Holy Dang! A Libertarian Statement in a Mainstream Media Article?! The World is Ending!

So as I finished this article, my heart nearly stopped. (Then again, it might have skipped a beat or so out of utter shock!) The article describes how all the cities around the country that have been touting their free Wi-Fi access, available throughout the city, have almost all failed to get started and are being scrapped. There is a statement that if more people took to heart, the world would be a much better and nicer place. Here is the statement from the article that will make Algore cringe as the Earth rattles.

"This is a technology that is changing so quickly that you have to allow the industry to handle it on a competitive basis to keep the prices low and innovation high," Kagan said. "When government gets involved in these projects, no matter what government, it just trips over itself."

The speaker Kagan is "Jeff Kagan, an independent telecom industry analyst." (Might as well put it in quotes when I can't really change his title description.) I don't know who this guy is, I don't know what his political viewpoints are, and I am utterly stumped at how he got quoted in this piece, but I do know a great libertarian message when I see one. And golly, this here's a goody! I have included more in this quote to provide context, but his idea about government tripping over itself can apply even to technologies that don't change very rapidly.

I have to admit, the article I linked to is one of the best articles I have read from a mainstream media source in a long time. Even more so that this one was on the top news stories on Yahoo!, usually where crappy news stories appear.

Now, without going into too much detail, these plans were meant to provide the urban poor with Internet access for free. Needless to say, the idea was junk and obviously doesn't really work. (People love exceptions so Philly will be the one for this story.) I just have two questions. Did anyone in these cities ask where poor people were going to get computers from? I mean, those suckers are expensive. And, come to think of it, Wi-Fi is more of a laptop thing, available as you travel around. Laptops are more expensive than desktops so what poor person can afford one of them? Because if they can afford a desktop, there are cheaper ways to provide net access for a desktop than Wi-Fi.

My second point is this. The lies about the possibility of broadband Internet access (in the past few years, the wired version of Wi-Fi utopia) was the final straw for Enron and CEO Jeff Skilling. He is now in jail for lying about the broadband possibilities so I have to ask. Are any of these city politicians who kept touting Wi-Fi as great for the masses and easy to set up going to spend any time in jail? I mean, Skilling lied and took investor money that they voluntarily gave to him. (People with pensions investing in Enron can't really blame Skilling as they should be blaming the pension runners first.) These lying bastards took taxpayer funds and wasted it. Shouldn't they at least spend some time in jail? I say yes because it is only fair. They don't need the 25 years that Skilling got because he did other stuff, but at least 1 year or so was because of the broadband shenanigans. Give these city politicians a year in the slammer. Make politicians think twice about promising stuff they can't deliver, which is exactly the same thing Skilling did wrong. See, they are connected.