DISQUS

Berin Szoka · 11 months ago

Amen, Adam. Let's not forget the experience of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which was intended to subsidize electricity—the "broadband" of its day—in that region. But instead of promoting economic development in that region, it simply made the region poorer for the very reasons you suggest here.
dm · 10 months ago

On the other hand, Verizon and other phone companies are pulling out of rural areas, which are also not served by cable. There might be a role for subsidized broadband (presumably wireless) to those areas, just as there was a role for subsidized roads to bring crops to market (and I think roads might be a better analogy to broadband than electification).

TVA made the region poorer, how, exactly? Which reasons "suggested here" apply? Discouraging competition? For electrical production? For that matter, poorer than what? The region was already pretty poor, and it seems to me that lack of resources and education might have had a more serious effect than any putative effect of the TVA.