lastgiantrobot

@SilverTrumpet We are not "behind" so much as other countries tend towards being based around one metropole and also having smaller populations. For example if you get high speed internet to tokyo then you have covered the majority of the Japanese population by only covering one city where as in america we have a very dispersed population and numerous metropoles. If you were to single out a state like New York you would have similar broadband penetration rates however once you dilute them with less populated states like Kansas your penetration ratio declines.

@Mike10010100 If what you said were true then no EPA laws would have ever been passed nor would a board of directors for public companies be mandated by law. Corporate lobbyists are not as powerful as you think they are since they are balanced by union influences and bond holders who sometimes even want a companies dissolution. In addition you seem to build up companies to be some sort of abstract bogeyman, they are not, they are made of people who run it and often what is good for a company, like tax breaks, mean they are able to hire more people. Finally money is not the main thing politicians care about, it is votes they want wether through campaign financing or being supplied by voting blocks. The Cuban embargo is continued because of the vote supplied by calle ocho, not by their money. There is no massive conspiracy of industrial complexes, there are just monetary considerations.

@Exodite Sweden's higher median disposable income may be more due to its lower birth rate than anything else (2.05 usa v 1.67 sweden: from Wolfram Alpha) but I would have to see what your quoting "disposable income" numbers from and what that is defined as. As for your definition of the point of government; there is no right answer since it speaks to beliefs and ideology, that is why governments differ so much. There are those who believe governments should prevent violence and fraud and not become a market force while others believe the government should either moderate the market or dominate it but no one answer is "the point". Abject horror at government involvement is not necessarily a bad thing, take a look at China or other countries that take an active role in the internet and block sites or limit usage in some regards. Is it so far fetched an idea that a politician eager to appease a political voting block would interject the government in a similar fashion? The cyber-bullying statutes spring to my mind, which I believe are so vague that anyone on the internet that has ever trolled could be charged under.

@Calculon; InspectorGadget is not making off the wall arguments that you seem to think he is. You and others are making the mistake of thinking only in terms of current technology and also assuming everyone wants these high speed pipes. First by rolling out a high speed fiber network, supported by the government with a triple A bond rating you then reduce the incentive for any company to compete with that by innovating with new kinds of wide area wifi or satellite technologies since it would be impossible to compete with this government backed service. Second, you support this program because you would benefit that most from it will the costs would be spread out amongst the entire population in the form of taxes. Some one who just uses the internet for email and lolcats does not need 10mbps and it would be unfair to force them to pay for a service they do not need or even want. On a sidenote @Calculon, you can move to a number of places with better internet connections without buying a house, there are a number of college towns with dirt cheap rents in the surrounding communities with great connections.

This previous comment was suppose to be in reply to the paradoc/ Mr Johnson thread. My apologies for also failing to hit the reply button.

Mr. johnson,

I am sorry but it is not a "conclusion" of fact that healthcare should be state provided. These are political maneuvers made by foreign governments for many different political reasons. Most government health care systems in europe came to being after WW2 to promote reconstruction, in fact the Germans welfare state was first stated by Bismarck to head of a socialist movement...ultimately failed but it was a political maneuver in the end. Communist countries instituted theirs as a way of controlling their populations both politically as one would be reluctant to oppose a government that could cut off your family's treatments or in the case of China to enforce a one child policy. These are all political machinations not mathematically provable moral standards since they all involve a forced reallocation of wealth, freedom and privacy.

Apologize for the repost of previous comment, 1password seems to have remembered my entire post.

The comment I intended to make was that the arguments here are not about the program PPA but about the comments made in connection "free healthcare" therefore his comments are not the "best" in that it fails to address the concern some have here. First that TUAW is bringing politics into what some of us regard as a neutral place and that those politically charged statements are treated as fact.

Your argument is flawed on a number of fronts. Though Dr. Salk sought no patent for his vaccine he did draw a salary as a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Secondly it would have been hard for him to claim a patent if he wished given that he had a large research team with him and undoubtably the Foundation for Infantile Paralysis which funded his project would have a clause in their generous grant about ownership of the vaccine. And finally polio was a plague and possessed a threat to the nation( arguably on the same level as a famine or invasion). This is different from an individual's non-plague health problems in that it may be a personal tragedy but it is not a nation's. I do not know who you are referring to "people in today's times, who are all greedy"...a specific person would be helpful to your argument. As for you belief that if "you have no job because you're sick - guess what, then you die, unless you're rich and have the 500K saved up already" again you are mistaken. If you are grievously hurt a hospital legally has to treat you, they will provide life saving measures for the short term. The cost is then passed onto those who have insurance in the form of increased costs for the same procedures which in turn increases their premiums. No one dies in the street of America, ambulances will come, they will stabilize you and take you to a hospital where doctors will attempt to keep you from dying. Longer term care is on the individual as it should be since it represents a choice in quality of life; you can pay money for health insurance or for beer and cigs... we all live with our choices. Furthermore you generalize by saying no one has concerns about public education, school lunches and parks but that is not true, many people do have concerns about that. A greater role for private education is brought up every time education reform is, school lunches fall under most general complaints about "welfare moms", and public parks are constantly cut back in many metropolitan areas as voters vote down taxes for parks or alternatively vote in officials who cut back park budgets. You then say people don't want to help with kids healthcare but that is a flat out falsification as SCHIP has been in force since 97. This program too is also controversial but there are people who do want to help children in that regard and there are those who do not, which is one of the reasons SCHIP only matches state funds devoted to child healthcare instead of being a general grant. Finally, welfare programs aimed at minors at not necessarily analogous to welfare programs for adults in that minors have diminished capacities both physically, mentally, and legally (inability to form contract, work, so on so forth) so it can be argued that it is the states job to ensure all minors are adequately provided for so that they can grow up to be productive citizens...who are then free to make their own choices as to how they wish to live their lives.

P.S. TUAW, it would be advisable to not interject politics into gadget reviews or else it descends into this. Believe it or not I go to gadget sites to get away from politics for a brief moment. However if I see charged comments like "catch up to the rest of the world" or "free" anything I do feel compelled to check the pretentiousness of those statements with counter arguments.

Your argument is flawed on a number of fronts. Though Dr. Salk sought no patent for his vaccine he did draw a salary as a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Secondly it would have been hard for him to claim a patent if he wished given that he had a large research team with him and undoubtably the Foundation for Infantile Paralysis which funded his project would have a clause in their generous grant about ownership of the vaccine. And finally polio was a plague and possessed a threat to the nation( arguably on the same level as a famine or invasion). This is different from an individual's non-plague health problems in that it may be a personal tragedy but it is not a nation's. I do not know who you are referring to "people in today's times, who are all greedy"...a specific person would be helpful to your argument. As for you belief that if "you have no job because you're sick - guess what, then you die, unless you're rich and have the 500K saved up already" again you are mistaken. If you are grievously hurt a hospital legally has to treat you, they will provide life saving measures for the short term. The cost is then passed onto those who have insurance in the form of increased costs for the same procedures which in turn increases their premiums. No one dies in the street of America, ambulances will come, they will stabilize you and take you to a hospital where doctors will attempt to keep you from dying. Longer term care is on the individual as it should be since it represents a choice in quality of life; you can pay money for health insurance or for beer and cigs... we all live with our choices. Furthermore you generalize by saying no one has concerns about public education, school lunches and parks but that is not true, many people do have concerns about that. A greater role for private education is brought up every time education reform is, school lunches fall under most general complaints about "welfare moms", and public parks are constantly cut back in many metropolitan areas as voters vote down taxes for parks or alternatively vote in officials who cut back park budgets. You then say people don't want to help with kids healthcare but that is a flat out falsification as SCHIP has been in force since 97. This program too is also controversial but there are people who do want to help children in that regard and there are those who do not, which is one of the reasons SCHIP only matches state funds devoted to child healthcare instead of being a general grant. Finally, welfare programs aimed at minors at not necessarily analogous to welfare programs for adults in that minors have diminished capacities both physically, mentally, and legally (inability to form contract, work, so on so forth) so it can be argued that it is the states job to ensure all minors are adequately provided for so that they can grow up to be productive citizens...who are then free to make their own choices as to how they wish to live their lives.

P.S. TUAW, it would be advisable to not interject politics into gadget reviews or else it descends into this. Believe it or not I go to gadget sites to get away from politics for a brief moment. However if I see charged comments like "catch up to the rest of the world" or "free" anything I do feel compelled to check the pretentiousness of those statements with counter arguments.

Free healthcare? You mean all those doctors and nurses and drug researchers will sacrifice years of their life to school and grueling double shifts..all for free?

Nothing is free, you just mean someone else is picking up your tab...