Quote:
Originally Posted by mookiemookie
Paging Dr. UnderseaLcpl, Dr. UnderseaLcpl, please meet your party at the front desk.
 |
I'm here.....I'm here. What seems to be the problem? South Korea is implementing a forward-thinking attitude to internet speed, connectivity, and bandwidth? And they are ahead of us? Troubling.
Diagnosis: Though it is not unknown for the occassional government program in some nation, somewhere, to get something right, time will tell as to whether this is a wise move on the part of the S. Korean government.
Remember when Japan thought subsidizing robotics would be a great idea? They developed a lot of fascinating innovations in the field, but look where it got them as a nation. Now they are struggling to stay competitive against other Asian markets that weren't quite so enlightened but had a more practical attitude.
Now, look where their efforts got us. Nice tech at bargain prices with relatively little effort on our part because there is never any demand for what they develop when they develop it. They paid for their attempt to bypass the natural progression of free exchange in more ways than one. Worse, they paid for it as a nation because it was a national initiative. What should have been an impressive series of market triumphs was cut tragically short by something as simple as basic supply and demand. The case for state foresight in new industries has already been made.
On to the US part of the equation. There was a time, not so long ago, when the US government still thought it was their onus to facilitate telecommunications. Anyone alive at the time will remember what a spectacular failure that was. The "deregulation"(read: limited, licensed, privatization with heavy regulation) of telecommunications led to a worldwide revolution in digital communications. The effect was so profound that we now have debates over the tremendous availability of data, whether it is to children or the quality of information or the ability and need of the average citizen to utilize it. The case for privatization, in any capacity, is already made.
So how does this all tie together? Well, what we're essentially looking at here, given the heavy regulation of US telecom industries under the FCC and the telecommuncications act of 1996, which was supposedly deregulatory but managed to somehow add nearly 10,000 pages of regulation to the registrar, is a match between a state initiative and a state intitiative. To put it simply, the US set a bar on what telecom industries could do, and South Korea has directed state resources at raising the bar, possibly without regard to the consequences. Perhaps they will be successful, or perhaps they will end up the victim of yet another unintended result of cramming people's own money down their throats in the name of a supposedly greater good.
Prescription: Remove taxes, spurious regulations, and subsidies for US business of any type (or at least anything that was lobbied for) and actually force them to compete by removing state trade barriers. It will cure what ails you. Side-effects may include complaining special interests and unemployed, politically-inclined rhetoriticians.