Bush Condemns Free National W-Fi A connected and informed public is a bad thing for an anti-populist government. The more people who are informed and organized to get out and vote, and not being stuck on one news source that constantly tries to passively indicate that one candidate is a Muslim terrorist , the worse for conservative republican smear tactics that used to work so darn well in the past .
My first thought is against free national wi-fi as well. It's bad enough that Americans these days think they are entitled to free money and free healthcare. Do we need to add free technology to it too?
I have to side with Bush on this one. Nothing is free and it will come with government oversight. It would start as a great thing and soon turn into regulations and censorship. I would rather pay $30 a month than have the Government involved in controlling the Internet. The Internet is a free market and as such, it should remain so.
Did we not learn something by how countries are banning access to certain sites yet? We don't want the government involved in internet access.
Good points one and all. I hadn't looked at it from those points of view. However, most of your arguments against it have to do with the government being involved. Is that the only downside you can see? Because if we put laws on the books that keep government from medaling in this other than mandating the bandwidth be set aside for public access what other problems do you see? I can see ISPs becoming worried about having to compete with free public wifi but as with all similar situations, if you provide a great product or service in capitalist society you will always come out on top, even when competing with "free". Markus Frind who runs PlentyOfFish.com gets a nice chunk of the (free) market, but sites like eHarmony and Match.com are doing just fine as well because PoF is a PoS . They provide a far better user experience.
I don't know if the ISP's would really be able to stay afloat. See, I think the way it works now is that ISP's bank on the "typical internet user". Typical internet users don't spend hours on forums, play games for 4-5 hours a day, and run businesses out of their homes. Generally, they hop on a few times per week maybe, do some research, and generally don't download movies, etc. They probably lose money, or cut even, on people like me who goes through countless amounts of bandwidth each month, whereas, the typical internet users is where they make most of it up. The typical internet users would all go to free wifi.
Anything the government provides has to come outta *somebody's* pocket... so yes, we'd pay for it anyway. Nonetheless if said system was built with taxpayer dollars and government oversight it *would* be government administered, that's just how it works, and we'd be handing control to them. I'd say the bureaucracy already tries to control enough of our lives without handing 'em a piece.