Slashdot's anti-"free market" lies

[yesthattom]

“Karl Bode of Broadband Reports takes aim at supposed telecom experts and think tankers who profess to love the ‘free market,’ but want to ban the country’s un-wired towns and cities from offering broadband to their residents. If you didn’t know, incumbent providers frequently determine towns and cities unprofitable to serve (fine), but then turn around and lobby for laws that make it illegal to serve themselves (not so fine). They then pay experts to profess their love for a free market and deregulation — unless that regulation helps their bottom line. A simple point: ‘Strange how such rabid fans of a free-market wouldn’t be interested in allowing market darwinism to play out.’”

http://politics.slashdot.org/politics/06/10/31/2341240.shtml

Gosh I just finish one LJ post to my libertarian brothers and then I see this on Slashdot? Sheesh. There is no irony in what is listed above! The towns that want to offer free WiFi are ruining the free market because it is social engineering: Towns that provide free WiFi are trying to actively attract high-tech businesses to their town. That’s government social engineering! If they just did nothing, the free market would play out and companies would decide which town to move to without government intervention. Which, by the way, means a little place called “anywhere else”.

Proponents claim that the cost of providing WiFi is so low that a government can provide it to an entire town for considerably less money than the tax revenue that will be gained from companies moving to their town. Yes, that’s right... it’s all about getting more taxes so they can have more big government programs... like schools and fire houses and who knows what else... possibly more money for police to “fight crime” (which we all know is a code word for “stopping the free market”).

You’d think all the unemployed people in those towns would have enough free time to protest against such government craziness.

Comments

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Do no tags appear (i.e. your LJ style doesn't display them) or do they just not appear on my posts?

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

None, I think. When I open your post (which is still in my style) I see the tags, but not from the Friends Page. So once I've decided what I want to say, I may not notice the tag even after I open your post to comment on.