Let's see. This organization was able to get a sweatheart loan from the city, a grant from the province, and is able to use a government built network for their upstream. Keep in mind they've been working on this for 10 years and only have service available to 60% of the town's 8500 residents.

Go read the article. That $57/mo is only a small fraction of the total cost of the system.

They essentially did, the town "loaned" this non-profit $6 million to help with the costs and another $2.5 million was taken from the other citizens of Alberta who won't even get to use the network. They're also using a government network for their upstream so all in all the tax payer is responsible for the majority of the costs.

The lack of competition in the U.S. isn't due to startup costs, it's due to government granted monopolies. In most of the U.S. it's illegal for a second cable or phone company to come in and start laying lines even if they want to

ALL products and services are ultimately produced through labor. The "low cost" in this case is largely due to the fact that they were able to get other people to pick up much of the cost rather than paying for it themselves.

What makes you think an attack would have to involve a DDOS? There are other ways of attacking a network you know.

It's a lot more relivent than the maximum tax rate which almost nobody actually paid back when it was over 90%. Even as a percentage of GDP taxes in 2007 were about the same as in the 1970s. As I said however, the real tax is the spending and spending as a percentage of GDP hasn't been this high (over 24%) since WWII.

Trickle-down is normally associated with Regan but during his presidency spending nearly doubled.

Maybe not purely but on average, yes. Every dollar spent by the government is a dollar not available to individuals to build/buy the things they need most so unless you think that, on average, the government spends more efficiently than individuals then it's a net drag.

Just the opposite. I think the complexity is why the decision making needs to be as decentralized as much as possible rather than being left to government bureaucrats who, all too often, spend for political gain.

Standard Oil's near monopoly only lasted maybe 30 years and by the time they were broken up their market share had been dropping for many years and was down to 65%. The market was in fact doing exactly what I claimed, competitors saw the profits to be made in the oil industry and found ways to compete. Furthermore, during this period, Standard Oil greatly increased efficiency, found new uses for waste products, and lowered prices for consumers dramatically.

In a true free market there would be very few very wealthy people because any industry that generated massive profits would also attract massive competition. The most profitable industries have gotten that way because of government interference not in spite of it.

The maximum marginal tax RATE may have decreased but the total amount of taxes collected has not decreased over the long term. Besides, taxes are just one form of government interference in the market. All government spending is ultimately a tax so simply trading greater deficits or money printing for taxes isn't an improvement.

Agricultural subsidies, copyrights, patents, bailouts.....

What are these UDIDs used for? Could it be that these were collected from the owners via a Trojan app or web site or whatever?

Thermoelectric coolers use way too much current for a reasonably sized solar panel. A standard, well insulated cooler would probably be fine. Wrap it in a blanket if you need more insulation.

Around here, the excuse the phone company uses is woodpeckers poking holes in the lines.

That's only true if the rate of interest on the bonds exceeds the rate of increase in energy costs. That seems unlikely today.