Damn... let me know when that changes. Here on the Eastside in Redmond we have 50/50Mbps FiOS from Frontier for $60/mo. or so. Back when I lived in DC, we had Verizon FiOS and it was pretty great, except I had to pay extra for the Business FiOS so they'd unblock HTTP(S)/SMTP on my home server (and get vaguely more helpful customer service). But none of that silliness is necessary at the Frontier Residential tier.

ROFL.

What a strawman. Which hypothetical investment banker will take Uber and what happened to his limousine and private driver?

Because other people will pay for your desire.

Economists are big fans of auctions and say that's the most fair method to distribute resources. Economists, however, are not known for taking social, cultural or human values into account in their simple models.

So yes, I would. Man, it really isn't so difficult. Get some history lessons on when and why the taxi business became regulated.

It's worst than that. Lobbyists actually write most bills, then find a congresscritter to sponsor the lobbyists' pet bills. Congresscritters very rarely write legislation themselves (I don't have it to hand but I recall seeing a stat that put their share at something like 5%.)

I lived on fixed wireless for most of the past decade. It was down at least 10% of the time, and often more (like every time it rained). It was unreliable enough that I kept the dialup modem as a backup.

If good upload speeds were widely available, I suspect online backup would quickly become a mainstream market, especially as more people become aware of the need to back up (witness the solid market for flash drives and external hard drives, mostly to ordinary folks and largely used for personal backups).

I know I'd use it, but my paltry 600k up will not cut it.

The Founders had largely expected common sense to prevail. That it didn't is one reason why we have the Bill of Rights.

This.

I grew up in the DC metro area. Snowstorms in New England are notoriously hard to predict, especially nor'easters like this one (which are typically a combination of 2-3 storm systems).

Sure, you can see it coming down from the Midwest, but it's always hard to tell exactly what's going to happen to a blizzard after it stumbles over the Appalachian Mountains, which will divert some of it and squeeze some or all of the moisture out of it. Then it collides with some storm full of rain coming in from the North Atlantic. Then the wildcard is some sort of warmer air coming up from the south... It all collides over New England. The computer models can tell you what's going into the mix, but who knows exactly where it's going to transition from rain to snow? WHICH STORM WILL WIN?! A butterfly in Miami decides.

I'm sure all Uber drivers are responsible, altruistic people and they will only offer you a lift if they are in possession of specially equipped and certified snowstorm-safe vehicles.

In Econ 101 you also learn about horizontal and vertical pricing.

Basically, if the surge price is reasonably high, most drivers will be available. From 1.0 to 1.5 you may raise the number of drivers considerably, but from 3.0 to 3.5 you will probably not motivate many more drivers to go out and drive - most available drivers will already be on the road, and the few who decide against it will not change their mind here because if 3.0 doesn't motivate them, then 3.5 most likely won't because they have important reasons to stay home.

A cap on such elastic pricing is almost always a good idea.

This exactly.

Why do rich people not live in Africa and Asia where the climate is good? Safety and convenience. If you don't want to spend your life in a castle defending your riches, you go somewhere where culture, society and government will do that job for you.

Strangely, many don't see this as a service worth paying for, which is largely a semantic problem. Maybe we should tackle it there, and instead of taxes, we should collect a "wealth-protection service fee".