The mid-1990s inception of the private sector Internet – has led to the greatest economic and lifestyle leap forward in the history of humanity.

More than $1 trillion in private investment has taken us from 14K dial-up – to 1GB+ of speed. And hurtling ever upward.

The free speech-free market Xanadu that is the Internet – is entirely the creation of the free market. NOT of government.

Government has in fact been an ongoing, rolling impediment to this mind-boggling progress – not a contributor.

While all of this amazing private sector Internet success has been going on – Leftists have bizarrely insisted these local governments actually try to get into the Internet provider business.

The Case For Municipal Broadband

This paper should be MUCH shorter than it is. Seven words: “There isn’t a case for municipal broadband.”

We Need a Public Option for Broadband

Because the Obamacare public option was so outstanding.

We Need Affordable and Reliable Publicly-Accountable Broadband

Government – affordable and reliable? That’s like saying “We need short and slow NBA basketball players.” Reality is an impediment to the asserted demand.

Government can’t even get it going – because of my Wallet Rule:

If you go out on a Friday night with your wallet, and you go out the following Friday night with my wallet – on which Friday night are you going to have more fun?

Obviously, you’re going to have a whole lot more fun with my wallet – because you don’t care what my wallet looks like at the end of the evening.

Well, government is always on other peoples’ wallets – ours. In gambling parlance – they’re playing with house money.

Government will never spend money as wisely or well as the people who earned it – from whom government takes it.

“The only place in San Francisco still pricing real estate like it’s the 1980s is the city assessor’s office. Its property tax system dates back to the dawn of the floppy disk.

“City employees appraising the market work with software that runs on a dead programming language and can’t be used with a mouse. Assessors are prone to make mistakes when using the vintage software because it can’t display all the basic information for a given property on one screen.

“The staffers have to open and exit several menus to input stuff as simple as addresses. To put it mildly, the setup ‘doesn’t reflect business needs now,’ says the city’s assessor, Carmen Chu.”

This is San Fran-freaking-cisco. The Tech Capital of Planet Earth. The government is awash in hundreds of millions of Silicon Valley tax dollars.

And they are running software, government-wide – from when Ronald Reagan was president. Back when there was still a Soviet Union.

If The Tech Capital of Planet Earth is three-plus decades behind – how do you think the federal government is doing?

Here’s a hint: Frigging terribly. In fact – even worse.

US Government Is Spending Billions on Old Tech that Barely Works, Says Watchdog:

“Three-quarters of the government’s IT budget goes to supporting legacy systems, some of which date back to the 1970s.”
Oh good – four-plus decades behind. Ahh…1970s tech. When Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were President.