The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

How dare a city provide services to its citizens. For example:
Philadelphia spending $10mil to provide free wi-fi for its residents?? Collectivist tyranny I say!! Why should everyone in Philly be paying for wi-fi they might not use when Verizon could provide similar service for $50 per month per citizen. The free market is sooo much more efficient in this case. That's why the telecoms are lobbying nationwide to prevent municipalities for enacting such socialistic schemes. Verizon knows what's best for us, and it sure isn't government run wi-fi at a fraction of the cost.
But what do I know. Maybe if I subscribed to a philosophy from a poorly written piece of fiction (everyone know the best philosophy comes from fiction!! Not that academic stuff), I'd know better.

I appreciate the comment, but Philadelphia is spending money on free wireless? That makes perfect sense.

The point here is that Philadelphia or SF taxpayers will pay for the service whether they like it or not, whether they need it or not, whether they want it or not. Why should they? What is the compelling need for government subsidized WiFi, or other media? How is this necessary?

The free market does work in this case, JH. There are places where WiFi is made available for free by companies, for economically viable reasons. But if it is not economically viable, why is it being done?

For votes, JH. For no reason but political points. There is no other basis for it. And I have never heard anybody give a sound justification for government by this philosophy. You care to take a crack at it?

As for the very clever comment regarding the basis of your personal philosophy, or mine, you are mistaken. My philosophy rests on ideas that well predate Ayn Rand, whose work I enjoyed but do not hold up as the best by any means. But you seem to miss the point of why she wrote fiction in the first place. It's more economically viable than non-fiction, as shown by her sales records. Her philosophy did not spring from fiction, any more than did the philosophies of Thomas Moore or Voltaire. To suggest otherwise is specious and incorrect.

Score one more for free market capitalism.

Public WiFi certainly could be economical. Rather than each individual paying an ISP, a city can negotiate bargain prices using its economy of scale, and cover the same number of users with less equipment.

If this is something that voters want, it might justify a low per-person cost in taxes. There's nothing wrong with that. Just as we direct the government to build us roads, bridges and levees, building a wireless infrastructure can provide great benefit at low cost to communities.

Marvin, the problem with this approach is that it is only efficient in principle, or for very small groups - for example, we buy in bulk for our families.
Americans accept that paved roads etc are necessary, or at least worth it, but for most commodities it is neither. Introducing the government into the equation means building a bureaucracy, which is never efficient. How many city jobs will be "created" by the S.F. initiative? They cost money and provide no new service, other than to oversee what we would have been doing individually anyway. Once again I say if it were financially viable, Google would do it without being paid by the city. Collectivism is only efficient if all participants are sincerely seeking the best outcome for all involved, again like a family. But a city is not a family.

Would you ask your city to provide "free" milk, clothing, video games, and pornography? Couldn't the argument be made that these things would be provided to residents more cheaply if a city bought it in bulk and distributed it to residents, each according to his want?

Of course you can see where I am going with this. If this is something that voters want, it only means that unchecked democracy is formalized mob rule. The logical conclusion would be that voters could also vote things away, like the rights of the individual.

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