America! The land of selfish arseholes. At least that’s what a new survey seems to show, with 53 per cent of respondents against the idea of the government making high-speed broadband available to those it has yet to reach.
A national survey of 2252 adults by Pew found that 11 per cent thought broadband should be a top priority, 30 per cent think it’s an important priority, 27 per cent said it was “not too important” a priority and 26 per cent think it shouldn’t be attempted at all by the government.
Now, as someone reading this post right now, I’m going to guess that you have access to the internet. Imagine if you did not. Could you live your life as well as you do now? Could you, say, apply for a job without an email account? No?
But hey, why let the government create incentives for ISPs to expand into areas where they think it’s just not cost-effective enough to provide their services? That sounds like socialism to me. The government shouldn’t do anything for anyone! Now where’s my Medicare check? [Reuters]
Roland
Friday, August 13, 2010 at 7:58 AMWithout feeding fire to the flames, I’d say most of our city folk would think the same.
Rawprawn
Friday, August 13, 2010 at 8:32 AMI normally, cough, agree with your opinions however a survey of 0.001% of people is hardly representative all Americans. Secondly assuming that access to the Internet and high speed broadband are exactly the same thing is a bit naive. Finally, the fact that the US needs to cut spending by 14% just to try and pay off the interest on their debt, compounded by a economy with deflation and the fact they have spent the majority of the govt super and have no way of funding retirement seems a bit more of a problem then giving broadband access to every door.
Fordi
Friday, August 13, 2010 at 8:34 AMI sadly agree with Roland. The childcare rebate debate proves it. Everyone seems to be calling for a ‘delay’ in child care costs increasing – ie. Just wait until my kid is a little older. Selfish MFs.
X
Friday, August 13, 2010 at 1:33 PMIs there anything wrong with a person acting in their self interests?
Steve
Friday, August 13, 2010 at 6:12 PMYes.
Paul
Friday, August 13, 2010 at 8:43 AMGood to see we are not the only country with this issue.
Bring on better infrastructure I say.
Keelback
Friday, August 13, 2010 at 10:44 AMI am not surprised by such a result given what I hear from an aussie friend of mine living in Texas however, to be fair, as rawprawn says, it is a very small sample and USA has lots of problems right now. Look at us. Abbott wants to stop our NBN being rolled out.
I think we really need it given the size of our country and low population density. Heck, Kiwis have better internet than we do.
Rich
Friday, August 13, 2010 at 11:10 AMNo, they don’t.
They have terrible latency, and even worse broadband plans. To boot, they have a smaller percentage of ADSL2 coverage than we do.
Nato
Friday, August 13, 2010 at 2:39 PMAs always.
Let the free market sort it out.
Cheshire Cat
Friday, August 13, 2010 at 6:59 PMLOL. because the free market does such a good job with everything else. (GFC didnt happen right?)
We should NEVER use the free market for things that are important, Health, Education, Water, Power, Roads etc etc…. and what happens when we do. they rise in cost and go to hell as companies pinch pennies to make them profitible. For profit health insurance is the most evil idea in the world.
Steve
Friday, August 13, 2010 at 6:11 PMWas it an online survey? :P
Remy
Friday, August 13, 2010 at 9:20 PMThat same formula is how they rate television programs. 2.8 Million people watched Masterchef, no I bloody didn’t stop generalising…