Having conducted policy work on rural internet in Canada around 2018/2019, the solutions for connecting people at that time were grim. At that point, connecting the remaining homes with no high-speed internet had long been unprofitable for the private sector and was becoming a losing proposition for the government. We are talking tens of thousands of dollars to connect one house.
Starlink solved this challenge overnight, and I would say rural internet connectivity is no longer an election issue. This was influential for a highly developed country like Canada, and I can only imagine the transformation this has had for middle- and low-income economies.
SKabanov on
Feels like there’s another point on either side: whether private exploration by oligarchs like Musk should be tolerated because their work advances humanity all the same, or whether longtermism is not an inevitability and not worth the tradeoffs and that public exploration is a better alternative.
tyontekija on
I am in favour of rurals not having internet access, actually.
Evnosis on
Why are they all lumped together?
Satellite Internet access and space exploration are worthwhile investments. Asteroid mining isn’t.
We aren’t even close to running out of minerals on Earth and asteroid mining is nowhere near cheap enough to be competitive with terrestrial mining.
vaguelydad on
Krugman is right, but space is cool. If the government is going to waste money on things that everyone else thinks are cool, they get to do mine too. I’m willing to negotiate and if we can do large cuts of all the bloat, they can cut my favorite waste too.
Also billionaires trying to colonize mars with private money is cool and better than hedonism or spending it on trying to take over the republic.
red-flamez on
I doubt that SpaceX has cut launch costs. SpaceX rocket engines come from the soviet union. This technology was developed in the 1960s in the Soviet Union. It is last century technology. No one has yet to make engines better, including SpaceX.
Swimming-Ad-2284 on
Not a musk bootlicker that’s for sure.
Swimming-Ad-2284 on
You should post this in an additional three places just to see if you get even more engagement.
9 Comments
starlink sucks
Musk is a piece of shit person but…
Having conducted policy work on rural internet in Canada around 2018/2019, the solutions for connecting people at that time were grim. At that point, connecting the remaining homes with no high-speed internet had long been unprofitable for the private sector and was becoming a losing proposition for the government. We are talking tens of thousands of dollars to connect one house.
Starlink solved this challenge overnight, and I would say rural internet connectivity is no longer an election issue. This was influential for a highly developed country like Canada, and I can only imagine the transformation this has had for middle- and low-income economies.
Feels like there’s another point on either side: whether private exploration by oligarchs like Musk should be tolerated because their work advances humanity all the same, or whether longtermism is not an inevitability and not worth the tradeoffs and that public exploration is a better alternative.
I am in favour of rurals not having internet access, actually.
Why are they all lumped together?
Satellite Internet access and space exploration are worthwhile investments. Asteroid mining isn’t.
We aren’t even close to running out of minerals on Earth and asteroid mining is nowhere near cheap enough to be competitive with terrestrial mining.
Krugman is right, but space is cool. If the government is going to waste money on things that everyone else thinks are cool, they get to do mine too. I’m willing to negotiate and if we can do large cuts of all the bloat, they can cut my favorite waste too.
Also billionaires trying to colonize mars with private money is cool and better than hedonism or spending it on trying to take over the republic.
I doubt that SpaceX has cut launch costs. SpaceX rocket engines come from the soviet union. This technology was developed in the 1960s in the Soviet Union. It is last century technology. No one has yet to make engines better, including SpaceX.
Not a musk bootlicker that’s for sure.
You should post this in an additional three places just to see if you get even more engagement.