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Municipal Wi-Fi Networks In Trouble

Posted by kdawson on Tue May 22, 2007 03:33 PM
from the seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time dept.
Wireless Networking Networking Hardware IT
imamac writes "According to an AP story, municipal Wi-Fi is going nowhere fast. A think tank research director quipped, 'They are the monorails of this decade: the wrong technology, totally overpromised and completely undelivered.' Subscriptions to the services are much lower than expected and lawmakers are concerned that millions of dollars will have gone to waste that could have been better spent on roads or crime-fighting. Satisfaction with the quality of service has also been low, which give some insight into the low adoption rate. Is municipal Wi-Fi just a bad idea, has it been poorly implemented, or is the technology just not there to support such an endeavor?"
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] IT: Chicago Cancels Municipal Wi-Fi Plan 93 comments
thatshortkid writes "The Chicago Tribune is reporting that a proposed plan for municipal wi-fi in Chicago has fallen apart. The story cites contract disputes and the falling price of residential broadband as reasons for the talks collapsing. 'Chicago officials had intended that the city would offer infrastructure, but no cash, to a carrier that would use its own funds to build the network here. EarthLink and AT&T Inc. submitted proposals to the city, but after months of negotiations the parties were unable to reach agreement. The companies sought a commitment from Chicago to be an "anchor tenant," agreeing to pay to use the Wi-Fi network to support city services, but the city declined ... Even if Chicago declines to back a municipal wireless network, city residents soon will gain more Internet connection options. Sprint Nextel Corp. is building a wireless WiMax network here that is due to offer service next spring.'"
[+] ISPs Losing Interest In Citywide Wireless Coverage 98 comments
The New York Times is running a story about how hope is fading for the implementation of municipal wireless access in cities across the US. Major cities and small towns alike are finding that ISPs are withdrawing from such plans due to the low profitability of ventures that are similar to Philadelphia's incomplete network. We've previously discussed Chicago's and San Francisco's wireless status, and also some of the stumbling blocks other cities have faced. From the Times: "In Tempe, Ariz., and Portland, Ore., for example, hundreds of subscribers have found themselves suddenly without service as providers have cut their losses and either abandoned their networks or stopped expanding capacity. EarthLink announced on Feb. 7 that 'the operations of the municipal Wi-Fi assets were no longer consistent with the company's strategic direction.' Philadelphia officials say they are not sure when or if the promised network will now be completed."
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  • But if we don't have it (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 22 2007, @03:35PM (#19227053)
    The WiFi will go to Shelbyville!
  • "I'll say anything if you give me money."

  • WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun (571051) on Tuesday May 22 2007, @03:39PM (#19227139)
    As a tech, I'm dying for these things. I'm getting more and more wireless networks where it just doesn't work because there's too many people with wireless devices in the area. I had one house with 6 wireless networks in range, cell phones, wireless security systems, 2.4 Ghz wireless on the land line, and even a few wireless mice and keyboards floating around. It was too much.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Spy Hunter (317220)
      But how could yet another WiFi network be the answer? Personally, I don't see how a municipal WiFi network could ever be considered a good idea, for one reason and one reason only: range. You need billions of hotspots and even so you will inevitably have terrible coverage. Not to mention the conflicts with existing networks. Unreliable wireless is hardly better than no wireless at all. OTOH, municipal *WiMAX* makes lots of sense. Let's use technologies for the purposes they were designed.
    • That is why I run OpenWRT. I can crank up the gain a little to get an edge over my neigbors. I also cracked a bunch of them and set them to one end of the spectrum, reserving the other for myself. That makes me feel selfish so I am considering running on channel 13, which is of course illegal in the US, but is nice clean bandwidth.
    • I use an ethernet cable. Its faster , cheaper , more reliable and impossible to hack from over the air.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by mrchaotica (681592) *

          I get about 20 or so and they're ALL encrypted so I can't even bum off someone else's connection!

          Two thoughts:

          • Wi-Fi encryption is weak. Get some software to crack it and bum off somebody's connection anyway.
          • Take charge of the situation: set up a community meeting and work out a plan to equip the apartment complex with one shared Wi-Fi connection. If you can't get signal, chances are nobody else can either, and they'll welcome the idea. Besides, if you do it right you should be able to make everybody's c

  • At the risk of being repetative (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zappepcs (820751) on Tuesday May 22 2007, @03:39PM (#19227149) Journal
    Let me say this, Metropolitan networks, whether Wi-Fi or otherwise need one thing to make them both competitive and financially viable; the metropolitan network needs to be owned by that cooperative body within the municipality's control. That means every last 'last mile' connection.

    When the city/county (whatever) owns all the last mile physical plant/infrastructure and ISP's simply rent connectivity to end users the municipality will be functional and profitable. Yes, that is how we would see big bandwidth to every home, and each home would have the choice of ISP services. It is possible to do this and would instantly flatten the cost of entry as well as the rules of engagement.

    Then, if you ad Wi-Fi support to parts of the city that is subscribed to by users who already pay... well, it's not such a stretch to support financially.

    Does anyone see any downsides to this?
    • More than that, they need their own spectrum, and they need a lot of it. Which means they need proprietary cards which will connect to their spectrum.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by davygrvy (868500)
            zappepcs has it right. I am 100% for the success of municipal fiber networks. Financial payback comes from renting access to the service providers, which results in competition for the end user. Slap on some wifi access points on some poles where the fiber trunks are located, and poof, wifi, too. The end user has choices and price per Mb goes way down to Japan/Korea pricing (Why aren't you jealous?). The USA still has the highest $ per Mb of broadband in the world for no good reason except that us sill

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Shaman (1148)
              Municipal wireless & fibre is no problem as long as it's open for competitive access. That's rarely the case, in which point it's an abuse of government funding. But let's not open that can of worms.

              I'm entirely behind the concept of the municipalities running fibre and wireless networks, as long as they don't try to shrug existing providers aside and provide open competitive access to service providers using their network.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Agent Smart (204871)
      Sure. So the only municipalities that could implement this plan with success are those that have no current last mile connections within their boundaries. No cable co. No big bell.

      The downside is that few municipalities are still free of these existing monopolies, so most could not execute that brilliant plan.

    • Sure - who's got the incentive to upgrade the network?

  • Google's Wifi (Score:5, Interesting)

    by James_Aguilar (890772) <aguilar,james&gmail,com> on Tuesday May 22 2007, @03:39PM (#19227151) Journal
    Google's wifi here in Mountain View is not very good. I can't get any reception on it, and I live less than a mile from their headquarters. If even Google can't get it right, city governments probably . . .

    The rest of the above sentence is left as an exercise for the reader.

  • The major issue (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Shaman (1148) <{ten.sok} {ta} {namahs}> on Tuesday May 22 2007, @03:40PM (#19227169) Homepage
    The major issue has been that they have given the contracts to implementors that are paid for the number of radios that they install and by gosh they will install more radios than anyone every imagined. But, see, the 2.4Ghz bands were already polluted BEFORE they started and installing 2.4G radios on every block for several square miles when each mesh radio has a practical range (line of sight) of around 20 miles is really not helping things. And just as bad, the backhaul of the mesh radios is almost always 5.2Ghz or 5.8Ghz, which have only a few channels each to choose from (5.8Ghz has more, but still...)

    Don't believe this could happen? Ask anyone that has tried to use the Toronto mesh network downtown. It's flat ugly.

      • Re:The major issue (Score:5, Informative)

        by Shaman (1148) <{ten.sok} {ta} {namahs}> on Tuesday May 22 2007, @06:10PM (#19229583) Homepage
        I operate a fixed wireless ISP with 40 towers and over 1,500 (deeply) rural customers. Just so we're clear on the level I'm speaking at.

        Actually, you have several things wrong. Mesh radios CAN be set to low power modes but invariably they are not. They are set to blast at or near full power because nearby interference causes issues that only power output can solve. Sectorizing only solves so much. But even those that aren't set up that way still exhibit many issues. At a full 36db EIRP, 2.4Ghz will indeed go 20 miles line of site and beyond, if the noise floor is low enough and the radio is high enough. 5.2Ghz cannot use reflectors and only has a useful range of a few kilometers, but it's the lowest power of the available bands.

        Take a look at the 2.4Ghz backhauls that go over 40 miles with standard EIRP. Not that PCMCIA cards will power that far, but the A.P.s will. One company makes a product that claims 216Mbps full duplex over 20 miles, in fact.

        So the question to you: If mesh gear worked so well, why is everyone having trouble with them?

        As for interference... 5.8Ghz noise levels are horrendous around here, 2.4Ghz is only good for backhaul links for towers that are way out in the middle of nowhere, for multipoint it's nearly unusable, and 5.2Ghz is moderately noisy as well. I'm hoping the 5.4G and 4.9G radios will be available really soon because I need them. Speaking of that, my damn Motorola OFDM radios still can't be set to 4.9G even though it says right on the box that they support that band.

        Then there's 900Mhz... the interference in the top of the usable unlicensed band made it unusable and if two WISPs in an area decide to use 900Mhz, they'll both lose... and the beat goes on.

        The only real way out of the mess is to go with proprietary WiMax type products, and if you see another one of my posts, that's not a completely infallable solution, either.

  • Anecdote (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746) on Tuesday May 22 2007, @03:40PM (#19227173)

    Subscriptions to the services are much lower than expected and lawmakers are concerned that millions of dollars will have gone to waste that could have been better spent on roads or crime-fighting. Satisfaction with the quality of service has also been low, which give some insight into the low adoption rate. Is municipal Wi-Fi just a bad idea, has it been poorly implemented, or is the technology just not there to support such an endeavor?

    Internet as a utility needs time to develop if it is ever going to be adopted. Take a look at my situation. I pay for a cable modem and not for a municipal wi-fi connection. Why? Well, because I occasionally like to watch television and television service is bundled with internet service. If I buy them separately I'm paying a whole lot of extra cash. What would make me change my mind? Well, if I could rent legal TV episodes over IP for a very, very low price akin to that portion of what it costs to see them on cable TV. Until that time, however, why should I pay extra?

  • Muni wireless done right: Oakland County, MI (Score:4, Interesting)

    by XorNand (517466) * on Tuesday May 22 2007, @03:43PM (#19227237)
    Here in Oakland County, Michigan [wirelessoakland.com], they took a different approach. Our nascent, county-wide wifi network was almost entirely privately funded. The county agreed to provide the space to mount the antennas (on land already owned by the county) and to promote it. The actual design and implementation was bid out to the private sector. The winner agreed to pick up the infrastructure tab and to provide free wireless to everyone in the service area. In exchange, they are permitted to offer plans with more bandwidth and traffic prioritization to those willing to pay for it. It's a win-win: It didn't cost the taxpayers anything and we all get free access, and the private company gets to keep any profits that they make from the premium service.
  • There are only a few groups of people who want wireless everywhere:
    • College students. Most colleges already have wireless for their students, and students spend most of their time on campus. Time off-campus is typically spent working or finding some other form of entertainment.
    • People who need internet for work who already have blackberries or cell data cards.
    • People who want wireless where they hang out, but many of these places (coffee shops, etc) already have wireless.

    Most other people might have

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by arth1 (260657)

          - Only available if signing up ahead of time

          I'm not even sure what point you're trying to get across here.

          If I'm visiting a city with Municipal Wi-Fi, I can't just open my laptop and access it. That was the initial promise of Municipal Wi-Fi -- it should be free for all, and anyone could access it -- not just those who had signed up in advance.
          Then the crusade against child porn and copyrighted entertainment shot down that idea, because there was a "need" to register who did what.
          It wasn't meant to compete

  • the project get sent to a private company who uses it as a tool to gather demographic information, annd is overly paranoid about the right kind of information.

    Let people connect. If you MUST have something, put a 1 page explaination. Period. Then let people use it. If somene crosses the line, deal with them.

  • Municipal WiFi is hard. Municipal WiMax would be a lot easier.
    • WiMax has its limitations too, and plenty of them. Chief amongst those is that it doesn't work as advertised (3 miles non line of site? In absolutely perfectly ideal conditions, perhaps). It's good... but it's basically good old OFDM re-packaged into multipoint.
    • That is my thought as well. Though WiMax sure is taking a long time to ramp up.

      Cellular internet may have already taken over by the time WiMax is ready. Though WiMax may get a boost if the cellular providers are the ones providing it, which is likely what will happen around here (WiMax base stations on cell towers, telco offers yet another package to their users).

  • WiFi obsolete as a public WAN... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Wonderkid (541329) on Tuesday May 22 2007, @03:46PM (#19227287) Homepage
    ...if a broadband or near broadband wireless connection is not available everywhere, then it is pointless. People cannot run their lives hoping to find a connection. Far better to put up with a slower but acceptable 3G or equiv connection through the cell/mobile providers where coverage is often assured. I reside in the UK and have a Vodafone 3G connect doo dah connected to my Macbook via USB and it works like a dream, anywhere I go. Even when it slows to GPRS, it is fast enough to surf most websites. I only use WiFi when back home or at the office where I am more likely to waste time watching YouTube videos and downloading stuff. :-) Seriously, my point is valid and when 4G is introduced (Google Samsung 4G trials), that will be it for public WiFi.

  • It's the marketing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by L. VeGas (580015) on Tuesday May 22 2007, @03:46PM (#19227293) Homepage Journal
    When the internet was taking off, we had great catch-phrases like "Information Superhighway"." Now that's a name I can get behind.

    "Municipal Wi-Fi", in contrast, sounds so lackluster, like "Deparment of Leisure Services". Proponents use lame slogans like "Wi-Fi? Wi-Not?" and "Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not useful."

    We need something that will make folks excited, like "Naked Bimbos Everywhere".
  • It may be a matter of scale and what you are trying to accomplish. Spokane, for example, has a muni system downtown that is free for X hours. They use it as a convention/tourist draw. Bremerton is installing one as we speak for the same reasons. They are trying to revitalize the downtown area with a new convention center/hotel, etc. If the goal is to get people to sign up and pay money so we can make a profit, maybe it won't work. But if the issue is to draw people to the area with a wi-fi infrastructure to
  • There have been various articles about it, but I only found one that talked about pricing - $17.70 per month [blogs.com] (via thenewsroom.com).
  • The government nearly always performs at this level: substandard. Why?

    1. Unlike the free market, they only answer to the people every couple of years. The sellers must respond to the buyer every single day.

    2. When government screws up they spend your money to figure out what happened and to come up with a solution. In the free market, you can just change providers.

  • Poor Implementation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MrCrassic (994046) <mrcrassic&gmail,com> on Tuesday May 22 2007, @03:53PM (#19227417) Homepage Journal

    It is not that City-wide Wi-Fi doesn't work or there is no tech powerful enough to run it; it's just poor implementation and, more importantly, poor advertisement.

    For one, rural and suburban municipal Wi-Fi would be a much better implementation because some of these cities are still on the lower-end of personal internet connections (think low-speed DSL...). Running a Wi-Fi network with its network connection coming from an area with a much faster internet connection or a satellite-capable connection could possibly happen...

    Also, I live in a fairly popular city in the United States. I believe we have city-wide Wireless internet, but I have not heard a WORD from our city's government (either that or it was taken down). Plus, another poster mentioned a good point that there is just too much cross-talk; I could be in a cafe with Wi-fi enabled, but it will not be that advantageous with the SEVENTEEN other wireless networks that are in the air...

    I think this is a case where 802.11a might hold a candle. But that's just me, and maybe it's not right either ;-)

  • "Is municipal Wi-Fi just a bad idea, has it been poorly implemented, or is the technology just not there to support such an endeavor?"

    Well, based on my experiences with municipal bureaucracies, I'd say yes, yes, and maybe.
  • I read this article on the way in today and saw some of the stumbling blocks they hit. One of them was that in many instances the materials the houses were made of prevented a clear (if any) signal from getting through. This requires additional equipment to get it to function. The speeds offered by these services are also usually that all that super. Then it mentions this kind of service has been a possible motivator for the local cable/telephone companies to suddenly offer services in the area. The en

  • Maybe Muni WiMax, but not WiFi (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sycomonkey (666153) on Tuesday May 22 2007, @04:02PM (#19227603)
    802.11 wasn't designed to be used city-wide. Of course it's expensive and unpopular to try to blanket the town with WiFi, the stations barely enough range to cover a whole house well, much less a whole block. Furthermore, 2.4ghz is way too overcrowded for this sort of thing. Better solutions would be WiMax or a simular tech using the analog TV frequencies when they finally get auctioned off. The idea of Municipal Internet is very good, but this isn't the way to do it.

  • huh (Score:3, Funny)

    by TrippTDF (513419) <hilandNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday May 22 2007, @04:03PM (#19227611)
    better spent on roads or crime-fighting.

    Did anyone else instantly think "SimCity" when they read that?

    Yeah? No?
  • I don't see the point of commercial municipal Wi-Fi. A private company is perfectly capable of installing a few hundred 802.11n base stations in the city, unlike the burden of, say, laying down cables or water pipes. Such a solution also does nothing for city visitors, who are more likely to need Internet access in some arbitrary location than residents. Would you want to open dozens of separate accounts for each city in Bay Area? Starbucks hotspots will probably do better for you.

    On the other hand, a free

  • Why? (Score:3, Informative)

    by LWATCDR (28044) on Tuesday May 22 2007, @04:09PM (#19227719) Homepage Journal
    Simple question is why have wi-fi everywhere in a city? What problem does it solve?
    Do people constantly use their computers in parks? On the sidewalk?
    Most people use the Internet in their home. A few will use it at a coffee shop or restaurant.
    If you want to provide Internet access then a community DSL or fiber network is the place to start. Then selective hot-spots. like at schools, libraries, community centers, and maybe some parks.
    Why would I pay for access to a metropolitan wifi network when I have a WAP at home, internet at my office, free wifi and a couple of restaurants I go to, and a browser on my phone?
    metropolitan wifi networks are a solution seeking a problem.
    Now Monorails are cool. Actually they do tend to be cheaper than subways and a lot more attractive than elevated trains. I think they are a good solution to mass transit. Too bad buses and light rail are cheaper still.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by LWATCDR (28044)
        I think that a city thinks people will ask. What I would look at is totally different.
        1. Cost of housing
        2. Work force
        3. Schools
        4. Cheap fiber to my Office.
        5. Traffic
        6. Home Broadband.
        My priories are based on a small development staff and a big support staff.
        Wifi everywhere? Not really on my list.

        I think City managers think that it will attract "high tech" companies. The problem is they don't understand high tech so they guess wrong. Or I could be totally wrong.
        I think paying my staff enough to afford a ho

  • Worst since the monorail eh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by bizitch (546406) on Tuesday May 22 2007, @04:33PM (#19228105) Homepage
    I've sold municipal wi-fi to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and by gum, it put them on the map!

    • Re:the answers: (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SQLGuru (980662) on Tuesday May 22 2007, @03:46PM (#19227279)
      The reason that subscriptions are so low is that they've concentrated on the business districts.....

      1) Most businesses have their own network (which, BTW, is faster than the service provided)
      2) Most CBD's are "vacant" during the evening when individuals would be using it.
      3) It doesn't make it to the 'burbs where I live.

      Layne
    • Right - interstate highways suck. I could have built the whole system solo in a week. National Parks - who needs-em. World War II. Give me 100 men with rifles and we could have beaten the Jerrys and the Nips. Nuclear weapons - HA - my own cousin has THREE in his garage next to his GTO.

      Hey swallow some assholes book - he needs the money.
      • This is far from flamebait. When it comes to something that needs to help the public in general, the government can be trusted to do it much better than any corporate entity. Roads, parks and military are three good examples. Just because the government can screw up doesn't mean it always has or always will. Municipal Wi-Fi is a good idea, but it was farmed out, in most cases, to groups that have a lot to lose from it doing well, or to groups that didn't have and weren't given the resources they needed. This is an instance of "Crap in, crap out." not government deficiencies.

    • And the private sector does work? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      A lot of these municipal wi-fi efforts have arisen just because the private sector has failed so terribly to bring decent Internet access.

      Hell, scroll down the front page here at Slashdot and you'll see a story posted today about the failure of many ISPs to provide adequate service [slashdot.org]. Of course, we've seen many, many stories like that posted here. I'm sure we've all got our own stories to tell about the trouble we've experienced dealing with various ISPs.

      So every time that somebody comes along and says that t
      • I thought they'd all be too busy advocating Ron Paul for President. [nationaljournal.com]

        My favorite quote? We are not libertarians, we are constitutionalists. Suuuure you are.
        • Wow, talk about false dichotomies... so anyone who thinks libertarians are nuts must be socialist? With that kind of simplistic thinking, I'm not surprised libertarianism hasn't caught on.

            • Re:Harry Browne said it best... (Score:4, Interesting)

              by PopeRatzo (965947) * on Tuesday May 22 2007, @08:42PM (#19230999) Homepage Journal

              Maybe - just maybe - we noticed that everything the gov't does could have been done better, chaper and faster by private companies or individuals?

              I think there's plenty of evidence to support that the only thing private companies do "better" than government is enrich themselves. You may not have noticed, but to a great extent, many of the economic problems we're facing in the US at the moment are the direct result of the fanatical belief that "free markets" are good in any way shape or form.

              The reason we had a strong middle class in the US during the second half of the 20th century is because of the "socialist" programs of FDR and his followers. That, and Labor Unions were the two forces that created a middle class where families could live off the salary of one working parent and kids could expect a better life than their parents (mostly gone, now). All unfettered capitalism and free markets got us last century was a whopper of a Depression and a tech bubble.

              By the way, after a decade of Republican, pro-capital, "free market" rule in Congress and 5 years of Bush, we've just about done away completely with the American middle class. Things like thederegulation of the banking industry have leeched an incredible portion of the wealth that had been gathered by the middle class. If we keep this nonsense up much longer we're going to have a very small group of rich people and a whole lot of serfs. That may suit some of you, but I don't really have the temperament for serfdom, and I certainly don't have the necessary greed and lack of morals required to become one of the elite.

              I get such a kick out of midlevel techie "managers" who swear they're doing so much better under Bush, until you find out the amount that they owe has been increasing every year, and their real income has been declining at about 7 percent annually (despite their 2 percent "raises").

              • Re:Harry Browne said it best... (Score:4, Insightful)

                by XxtraLarGe (551297) on Tuesday May 22 2007, @04:21PM (#19227927) Journal

                I like being called a socialist. Anarchosocialist, anyways. There is nothing wrong with caring about the important rights: the right to food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. Without those rights, all others are meaningless. Libertarians want the right to economically enslave others. When all resources are privately owned, all non-owners are defacto slaves, and it is this goal that libertarians work towards: the enslavement of the poor, worldwide.
                1984 called, it wants its Newspeak back. We have a right to medicine? Suppose all the pharmaceutical companies closed their doors tomorrow. Where would your right to medicine come from then? The only way people can have a right to any good or service is if the government can FORCE somebody else to provide it through taxation. When you are forced to work to support others involuntarily, that is the definition of slavery.

                • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                  by spun (1352)
                  You support slavery, do you? When all resources are owned, all non owners are slaves. If rights to basic necessities are not guaranteed, I can get you to do anything by denying them to you. You want a world where a small owning class controls all resources and the rest of us all have to do what you say, don't you? That is what libertarianism necessarily leads to.
                • You should really think about differentiating between "rights" like (life, speech, etc), and consumer products.

                  Good call.

                  Given that life at least requires food, and according to many, also clothing and shelter. having a right to life implies having a right to those things as well.

                  That sets them apart from whatever_you_want

                  Hence. maybe you should follow your own advice before starting to sound like a fanatical non-thinker.
            • Uhhhh, I am an anarchist. An anarcho-syndicalist. We think your concept of individual ownership of natural resources will automatically lead to an oligarchy of a few owning class people. We believe in democratic control of natural resources by the workers actually using those resources.

              Government is a control structure, and like any it can be abused. That includes the control structures of private ownership, which aren't as efficient as you may think. In studies of privatization, privatization of competitive industries works well, while privatization of natural monopolies has always failed.

              With government, there is a system of checks and balances. In the free market, there are no checks and balances to curb the runaway positive feedback loop of wealth accumulation. There are no checks to stop the exploitation of the natural failure modes of the free market: information imbalance, natural monopoly, and externalities. I have yet to hear a Libertarian give a cogent explanation of how their system would deal with those three factors.

              You accuse me of not understanding Libertarianism, I accuse you of not thinking through the consequences.

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