Bad Arguments #12323

From our, dear, dear friends over at Samizdata.net.

There is no such things as 'unbiased reporting': example 26,781

There is no such things as 'unbiased reporting': example 26,781 | Samizdata.net

There comes a point in pretty much any argument with Libertarians where certain tropes will be dusted off and hauled out.  The guys from EZ Rocket used it again at the worldcon last year.  Several of the commentators here use it too.  It runs something like; what has the government ever done for us.

The World Con examples were; what would computing look like if the government had been in charge; what would aerospace look like if the government was in charge; what would the internet look like if the government was in charge.

Well, the fact is, the government, generally speaking was.  What they are doing is confusing generally command economy attempts at design with what governments in free markets do.  The assumption is that through the free market competing that you will always end up with a better solution.

You mean... like, for example, the mobile phone market in the USA?  As I write this the penetration and use of mobile phones in Western Europe is pretty much as close to 100% as makes no difference.  Sure, a lot of those are sitting in drawers and hardly used, but in many age groups and demographics there is effectively 100% penetration of mobile phones.  That is not yet the case in the USA.  It's better than it was 5 years ago when I first started coming here regularly, but you have to look at the reasons for that.

One of the oft-cited reasons was the decision not to adopt the GSM standard on the grounds that it was anti-competative...  Instead the government decided that having multiple competing solutions would end up with the adoption of a better technology.  This led the US into an interesting (read fundementally f*cked up) situation where they had regional networks, and then national networks running competing networks on competing technologies which didn't interoperate at any real level. 

As it ended up with the operators essentially buying into the installed technology base you had competing infratructure owners making it as hard as they could to allow customers to move between providers and you certainly couldn't move numbers (I was here last year when the US finally allowed number portability!).

Part of this was down to the actions of one company; Qualcomm.  A bastion of free enterprise you say?  No, not really, an off shoot of the industrial military complex.  Now, to be fair to Qualcomm, their CDMA technology is without a doubt better than the European GSM standard - it's more efficient, has better voice quality etc...  It should be better they got the technology from the military. As, frankly, did all the mobile companies.  Which brings us back to the government again.

I've worked in the mobile industry for 6 years now and I noticed something early on.  All the gnarly old techny guys who were in at the birth of mobile phones seemed to have something in common.  They were mostly trim, grey haired, serious guys who looked like they knew how to salute somebody in a better uniform.  Yes kids, many of those running mobile phone companies came into it from military communications companies who snapped them up when they retired.

 Anyway, back to mobiles.  CDMA and GSM were really set to have a Betamax versus VHS fight, only, well, it didn't happen.  What happened instead was the network operators spotted quickly that the really cool technology was allowing people to use their phones anywhere, and pretty soon were starting to sign up roaming agreements.  When I moved to the USA in 2001, a roaming agreement was something you needed if you intended to use your phone in another state, or, in extreme examples, another city in the SAME state.  Before too long, GSM was pretty much the global standard in Europe, Africa, Middle East.  There were a few hold outs.  North America, bits of South America, Japan and Korea.

The asia markets did work the way the US wanted them to, but they had different price points and cultural differences.  The US stagnated. 

One of the draw backs of the CDMA system is the lack of the SIM card.  Without it, the phone is a lump of plastic attached to an operator.  There is an unintended consequence of this which I'll come onto another time - which is why GSM led to a crime wave in Europe.

So, in the end, the US has had to adopt GSM and it's been a huge success.  Pretty much everwhere, except Japan and Korea adopted GSM.  That's why you can fly almost everywhere, pull out your phone and talk to people.  It may cost you a small fortune but without governments and standards, I think we'd still be in the 1980s in terms of mobile communications.

I've also seen the internet as delivered by commercial enterprises.  It's called WAP.

Cheerio...

Got a very loud cheerio today from a flight crew member as I left the aircraft. Should I be worried?

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