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Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes

(arstechnica.com)
1135 points carride | 6 comments | 10 Aug 22 13:23 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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qwe----3 ◴[10 Aug 22 13:35 UTC] No.32411651[source]▶
> over $30,000 for each of those homes to get served

This doesn't seem very efficient to me.

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fourthark ◴[10 Aug 22 13:46 UTC] No.32411831[source]▶
At $55/mo, he'll start making a profit in 45 years.
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TrueGeek ◴[10 Aug 22 13:53 UTC] No.32411957[source]▶
From the article: he had $2.6MM in help from the "American Rescue Plan's Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds".

He's being paid by the government to bring Internet access to homes in the state that aren't currently wired for it.

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qwe----3 ◴[10 Aug 22 13:58 UTC] No.32412037[source]▶
That bill and these types of projects are basically why we have 10% inflation now.
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1. cgeier ◴[10 Aug 22 14:04 UTC] No.32412142{3}[source]▶
How does spending a lot of government money make goods and service more expensive?

EDIT: At least here in Western Europe, we mostly have a supply side inflation, because energy got a lot more expensive, not because the government has been "printing" a lot of money. I suspect it's the same in the US.

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2. failrate ◴[10 Aug 22 14:34 UTC] No.32412664[source]▶
It does not unless that money is spent competing with businesses and citizens for resources. However, in this case the money had already been earmarked for rural internet service and is not being used to purchase goods and services that citizens would be buying instead.
3. pwinnski ◴[10 Aug 22 14:34 UTC] No.32412665[source]▶
Yes, inflation is currently a world-wide issue, and explanations at the world level lead somewhat obviously to the pandemic and Russia's invasion of the Ukraine.

But here in the USA, people like to believe it must be political and local, completely unrelated to the totally-coincidental worldwide issue that happens to be very similar.

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4. Bloating ◴[10 Aug 22 14:43 UTC] No.32412827[source]▶
>But, here in the USA people like to believe it must be political...

Cool, whats your prognoses for effectiveness of the Reduce Inflation Act

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5. pwinnski ◴[10 Aug 22 14:48 UTC] No.32412924{3}[source]▶
I'm in favor of the bill, but the name is stupid, even misleading. The spending is largely good, but it won't have much effect on inflation, if any.
6. h1fra ◴[10 Aug 22 16:19 UTC] No.32414478[source]▶
Actually Europe has been printing a lot of money by having less than 0% interest rate for loan. Current inflation is due to many factor, some estimate it has been slowly growing since 2008, plus covid where we printed money to just to keep business alive, plus negative interest rate that allowed countries to loan too much, etc...

But I suspect that subsidies for infrastructure is one of the least impactful factor for inflation.