Now imagine yourself trying to buy and sell online from the prairie? It really is like living in two different eras (and part of why flyover states stay that way). It’s like this. If we wanted a high speed railroad, we would have to figure out how to include everybody. You can’t fund a patchwork of lousy roads AND a highway you’re charging high tolls for. Make it cheap, completely universal, you know, like interstate highways….. this country is so fixated on not giving away a nickel’s worth of those precious bits per second, they’d rather carry around their own railroad and lay track every day, lest some hobo use the rails for free. So called third world countries set up internet, and it’s rock simple and cheap. Why? Because they realize if they don’t subsidize and make it available for everyone, the provinces will suffer, and be divided from the cities. Oh they might even elect reactionaries who tear down the wires rather than let a nickel’s worth of SpongeBob go to the poor.