[AusNOG] NBN: "i want a pony! but can I afford it"

[Mark Newton]

On 13/08/2010, at 11:39 AM, Matthew Moyle-Croft wrote:

And yet you STILL OFFER NO LONGER TERM ALTERNATIVE.

I could propose that on October 20th this year we should replace the
world's entire passenger transport infrastructure with flying monkeys.
Ships, planes, cars, busses, trains all gone.

These aviating simians can cradle us all gently by our armpits and
convey us safely and rapidly to wherever we want to go.  "Tally ho,
my dear monkey," you might say, "take me to Macworld!" And lo, it
will happen.

What's this I hear?  You reckon that's a stupid idea?  I've offered up a
revolutionary way to remove a huge chunk of carbon pollution, make
transport more efficient, form new relationships with our primate
brethren, and provide valuable stimulus to the banana industry, and
you rubbish it?  And yet you STILL OFFER NO LONGER TERM
ALTERNATIVE.

No solutions for even 10 years time.   No actual changes to the regulatory environment, nothing.

"Do this because the alternative is nothing" looks like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

Portraying the whole issue as one about affordability looks like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_single_cause

The entire NBN looks like one of these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_necessity

And the reception that some of the alternatives have received look like
this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

I don't think people who criticize proposal X are automatically required
to offer alternative proposals.  Yes, it's nice if they do, but it isn't
required.  Dumb ideas deserve to be shouted down on their own merits,
it shouldn't require comparison with less-stupid alternatives to show
that a bad idea is, actually, bad.

The alternative to the NBN isn't "No solutions for even 10 years time.
No actual changes to the regulatory environment, nothing."
(any more than the alternative to ISP censorship is supporting child
molestation)

We've lived with the current regulatory environment for most of two
decades.  There's no emergency here; it should be possible to spend
a bit of time scratching our nation's collective heads until we have
an idea better than the one that Conroy and Rudd dreamed up
last April during a plane flight from Sydney to Melbourne.

In fact, we know to a high degree of certainty that it IS possible to do that,
because to think otherwise would be to assume that Conroy and Rudd
are total broadband experts, and that the output of their deliberations
is implicitly perfect. :-)

If a/the problem is the regulatory environment, is there anything a government
could do to fix it, so that people like Tim would have regulatory certainty,
the Govt won't eat up his investments, AND Australia can get better
broadband?

  - mark

--
Mark Newton                               Email:  newton at internode.com.au (W)
Network Engineer                          Email:  newton at atdot.dotat.org  (H)
Internode Pty Ltd                         Desk:   +61-8-82282999
"Network Man" - Anagram of "Mark Newton"  Mobile: +61-416-202-223





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