FCC regulators want to provide wider and cheaper broadband access by subsidizing it, raising taxes, and forcing network owners to share their network infrastructure with competitors.

A few things the FCC should consider:

-Subsidies don’t make broadband access any less expensive. They just change who pays for it. In this case, that would be anybody with a phone. Which probably includes you. The great economist Ludwig von Mises observed that “A government can no more determine prices than a goose can lay hen’s…

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So spoke President Barack Obama in his inaugural address today:

“We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.”

When Obama said this, he was no doubt referring to his stated goal of having government build out broadband networks on taxpayers’ dime. The massive $825-billion stimulus package unveiled in Congress last week devotes $6 billion to build out broadband to areas where high-speed online connectivity is sparsely available.

Providing private goods like broadband…

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