Also, while I acknowledge there are roles for central authority to achieve this end (such as national defense, enforcing contract and property rights, etc.), I do not accept the notion that all infrastructure must be provided for by government. In fact, most of our best infrastructure has not been. The electrical grid, telephone infrastructure, cell phone infrastructure, New York subway system -- all were developed by private businesses.
Federal government (Rural Electrification Administration) was part of the rollout of a true national electric grid, and later the agency changed into the
Rural Utilities Service to assist with full deployments of telephone and other utility services.
My personal opinion is that there needs to be a good balance of both federal government and business driving key infrastructure. Businesses left on their own to create critical pieces of modern infrastructure tend to stop when the profits dip below a certain level, leaving rural America without power. A good balance prevents the corporations from running wild (creating Enron energy crisis situations), and also avoids the federal government from growing too large.
I think had the FCC stepped up a bit back in the late 90s and guided the private cellular companies towards a unified standard, we'd have a much more competitive mobile phone market today. Instead we are faced with a situation of having only 4 national providers, possibly down to 3 in the next year.
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