Paul Krugman does it again

[Taranne]

Ce gars doit vraiment être remonté contre Bush et son pays en général:

Paul Krugman: The French Connections

Paul Krugman discusses how lack of competition among providers of high-speed internet service has caused the U.S. to fall behind other countries:

The French Connections, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: There was a time when everyone thought that the Europeans and the Japanese were better at business than we were. In the early 1990s airport bookstores were full of volumes … promising to teach you the secrets of Japanese business success. Lester Thurow’s 1992 book, “Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle Among Japan, Europe and America,” which spent more than six months on the Times best-seller list, predicted that Europe would win.

Then it all changed, and American despondency turned into triumphalism. Partly this was because the Clinton boom contrasted so sharply with Europe’s slow growth and Japan’s decade-long slump. Above all, however, our new confidence reflected the rise of the Internet. …[M]ost of Europe except Scandinavia lagged far behind the U.S. when it came to getting online.

What most Americans probably don’t know is that … as dial-up has given way to … high-speed links — it’s the United States that has fallen behind.

The numbers are startling. As recently as 2001, the percentage of the population with high-speed access in Japan and Germany was only half that in the United States. In France it was less than a quarter. By the end of 2006, however, all three countries had more broadband subscribers per 100 people than we did.

Even more striking is the fact that our “high speed” connections are painfully slow by other countries’ standards. … Oh, and access is much cheaper…

What happened to America’s Internet lead? Bad policy. Specifically, the United States … forgot — or was persuaded by special interests to ignore — …that sometimes you can’t have effective market competition without effective regulation.

You see, … to get [to the internet] you need to go through a narrow passageway, down your phone line or down your TV cable. And if the companies controlling these passageways can behave like the robber barons of yore, levying whatever tolls they like on those who pass by, commerce suffers.

America’s Internet flourished in the dial-up era because federal regulators … forced local phone companies to act as common carriers, allowing competing service providers to use their lines. Clinton administration officials … tried to ensure that this open competition would continue — but the telecommunications giants sabotaged their efforts, while The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page ridiculed them as people with the minds of French bureaucrats.

And when the Bush administration put Michael Powell in charge of the F.C.C., the digital robber barons were basically set free to do whatever they liked. As a result, there’s little competition in U.S. broadband — if you’re lucky, you have a choice between … the local cable monopoly and the local phone monopoly. The price is high and the service is poor, but there’s nowhere else to go.

Meanwhile, as … Business Week explains, the real French bureaucrats used judicious regulation to promote competition. As a result, French consumers get to choose from a variety of service providers who offer reasonably priced Internet access that’s much faster than anything I can get, and comes with free voice calls, TV and Wi-Fi.

It’s too early to say how much harm the broadband lag will do to the U.S. economy as a whole. But it’s interesting to learn that health care isn’t the only area in which the French, who can take a pragmatic approach because they aren’t prisoners of free-market ideology, simply do things better.

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/07/paul-krugman--1.html

[h16]

Mon dieu mon dieu mon dieu.

Ce type est une andouille triple A.

[xiii]

C'est dingue, j'ai pourtant un super livre de lui "la mondialisation n'est pas coupable"; où il défend bec et ongle le libre échange.

[h16]

Un type qui dit "But it’s interesting to learn that health care isn’t the only area in which the French, who can take a pragmatic approach because they aren’t prisoners of free-market ideology, simply do things better." et qui pense donc officiellement que les Français sont pragmatiques ne peut pas être totalement honnête.

[pankkake]

Et il raconte n'importe-quoi pour l'accès Internet ; la difficulté des US c'est le réseau téléphonique qui n'est pas adapté à l'ADSL. (Et les régulations à la con qui ne manquent pas). Enfin que le Japon ait de meilleures connexions, c'est normal vu la concentration des habitants…

[Sous-Commandant Marco]

By the end of 2006, however, all three countries had more broadband subscribers per 100 people than we did.

Je serais curieux de connaître les sources de Krugman. Car, dans les statistiques de l'OCDE, la France et le Japon ne sont passés devant les Etats-Unis que très récemment (entre juin et décembre 2006), et l'Allemagne est encore loin derrière:

http://www.oecd.org/sti/ict/broadband

De même, lorsque l'on connaît les pouvoirs de la FCC et la quantité impressionnante de régulations, notamment des contenus, qui se sont abattues sur les Etats-Unis, on ne peut que se gausser de la position de Krugman, selon laquelle le marché des télécoms américain serait un modèle de marché libre. Par ailleurs, les pays les plus en avance sont les Pays-Bas, le Danemark et l'Islande, des pays où je ne serais pas surpris que les télécoms soient très peu régulés. Mais je n'ai pas réussi à trouver de documentation à ce sujet.

[Cochon]

Un type qui dit "But it’s interesting to learn that health care isn’t the only area in which the French, who can take a pragmatic approach because they aren’t prisoners of free-market ideology, simply do things better." et qui pense donc officiellement que les Français sont pragmatiques ne peut pas être totalement honnête.

Pas folle la guêpe, notre ami Krugman ne cédera certainement pas son salaire dans le tiers monde universitaire US pour venir enseigner dans la merveilleuse France et ses merveilleuses facs.

[Guest Arn0]

Et il raconte n'importe-quoi pour l'accès Internet ; la difficulté des US c'est le réseau téléphonique qui n'est pas adapté à l'ADSL. (Et les régulations à la con qui ne manquent pas). Enfin que le Japon ait de meilleures connexions, c'est normal vu la concentration des habitants…

Pour internet (et pour le portable d'ailleurs) on voit rapidement que la faible densité us les handicape, et que la forte densité européenne et plus encore nippone les favorise.