I respect the Economist as a newspaper. Not as much as do some underinformed commentators (I’ve seen enough of its coverage of areas on which I’m a genuine expert to know that it can be highly misguided), but quite a lot. Therefore, it surprises me that it employs Megan McCardle as a staff writer in the US, to the extent that I’m predisposed to ignore its US coverage entirely.
One glittering recent example: "Plus, remember how Europe’s cell phone network was, like, eighty zillion times better than ours until it turned out they couldn’t afford to upgrade to 3G? Big, honking government sponsored infrastructure projects, in which the government picks a technology winner, generally look better than the market’s bumbling trial-and-error approach right up until it turns out that the government has made a whomping big mistake and it’s too costly to fix."
As anyone who’s walked down a European high street, viewed the European media or travelled on European transport in the last two years will know, 3G has been widely available here for some time. In the US, meanwhile, handset and market development is still way behind Europe – and although the country’s CDMA providers do now offer a product that’s labeled 3G (CDMA2000 1X), it actually only runs at the speed of GPRS.
It worries me that someone this unaware of what the hell she’s talking about has a job as an opinion former on one of the most influential newspapers. Sack her, employ me.
Oh, speaking of idiocy: global warming denialist bingo; reporting on terrorists means the terrorists have already won; and airline security monkeys can now ban books.
Also worth remembering that in as much as there was a problem of financing the build-out of 3G, it was more or less entirely a result of the humungous negative subsidy handed out to the industry through the spectrum auctions. Which saved us a load of money to spend on healthcare and pharmaceuticals research, which we also don’t do.
The 3 G auctions were a bloody good idea, straight Georgism, taxation of land rents.
As to Megan she works on the Global Agenda part of the website. As she’s pointed out this past week she does a huge amount of research before writing anything for them, unlike for a blog post.
She’s also working in London for a few months. So if you see a 6 ft 2 redhead (female) wandering the streets say hello.
I admit to being no expert on mobile phone technology, but the difference between the US and Europe was something that struck my layman’s eye strongly when I move to New York last year. Is it due to the curious US decision to make people pay for incoming as well as outgoing calls? This seems to have surpressed the market, particularly the important children/young people sector, for whom mobiles seem vastly less central to their lives than in Europe.
Also, no-one texts here, which is rather frustrating for a Euro-texting addict…