"All starting from the unwarranted assumption that telephone access was necessary to farmers and food prices would have risen dramatically."
Yeah, that initial assumption really is weird.
How much could a phone line like that possibly cost for a company who does phone lines? I have no idea, maybe 10 million for all I know.
But that's a one-time cost that will be spread out over all the crops that farm produces for the next however many years that telephone line lasts. With some (admittedly ~10 years out of date) idea of some of the other costs involved in farming, I have a hard time seeing the bump to food prices being anything to get your undies in a twist about.
Some googling around gets me a cost of $120,000/mile to install overhead telephone wire. So, for example, if you have a tiny town of 200 people that's 15 miles away from anywhere, running a phone line out to it will cost $9,000 per resident. Which sounds steep, but possible to self-fund.
On the other hand, if you have one guy on a farm two miles away from the next nearest neighbor, well, adding a phone line costs as much as building a second house.
The interesting question for society is, should these people have phone lines? And if they should, how much of the cost should they bear themselves? And how far should we be willing to go to run phone out to increasingly remote areas?
"The interesting question for society is, should these people have phone lines? And if they should, how much of the cost should they bear themselves? And how far should we be willing to go to run phone out to increasingly remote areas?"
Phone lines, or roads, or fire brigades, or police. Or tax collectors…
I suspect most farmers would choose to fund their own telecommunication, if it meant they didn't have to pay tax.
I'm not quite sure where the line gets drawn about what's reasonable to "expect" the government to provide in return for your tax dollars, and quite how to ensure "fairness" or equality between city-dwellers and rural taxpayers. But deep down I'm a bit of a socialist - I think phones should probably be owned by "the government", or at least regulated so heavily that the decisions about who does and doesn't get phone service is largely driven by ethics and "the greater good" than by "increasing shareholder value".
Certainly they are not. But you have more deployment options, and while 15 miles of phone line run to a single customer benefits only the customer (and, I suppose, everyone else who might want to reach them) a single cell tower has potential benefits to the entire subscriber base.
Yeah, that initial assumption really is weird.
How much could a phone line like that possibly cost for a company who does phone lines? I have no idea, maybe 10 million for all I know.
But that's a one-time cost that will be spread out over all the crops that farm produces for the next however many years that telephone line lasts. With some (admittedly ~10 years out of date) idea of some of the other costs involved in farming, I have a hard time seeing the bump to food prices being anything to get your undies in a twist about.