Larry Page blasts white space FUD on capitol hill

[jmcannon]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080926-page-blasts-whitespace-fud-on-capitol-hill.html

[swombat]

Well, that's certainly not an evil thing to fight for. Go Google!

[cdr → swombat]

Maybe not evil, but certainly self-interested.

[Prrometheus → cdr]

Nothing wrong with self-interest. The market leads self-interested people, as if by a hand made of invisible spectrum, to act for the public good.

[_5y6p → Prrometheus]

It's in my self-interest to rob you if I can get away with it.

It's also in my self-interest to strong-arm my way to a monopoly and charge more than the efficient price.

It's also in my self-interest to prevent workers from obtaining bargaining power.

It's also in my self-interest to start a weapons manufacturing company and make campaign contributions that will increase the probability of wars taking place.

Seriously, it's not like anyone here needs to be convinced about the power of capitalism. But not even Adam Smith was so naive as to think there was nothing wrong with self-interest, or that it always worked out in favor of the public good.

Sheesh.

[yan → _5y6p]

I think what Prrometheus was trying to say, that just because it was in self-interest, doesn't necessarily make it evil.

[Prrometheus → _5y6p]

It's also in Google's self-interest to work for looser regulations on the use of wireless spectrum, which is the example at hand.

[DaniFong → _5y6p]

The best goals tend to align themselves with both self and public interest, as when the going gets hard and one or the other fades from view the other spurs you on.

[yan → cdr]

pg promotes the start-up lifestyle in self interest also, but is that necessarily bad?

[r00k]

Yeah! Down with Python! Wait...

[pchristensen]

I thought it would be about sparse web design. :)

This is awesome and three cheers for LP!

[dfranke → pchristensen]

I thought it was going to be about the nonsense rumor from a while back that Google could save the country $HUGE_AMOUNT of electricity by changing their background to black.