The article argues that good situations resulted from government action. The reality is that while these situations are viewed as good, they are not neccessarily the best. Only when individuals are able to voluntarily interact in the market do the best services and products meet the best prices and innovation is at its highest. One of the main factors that does not permit government from being able to exist in a market in a positive way in comparison is due to a complete lack of price model interaction. Government (by its very nature) does not depend on consumer response (price model). It thus has no way of allocating resources as efficiently as it would were it to exist without tax dollars (confiscated property, not gained through competition or voluntary interaction). As such, it cannot gauge weather or not the things it is doing are the best or the most effective to meet the demand.
There are mountains of writing on the basics of free markets and Austrian Economics, if you would like me to link you to some resources.
Government getting the hell out of the way of people voluntarily interacting the marketplace is the best situation.
For example: cable easements. Get rid of them. Get rid of all easements. Without them, you would have a variety of options and methods of gaining access to a number of utilities (internet, power, etc) as well as new services that have not yet been created.
The only reason we don't have most metropolitan areas with gigabit fiber to the door is almost entirely teleco/cable easements.
The day you stop government from mandating one company per area or delimiting it to a small few monopolistic entities and allow a free market is the day we stop dealing with the hell that is becoming us.
The answer is quite simply LESS government, dammit.
Oh, I don't think he was saying that wasn't the case. I believe what he meant (perhaps I am projecting here) that because it continues to exist, and exist successfully, the idea of free software wins.
The mere continued existence of free software/open source validates the ideology behind it.
As a libertarian/dyed in the wool capitalist, I love the success myself.
I am right there with you. Sometimes I need an energy drink to make one part of my brain catch up with the other, or it's a beer or two.
Frankly, I would have never finished college were it not for a strange mix of kidney-liver assaulting caffeine/alcohol liquids concurrently being imbibed. At times it seems the solution is the same for writing code for extended periods of time..