51–52 of 52 posts
It makes me a bit sad to realize that even I remember minitel, though I grew up with the internet, and not in France -- not because I'm into tech history, but because in 2002, that's how old my high-school French textbook and its helpful cultural asides were.
Same, and somehow, apparently, I still remember that the slang for it is 'le mini'. I really need to call realloc() on that.
Everyone hailed Minitel in the 1980s. It was touted as an example of what gov't should do (these were also the days of Japan, Inc. kicking everyone's ass, also showing what gov't "should" do for industry). Yet along came the Black Swan of the Internet to slay it. Central planning never works.
Otherwise service providers could not have invested because there would have been no users; and there would have been no users because there would have been no services.
Note that the investment was recovered over time; but it would never have originated from private enterprise.
Today the same kind of thing could be happening with electric cars. People won't buy them until there's plugs everywhere, and plugs won't be put everywhere until most people have electric cars. Massive gov't investment could short circuit this problem in a pinch, and end foreign oil dependency.
There's no money in it for Goldmann Sachs or Halliburton, so forget about it, though.