Calling it like it is

When Finland became the first country in the world to declare broadband internet access to be a universal right, a lot of tech blogs oohed and ahhed at their enlightenment. The Economist, on the other hand, was the only source I saw that stated the obvious motivations for this declaration.

"Finland undoubtedly has fewer problems than America. But would you want to live there? It's nothing like as exciting or diverse as America, and it's wretchedly cold and dark in the winter.

No disrespect to the Finns, who were all extremely nice to me the only time I visited the place, but one reason why they have such outstanding levels of broadband penetration is that there is not much else to do during a Finnish winter except sit indoors and surf the net."

Lexington's Notebook: Finland is the best place on Earth