>This is why the pure libertarian ideas about a completely free market just don't work for some services. It is a complete waste of human and material capital to run more than two last-mile networks (the second for redundancy and you could argue that is also a waste). When you've got more than 4-5 you simply can't ever make a return on investment.

If the current environment is preventing any and all business from flourishing, in this specific case Google Fiber, this is arguably even more wasteful. There is nothing getting done instead of something getting done. The political & regulatory maneuvering probably costs nearly as much for Google Fiber would as building out more redundant infrastructure. Plus, their business model may have required a large amount of users to really make the business worthwhile, so they wind up in this situation where they can't expand fast enough.