so McCaw basically took advantage of a giveaway to non-profits, which, naturally, the government failed to specify could not be used by for-profit companies.

And the non-profits involved are collecting cash for no real value produced, simply selling something given to them that was intended to be used. So essentially the gifts are not promoting educational uses but are promoting whatever entities were lucky enough to get them for free.

I'd much rather see all things be treated equally and then have people decide to what uses they wish to devote their own resources. What could be more democratic than that?

Some will argue that without the philosopher kings to tell us what to do, we'll make terrible choices. But somehow we terrible choice makers are able to choose the philosopher kings.

The reality is that distributed decision making in many instances yields better decisions. And hopefully fewer instances of people getting rich on the cheap.