I hear this on reddit-like social media all the time but I am disappointed to see it here. This is a low-effort and reductionist take. According to the GAO from 2009 through 2017, private ISPs made about $800 billion in capital investments and federal contributions for rural broadband in that period totalled about $50 billion. What would success look like for that 50 billion? Broadband to everywhere? America is very big and infrastructure is slow and expensive.

That doesn't mean we can't ever do useful work by subsidizing the deployment on infrastructure.

We can and should spend public money to improve broadband infrastructure. I have seen quite a few hugely successful subsidized broadband deployments from PUDs and small municipal power distribution companies in even lightly populated counties. For my money, continuing to subsidize these organizations and empowering them to sell broadband access direct to consumers is a huge value for the money.

Yeah, I know, it sucks