First, the $200 billion number is a total fabrication. It was derived by projecting how much more profit telecoms made after deregulation in 1996 than they would have had as tightly-regulated utilities. It's not money actually invested. The states never had that kind of money to invest.
Second, to the extent that tax breaks, etc, were handed out, it wasn't combined with the kind of political will you see in European countries or Asian countries. In South Korea, wiring Seoul up with fiber is a politically tractable proposal. In the U.S., wiring New York and Chicago and LA up with fiber is a political non-starter. In the U.S., rural votes count about 2x as much as urban votes, so to the extent that broadband appears on the political radar, it's all about making sure people in rural Kentucky can get DSL, not making sure people in major cities can get fiber.
You are comparing a free service where they are up front about their plans to a pay for service which doesn't detail any plans you describe. I have to ask, do you think they would?
I think the idea would be that you would withdraw from escrow, manipulate the transaction to change the transaction id (which they shouldn't be relying on if they use bitcoind and makes the whole thing kinda fishy) then when SR can't find the transaction it assumes it failed and sends again or he opens a ticket saying he never got his funds and they send them again manually.
