Broadband Rights & the Killer App of 1900

newscloud writes "Tech writer Glenn Fleishman compares the arguments against affordable, high speed, broadband Internet access in each home to arguments made against providing for common access to electricity in 1900 e.g. '...electric light is not a necessity for every member of the community. It is not the business of any one to see that I use electricity, or gas, or oil in my house, or even that I use any form of artificial light at all.' Says Fleishman, 'Electricity should go to people who had money, not hooked up willy-nilly to everyone ... Like electricity, the notion of whether broadband is an inherent right and necessity of every citizen is up for grabs in the US. Sweden and Finland have already answered the question: It's a birthright.'"

Comments

Same Arguments, So Simply Discredit Them

[eldavojohn]

The thing about electricity is that people couldn't see that it would service more than just lights. But there were a few people out there (like Edison's lab and Tesla) that could see innumerable uses awaiting. The people just couldn't comprehend it or were rightfully dubious. I mean, traveling scam artists were well known to people at the time (probably even far before) just look at what Mark Twain was writing a decade before.

If we follow through with this analogy the solution is simple, you merely need to tell us about and convince us that the "inalienable right to broadband" will indeed herald a new era of empowerment--or at least will be easily worth the cost it's going to take getting an infrastructure up that will cover the nation. Unless you have some WAN technology I don't know about or are accepting the issues of broadband over power, I think it's hard to convince someone that a traditional infrastructure covering--say--all of the Ozarks is going to be worth a whole lot more than the few towns and cities in it that are already covered. And you'd be out of your mind to ask a taxpayer in the farmlands to subsidize via tax dollars some infrastructure their not going to gain anything from.

Such a strained argument is hardly necessary

[drinkypoo]

You need not go back to electricity; phones will do. We have already decided that communications are something we need to deliver to everyone, and the internet is the new communications medium.

Arguably, the government should stop promoting television and radio, and should put the effort into figuring out how to make the emergency notification network work on the internet... railroading connections and returning "DISASTER IN PROGRESS" errors, whatever. Then we could [eventually] reclaim all spectrum used by broadcast media for a more noble use: bidirectional communications permitting collaboration between humans. It's not like the shitty ol' push media can't be distributed via internet.

"Right" is the wrong term.

[Fished]

Part of the problem here is that the language of "right" doesn't really capture what we ought to be capturing here. Webster's defines a right as "something to which one has a just claim." And that is the right way to look at things like employment discrimination, etc.

But when we start talking about universal access to services like broadband, healthcare, electric, I think it's much better to speak of it in terms of what's best for society. Simply put, our society as a whole is better off with a healthy work-force. Businesses will have more predictable costs, and the playing field between large and small companies, as well as government, will be leveled substantially, promoting innovation. Likewise, it promotes economic development for everyone to have electricity, not to mention public health--it's no accident that regular bathing became much more popular once everyone had a water heater. And, in a democracy, isn't the publics access to information equally vital? Isn't the ability for all members of society to communicate on a somewhat equal footing a useful social function? In other words, let's not talk about this as a moral question, but as a pragmatic one.

High speed Internet is infrastructure. Maybe it's not a "right". But if you don't have it available to all of our population and all of your competitors do, then watch out!

Re:That's a very US-centric view

[MacAnkka]

"vast frozen wastelands"? Really?

You must be confused. We are talking about Northern Europe, not the North Pole. While it does get a little bit chilly and snowy in the Northern Finland during the winter, it's very much habitable.

Most of Finnish population outside the main capital area and the other few big "cities" (more like towns, really...) is quite well spread around the countryside. Yet we don't see the idea of providing fast internet access for everyone as an impossible task. Stop crying that it's impossible and that your problems are somehow unique in this world and try to do something about it.

Re:That's a very US-centric view

[DaveAtFraud]

While true in some economically depressed areas, there are quite a few areas in the States where people choose to live to "get away from it all" (noise, pollution, crime, etc.) that are "out in the sticks" but not economically depressed. These seem to be the people who make the most noise about wanting broadband, paved roads, no critters eating their vegetable gardens, rapid emergency response, schools that teach advanced topics and not just agricultural subjects, etc. That is, they want all of the conveniences of city life while living in the country and they want the other rate payers to subsidize their lifestyle choice to make it happen.

I won't argue the merits of government intervention to provide additional services for disadvantaged areas. I will argue against blindly building out broadband given the above. Also, there are options such as satellite services that don't require any build out and are available regardless of location.

BTW, I live in an area (Colorado near Denver) where this debate keeps coming up. People keep moving out into what were once small farming communities to "get away from it all" but then make all sorts of noise because they still want some of the things that they didn't realize that they were also "getting away from." And, of course, they want the other rate payers to help them pay for it.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:If you want broadband, live where it's availabl

[IndustrialComplex]

Vice taxes don't deter vices. They just cause more problems down the line. So now a particular subset of the population not only is addicted, but also is poor and perhaps driven to crime. Taxes are simply a means of revenue in this case, since the demand is inelastic due to addiction.

They are an insidious way to implement a tax hike as well.

Vice taxes cause the government to be dependant on the 'vice' activity, and thus the government has a vested interest in keeping that line of revenue open. It is why I oppose the 'Legalize it, Tax it' mantra that gets spread around regarding a certain product. I prefer to simply stop at the first goal.

What happens when your 'vice' is ended? Too often, vice taxes are used to fund activities unrelated to the ending of the vice, and therefore, if that revenue stream ends, then the government finds that it is now overbudget, and must either run a debt or raise taxes on everyone.

It is a convenient way to disguise a planned general tax hike and make it more palatable by targeting it at an 'unliked' minority. Then, either the minority continues to exist and pay extra taxes, or it ceases to exist, and the government is now overbudget.