I have been in favor of federal support of rural broadband. Unfortunately, the provision in the present infrastructure bill is about three years late and there’s little actual need for it. Elon Musk is already in the process of doing what the federal government declined to do.
Consequently, I have little to say about the Washington Post’s editors’ full-throated endorsement of the provision but I did want to open their closing paragraph up for discussion. Here it is:
In an ideal world, society might ensure that every household has adequate income, and let people decide for themselves how to allocate it, rather than creating separate bureaucracies to help pay for food, rent, child care and, now, Internet bills. But that’s not our current world. Congress is prepared to make a massive investment in a defining element of modern-day infrastructure. Every member should want to help make this history.
Is that a Kinsley gaffe? Far from being ideal, I think that would be dystopian. The run-on effects would overwhelm the presumably benign intentions. Maybe in an ideal world with ideal humans but I don’t think I can even imagine ideal humans. I think that being flawed is part of the package.
What do you find dystopian about people making their own decisions with gifted resources. That government bureaus are superior allocators? That they are better intentioned than other flawed human beings?
The tiny amount of money that actually reaches the poor, compared to that siphoned off for buildings and salaries of bureaucrats and the various hangers on, is dystopian. That politicians are making the very same promises to solve poverty, disease and other human afflictions as they were when I was born is dystopian.
That’s what I find dystopian.
Maybe I misunderstood your point. I’ll take individual self interest over govt bureaucrats any day. Flawed as those individuals may be. Dystopian, yes. Empirically sound, yes.
Why the interest in subsidizing rural living?
Steve
Because I think we should be one country. Because I think our attention should be focused on where actual poverty is the worst which is among rural dwellers.