So if you ask me, "Are we ever succumbing to some notions of solidarity as a nation? I would say, "Not at all." I would describe us as a group of people who share a geography. That's a better description of Americans than that we're a real nation with a sense of solidarity.
Uwe Reinhardt, the German born Princeton University economics professor who died earlier this week at age 80, made that comment in the context of the American system of providing and paying for medical care. Americans, he observed, view medical care as a consumer commodity rather than a social service available to all citizens and hence tend to resist policies that would recast health and medical care as a common good. As a commodity, access to its purchase depends on one's income and financial assets. The result is very uneven access to care based on socio-economic status.
If Reinhardt had studied the U.S. telecommunications system as well as health care economics that was his area of expertise, he might have reached a similar assessment. When it comes to access to advanced telecommunications infrastructure, there is no sense of commonweal despite a common national geography. There is a sense that the telecommunications infrastructure one is served by is driven by individual choices on vocation and housing. If you choose to live in a neighborhood that has robust landline infrastructure rather than another that might only be a mile or two away or you earn too little to pay increasing and unregulated rates for commodity "broadband" service, that's your problem.
Rather than implement a federal policy that views telecommunications infrastructure as an interstate asset that benefits all Americans no matter where they live, we leave it to underfunded localities to try to cobble together their own disparate infrastructures with "wildly uneven" prospects, according to a recent compilation. Consequently rather than a coordinated national effort to modernize yesterday's metallic infrastructure designed for voice telephone and cable TV to modern fiber optic infrastructure capable of serving the advanced telecommunications of today and years to come, the United States is attempting to do so on the cheap in a piecemeal and highly incremental manner.
1 comment:
The loss of Uwe Reinhardt was significant to the healthcare debate and leaves a giant void as he was a rational, witty and master of health economics. I think some of his healthcare observations are true for telecom too... although I still believe health care has a higher urgency and basic right above equity in telecom. That said, these worlds and issues are more closely connected as more rural areas depend on telemedicine as their primary access to healthcare. Not having reliable bandwidth is a barrier to access care. I currently enjoy reasonable access to both but know many more who struggle to stay connected and enjoy the many benefits of modern healthcare and telecom many of us may take for granted. Reinhardt’s life experience helped shape his egalitarian view of healthcare and I agree Americans are uniquely independent and less likely to huddle and embrace equity for “the other guy”. The tension will continue in achieving or protecting both universal health coverage AND Net Netrality for some of the same reasons. Most Americans may truly believe we are all created equally, but also very comfortable with some having more, better and cheaper access to it than others.
Not familiar with Net Neutrality? Here’s a humorous video from Jon Oliver on HBO that explains it all: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU
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