I was just reading an article about the Philadelphia city government buying the infrastructure for the now-defunct Philly Wifi network, when it occurred to me: we need a public option for Internet access, too. We the People have been thwarted at every turn in trying to bring fairness, equity, and transparency to the bloated, out-of-control telecommunications industry. Most of the time, they win. Among the major causes: legally or illegally, through campaign contributions, lobbying, and who-knows-what-else, our legislators and the political appointees they feed are in the employ of the dominant providers.
Sound familiar? All of a sudden, it hit me. This is just like the health care morass. Just change the names to those of the top health care insurance companies. The pattern is virtually identical. We are in a death-grip, held by corporate bodies bigger, fatter, and more powerful than ourselves. What started out as a simple, fair equation:
X builds something of value, Y buys it for (X's time+costs+a reasonable profit), both walk away happier and better off.
has been gutted to the point where Y exists primarily to feed X's limitless greed. Since Y (which stands for "you," by the way) depends on X for its livelihood, and X has guarded its flanks against all competitors with armies of lawyers, Y has no choice but to beg, whine, fuss, or roll over and play dead.
I don't like it a bit. We can do better.
We've done it in the past. The question is: what will it take to do better now? Nota bene: "now" means now. It does not mean "when and if someone lets us do it" or "wait until (fill in the blanks)". Lots of good, smart, hard-working people have been trying to bring about positive change. What can we learn from their successes and failures? What novel tools and strategies are sitting right under our noses, just waiting to be put to work?
But I digress. To reiterate: we need a public option for Internet connectivity. We need it yesterday. Granted, yesterday might be hard to achieve... but today's not over yet.
