Yesterday I spent one of the most interminably boring afternoons of my life in a cramped and sweaty eighth-floor conference room at the FCC. The occasion? A special panel was announcing its recommendations to the FCC on a new universal service plan, as required by the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
The problem was that the Federal-State Joint Board hadn't reached a decision by the time the hearing was due to begin at 1 pm. Nor had they at 2 pm. Or an hour later. In a conference room down the hall, the eight-person board were sweating even more than we were. They wanted consensus. Eventually the meeting began, closer to 4 pm.
The board's unanimous recommendation: The creation of a $2.25 billion universal service fund to subsidize schools' Net-connections. The subsidy will range from 20 percent to 90 percent and will be tied to how many kids get tax-subsidized school lunches at each school. The cost will be paid for by "telecommunications carriers," meaning higher phone bills for consumers. (Of course, the FCC's Reed Hundt tried to duck this question, but other panel mambers clarified.) The FCC will vote on this proposal early next year -- and since Chairman Hundt was on the panel, approval seems almost certain.
I happen to think this is a bad idea, but saying so publicly almost inevitably results in charges of elitism, "information have-nots," or being indifferent to the needs of our children. Opposing the CDA also left one open to similar charges: soft on porn, high on anarchy, or indifferent to the needs of our children. (I'm starting to believe that more evil can be done in the name of "protecting our children" than with any other excuse.)
But just as there are real arguments against the CDA that don't rely on overheated "protecting children" rhetoric, so there are real arguments against this universal service scheme:
Declan writes a weekly column for Time Warner's Netly News, available from the Pathfinder site. He also manages the "Fight Censorship" mailing list.
I find most of the reasons given below completely spurious, and more of a political polemic than any sort of examination of the issues.
The board's unanimous recommendation: The creation of a $2.25 billion universal service fund to subsidize schools' Net-connections.
... I happen to think this is a bad idea, but saying so publicly almost inevitably results in charges of elitism, "information have-nots," or being indifferent to the needs of our children.
Two can play at the game of pre-emptive strawman. I happen to think this is a good idea, but saying so publicly almost inevitably results in charges of favoring big government intervention, being a tax-and-spend liberal, or using children as pawns.
Opposing the CDA also left one open to similar charges: soft on porn, high on anarchy, or indifferent to the needs of our children.
Supporting any social program, from anti-discrimination laws to social safety nets to public services also left one open to similar charges: soft on responsibility, high on Communism, or using children as pawns.
But just as there are real arguments against the CDA that don't rely on overheated "protecting children" rhetoric, so there are real arguments against this universal service scheme:
Nicely-executed rhetorical trick, to try to equivalence "oppose censorship" to "oppose social programs", slotting both as "bad government" but it's a very old one, and I see it about once a week.
Just as there are real argument for providing a public education that don't amount to Communism, there real arguments for this universal service scheme.
With more government intervention almost inevitably comes more control. I can hear it now from family values activists: "My tax dollars are going to pay for porn on the Net!"
You hear it already. If we're going to say the net is just like the PUBLIC library, you can't turn around and and cry foul when exactly the same opposition is faced "My tax dollars are going to pay for this filth that can be loaned out to anyone!". In fact, this is the argument that libraries deal with all the time.
Why should a Beverly Hills high school get a discount of 20 percent? Can't they afford to pay for ISDN?
Why stop there - why should Beverly Hills high school kids get free textbooks? Can't they afford to pay for them?
This is step one of a populist Libertarian or Republican generic attack on any program for all of society. It goes like this:
But if programs are means-tested, then it follows:
"The cost will be paid for by "telecommunications carriers," meaning higher phone bills for consumers."
There is nothing that makes up a society where you can't run this type of rhetoric. The answer is that social structure is NOT just a collection of little businesses, that there are things which have to be done that do not fit the market paradigm for one reason or another, whether because of national scale or national values, and public education is one of these. You've just made the discovery that a) public education benefits go to the rich, poor, and everyone in between, and b) it's funded by, heavens, taxes.
Neither of these are particularly stunning objections.
Ironically, the same White House that is pushing this plan to wire schools to the Net is also pushing Bruce Lehman's "NII copyright bill" that will shut the door on schools' ability to _use_ information on the Net. Schizophrenic kowtowing to too many special interests? You decide.
No, actually a somewhat consistent re-making of the way we relate to information, with any eye to commercializing it (which doesn't mean full-price has to be charged everywhere). What does a library mean in an electronic age? Well, the answer for some is "free facilities to buy reading material". Sort of like the hip cyber-cafes.
I like the way public education is a special interest in the above, it's very Chomsky (one of Chomsky's statements of political observation - whenever you see "special interest" it often refers to the nearly the whole population, whereas the presumably opposite "general interest" by contrast usually implicitly means the business sector).
The American Library Association has fought the good fight on free expression issues (as in the second CDA suit, ALA v. DoJ) and on the copyright bill. Yet in this matter, they're the ones pushing for this universal service scheme. Clearly, alliances shift.
Alliance for what? Not everyone who supports free speech is a Libertarian or the like. Especially if these arguments above are viewed as spurious anti-social-program dogma. I'm basically with the ALA here.
There's an annoying thread that runs through lots of stuff that anyone who's for free speech must therefore be a member of cult of the Libertarian Party, or else there's an "alliance shift" or inconsistency or such. Who's allying where? I didn't know free speech required you to sign up to any particular economic view, or to be against government in general (hmm, there's an article here: "Free Speech vs. Free Guns vs. Free Market") Personally, I'm for both free speech and many public programs, in the social liberal tradition. I don't see the two as any sort of conflict. And anyone who's going to write me a ranting reply along the lines of Libertarianism is the One True Way Of Freedom should just not bother.
With increased taxation of telecom industries -- taxes that could increase constantly at the whim of the FCC -- investors will be wary and money will shift elsewhere. If this happens, it will damage the ability of firms to improve our nation's telecom infrastructure.
Oh, just come out and say it: "Government doesn't work, because everywhere the decisions of investors make for the best society, and so any government program is harming society by not having that money going through business". This is the Libertarian cant.
THE WHOLE INTERNET WAS A TAX-DOLLARS BASED GOVERNMENT SUBSIDY FOR YEARS! The above is nothing but the stock dogma-based assumption that the needs of society are best met by investor's priorities, which is highly ironic in the face of the counter-example of the development of the Internet. And as I understand it, we aren't even talking about government-based development here, merely purchasing existing services for schools.
Does every student have a right to be online -- that should be paid for by tax dollars -- or is it a privilege that should be paid for by other means?
Let's answer first: Does every student have a right to AN EDUCATION -- that should be paid for by tax dollars -- or is it a privilege that should be paid for by other means?
After all, Internet access is a trivial aspect of the above. IF the answer to the above is "yes", I think the argument that a net connection is a useful part of education is quite strong. Contrarywise, the attack on net connection has a structure that reproduces in miniature the attack on public education education as whole.
More and more, I don't think net access can be counted an education "frill". You can't even use library catalogues without a computer these days.
This implementation of universal service is based on a knee-jerk fear of Internet "haves and have-nots." That's unrealistic.
Nonsense. It's based on thinking that the Internet is transforming our society, so it should also be part of all education. How can we do the John Perry Barlow/cypherpunk/Wired thing of talking about how networked electronic communication is revolutionizing all of civilization, and then turn around and say it's just not a factor which matters for learning yet? What a reversal!
technologies takes time to filter through a society. The joint board's position ignores history; flush toilets and cars took decades to spread.
And such spreads were aided by (whisper) government funding of infrastructure.
Why should universal service be a priority, before books and roofs for our schools? Dozens of schools in the nation's capital were blocked from opening because of, I recall, fire code violations and even non-working bathrooms. If the Clinton administration truly and honestly wants to help children, the president has to look no further than the District's own school system.
If someone asked me "What's the first thing you'd fix about the public school system?", my answer would not be "net access". However, if someone asked me "Do you think net access is a good use of money?", I'm tending more towards agreement. I can see a lot of very realistic ways where Internet access could actually be useful. Even the most extreme censorship probably can't get rid of all the evolution info on the net. Ideally, everything would be prioritized and funding in ranking order, but politics doesn't always work that way. I see absolutely no indication that turning down the net connections will get the fire code violations and bathrooms fixed any faster.
Don't get me wrong. I agree with the end goal, which is to get kids online. But I can't stomach the Clinton administration's means to that end.
Hey, I understand there are reservations. But I can't stand the Libertarian ideologizing behind the arguments against the proposal. If you support public education in general, the argument against universal school access comes down to a fairly minor cost-benefit analysis, one which I think becomes more favorable each year. If you're against public education, it isn't a matter of the specifics of the plan. What's the Clinton administration proposing that's not stock public policy? Specific taxes are not new, it happens all the time. I've got little sympathy these days for the line "I think we should have a great society (pun intended), but the government shouldn't be involved", part of being fed-up in general with hearing this sort of politicing all the time.
Education's mostly a matter of state and local governments anyway, and that's guarded zealously (otherwise you couldn't have local standards where they try to offer students the wide range of alterative scientific theories like evolution science and bible science ...). I'd give the Clinton administration credit for finding a reasonable Federal educational initiative that won't provoke a big fight, and has a direct bearing on modern learning.
Seth Finkelstein writes regularly on politics and freedom of speech issues.