September 17, 2008 10:09 AM
How Can We Say There's Not Enough Money To Wire The Country With Fiber When...
...we're bailing out financial institutions to the tune of a trillion dollars over the last week?
Anyone who's against the idea of America moving aggressively into a full fiber future tends to cite the enormous cost of doing so as a reason not to.
Yet the cost to do so is pretty clear: about $1000 a home, with about 100 million homes, that roughly equates to $100 billion.
If we can come up with a trillion dollars to make up for the reckless actions of irresponsible parties simply to stave off the potentially devastating impact their mistakes may have on our economy, why can't we invest a tenth of that in our future by upgrading the most important infrastructure of the 21st century?
Put another way, it's almost like we've let our healthcare infrastructure languish and prices skyrocket while greedy health insurance companies try their hardest not to pay for treatments and then when a health crisis strikes we bail out the billion dollar companies when for less money we could've taken a more proactive approach towards investing in the infrastructure that can keep people healthy.
Of course the state of our healthcare system is another issue entirely, and hopefully this situation is one we never have to face, but the analogy still holds and my argument that if we set out minds to it we can afford to wire the country with fiber still stands.
Why are we spending all of our money propping up broken systems when we should be investing in the new paradigms of the 21st century, especially something like broadband that can revolutionize the efficiency and effectiveness of absolutely every facet of our society?
Comments (1)
I agree with you regarding the value relative to other government spending.
I think we might get more return on our investment by putting hand-helds into every hand.
p.s. previewing this post returned this error:
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Posted by Daniel H. Morgan on September 26, 2008 9:43 AM