Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

I didn't like Newt Gingrich when he was around, but only because I thought he was emotionally immature. I felt he went to excess with his enthusiasisms. However, I also felt I knew what he believed in. He was an idealist. I didn't agree with his particular flavor of free-market policy, but the issues he raised were the kind one could have a debate about, and in fact I think the nation did have a rather interesting debate at that time about how much the government should be involved in the economy.

With the Bush Administratiton, I suffer cognitive dissonance everyday. I don't know what they believe in. Do they favor the free market? Do they favor government intervention in the economy? What philosophy motivates them? What do they want? What do they hope to achieve? More so, why do they do what they do? When they propose bold initiatives like this, are they trying to win moderate votes in the middle? If yes, why do they do so much else that alienates moderate voters (such as myself)? But if no, then why bother?

If I didn't know that Team Bush was desparate to win the fall election--so desparate that they may not stop at the bounds of decency and legality--I'd almost suspect that they were peppering the landscape with boobytraps they (or Jeb's folks) could set off in 2008.

"We made broadband access a national priority in 2004. Four years into the Kerry Administration, President Kerry has made no progress whatsoever. He is total failure."

Replace broadband with Mars or banning gay marriage or any of the other nonesense recently trotted out.

Lawrence Krubner writes:
>
> With the Bush Administratiton, I suffer cognitive dissonance
> everyday. I don't know what they believe in.

They believe in money. They are actually very consistent about this.

> Do they favor the free market?

When that gets them more money than regulation or legislation.

> Do they favor government intervention in the economy?

When it makes them money. Tax cuts are a great intervention, for example, but tax credits are for people with less money, hence a diversion (and waste) of money.

> What philosophy motivates them?

MAKE MONEY FAST.

> What do they want?

More money.

> What do they hope to achieve?

A system guarantees their future cashflow and protects their wealth (at least from the government).

> More so, why do they do what they do?

To establish the system mentioned above.

> When they propose bold initiatives like this, are they trying to
> win moderate votes in the middle?

They actually don't really care *who* votes for them, just as long as enough people vote for them to keep them within a court decision or two of winning the Electoral College. Remember that they could have lost the popular vote in 2000 by as many 3 million or so in a 2-candidate race (Gore+Nader > Bush + Buchanan; Libertarians really are a separate breed). If they pick up half a million votes in the right states, they could lose millions elsewhere and it has no effect on them. OK, it does have an effect, but only if they lose a lot of seats in Congress.

> If yes, why do they do so much else that alienates moderate
> voters (such as myself)?

So where do you live? If it was in a state whose electoral votes went for Gore in 2000, they are uninterested in you unless you happen to live in Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin. If it was in a state that went for Bush in 2000, they're not really interested unless you live in Florida, Ohio, or possibly Missouri. They're mildly interested if you live in New Hampshire or Nevada. Otherwise, it really is all about getting The Base to turn out and making money.

> But if no, then why bother?

Talk is cheap. It doesn't cost them anything. If it flips even 5% of the undecideds, though, it's well worth it.

I'm sorry to sound so cynical, but it *is* a Monday, plus I always go for simple arguments when they seem to suffice. There are undoubtedly all kinds of complex reasons behind Bush Administration policy, but almost all of them are like the small terms of a complicated sum that end up cancelling out, leaving (in this case) the one big term of MONEY.

Shorter George Bush:
In order to facilitate the further outsourcing/arbitrage of American jobs - without having the direct beneficiaries of said outsourcings, the political donor class, pay for it & in keeping with the past precedent of public subsidies leading directly to private (donor class) profit – I wish to increase our nations broadband capacity to create market efficiencies and more jobs!!

Don’t like that? Well, I’m the pResident see. I don’t answer to nobody. Rumsfeld… add this to the Pentagon’s budget.

WSJ editorial page reports that Bush urges Americans to eat their vegetables. Ketchup sales rise.

First of all, props to Jonathan King for his excellent summation of what Team Bush believes in. I couldn't have said it any better myself.

Second, I said it there, and I'll say it here: the sheer unseriousness of Bush's periodic pseudo-proposals should be a Kerry campaign issue in and of itself. This country has some serious problems to deal with (jobs, deficits, the War on Terror, nuclear proliferation, Iraq), and what we get from the kid in charge is moon bases, trips to Mars, steroids, gay marriage, and broadband.

Put a grownup back in the White House.

Odd...when Al Gore made a pronouncement similar to this, liberals thought it was the greatest idea they had ever heard. I wonder what the response here would have been if Kerry had said this.

That being said, the best thing the government could do for broadband, and to insure that it will be available to the largest number of people at the cheapest prices, is to ignore the industry completely.

Almost anyone willing to pay for high-speed internet access--unless you live on a farm--can access it through DSL or cable. Growth rate is about 12 percent a year. Dish systems can help even the farms.

Bush, Kerry, and anyone else looking to "do us a favor:" Leave it alone. The internet, and the computing industry before that, were as successful as they were largely because they were well under way before the Congress had any idea what the hell either of them was.

I suggest wiring up the Senate and the House to fire about 300 volts into the crotch areas of those legislators who are tempted to "fix" the internet access system or anything else in that area.

Can we assume 'universal' includes Mars?

I already have broadband. Now I want a pony.

tbrosz, if you would glance at Brad's extract from Kevin's post, you would see that the point is that there's nothing to indicate that Bush has a clue. It's pretty much an announcement. Like the Mars mission.

at last something i am supposed to know something about: broadband. let me say that President Bush was right to call for organized government policy to achieve universal broadband. Externalities compel this. So do the existence of numerous policies that discourage effective marketplace competition that would generate broadband. Let me also say that the refusal of the Bush FCC to define broadband as a universal service represents three years of contradiction of the current White House policy.

at last something i am supposed to know something about: broadband. let me say that President Bush was right to call for organized government policy to achieve universal broadband. Externalities compel this. So does the existence of numerous policies that discourage effective marketplace competition that would generate broadband. Let me also say that the refusal of the Bush FCC to define broadband as a universal service represents three years of contradiction of the current White House policy.

tbrosz writes:
>
> Odd...when Al Gore made a pronouncement similar to this,
> liberals thought it was the greatest idea they had ever heard. I
> wonder what the response here would have been if Kerry had
> said this.

I can't speak for other people, but if Kerry had just made the statement that "Broadband is good; we should have better access and competition" without any reference to a *concrete policy* or plan as to how to achieve this, I would think of it as a pretty useless statement of generic approval, to be filed with others like "favors education" or "wants to keep the streets safe" and stuff like that. Campaign filler at best.

What would be way more interesting, I think you would agree, is for Bush to have come out with more than just a vague timeline. I mean, why mention this unless you have an idea of what we might need to do to make it happen. Will this goal require regulatory changes? Incentives to provide service to cost-inefficient rural areas? Demonstration projects? Funding for providing access to schools that could bootstrap access for all? A new role for the postal service or someting? Licensing for new wireless technologies? What? This is important, because NOBODY in the field actually believes we are going to have anything like universal access in 2007 if the current situation goes forward in business-as-usual mode.

> That being said, the best thing the government could do for
> broadband, and to insure that it will be available to the largest
> number of people at the cheapest prices, is to ignore the
> industry completely.

I would be much more likely to agree with this if it didn't (at first blush) appear to be the case that Bush appointees at the FCC (including Chairman Powell) were actively involved in decision-making that is in NO way hands-off or disinterested in the demands made by the telecom industry.

> Almost anyone willing to pay for high-speed internet access--
> unless you live on a farm--can access it through DSL or cable.
> Growth rate is about 12 percent a year. Dish systems can help
> even the farms.

I'm always gratified to see statements made like this in the complete absence of facts to back them up. What I do know is that here in the city of Columbia, MO, (population ~90,000 and growing like a weed), there are many, many places in town that can get neither DSL nor cable access. Ironically, most of them (by residence counts) are within 2000 feet of the CenturyTel building downtown. Why this is so is (as usual) complicated, and UNlikely to change very quickly. So if the Bush goal were for this to change quickly, it makes sense to spell out what it might take, or what the challenges might be.

There is also an interesting point to make about the growth rate of broadband. Accepting for a moment your statement that the rate is is 12% per year, what exactly is that the growth rate OF? Residences that actually subscribe to broadband? Residences that could subscribe to broadband? Residences where there is a choice of broadband providers? Something else? Another question is--whatever rate this really is--how long can such a rate be sustained? Long enough to reach every household? I'm doubtful that this will be true since, as you would expect, cable and phone companies have concentrated on what we might call "the low hanging fruit". I personally can now get broadband through cable or DSL, and might well be able to get an experimental wireless system coverage soon as well. This does not much for people living even 2 miles to the north or west of me, who had no options at all last I checked.

It's easy to see how broadband can be provided to the richer and denser areas since that's already been accomplished. It's less easy to see what miracle will occur that will bring broadband to the outcounty of my home city, which is home to over 30,000 people. If they can't do Boone County, good luck with Moniteau.

This proposal does have some meat behind it. It's just that nobody is going on the record about it yet. The Bells and various equipment makers are pushing for a 'national broadband policy' - something that has shown up in so-far unsuccessful bills in Congress from both parties in past sessions. While all concerned will take what they can get, the goal is a bunch of 'tax incentives'. There's also some posturing ahead of a likely Telecom Act rewrite in the next Congress.

'Broadband by 2007' is of course a meaningless slogan unless one defines what broadband is. Depending on one's definition, it may already be here, or be completely infeasible. But the goal is not the point. This is all about the means. not the end.

The question the Bells are asking themselves is, of course, whether this is is a real presidential endorsement of their efforts or hot air from Karl Rove's office.

Obviously broadband will be an important part of the communications infrastructure of the economy. And this will probably be true regardless of what policies are put in place. But policies, and vague statements about unrealisitic goals, can have real impact on the speed of deployment of broadband services.

For example, the rise of wireless was not simply due to governement hands off. Were it not for a small part of the Telecom Act and subsequent FCC interpretation by Reed Hundt, cell phone companies would have continued to pay high per minute fees (about 3 cents per minute for all calls) to the landline telephone companies. With this in place, there would have been no unlimited night and weekend calling, big bucket plans would be much more expensive, and we would not have nearly the competition that we have today.

This is just an example of how a forward-looking use of regualtion that aligns with market forces can have a huge impact on the outcome of competition, deployment and ultimately the affordability and universality of advanced services.

Rather than just saying that we need universal broadband by 2007, there should be a well thought out method for encouraging market forces to be the force that compels companies to provide services pervasively at low prices.

universal access to broadband sounds great. it should probably wait until we get closer to everyone having a computer. or dinner.

it's a pretty carriage with no horses kind of idea.

Check out Slashdot's comment:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/28/1730220&mode=nested&tid=103&tid=126&tid=95&tid=99

(I like the '... and a pony' part).

tegwar

"universal access to broadband sounds great. it should probably wait until we get closer to everyone having a computer. or dinner.

it's a pretty carriage with no horses kind of idea."

I'm not so sure "everyone" will have a computer. It's possible to purchase a system for less than $500 right now that will make an adequate email and internet access box. That is (IIRC) about what you could expect to pay for a color television a few years ago. And "everyone" has a TV.

Computers are too complicated for the masses to run well, but you won't know it by the ads. That's not to say a person of average intelligence can't dope out how to safely operate a PC, but it's far from being as easy as plugging in a television.

Unh, my point is that if we wait to install universal broadband until everyone has a PC we'll be waiting a long, long time.

So Bush is for universal...broadband. Great. Whoopty doo. Shouldn't we get universal, I don't know, healthcare or food & shelter or something like that before we start worrying about whether we can all access the internet at blazing-fast speeds?

Lawrence Krubner: "With the Bush Administratiton, I suffer cognitive dissonance everyday. I don't know what they believe in."

Jonathan King: "They believe in money."

Lawrence Krubner: "What do they want?"

Jonathan King: "More money."

My two cents (pardoning the pun): "More money out of the pockets of the ever shrinking middle class."

"Odd...when Al Gore made a pronouncement similar to this, liberals thought it was the greatest idea they had ever heard." --tbrosz--

America is a very different place today thanks, in no small part, to Bush. Priorities have changed, like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.

It is a far, far bolder to announce a goal before you have a plan than it is to to do the clerkish labor needed to accomplish it.

Sort of sidestream to the topic, but I worked in broadband, well, in broadcasting anyway, during the time of multimedia broadband fever, and I'll share the collective horror that every broadcast company owner secretly losses sleep over.

Television alone uses uptiskiddily bazillions of megabytes of raw product. Sports, talking heads, CSPAN, movies, you name it, it's 24x7 times 200 channels and an ungodly black hole for talent and money and time. Mostly time. There's not enough time until the universe ends to fill up all the channels with product.

Now multiply that visual by a 24x7 medium moving continuously all around the world, non-stop, and on 2,000, or 2,000,000 e-channels. Do you see where I'm going? All of the script writers and copy editors and screen guild actors and umpty gigabillions of production dollars couldn't fill up even a ten-thousandth of broadband bandwidth.

Be careful what you wish for, or we might just get the Third Millenium 24-hour Tower of Babbel, in syndicated reruns, and pay-per-view.

Praise Jesus, and don't stop shopping!!!!!

Having an industry with an actual demand for talent and work would be a nice change from the Bush Years.

Frankly, I'm confused, because this is direct opposition to what the administration's friends want.

Well, they want everyone to have a fat pipe, but they don't want consumers to "have plenty of choices."

Each would like monopolies on both the pipes, and the content shoved down them, and the marketing data flowing up them, and all for the low low price of $100 bucks a month.

I suppose what Bush would propose is having the Federal Gummint do the build out at (middle class) tax payer expense, then hand over the infrastructure (gratis) to the Cable Mono-Co.s.

Teapot Dome, anyone?

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In hoc signo vinces - In this sign, you will be victorious. (Eusebios)

Non est vivere sed valere vita est - Life is not being alive but being well (life is more than just being alive)

Uti, non abuti - To use, not abuse

Si tacuisses, philosophus manisses - If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher. (Boethius)

Virtute et armis - By courage and by arms

Non mihi, non tibi, sed nobis - Not for you, not for me, but for us