In an provocative oped in today’s New York Times, Vint Cerf, one of the pioneers of the Net who now holds the position “chief Internet evangelist” at Google, makes the argument for why “Internet Access Is Not a Human Right.” He argues:

technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end up valuing the wrong things. For example, at one time if you didn’t have a horse it was hard to make a living. But the important right in that case was the right to make a living, not the right to a horse. Today, if I were granted a right to have a horse, I’m not sure where I would put it. The best way to characterize human rights is to identify the outcomes that we are trying to ensure. These include critical freedoms like freedom of speech and freedom of access to information — and those are not necessarily bound to any particular technology at any particular time. Indeed, even the United Nations report, which was widely hailed as declaring Internet access a human right, acknowledged that the Internet was valuable as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.

You won’t be surprised to hear that I generally agree. But there are two other issues Cerf fails to address. First, who or what pays the bill for classifying the Internet or broadband as a birthright entitlement?  Second, what are the potential downsides for competition and innovation from such a move? As I noted in a recent essay here (“What Does It Mean to Declare Broadband a “Human Right,” and What Are the Costs?”):

We live in a world of trade-offs and there is no free lunch. One doesn’t just mandate broadband for all and then expect there won’t be any costs — both direct and indirect. The direct cost is the cost to taxpayers or ratepayers in form of higher taxes or bills. The indirect costs usually arrive in the form of diminished competition, limited innovation, lackluster options, and the various problems associated with the regulatory capture that will ensue.

The first objection is self-evident and needs little elaboration since we are today witnessing the breakdown of welfare state entitlement systems and policies across the globe as one country after another is bankrupted by them. But the second point needs to be unpacked a bit more.

As I noted in my earlier essay, the best universal service policy is marketplace competition. When we get the basic framework right — low taxes, property rights, contractual enforcement, anti-fraud standards, etc. — competition generally takes care of the rest. But competition often doesn’t develop — or is sometimes prohibited outright — in sectors or for networks that are declared “essential” facilities or technological entitlements.  That’s not because they are natural monopolies, rather, it’s because the policies that lawmakers and regulators put in place to ensure universal service ultimately have the counter-productive impact of retarding new entry.  Worse yet, the entitlement mentality and corresponding universal service mandates typically produce less fertile ground for innovative breakthroughs. For greater ellaboration on both points, see my old 1994 essay:  “Unnatural Monopoly: Critical Moments in the Development of the Bell System Monopoly.”

So, while I appreciate and agree with Cerf’s humorous point that “Today, if I were granted a right to have a horse, I’m not sure where I would put it,” the more interesting question is this: If government would have decreed long ago that everyone had a right to a horse, would that have meant everyone actually got one? (Recall that despite a similar mandate for telephony and billions upon billions in spending / transfers, we never had more than 94% of the nation served with basic telephone service.) If everyone did actually get a horse via a hypothetical Horse Entitlement System, how efficient was that program and the resulting bureaucracy / regulatory apparatus? Who picked up the bill? Did it discourage entry by more efficient vendors? Did it discourage innovations that might have served the public better? Did the program outlive its usefulness and become a drag on innovation /productivity. Was the system gamed or captured? (I can only imagine the lobbying that would have ensued from the horse industry once trains, cars, and airplanes became a disruptive threat!)

These are the sort of questions rarely asked initially in discussions about proposals to convert technologies or networks into birthright entitlements. Eventually, however, they become inescapable problems that every entitlement system must grapple with.  When we discuss the wisdom of classifying the Internet or broadband as a birthright entitlement, we should require advocates to provide us with some answers to such questions. Kudos to Vint Cerf for helping us get that conversation going in a serious way.

The folks at the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project came out with another installment of their “Home Broadband” survey yesterday. This one, Home Broadband 2010, finds that “adoption of broadband Internet access slowed dramatically over the last year.” “Most demographic groups experienced flat-to-modest broadband adoption growth over the last year,” it reports, although there was 22% growth in broadband adoption by African-Americans.  But the takeaway from the survey that is getting the most attention is the finding that:

By a 53%-41% margin, Americans say they do not believe that the spread of affordable broadband should be a major government priority. Contrary to what some might suspect, non-internet users are less likely than current users to say the government should place a high priority on the spread of high-speed connections.

This has a number of Washington tech policy pundits scratching their heads since it seems to cut against the conventional wisdom.  Cecilia Kang of The Washington Post penned a story about this today (“Support for Broadband Loses Speed as Nationwide Growth Slows“) and was kind enough to call me for comment about what might be going on here.

I suggested that there might be a number of reasons that respondents downplayed the importance of government actions to spur broadband diffusion, including that: (1) many folks are quite content with the Internet service they get today; (2) others might get their online fix at work or other places and not feel the need for it at home; and (3) some may not care two bits (excuse the pun) about broadband at all.  More generally, I noted that, with all the other issues out there to consider, broadband policy just isn’t that important to most folks in the larger scheme of things. As I told Kang, “Let’s face it, when the average family of four is sitting around the dinner table, to the extent they talk about U.S. politics, broadband is not on the list of topics.”

I also noted that many Americans are getting increasingly fed up with the scope of government power and the sort of wasteful spending that is increasingly bankrupting our nation and future generations.  More specifically, to the extent people know about them, existing universal service schemes for telephone service are massively inefficient and a prime example of why many Americans don’t trust their government to deliver on such grandiose tech-entitlement promises. One government report after another lambastes the waste, fraud, and abuse that runs rampant today our universal service system, and yet, those programs just keep growing and growing, year after year.

That’s why I told Kang that extending the same kind of federal aid to broadband providers is not likely to be any more efficient. “My skepticism comes from a poor government track record on tech funding,” I told her.  And I suspect that many people are equally skeptical for such reasons, and that might be influencing their answers when responding to Pew or other surveys.

Finally, I bet there are some folks out there who believe that, to the extent government should have a role in the “spread of affordable broadband” at all, that role should be focused on (1) clearing the deck of unnecessary regulatory burdens that prevent quicker rollout of privately-funded networks, and (2) limiting any subsidies that may be needed after that to targeted state and local programs for the truly neediest, not grandiose federal tech-pork barrel schemes.  Indeed, that’s my own position.

Of course, as I’ve noted here many times before, liberty is a loser these days and the natural progression of history is for Big Government to just grow and grow and grow.  So, I am prepared to get in line for my own tech handouts, as I noted in my essay last October, “Broadband as a Human Right (and a short list of other things I am entitled to on your dime).”

Hey people. You owe me.  All of you.  You owe me free broadband.  I am entitled to it, after all. That seems to be where our current FCC is heading, anyway.  And hey, Finland’s just done it, and the supposed Silicon Valley capitalists at TechCrunch are giddy with delight about it.  We’re apparently all just Scandinavian socialists at heart now.

Thus, I too have decided to throw in the towel on the idea of everyone carrying their own weight and picking up their own tab.  So, get your wallets open and ready for me because I have lots and lots of things that I believe I have an inalienable right to receive free of charge from the government (i.e, “the people”;  i.e., “YOU”).   Please let me know which of the things on my high-tech wish list that you’ll be purchasing for me and I’ll check you off my registry so I don’t have to send the cops to your house to collect:

• free broadband (fiber, Wi-Max, and whatever else is around the corner);
• a couple of free new computers (and a really fast ones, thank you very much);
• 3 new HDTVs for my home (including one of those sweet new DLP projectors that usually cost about $10,000 bucks.  And I’ll need you to pay for someone to help me install it. Or could you just come over and do that for me perhaps?);
• 3 free new DVRs for each new TV set that you are buying me (and could I get a nice universal remote to control everything, please);
• a free subscription in my area to either DirecTV, Cox Cable, or Verizon FIOS TV (with all the premium channels and sports packages… and don’t forget the Playboy Channel!);
• a free lifetime subscription to Netflix (or I guess I would settle for a free Blu-Ray player and some free movies);
• free new wi-fi router and signal extenders for my home (N-standard please, none of that B or G garbage… too slow for me);
• free mobile phone service for life + an iPhone + unlimited downloads in their app store (oh, could you have that iPhone autographed by Steve Jobs if you get a chance?);
• free Playstation or XBox + lots of games (and if I could get one of those driving wheels to play my new Gran Turismo game that would be dandy); and finally,
• free lifetime tech support when all this crap breaks down.

In closing, I thank you for your generosity.  I mean, look, I know I don’t actually deserve any of this stuff, and that there’s no good reason that you should have to pay for my free-riding ways, and there’s obviously nothing in our Constitution to support all this, but hey… screw all that!  This is my God-given birthright. I am entitled, baby!  Now get busy thinking of how you are all going to start paying for me, you selfish bastards.