ARPA Is Delivering The ‘Abundance’ Ezra Klein Claims To Be Looking For

So you may have noticed that the media red carpet has been rolled out for Ezra Klein’s new book, “Abundance.” I don’t think the premise of the book is particularly original or challenging: that government should promise and efficiently deliver big things that genuinely help the public.

But as we noted last week, I had some issues with Klein’s simplistic description of government broadband subsidy programs like BEAD, the Broadband Equity, Access, And Deployment program poised to deliver $42.5 billion in broadband subsidies thanks to the 2021 infrastructure bill.

Klein singled out BEAD as example of almost absurdist government waste, noting the program has taken longer than it should to deliver any broadband (correct), and that the program has a lot of cumbersome restrictions for providers looking to participate (also correct).

But Klein’s framing of the program was superficial, implying that the program (which was poised to start funding projects this year) was so loaded with restrictions as to be an irredeemable waste. Klein also failed to note why this program program took so long and had so many restrictions.

One being that as part of BEAD, Congress had the FCC completely remap broadband access across every county in the United States. This is a good thing, and was necessary because, for decades, the GOP and telecom giants fought tooth and nail against accurate maps that might outline market failure.

Another reason BEAD had more restrictions (and was run by the NTIA) is that government was trying to avoid the taxpayer-funded fraud that had occurred with a different, recent Trump first term FCC programs (RDOF). This was also a good thing.

BEAD isn’t any poster child for government efficiency, but many of its restrictions exist for good reasons. Many of them involve trying to combat past corporate fraud and government dysfunction. It isn’t, as Klein tries to claim, just government trying to impose annoying bureaucracy because everyone really loves bureaucracy for some ambiguous reason:

“This is how liberal government works now.”

Klein’s portrayal of BEAD as an abject and pointless bureaucratic failure (which it most decidedly isn’t), actually works against “abundance.” The GOP has been trying to frame this program as a pointless bureaucratic nightmare for several years (current FCC boss Brendan Carr got mad at us last year when we pointed this out). I’d wager those false claims are how it got on Klein’s radar in the first place.

Abundance Right Under Your Nose

More damning to me is that Klein also failed to mention that other programs launched the same year are doing exactly what Klein claims to be looking for. Like the $350 billion, 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which is currently doling out $25 billion in broadband grants to help deploy affordable fiber to countless U.S. communities that, in many cases, have never been connected to the internet before.

I speak constantly with the people all over this country deploying this particular “abundance.” Every single week as part of my research on U.S. broadband I talk to a different municipality, utility, cooperative, or small rural provider rolling out fiber thanks to ARPA grants. Fiber broadband access that’s usually cheaper and much faster than anything available in major metro areas.

In many areas, cooperatives, leveraging experience from 100 years earlier when they were forced to address electrical market failure, are pushing out $60 per month symmetrical gigabit fiber to people who’d been neglected by the private sector and government for a generation. A lot of these ARPA deployments are being helped by the broadband mapping improvements mandated by BEAD.

And, unlike a lot of past government subsidy programs (where the entirety of funds are thrown in the lap of giant regional telecom monopolies), a lot of this money is going to small, local, rural ISPs. A lot of it is going to communities that are building their own popular, community-owned local broadband infrastructure. This seems like something somebody interested in abundance might want to mention in any of the countless book promotion podcast interviews?

ARPA (which had far fewer of the restrictions Klein laments) is, of course, funding countless other essential improvements and infrastructure. There’s a brand new community center and affordable housing center being built here in South Seattle that’s a stone’s throw from my backdoor.

Klein doesn’t mention ARPA’s broadband successes because he either didn’t do enough research into broadband to understand it, or the example contradicted the implication of his book (that Democrats love bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake). I genuinely get the sense he didn’t actually do research when it came time to talk about broadband. He saw Republican complaints and riffed off them.

Now Democrats do suck at messaging. Nobody knows this community center near my house is thanks to ARPA because there’s absolutely no signs saying so. Democrats suck at taking public credit for a lot of this stuff. And the ad engagement based press usually doesn’t cover it because “boring” infrastructure stories don’t get clicks, and they’re afraid to appear biased to Democrats.

I don’t say any of this as some sort of apologist for government bureaucracy. I’ve genuinely spilled more ink on U.S. broadband policy dysfunction more than anybody alive. But if Klein wants to portray himself as a policy expert and his book as the final word on infrastructure, these are all weird omissions, and stuff any broadband policy expert would have told him in a half hour conversation.

I also take issue with the way Klein downplays consolidated corporate power and corruption.

Most of our burdensome U.S. regulation wasn’t created by well-intentioned reformers or caricatured avocado-toast gobbling Millennials living in Pasadena. It was primarily built by those with the most influence on government policy and those most usually inclined to benefit: consolidated corporate power. The lion’s share of government function persists because it benefits America’s biggest companies.

Our tax filing processes aren’t convoluted because being convoluted is fun, they’re convoluted to coddle the rich, confuse the poor, and benefit tax prep companies. Our broadband policies aren’t bureaucratic for bureaucracy’s sake; they’ve convoluted messes because dominant regional monopolies have made a complicated mess of markets to their own benefit, and routinely muddy up good faith reform and want to deter anybody looking to change things.

The primary culprit of bad regulation isn’t progressive reform. It’s corruption and regulatory capture. It’s careerist revolving door regulators who stopped caring about the public interest a decade earlier, assuming they ever did. It’s a Congress so heavily lobbied by corporate interests it’s literally too corrupt to function or pass even the most basic reforms (see: our lack of internet privacy laws).

As somebody who has studied and written about telecom policy for several decades, corruption is at the very heart of that sector’s bureaucratic dysfunction. If you’re talking about abundance and you think corruption and consolidated corporate power is some kind of afterthought in the conversation of why the government consistently fails to deliver, I’m going to have a hard time taking you seriously.

The conversation “Abundance” wants to have is also just weirdly crafted for a different time (read: pre-fascism). Trump authoritarianism is dismantling what little corporate oversight and consumer/labor power remains, ushering in a golden age for corruption. We can obviously still debate policy; but this particular conversation at this particular moment feels like bickering about drape colors while an arsonist sets the house on fire.