Conservatives love to evoke the give-a-fish-versus-teach-to-fish adage when they lecture those who are down on their luck. Fortunately, many conservatives also have a track record of supporting commonsense means of giving prospective workers what they need to show how much they have learned to metaphorically fish in any given vocation.
Unfortunately, the most powerful conservatives in Washington are shamelessly bent on complicating that dynamic. As if the imminent threat to net neutrality were not bad enough, Free Press and other organizations are also reiterating the urgent need to preserve the Lifeline program.
As part of an Oct. 26 press release, Free Press Deputy Director and Senior Counsel Jessica J. González reminded us of the following:
“Visionary bipartisan leaders created Lifeline during the Reagan administration, seeking to connect the most vulnerable people in the United States to telephone service. The Bush administration updated the program to cover wireless-telephone service, drawing on knowledge gained in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In 2016, the Obama administration modernized Lifeline to more fully promote affordable broadband connectivity.”
Now, late in the first year of the current administration, FCC Chair Ajit Pai is making his underhanded case to puncture this program. The implications are nothing short of reduced or abolished phone and/or Internet service for underprivileged people and communities.
Many of those communities comprise the exact rural, Middle American zip codes whose residents were told they “will be forgotten no longer” by the man who appointed Pai to his post.
As it is, Lifeline invests $9.25 per month to subsidize crucial communications services for these communities. The quintessential return on that investment manifests itself every time a Lifeline user finds a job posting on the web, submits an application, connects for an interview via phone, Skype or the equivalent and ultimately wins the position.
In other words, that person has gone from being one of the so-called “takers” those conservative lecturers enjoy simplistically generalizing them as to one of the noble “makers.” The process epitomizes the refreshing transition from being given a fish to flaunting one’s fishing skills and finally getting rewarded for it.
But naturally, that process is only possible when the pond is open.
Former NFL player Joe Ehrmann, who has since become a minister and high-school coach, evoked the metaphor best when interviewed for Jeffrey Marx’s book, Season of Life:
“Everybody ought to be able to participate in the community…There’s that old saying, ‘You give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. You teach him how to fish, and he can feed himself for a lifetime.’ But if he can’t even get to the pond, no matter how impressive his rod and reels are, what good are they? You gotta remove the barriers so the person can go fish.”
In countless lines of work — writing, music, acting, graphic design, photography, videography, research and retail, just to name a few — the Internet is an indispensable pond of virtually unlimited space where anyone can demonstrate their skills. In an even greater breadth of fields, it is where prospective employers and employees maximize their outreach to find and attract the best mutual fits.
Some users may even build their own business from scratch depending on how many fish they can convince to bite. This author, for one, applied for and landed his most recent job after hearing about an upstart website while listening to an online radio station that was based more than 600 miles away.
Other users are building their resumes and honing their knowhow by taking online classes, applying for admission and/or scholarships to a physical school or doing required research for an institution they already attend. Putting that another way, while subsisting on reasonable fish rations, they are learning to fish.
But no Internet access means no chance of reaching those prospective employees, employers, benefactors and/or audiences. Limited access based on one’s location, one’s income or the preferences of one’s IP means unduly reduced opportunities for legitimate, hard-earned employment.
There is no way to spin that fact. In today’s job market, under those circumstances, you are as good as stuck relying on others to give you a daily fish ration.
Surely no one wants to block the path to the pond so they can get worked up over the unemployed or underemployed and scream at them to “Get a job!” for kicks, do they?
Assuming they do not, then they — like the 76 percent of Independent, 73 percent of Republican and 81 percent of Democratic constituents polled by Civis Analytics this past summer — will agree that net neutrality should stay, if not strengthen. And they, like their bipartisan predecessors from previous administrations, will agree that Lifeline must live.
When the man who appointed Pai promised that “Everyone is listening to you now,” he inevitably included Lifeline users under the “you” umbrella.
There is no time like the present to make sure that is still genuinely the case. It must be made permanently and prominently clear that the great pond that is the Internet must be open to everyone with the ability and desire to fish or to learn to fish, not just those who have a comfortable stock of fish to begin with.