If only it were this simple

Since I have to turn in these columns a few days in advance, I don’t actually know how the Supreme Court will rule on the healthcare debate.

However, that does not stop me from committing to a tangent of how the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act might affect the future of how we pay for the Internet.

Follow me here. One of the reasons why people argue in favor of the individual mandate is because healthcare should be a universal right.

If you are wounded by a life-threatening paper cut from the pages of this newspaper, you shouldn’t have to die because you didn’t have enough money to go to the ER and get stitches. That would be a horribly cruel way to die.

Around this time last year, the United Nations declared Internet access a
universal human right.

If the American government is in the business of preserving our rights, it needs to mandate data plans, because according to the UN we need the Internet to be minimally functioning human beings.

Essentially, you would pay for a general Internet account with which you can draw data from for your phone, iPad and computer. This is similar to how Verizon and AT&T are restructuring their business model for data plans.

They sell one Internet account with a maximum data allotment shared between all devices, cellphone or computer.

The mandate is a tax you have to pay if you don’t want to buy healthcare.

Even if you don’t have health insurance you’re probably going to use a hospital at some point, and this tax is supposed to help factor in that cost to society.

Now, think about a tax that everyone pays if you own a smartphone or computer but you don’t want to buy Internet.

The rationale being, a consumer will use Internet at some point, maybe to send out Tea Party chain letters at a café with free Wi-fi. If they use it they should have to pay for it in some way.

Wireless Internet should fall from the heavens like a sweet ambrosia of knowledge and cute pets wherever an American needs it.

And on that note, state and federal government would be forced to use some of that collected tax money to increase cyber infrastructure, which would require putting people of various skill levels to work.

Now please, ignore how incredibly socialist this model is, because this would effectively socialize the costs of the Internet industry.

But think about how incredibly convenient it would be to Google anything,
anywhere.

Or be able to communicate with whomever you wanted, whenever you wanted, wherever you wanted via social media and apps like Skype?

This increase in the use of Internet would connect every American like some sort of telepathic beehive of creation and consumption.

Oh yes, a hive mind where everyone knows the next best video of a corgi flopping into water as soon as it is posted on YouTube.

But, uh, remember, this all hinges on the Supreme Court ruling in favor of the idea that government can mandate healthcare insurance.

So, if it strikes that down, and you read the previous 500 words, I apologize that I am not apologetic because I just fixed the economy and got everyone access to
high-speed pornography.

Also: Could you beer me that Nobel Prize, bro?

­— nicjacob@indiana.edu