“If it ain’t broke, we’ll fix it!”
That appears to be Mayor de Blasio’s guiding philosophy, at least with respect to businesses investing in the city. At the same time his administration touts figures showing employment in Gotham’s technology sector far outpacing job growth in the rest of the economy, the mayor made clear he will bully companies into following his plans for “economic justice.”
The mayor’s immediate target is Verizon, though presumably others would be affected too. A hint of where this is going is that he’s turned over the issue to Maya Wiley, a civil-rights attorney de Blasio recently named his counsel.
“If you can’t afford to feed your family by the end of the month,” Wiley says, “you can’t afford $75 a month for the broadband service. And that’s what we have to fix.”
Really? High-speed Internet is now a “right” — and the mayor is going to “fix” it by setting prices for a private company?
Let’s remember, the free market does a better job of making things affordable than government ever will. That’s because companies with a product or a service have an incentive to expand their market by lowering prices. This is how things once regarded as luxuries — say, cellphones — become everyday necessities.
But de Blasio knows better. He’s going to compel people who are investing billions in this city’s infrastructure into doing what he wants at the price he wants — and he thinks it will have no effect on jobs, investment or the city’s future.
In other words, if you think broadband is expensive now, just wait until the mayor makes it “affordable.”