Is there a computer in the house? I found out the hard way what it is like to not own a computer when I recently moved to Seattle. With my computer far away in storage, I found out to my dismay that if you don't own a computer, you're going to wait a while before you get to one. My attempts to use a computer where I wasn't getting my wallet lifted (like at Kinkos)--namely the public library--did not bear fruit, as the downtown branch's computers are usually booked for up to two days in advance. The computer lab in the main library is open for drop-ins for a limited amount of time, in the early evening hours, on selected days.

It is an article of faith among the technophiles that a technological fix can solve a political problem. The mere existence of advanced technology like the Internet will democratize society and make us all into lap-top owning millionaires, the faithful tell us skeptics. High-tech balderdash from the technophiles carefully avoids mentioning the realities of the political economy. Listening to the technophiles, one would believe that the modern PC really did come from somebody's garage, not industrial policy--i.e., government intervention in the economy. This is complete nonsense, as high-tech industry is as much a product of industrial policy as any old-fashioned auto or steel factory ever was. The technophile's avoidance of mentioning the political economy is a convenient way of not disturbing a world view that only exists in a vapid, child-like imagination.

All of this brings up the obvious point that it is asking too much for under-funded public institutions like public libraries to guarantee computer and Internet access to the masses. Of course, no serious discussion of the computer/software and Internet industries can take place without pointing out the source of their success--namely, the taxpayers. But this is the era of Yuppie.com economy, where the wealth goes up and never comes down.

The leaches of Silicon Valley and Redmond, along with the rest of the high-tech industry, are arguably the greatest extortionists of public wealth in human history. The executives of these multi-billion dollar companies are happy to lecture the masses on the marvels of the "free market," now that the time has long since come to pass when the personal computer is finally efficient enough to be marketed to the public. We have seen this movie before. Massive public subsidies by way of government contracts and research at public universities are granted in the form of exclusive copyrights or patents to a corporation by way of cheap purchase or outright giveaway. This was how the fruits of Bill Gates' prized piece of "intellectual property" (i.e., his Windows operating system) was realized. The first computers were too big to fit in anybody's garage and they would have stayed that way without massive public subsidy into continuing research and development. Bill Gates wouldn't have his personal fortune without the public subsidy that created the modern PC--for owning the Windows operating system would be meaningless without it.

It is with the multi-billion-dollar, high tech corporations that the resources for providing computers and Internet access to the masses lies. Why should anybody have to pay for a computer? Why should anybody have to pay to have a domain name hosted on the Internet--that other publicly-subsidized cash cow handed over to the commercial interests with a tax holiday? A simple tax on all computer, software and Internet sales of, say, five percent of whatever, would be more than enough to raise the money needed to provide libraries and non-profits with more space and computers than they would know what to do with. Of course, the political will doesn't even exist to do the right thing and break up Microsoft, much less impose a well-merited tax on Internet transactions. The mere suggestion of an Internet sales tax is always met with a barrage of pro-industry propaganda in the mass media characterizing such a tax as an attack on capitalism.

Perhaps no industry is better at promoting its image as a champion of the "entrepreneurial spirit" than high tech industry. It takes a rational person about three seconds to see through this deceit, as I explained above. Characterizing the federal government's anti-trust case against Microsoft as an attack on "capitalism," as Newsweek and much of the mass media has, is like calling an attack on Stalinism an attack on capitalism. Starting a high tech company is as entrepreneurial as getting appointed local Communist Party boss in the former-Soviet Union was.

Of course, merely advocating a tax on computer software and Internet sales is hardly radical. Nothing less than the destruction of the instruments that make it possible for Bill Gates and his ilk to extort billions for individual material gain, courtesy of the public trough, is called for--namely the publicly traded corporation. The cause for social justice demands nothing less.