Abstract:

Cultural Cognition refers to the disposition to conform one's beliefs about societal risks to one's preferences for how society should be organized. Based on surveys and experiments involving some 5,000 Americans, the Second National Risk and Culture Study presents empirical evidence of the effect of this dynamic in generating conflict about global warming, school shootings, domestic terrorism, nanotechnology, and the mandatory vaccination of school-age girls against HPV, among other issues. The Study also presents evidence of risk-communication strategies that counteract cultural cognition. Because nuclear power affirms rather than threatens the identity of persons who hold individualist values, for example, proposing it as a solution to global warming makes persons who hold such values more willing to consider evidence that climate change is a serious risk. Because people tend to impute credibility to people who share their values, persons who hold hierarchical and egalitarian values are less likely to polarize when they observe people who hold their values advocating unexpected positions on the vaccination of young girls against HPV. Such techniques can help society to create a deliberative climate in which citizens converge on policies that are both instrumentally sound and expressively congenial to persons of diverse values.

And from the conclusion:

Conclusion:

There is a culture war in America, but it is about facts, not values. There is very little evidence that most Americans care nearly as much about issues that symbolize competing cultural values as they do about the economy, national security, and the safety and health of themselves and their loved ones. There is ample evidence, however, that Americans are sharply divided along cultural lines about what sorts of conditions endanger these interests and what sorts of policies effectively counteract such risks.

Findings from the Second National Culture and Risk Study help to show why. Psychologically speaking, it's much easier to believe that conduct one finds dishonorable or offensive is dangerous, and conduct one finds noble or admirable is socially beneficial, than vice versa. People are also much more inclined to accept information about risk and danger when it comes from someone who shares their values than when it comes from someone who holds opposing commitments.

This op-ed recommends that the city buy the division, and have it build service, which they estimate at about $100 per household, which could save $300 to $400 per household per year for those with broadband. But that means that they prefer any market for broadband to be destroyed in favor of a publicly owned and operated network. Which, frankly, would scare me if such a thing were proposed in my city.

It's not so much that any given broadband firm is so marvelous that I wouldn't prefer another. (I am surprisingly happy with my DSL from incumbent Qwest, including their fantastically improved technical support.) But, rather, that cities seem to do best in ensuring that missing pieces of all kinds are provided to those least able to advocate for themselves. This, in my mind, extends to cities providing incentives for supermarkets to be built in disadvantaged areas. (There's always an irony that people least able to afford food must travel the furthest to obtain food at prices below that offered in their neighborhood, typically through convenience stores. That's changing.)

One prominent argument that I found myself agreeing with when the discussion of municipal Wi-Fi was in its infancy was the problem of building a broadband network that used taxpayer dollars to improve the lot of some citizens, often those who could afford a variety of broadband options. Plans that used city budgets to reduce costs for telecom or provide municipal services are more egalitarian, and seem to have won the day.

In this case, the op-ed writers are suggesting a course that would eliminate all competition. Can anyone trust their city well enough that they support starting a bureaucracy that would completely de facto (not de jure) prevent any better service from being installed? Or that would require you to pay as part of your taxes for service that you wouldn't use?

The columnists do more sagely suggest that a "city-wide fibre/wireless network could be an important boost to city departments and other civic services that have growing needs for networking, such as education, libraries, police and emergency health services."