A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal
By Bobby Neal Winters
We’ve all been part of an experiment.  I will leave it to the folks with the aluminum foil hats to determine whether the experiment was implemented by Big Brother or by Nature.  But an experiment it has been.
In this experiment, enforced upon us by COVID 19--All Hail COVID 19!--we’ve determined the things that can be done electronically--or I should say--differently with the aid of the Internet.
We can order food online and have it delivered--contactlessly--to our front door here in Pittsburg, Kansas, America.  We’ve done it ourselves.  We’ve also learned we can call it in and pick it up at the curb.  Both are steps forward, but here’s the thing: The calling it in part is awkward.  My time and the time of whoever I am talking to are tied up for the length of the call.  It is so much more convenient to have the option to put in the order on an app.  Yes, there is some continuing expense associated with it, but I think it will pay for itself.
During this crisis, there has been some occasion for Congress to do some work.  This has been strained because the nature of their work requires communication--presumably face-to-face--put the very thing they were fighting contra-indicated that they should be face to face lest they spread the disease.
Was I the only one wondering whether they could do it by Zoom meeting?  Seriously, they speak to empty rooms all the time, why can’t they just talk to their computer screen.
That having been said, with the sort of communication technology we have, do they really need to be personally in Washington at all?  Couldn’t they stay in their home districts spending more time rubbing elbows with the actual people they are supposed to represent?  Going into Washington, they run a risk of getting a disease far worse for America than COVID 19: Potomac Fever.
There have been numerous reports of how expensive it is for our representatives to live in DC so that you have to be wealthy to have the job.  What if they just visited DC periodically and lived in their home states the rest of the time.
Having said that, is there still a reason so many of the government bureaus have to be housed there?  Could we farm them out to the middle of the country? Those of us out here in fly-over country would get to see our federal tax dollars spent in our own states.  The people working in those offices would get to know this part of the country better.  Maybe they would view us with less contempt if they got to know us better and vice versa. 
This is actually a bigger idea than just government. Doesn’t our communication technology allow us to reconsider the idea of the big city?
Cities have been a paradox for Civilization from the very beginning. On one hand, they allow us to communicate better.  We exchange ideas. Idea is piled upon idea to come up with something completely new: I’ve got peanut butter; I’ve got chocolate--look a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.
But cities have also been places where diseases were exchanged.  Long, long before there was COVID 19, there was smallpox, cholera, the bubonic plague, tuberculosis, and good old-fashioned dysentery.  They weren’t created in the City, but they came to the City in order to fester there and be distributed.
What if our cities were less dense because their populations had been distributed out to the rest of the country?  Folks from NYC could migrate to Kansas City, folks from Kansas City could migrate to Pittsburg.  Hey, for $70 a month, I’ve got smokin’ internet at my house. We’ve got three people working from home here and one day last week we were all three in Zoom meetings at the same time. (Actually, one Zoom and two Team, but you get my point.) Even here in a place where “this ain’t the end of the world, but you can see it from here” we are connected, running, and doing work.
This may happen organically because of two things.  The first is that this is not going to be the last time we have a disease like this jump out at us; the next disease might not be so nice.  The second is look at the difference in death counts and number of diagnosed cases.  There is no comparison between the big cities and the small towns in this one.  Yes, we have smaller numbers, but we also have a lower rate of spread.  We don’t have to rub up against each other on public transportation or as we walk down the street.
My modest proposal: Let’s start moving out to smaller towns.  Let’s distribute our capacities around the country as much as we can.  We’ve got our eggs in too few baskets.
Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )