The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind

by Raghuram G. Rajan

The United States needs to do better in providing all its citizens fast access to the information highway, for many of the solutions to community revival lie there. Indeed, allowing communities, rather than large private companies with distant headquarters, to take responsibility for some of the local connectivity infrastructure may solve two problems – it prevents the community from being at the mercy of a monopoly private provider, and it draws some economic activity and responsibility into the community. Similar approaches could be tried for other infrastructure. For instance, as decentralised solar or wind power becomes cheaper, more remote communities could manage it, relying on the grid only for balancing power.

Decentralksed grids of power or internet