I always remember, especially on seemingly difficult days, that some people in the world starve to death. They don’t have enough food and they suffer from malnutrition before their organs shut down and they die. It’s horrible. You and I on either side of this blog post are very fortunate. That isn’t our condition.

But realizing we’re lucky to have what we have doesn’t mean we shouldn’t point out the things that don’t work well in society, even if they’re not life-and-death things. When I sit with my laptop in a café in 2012 in Manhattan, thought of as the key real estate in America, I’m struck by how incredibly slow my Internet connection is. It’s as bad or worse than the dial-up connections I used during the ’90s. How is that possible?

The short answer is that there are way more wired gadgets than there were then. Not only have laptops exploded in popularity, but now we have millions of tablets and smartphones. The stress on the infrastructure is incredible. But it’s hard to believe this is the best we can do, that the system’s failings aren’t our failings as well.

I’m happy President Obama invested stimulus money in desperately needed alternative energies–and that the investments have thus far turned out so well–but we need some sort of large-scale federal planning to correct our faulty Information Superhighway as well as our physical highways. Not only does business depend on it, but so does the exchange of information. The free market just isn’t handling these issues.•