e$: Market "Regulation"
Russell Nelson
Robert Hettinga writes:
> "Regulation" is an inherently anti-economic process, and the statistical
> effect of market "regulation" by government force is to retard innovation
> in a market and slow down the process of giving consumers what they want.
Yup. And the nature of economic regulation is to grow, and become
ever more finely detailed, e.g. down to the angle of the cut of green
beans. That's why I'm so critical and cynical of Jamie Love's efforts
-- because his organization gets the biggest benefit from them. The
more regulation, the more "consumer protection" needed.
As for telecom regulation, David Dorman, the former president of
PacBell said, in his article in this month's Upside,
``If we'd fired a gun in the air six years after divesture and
said, "OK, instead of us managing competition, it's now a
free-for-all--you guys go out and rip each other's throats out," I
suspect we[1]'d be better off by now.''
I agree. But I wouldn't even have divested. I would have said
``AT&T: you just lost your monopoly. Now learn to compete or die.''
[1] In context, by "we", he means all participants in the telecom
business -- suppliers and customers both.
--
-russ <nel...@crynwr.com> http://web.crynwr.com/~nelson
Crynwr supports Open Source(tm) Software| PGPok | Freedom is the primary
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | cause of Peace, Love,
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | Truth and Justice.
Larry Berg NWSYSLAW
On Mon, 27 Apr 1998, Russell Nelson wrote:
> I expect freedom will protect the public from commercial excess. Please
> explain to me again how a lack of freedom will protect us?
Since you're having trouble figuring this out, start with environmental
pollution ... and then you have manipulation of financial markets ... you
seem like a regular might-makes-right kind-of-guy .... where did you get
this idea that freedom doesnt require protection ?
~~ LB
Mike Fisher
On Mon, 27 Apr 1998, Larry Berg NWSYSLAW wrote:
> seem like a regular might-makes-right kind-of-guy .... where did you get
> this idea that freedom doesnt require protection ?
Where did you get the idea that it does?
--
Mike
"I swear - by my life and by my love of it - that I will never live
for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
--Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_
Bob Schmidt
>The problem is that some people are born bureaucrats and there is a steady
>supply of new bodies to staff the regulatory bureacracies of government
>and the corporate bureaucracies of the monopolies. a
You are speaking, perhaps, of the same US bureaucracy that created the
Internet in the first place? Or was the Canadians who did it? <g>
Bob Schmidt
www.provider.com
Author of The Geek's Guide to Internet Business Success
The Definitive Business Blueprint for Internet Designers, Developers,
Programmers, Marketers, Consultants and Service Providers
Published by John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 0471288381
http://provider.com/geeksguide/
Russell Nelson
Bob Schmidt writes:
> Russ Nelson writes,
>
> >I expect freedom will protect the public from commercial excess. Please
> >explain to me again how a lack of freedom will protect us?
>
> keeping most ISPs in business today. Without it, the local phone company
> wouldn't have to give an ISP squat, and the ISP would be out of business.
> Thus, your exalted freedom of the ISP would amount to no more than the
> freedom to go out of business.
Freedom for the wolves is tyranny for the sheep. If a teleopoly is
left in place then of course any ISP would be toast.
One mistake by government does not excuse another mistake by
government. Both are abrogations of freedom.
> A little effort on your part to read up on what was going on in the early
> part of this century when telephone service was a free for all and an
> unregulated and uncontrolled marketplace proved an utter failure with
> respect to interconnection would do wonders for your parochial viewpoint
> and might give you an educated clue as to what is going on today and what
> is coming down the pike.
Um, the justification for the 1934 Communications Act was universal
service, not interconnection. Yes, lack of interconnection hurt
customers. It also hurt carriers by keeping their markets small. The
mere existance of a problem or its solution by government action does
not mean that the only or best solution was the government action.
> Learning to think like a peace loving citizen is not that much harder than
> thinking like a peace loving programmer. <g> The difference is the
> willingness to consider the broader public interest issues that a pure free
> market economy somehow never gets around to addressing.
I know lots of people, but I've never met a public. Who is he? Where
does he live? Where does he shop? Is he male or female? Black or
white? Is he a farmer? Does he work for an automobile manufacturer?
What is he interested in? How do you know all this?
There is no such thing as a public interest, Bob, because those
questions are fundamentally unanswerable (as we can see from your
[anticipated] lack of an answer to them).
> Is the AMA full of crap? On some issues, sure. But, good luck convincing
> anyone to go back to the days of quack medicine and in home x-ray machines
> when the excesses of the free market were in full force.
Please explain the mechanism whereby the AMA (which is a doctor's
union. Unions typically serve their members, not the general public)
preserves the quality of medical treatment. In fact, bad doctors are
rarely disciplined by medical boards.
You are thinking that you need a government to control you. You think
that by controlling the government, you have gained back your freedom.
You have not. Your freedom, once given up, is gone. You cannot
reconstruct it by forcing the people who hope to force you to do
things.
Michael Dillon
On Mon, 27 Apr 1998, Bob Schmidt wrote:
> >The problem is that some people are born bureaucrats and there is a steady
> >supply of new bodies to staff the regulatory bureacracies of government
> >and the corporate bureaucracies of the monopolies. a
>
> You are speaking, perhaps, of the same US bureaucracy that created the
> Internet in the first place? Or was the Canadians who did it? <g>
Where on earth did you get the crazy idea that the Internet was created by
a bureaucracy!?!?!?
Let's begin at the beginning, shall we. The U.S. government funds the US
military who funded an agency called DARPA and far from the madding
bureaucracy some folks working under DARPA research grants created a
protocol called TCP/IP. But that was not the Internet! The Internet came
later when thousands of ordinary people took this public domain protocol
and used it to implement networking at their organization and then
interconnected those networks so that they could communicate with each
other. Not a bureaucrat in sight, thank God.
--
Michael Dillon - Internet & ISP Consulting
http://www.memra.com - E-mail: mic...@memra.com
Larry Berg NWSYSLAW
.. so where do you get the incentives to negotiate strong
disincentives ? Have you ever tried negotiating strong disincentives ?
.. or is your plan to impose strong disincentives on the parties ...
ooops, that would be regulation, wouldnt it ? ... Think
interconnection... Bon voyage.
~~ LB
On Tue, 28 Apr 1998, David Schwartz wrote:
> >No, contract simply provides a remedy AFTER damages are incurred.
> >~~ LB
>
>
> A good contract provides enough strong disincentives that damages are
> unlikely to be incurred in the first place. A law only provides a way to
> punish after damages are incurred.
>
> DS
>
>
>
Russell Nelson
Barry Shein writes:
> Are people discussing how to redesign the entire US govt, the contract
> system, all regulatory structures, and by and large, the economic and
> legal system of most of the entire world from the ground up serious or
> is it just a really, really slow day?
We are rich because we have insisted that our government leave people
to work things out on their own. E.g. England protected, nurturered,
and promoted its steam engine invention, but it was an American
steamship that crossed the pond to England. No, it's not a matter of
resources, which we have been taught. Similar resources were
available to the Romans. Similar resources are available to the
Soviets. What is different? Freedom. Only through a limited
government can people make best use of their energies.
So when people talk about "regulations", they're really talking about
involuntary poverty (whether they realize that or not).
> How about this internet telephony / FCC thing? Does anyone really
> believe that the FCC doesn't "get it" that it's by and large
> impossible to meter specific services?
Governments never "get it", Barry. They can't. Governments don't
create. They only destroy, or hinder, human energy. The only thing a
government can do to help is to protect its citizens from violence.
Everything else is a hinderance. Including anti-trust activities.
Pete Farmer
Barry, it's so much more fun (for some) to jump on a soap box and
pontificate at the 100,000 foot level instead of dealing with the
nitty-gritty of the real world. Reality bites. :-)
There are a couple of companies that are carrying/plan to carry
long-distance voice traffic over IP backbones (note: NOT necessarily
"over the Internet" -- using private IP backbones allows for more
consistent quality of service) and offer service at significant
discounts over the traditional interexchange carriers. Key players
include:
ICG Communications, Inc.
http://www.icgcomm.com/news/releases/1998/3-11.htm which has announced
long-distance services at 5.9 cents/min for calls originating and
terminating on their IP network, and 7.8 cents/min for calls originating
on their IP net but terminating elsewhere (i.e. on the PSTN). They
bought Netcom last year.
ITXC Corporation http://www.itxc.com/ , run by an ex-AT&T guy and
partially funded by the Death Star. They offer service both on a retail
and wholesale (to ISPs) level to allow for PSTN termination of
IP-originated calls.
VocalTec http://www.vocaltec.com/ , a key provider of IP telephony
technology.
See the VON (Voice Over Internet) Coalition's page http://www.von.org/
for additional background.
This sort of thing scares the pants out of a lot of governments/PTTs
around the world, who depend on outrageously high international
direct-dial tariffs for their revenues.
I personally am surprised at the ineffective marketing that's been done
to date on the fax-over-IP front. Fax over IP ought to be a no-brainer,
particularly for international traffic, but I don't have the sense that
it's catching on very fast.
An article reported in yesterday's Wall Street Journal summarized FCC
Chairman Kunnard's remarks to the USTA, to whom he said that advanced
data networks (e.g. networks running under IP) could be free of retail
regulation under the right circumstances. RBOCs operating such
networks, for example, could carry interLATA traffic without handing it
off to an interexchange carrier.
In other words, IP could be a "back-door" approach to having the RBOCs
participate in the long-distance market.
All of this becomes very interesting, indeed.
Pete
______________________________________________________________________
Peter J. Farmer E-mail: pfa...@strategies-u.com
Strategies Unlimited Voice: +1 650 941 3438
201 San Antonio Circle, Suite 205 Fax: +1 650 941 5120
Mountain View, CA 94040 WWW: http://www.strategies-u.com
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Barry Shein [mailto:b...@world.std.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 1998 12:27 PM
>...
>The implication would seem to be that perhaps traditional
>long-distance carriers (voice) are either considering or currently
>trunking some of their voice calls via (eg) interstate IP paths and
>thus claiming they're not really long-distance calls at all and
>shouldn't be subject to certain tariffs and taxes, even though the two
>callers are just using POTS in the usual way (picking up the phone and
>dialing, or punching.)
>
>Is this true? Is this actually going on or about to go on in any big
>way?
Bob Schmidt
Matthew James Gering writes,
>In case you all are wondering whose interest Bob delegates to the
>"public", it is likely that of the spamming operation that employs him.
Wrong, pal. No such entity employs me and none ever has. Do not confuse a
willingness to argue the unpopular side of an issue with engaging in the
behavior being discussed. All you saw on Cyberia was a willingness on my
part to subject some ideas to the scrutiny of antispammers knowledgeable
about the law as it currently exists. And despite your filters, twas one of
my posts on Cyberia that was posted here by a member of that list (you,
perhaps? Gee, I'd better check MY filters <g>) -- mis-identifying me as an
attorney --- that drew me here in the first place. As to the possible
copyright violations involved in cross posting another's post from one list
to another, I won't fuss about it when you do it as long as you don't fuss
about it when I do it.
And don't worry, I didn't come here to discuss bulk email. I've already
heard (over a year ago) all the opinions of the small ISPs over on the
small ISP list. From what I've seen here so far, I'd expect to find little
to add to the discussion of that topic on this list. I consider myself a
champion of the small ISP (and the small web developer), yet I am apalled
and disappointed at most ISPs' utter lack of understanding of regulatory
and public interest issues. I see too many ISPs who are against the
commercialism of the net except when it comes to their own ability to make
a buck through their commerical ISP business.
I am far more interested in what the law should be and less interested in
what the law is. I have broad interests that transcend any parochial view
point or vested interest. I call 'em like I see 'em and let the chips fall
where they may. I am a citizen of the realm and I am quick to candidly and
unapologetically declare my own point of view which is that of a seasoned
marketing and advertising professional -- both traditional and Internet.
I am interested in looking at the boundary lines between user's rights
issues (which I believe I am one of the few to see coming down the pike)
and the rights of commercial interests on the net. These are areas where
sparks fly and the discussion is at least heated if not always
illuminating. I try to shed some light while gleefully fanning the flames.
Some examples perhaps pertinent to this list:
The user vs. the operating system manufacturer and software developer (e.g.
hidden, closed or obtuse persistent data warehousing on the user's pc of
installed software registries inaccessible to the typical user but
accessible by other software programs and possible online transmission of
same-- did I mention codifying unilateral shrink wrap in the UCC?). I see
big privacy issues at play here as well as the issue of promise vs.
performance with respect to the role of the computer (and now the Internet)
in empowering the user.
I see privacy issues affecting users when ISPs block wholesale the email
emanating from arbitrarily and capriciously selected domains with no
oversight, no right of appeal, and no recourse by innocent victims of email
blocking. But, again, I do not come here to argue in favor of bulk email or
the rights of marketers per se, merely to discuss the com/priv issues.
I see antitrust and interconnection issues when ISP's gang up to form info
cartels and agree to jointly block email. (The lawyers on Cyberia had a
field day with that one. <g>)
I see online services like AOL/CIS acting like private online country clubs
with all the discrimination a country club implies when they are willing
to send out to the net their members' email but refuse to deliver all of
the incoming mail to their members. I see privacy issues here as well.
I see ISPs as hypocrites when they are willing to act as publishers gladly
blocking email but ready to conveniently hide behind the TCA and take
exemption from being a publisher when they refuse to block any type of
adult content or software piracy. And I see privacy issues aplenty therein
regardless of how the ISPs deal with these matters.
I see privacy issues in the failure to treat ISPs as common carriers. I
fail to see how the same bandwidth can be common carrier one minute and not
common carrier the next despite the fact that it is the exact same
bandwidth carried over the exact same telephone lines strung over the exact
same (public) right of way. I see an inherent inequity in the fact that a
beeper user has more rights to the use and privacy of beeper bandwidth
(like the Internet, another "enhanced telephone service") than an Internet
user has to the rights to Internet bandwidth.
I see due process issues when ISPs act as judge jury and executioner with
respect to punishing and blocking email. (The attorneys disagreed enormously.)
I see ISPs as confused and clueless when they claim that they own the
bandwidth because they buy it from their upstream provider but fail to
extend that same logic and privelege to their own customers (the ultimate
bandwidth consumer) for whom they are merely resellers/middlemen.
Again, I am not one whit interested in how great the Internet used to be,
only mildly interested in what the law is today and far more interested in
what the law should be. I'm look forward to discovering whether this is an
appropriate forum in which to discuss any of this.
Much obliged,
Russell Nelson
Bob Schmidt writes:
> Again, I am not one whit interested in how great the Internet used to be,
> only mildly interested in what the law is today and far more interested in
> what the law should be. I'm look forward to discovering whether this is an
> appropriate forum in which to discuss any of this.
Nope. com-priv is full. Go away.
David Schwartz
If the post office kept delivering bombs to me despite the ability to
detect them and prevent their delivery, I would blame them for delivering
them if they did.
>Now you are a fool, along with all ISPs who allow themselves to be blamed
>for the mail they are delivering. Blaming the messenger is one of the
>oldest errors of logic known to mankind. Do you blame the mailman for junk
>mail that comes to your home?
I don't blame him only because I know he is prohibited by law from
filtering out my junk mail. If he weren't, I well might pay him a few bucks
to throw the garbage out so I don't have to.
>Do you blame the phone company for
>telemarketers?
Yes, and it worked. They responded with caller ID, which I'm willing to
pay for. Now I don't have to answer calls unless they're from people I know.
Cool, huh?
>Evidently, many ISPs are poor business people and poor
>marketers with limited ability to deflect or sell around this type of
>misinformed customer complaint.
You live in your own little world, Bob.
>They feel compelled to take action and take
>responsibility for something they clearly are not responsible for and have
>no control over.
If ISPs had no control over spam, what would you be complaining about?
What's bothering you is that they _do_ have control over spam and _choose_
to exercise it.
>It is an issue they cannot possibly win. As you know, it
>is impossible to block all unsolicited email.
Ah, yes, the old, "if something can't be done perfectly, you shouldn't
even try to do it at all." Hey, Bob, no car alarm stops all car theives, so
I bet you don't own a car alarm.
>Thus, any claims that an ISP
>makes along the lines that it is the ISP who blocks spam is likely to
>create more customer problems that it solves. A smart ISP would not allow
>themselves to get caught holding the bag on bulk email.
We don't. We say, "we do everything we can to stop spam and wish we
could do more. Your beef is really with the spammers and their allies."
Looked in the mirror lately, Bob?
DS
Pete Farmer
One of the latest eposodes of the Schmidt-Schwartz saga produced:
>>Do you blame the phone company for telemarketers?
>
> Yes, and it worked. They responded with caller ID, which
>I'm willing to pay for. Now I don't have to answer calls unless
>they're from people I know. Cool, huh?
<grin> David, please go ahead and *answer* those calls so that you'll
impose more cost onto the caller. Or screen them with an answering
machine. The phone companies get no revenue from an unanswered call;
their costs, unfortunately, get passed on the rest of us poor blokes.
Bother.
(As aluminum siding season gets underway, I've been tempted to keep one
of my daughter's toys near the telephone so that when the phone rings at
6:45 pm and I hear that telltale *pause* after I pick it up, the
telemarketer gets presented with, "Hewwo -- can Elmo hewp you?")