[11858] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Telecomm regulation
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Vadim Antonov)
Fri Apr 22 05:11:13 1994
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 1994 22:49:30 -0400
From: Vadim Antonov <avg@sprint.net>
To: brodsky@radiomail.net, mech@eff.org
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, frezza@radiomail.net, stahlman@radiomail.net
>Regulation, by its very nature, can't
>restore competition.
Sorry, this an extremely naive statement.
A lassies-faire (sp?) "free" market simply
does not work -- because of economies of scale
and formation of trusts.
The whole purpose of regulation is to prevent
forming of monopolies (or prevent "natural"
monopolies like baby Bells from killing potential
competitors before they could get into business).
Regulation is definitely needed in the market
still plagued by the legacy of AT&T's monopoly.
Of course, i don't argue with thesis that legistlative
methods of regulation do not provide adequate
responsiveness in the ever-faster changing world.
The ideal thing would be to provide some kind
of "automatic" controls like those used by stock
exchanges to prevent crashes. As an example --
there could be a tax on market share (instead of
taxing profits) which makes it possible to get
into market easily but makes attempts to capture
more than half of the market simply unprofitable.
It will produce greater variety of services *and*
will force competition to move from brute-force
volume games into increasing efficiency and reducing
overheads. Of course, this scheme requires some
method of determination of boundaries between
"markets" -- probably by legistlative means.
>Regulation in telecomm is guaranteed
>to be obsolete before the ink is dry.
Exactly; but *not* regulating it will mean
back to Bell 103 days.
--vadim
DISCLAIMER The statement(s) above represent my personal opinion(s) ONLY
and in no way should be interpreted as position(s) of
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