[12848] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Monopoly, competition, and subsidies
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (baer@jessica.stanford.edu)
Tue May 31 18:00:39 1994
Date: Tue, 31 May 1994 09:48:12 -0700
To: bruce@phantom.com (Bruce Fancher)
From: baer@jessica.stanford.edu
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
>[Marvin Sirbu] has written:
>|
>| They also recognize that a model which calls for competition and no
>| subsidies to anyone will not provide what the majority of the society
>| has deemed the minimal acceptable service to the poorest of the poor, or
>| even the average person living on a farm or other costly-to-serve
>| location.
>|
>| Marvin Sirbu
>|
>
>This is an incorrect assertion. A free market with no subsidies and/or
>government interference will provide the greatest benefit for the most
>number people (ie: access will become available faster and cheaper than
>it otherwise would). To deny this is to misunderstand economics.
This is _not_ what economics says. What economics says is that, with no
subsidies or government interference, that which is most profitable to the
suppliers will be supplied. Whether this is faster and cheaper to more
people or more high bandwidth to the wealthy is, as they say, "an empirical
question."
Paul Baer
B.A. Economics, Stanford University, 1984
