[9457] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Aikens last (but long) posting/comments on ISOC and related issues
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Russell Nelson)
Thu Jan 6 12:55:02 1994
Date: Thu, 06 Jan 1994 08:08:10 EST
From: "Russell Nelson" <nelson@crynwr.com>
To: com-priv@psi.com
On Wed, 5 Jan 94 14:47:52 -0700, com-priv@psi.com wrote:
> The Internet is just like the railroad business and the oil business
> of the 1870s and 1880s. There were vast fortunes of money to be made.
> And there was no overall control. Take a look at the ways in which
> the robber barons like Gould, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, etc made a mess
> of things. It took the intervention of the courts and the government
> to straighten things out.
Um, this is revisionism at its worst. The mess that the robber
barons made was through cutthroat competition. They had so many
price wars that railroads would go out of business because their
margins were so low. This is obviously bad for railroads, so the
railroads asked to be regulated.
Now, once you have a situation like that, the government can
reasonably enough step in and set a minimum price to make sure that
railroads are guaranteed a profit. The problem with that is that
after time and technological progress, the government no longer knows
what the minimum price should be. So the price for the railroads is
set too high, so a competing technology (trucking) can come in and
undercut them. This is exactly the problem we have now with
telephones. The PUCs set the phone rates, while the cable companies
come in and undercut them. Do we *really* want to destroy the Bell
System like we did the railroads?
There are no natural monopolies anymore. Nearly everyone is served
by some combination telco, cable, and cellular. Deregulate and let
them compete. There are plenty of entrepraneurs out there willing to
spend their own bucks to try to lower telephone service, but they
can't unless we let them.
Let's *do* try to avoid this problem with the Internet.
--
-russ <nelson@crynwr.com> ftp.msen.com:pub/vendor/crynwr/crynwr.wav
Crynwr Software | Crynwr Software sells packet driver support.
11 Grant St. | 315-268-1925 (-9201 FAX) | Quakers do it in the light
Potsdam, NY 13676 | LPF member - ask me about the harm software patents do.
