Re:Appeals court upholds FCC's net neutrality order
by SkyMarshal on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @04:58PM
(#11905254)
>Likewise, if the choice is between Google controlling access to the internet and Chinese-style regulation controlling access to the internet, there's really no choice at all:
This is a straw man argument, that's not the only choice, in fact it's not even the actual choice facing us right now.
>it's an epithet because utility regulation over the past hundred years has been absolutely disastrous, enabling the supreme power of corporations, not limiting it.
This is not universally true. In the comparatively economically conservative Southeast where power generation and the electric grid have been regulated as public utilities for as long as anyone can remember, there was never a temptation to experiment with deregulation as in CA, and no small bit of schadenfreude when Enron wrecked havoc on the CA energy system as a result.
Stability is an (maybe the most) important characteristic of national economic infrastructure that is susceptible to systemic risk. It enables the forces of innovation to confidently build on top of it - capital formation, ROI forecasting, planning & investment, long-term credit extension to wealth-creating industries, etc. Introducing shocks and instability into the base layer infrastructure makes that wealth creation activity much more difficult and constrained.
This is a straw man argument, that's not the only choice, in fact it's not even the actual choice facing us right now.
>it's an epithet because utility regulation over the past hundred years has been absolutely disastrous, enabling the supreme power of corporations, not limiting it.
This is not universally true. In the comparatively economically conservative Southeast where power generation and the electric grid have been regulated as public utilities for as long as anyone can remember, there was never a temptation to experiment with deregulation as in CA, and no small bit of schadenfreude when Enron wrecked havoc on the CA energy system as a result.
Stability is an (maybe the most) important characteristic of national economic infrastructure that is susceptible to systemic risk. It enables the forces of innovation to confidently build on top of it - capital formation, ROI forecasting, planning & investment, long-term credit extension to wealth-creating industries, etc. Introducing shocks and instability into the base layer infrastructure makes that wealth creation activity much more difficult and constrained.