Re:Verisign will increase the .com price from $7.85 to $8.39
by trafalgarcircle on Thursday July 01, 2021 @06:54PM
(#27705902)
Apologies for the source of this, I couldn’t find a neutral organization hosting the excerpt.
https://mises.org/library/broken-window
In short - the $3 billion would be spent on improving the local economy of those individuals who would otherwise retain the money. Technically nothing is being destroyed, but the point of the article stands.
> Verisign will suck about $3 billion dollars out of the world economy just by having some powerful friends at ICANN.
It's not a zero-sum game.
If Verisign manages to extract $3B from the poverty-stricken folks who are buying up .com domains, it doesn't just disappear (unless, of course, Verizon takes it in cash and sets it on fire in the basement.)
That $3B will then be spent on whatever pet projects Verizon feels like spending it on, thus re-injecting into the global economy.
I personally think that Verisign should have to compete to run the .com registry, just like how we do FCC spectrum auctions, but hand-wavy statements like "suck about $3 billion dollars out of the world economy" do not help make that case.