Declan McCullagh wrote:
I'll have to reread John's piece tomorrow (I'm on vacation right now), but it doesn't surprise me. He and I have been arguing about this topic via email for the last week or so. He takes the traditional liberal view of government regulation of drugs is necessary; I take the more libertarian one.
The Cato Institute, BTW, will be putting together a roundtable on this soon.
-Declan
Characterising this as the "traditional liberal view" is somewhat misleading, its not as if Bob Dole or Newt Gingrich would disagree much. The argument is more over which special interest group is to be advantaged by changes in regulation. If I was a citizen of a country where the government was elected by a billion dollars of corporate contributions I might be a libertarian. Its important to remember that its the World Wide Web and not simply limited to the US. As long as US companies set up subsidiaries in Europe they will be constrained by European law. In the net.age law is becomming a major export for many countries. Regulation is not necessarily anti-commerce. UK beef farmers would be better off today if there had been more regulation, a weak "free-market" attitude to public health has destroyed the entire industry. It is often in a companies commercial interest to voluntarily agree to be regulated. Microsoft recently signed an agreement to be bound by the European computer privacy regulations because by doing so they gained a business advantage - people would trust them with their data. Much of the advertising regulation being discussed is private, agreement on standard formats for image placements for example. There is existing government regulation of advertising in many countries however. In particular much stricter control over advertising of drugs, making misleading statements in advertising and so on.In the UK there is regulation of advertising through the advertising standards council which is a voluntary body in the sense that it has no statutory enforcement powers but has practical authority because the publishers will not publishe ads that fall foul of its decisions. A more serious problem however is likely to be dramatically different cultural norms. In the US people expect to be lied to in adverts. In countries where there is regulation of advertising there is a general expectation for comparisons to be fair and for ads to be truthful. I'm just waiting for a major corporation to create an Intel scale PR disaster by applying sleasly US style marketing techniques in markets where the downside is very large. One recent example is Hoover which had a $30 odd million debacle over a "free flights" giveaway that was based on sleasly US style marketing techniques. The company ended up having to live up to the spirit of its offer rather than the letter as it intended simply to preserve the value of the brand. If you don't believe in anti trust laws there is no basis on which you can object to the sort of regulation by cabal that the advertising standards council represents. Of course such cabals cannot exist in the libertarian belief system since their existence is denied a-priori by invoking the spirit of Milton Freedman. Milton Freedmen is of course a rightwing ecconomist whose theories are widely admired by free market ecconomists who admire Mitlon Freedman. Phill