Perry writes:
However, its not like strip mining. So long as regulations are in place, the market is not functioning in a maximally efficient manner, and further distortions are occuring.
It's like strip mining in this sense: stopping the intervention doesn't restore the healthy previous condition automatically. Merely ending regulation doesn't make the distortions go away.
I understand the impulse to use metaphors like strip-mining, but metaphors are a way of explaining theory, not a way to reason.
Just so. If you really believe that merely stopping regulation, *without anything else*, would restore competition to a market that's been dominated by a government-supported monopoly or duopoly, then we simply must agree to disagree.
Concretely observed, there is no obstacle to the sort of national network we want other than the government.
Untrue. The cable providers often are putting up obstacles of their own, as are telco providers. The impossibility of Tim May's X-rated cable channel illustrates this point. The market can't function--Tim and those like him who want a certain type and variety of programming--unless there is access to the information infrastructure. Telling every would-be X-rated cable viewer to build his own cable system is not a solution. According to standard free-market theory, the existence of demand (Tim and friends) for an affordable product ought to stimulate a supplier for that product. But that will never happen if all we do is say to the cable and telco providers "Well, we've given you these markets and allows you to profit enormously and to have absolute ability to use nonmarket mechanisms to squash any hint of serious competition, and now we're going to just dust off our hands and walk away." --Mike