Net neutrality, price controls and the Internet
Intellectuals and politicians mistakenly think of telecom as a perpetual problem: a natural monopoly, an anti-trust peril, a free speech filter, and a forensic circus. Their bright idea of the moment, “net neutrality,” is a concept at once so vague and demanding that its penumbra could be litigated in fifty states and up-and-down the federal court system until all our Internet traffic has to be diverted through Seoul and Beijing merely to avoid lawyer spam. By any name, as Larry Darby points out in an important recent paper, “net neutrality” means price controls on some of the most complex many-sided markets in all industry and thus is sure to do for the rollout of broadband what Sarbox has done for IPOs. -GG
