Posted on 03/06/2015 7:54:50 AM PST by SeekAndFind
As a young reporter in the 1970s, I covered the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). Created in 1887, the ICC regulated the nation's railroads and sought to protect the public against abusive freight rates. Congress deregulated the railroads in 1980 and ultimately abolished the ICC. The verdict was that the agency had so weakened the industry that a government takeover might be necessary. Deregulation was a desperate alternative to nationalization.
I mention all this because there are obvious parallels between the Internet today and the railroads in the late 19th century. Like the railroads then, the Internet today is the great enabling technology of the age. Like the railroads then, Internet companies inspire awe and dread. And now there's another parallel: the resort to regulation.
Just recently, the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to adopt a proposal to ensure "net neutrality." The new rules will promote an Internet that's "fast, fair and open," said FCC chairman Tom Wheeler. As a slogan, net neutrality is swell. Who could oppose it? Speed is good, and hardly anyone wants an Internet that favors some users and penalizes others.
Be skeptical. The FCC's new rules weaken -- or reverse -- decades of minimal regulation, during which the Internet flourished. As often as not, economic regulation has adverse, unintended side effects. That was true of the railroads, and it may be true of the Internet.
The railroads needed ICC approval for almost everything: rates, mergers, abandonments of little-used branch lines. Shippers opposed changes that might increase costs. Railroads struggled to meet new competition from trucks and barges. In 1970, the massive Penn Central railroad -- serving the Northeast -- went bankrupt and was ultimately taken over by the government. Others could have followed.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Spelling killed the Rairoads
RE: Spelling killed the Rairoads
Where?
They got the L out
There has never been a regulatory scheme that did not raise prices and/or reduce efficiency and service. Ever. In history.
I want to know why all data should be treated the same by the ISPs!
Where’s our clapping seal?
Woodrow Wilson had the railroads nationalized during WWI and there was a completely political redistribution of assets when the railroads were re-privatized after the war. That's what happened to the railroads. The union movement and corresponding government interference in labor matters is what has kept the railroads from recovering.
where?
They got the L out
It's a Rairoad Christmass card from the Norks:
NOL NO L Noel noel ...noel.
Somebody fixed it:)
Automoobeels killed the rairoads!
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