Posted on 02/27/2017 10:16:26 AM PST by Kaslin
Nothing in the history of humanity has grown bigger, faster or better than the World Wide Web. In just about a quarter century, it has become an economic and political force of nigh immeasurable impact.
The Internet is a magnificent, unparalleled private sector success story. Yes, the Left reflexively and rightly states that the earliest, nascent Web steps were taken by the government - in the 1950s and 1960s. But there it sat, as a tiny little undeveloped lump for a quarter century.
Then the magic happened. In the United States in the 1990s, the Republican Congress and the Clinton Administration - up to and including the Administrations Federal Communications Commission (FCC) - privatized the Internet.
This is the Internets Big Bang. But it isnt a theory - it is demonstrable fact. The Web in government hands sat idle for more than two decades. Once the Web was handed to the private sector the revolution happened.
In the U.S. - thanks to our privatization - it has become a $1 trillion-per-year free-speech-free-market-Xanadu. And its unleash has dramatically improved the lives of literally billions of people on our planet.
But the Internet has served as a Big Government Rorschach test. The more overreaching governments are, the less they like the unbridled freedom of the Web. And the more they look to rein it in.
The global examples of Big Government assaults on Internet freedom are myriad. China. Iran. Saudi Arabia. Syria. Ethiopia. And on, and on, and….
Again, the Internets history: 25 years of Big Government control - and total Web inertia. Then: 25 years of privatization and Less Government - and mind-blowingly-explosive Internet expansion. Except where government has tried to remain big and in the way.
The Obama administration inherited this quarter-century of Less Government success - and decided to in omni-directional fashion ramp up the Big Government. And the biggest Big Government power grab of all was the Obama FCCs 2015 reclassification of the Web.
Reclassification is a DC term - which in this instance translates into English as much more Big Government. What happened was the FCC ignored the Internets titanic Less Government success story - and unilaterally changed the Webs regulatory classification.
Gone was the very-light-regulation Information Service classification. Superimposed was the uber-regulatory Communications Service classification. Communications Service law dates back to 1934 monopoly communications law - and further still to 1887 monopoly railroad law. Both of those ancient regimes cause the mind to immediately leap to the 21st Century Internet, do they not?
The Obama administration did this to magically create all sorts of new regulatory powers over the Internet. First and foremost among them was the imposition of the completely ridiculous Network Neutrality. For all of this, the legal standing is dubious. The rational standing is nil.
Because in the history of the expression If it aint broke - dont fix it - never has it been more aptly applied than to the private sector Internet. The Obama administration set alight the Web - in order to save it.
In comes the Trump administration - and his (temporary - but hopefully, eventually permanent) FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. Trump ran on big league deregulation - and now hes delivering. And Chairman Pai is willing and eager to hold up the FCCs part of the bargain.
There were a lot of Big Government gains under the Obama administration. On the Web, the glaringly, obviously biggest of the big was this reclassification. Chairman Pai has said he wants to take a weed whacker to Internet regulations. He absolutely should. If ethics rules allowed I would purchase the petroleum.
The Washington, D.C. Left is freaking out at the prospects of this re-re-classification. (This freakout is suffered nigh totally by authoritarian-minded elected officials and lobbyists. Let us not let them kid us that this is some sort of national uprising - it is not.)
To paraphrase Edmund Burke: Those who dont know history - are doomed to look really, really foolish. These Leftists are pretending that this re-re-classification is the end of the Web as we know it.
But it really isnt. Again, the Internet was classified as an Information Service in the 1990s - after which the Webs inconceivable expansion took place. And the Web was thus classified until 2015. To ignore more than two decades of history so as to freak out about less than two years worth is really, really foolish.
Oh: And when Big Government Obama reclassified the Internet - Internet investment dropped precipitously.
Because as government expands - the private sector contracts. And, of course, conversely, as government contracts - the private sector expands.
Nothing teaches us this better than the history of the Internet.
Trump and Pai know this. So do we. Let us ignore the DC freakout Leftists who do not. <
The Web was created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. Mosaic came later.
Uninformed writer confusing “the web” with the internet...typical nowadays.
It’s the Mobile / WiFi high speed data rollout, stupid....
“Uninformed writer confusing the web with the internet...typical nowadays.”
His point, which is entirely correct, is that the Internet only became an economic force after privatization.
It was Al Gore. Don’t you read the news? (</sarc for those that need it)
What??? A government asset? I thought ALGORE created the internet!!! /s
And then in 1996 gathered the first FReepers.
The free market didn't invent the Internet. I invented the Internet! The free market is the Devil!!!
Tim Bernes-Lee Did not invent the internet, interlinking of documents/www yes, but not the internet, the internet was invented long before that.
A glorious birth of freedom!
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