The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post

Sat Apr 26 20:01:27 UTC 2014

On Apr 24, 2014, at 8:38 PM, Larry Sheldon <LarrySheldon at cox.net> wrote:

> On 4/24/2014 10:23 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
>> The invisible hand of the market cannot fix problems when there is a monopoly.
>> 
>> Put in economic terms, a player with Market Power is extracting Rents. (Capitalization is intentional.)
>> 
>> Regulating monopolies allows a market to work, not the opposite.
>> 
> 
> Regulating monopolies protects monopolies from competition.
> 
> Monopolies can not persist without regulation.

This is absolutely false. Regulating monopolies CAN protect monopolies, but that’s not always the outcome.

Monopolies absolutely can persist without regulation. Except in the most highly dense population areas, there is not a sufficient market to support the deployment of more than one copy of a given media type to that population. As a result, there is, in most places, a natural monopoly in each media type, whether that’s electrical, water, cable, twisted pair, fiber, etc.

> A regulated monopoly is a monopoly, with all of the powers granted to monopolies by regulation.

Yes, but an unregulated monopoly is a monopoly without constraints imposed by regulation.

Owen