Monitoring, Modeling, and Memory

Pretty far afield for this group, but a nice analogue to Geof’s classification posts from the biodiversity list. The back story here, if you speak Greek (i.e. telecommunications policy), is that there’s a potentially consequential move afoot to reclassify certain classes of broadband provision from an ‘information service’ (historically exempted from regulatory oversight under something called the Computer Inquiries dating to the 1980s) to a ‘telecommunications service’ (historically deemed to fall under the rules of common carriage, and therefore amenable to government regulation). An interesting (and large!) topic in itself, but I also like the animal metaphors and Michael Pollan refs… – SJ

——– Original Message ——–

Re: [Cybertelecom-l] one good thing about reclassification?

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:55:49 -0600

Erik Cecil

cybertelecom-l@googlegroups.com

Guys, really, look at it this way. If we continue to
debate the present in
terms of the past, in terms of what it does to past law, past ways of
looking at thing, past process, past precedent, past viewpoints, guess
what? We will never leave the past. If you step way back and imagine the
U.S. regulatory system as a computer, would you keep the programming? Would
you pull a Bill Gates and continue to tweak and endlessly complex system,
adding new tweaks along the way? I think some would. I think, however, that
over time, another, with a simpler, more robust and straightforward system
might come along and eclipse the value of the present system, quite
unexpectedly. So, yes, Fred, the Devil is in the details, but more
accurately, the Devil is in the details because Hell is the details. Heaven
is in knowing when continued mixing of the details is, by definition, hell
and in leaving them for higher ground. I, for one, have neither the time
nor the interest in tweaks when I know and have known for at least the past
15 years and am
convinced this has been true for more than 30 years, if not
true since 1934, that the system needs a reset. As applied, I agree with
everything you say below. I will also agree that the FCC’s third way is Net
Neutrality meat-like product stuffed into an animal part tube wrapped in
Title II bacon, served up with a piping hot side of politically correct “it
is a difficult and complex problem, we’re trying really hard to fix it, but
we must study it for several years first because things are so uncertain”
hashed browns, packed with all of the flavor and nutritional punch of the
powdered version the FCC tried to serve up as “Net Neutrality”. Both are
the breakfasts of champions – Verizon, AT these beasts will die eating it;
we already know they are 30 years behind any real technology cycle, yet we
subsidize them. A the end of the day what we really subsidize are billing
systems. We have minutes, channels, and unregulated devices. Then we
litigate. Then that fails. So we make up new
rules about how to do the same
thing again. That’s what we do. All of U.S. regulation boils down to
billing systems and the subsidies that go with them. Billing is the only
infrastructure this nation ever actually supports; the rest is packaging.
I can see no rational view of the market, technology, the U.S. position in
the world, the state of regulation that says that gradual change is only
for those whose feet are on the backs of consumers that their necks remain,
for now, above the water line while they continue to weigh their full
bellies down with more consumer gold. This too will change. Just look at
the market numbers; the air is about to go out of the life vests again.
Obama and all Dems are the walking dead, however, if they ask the American
public to inflate it again. (I told everyone on this and other lists the
backlash was coming last fall; I also predicted the deflation of Net
Neutrality; I’m right on this one). Right wing, tax nut, whatever label -
this sort of
action without purpose or meaning beyond that which sustains
the narrowest and most selfish of political needs is beyond unsustainable.
Don’t be surprised when these guys finally sink that the consumers swim
out from beneath them and stand on their heads – politician or corporation.
This is everywhere too; this is killing small businesses – government, like
corporation – is finding all kinds of new ways to tax consumers while
providing nothing but more of the same in return. It will not last.

SoureLaw, PC 511 E. South Boulder Road Suite C Louisville, CO 80027 (720)
250-8889 ****************
Honesty can move Heaven. – Chinese Proverb

On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 8:05 AM, Fred Goldstein wrote:
At 6/14/2010 11:46 PM, Erik Cecil wrote:
What should the FCC do? Simplify. Everything is contracting; don’t expand;
de-complicate the mess. We don’t need 10 billion rules; we need a few rules
that matter and that actually work – that’s where a priori regulation makes
sense; deal w/
the bad actors using post-hac and kick their ass when you
do. De-wonk DC. Please. Complexity is a disease. Egos love it; but it is
toxic to business and innovation.
Yes, but simplify what, and how? The devil is in the details.

Extreme right-wing “anti-tax” activists want to “simplify” the tax code.
But usually that means removing a couple of lines from the progressive tax
rate table, so that poor people pay a higher rate and rich people a lower
rate. The real bulk of the IRS code is in determining just what is
“income”, and if you don’t put it into the code, it still has to be
determined, since corporate finance is very complex and income requires
deducting costs from revenues. This is just a bit too complex a concept for
the simpleton-oriented popular press. So it’s prone to demagoguery.

In the FCC’s case, the actual Rules that impact competition are slim.
TELRIC, for instance, is frighteningly complex in practice, but the rules
merely hint at it. There are few federal rules
left impacting Bell-carrier
retail rates.

The rules for intercarrier compensation and universal service are horribly
complex, and deeply inter-related, but they only apply to rural carriers.
Nobody but a specialist RLEC accountant can possibly make sense of them.
Sure, they need to be discarded, but those are the sacred cows whose paths
become and remain the street layout of the industry.

The Rules should be based on market power. That’s totally different, of
course, from the US norm, which is based on false analogies. US rules try
to protect the large against small competitors. From The Omnivore’s
Dilemma:

“The problem with current food-safety regulations, …is that they are
one-size-fits-all rules designed to regulate giant slaughterhouses that are
mindlessly applied to small farmers in such a way that “before I can sell
my neighbor a T-bone steak I’ve got to wrap it up in a million dollars’
worth of quintuple-permitted processing plant.” For example, federal
rules
stipulate that every processing facility have a bathroom for the exclusive
use of the USDA inspector. Such regulations favor the biggest industrial
meatpackers, who can spread the costs of compliance over the millions of
animals they process every year, at the expense of artisanal enterprises
…”

The FDA writes rules for IBP, Smithfield, and Tyson, and screws the little
guys in the process. This is making it very hard for the small organic meat
producers to stay in business. New York State, for instance, is having a
hard time sustaining a beef industry, since it lacks the volume to finance
an FDA-blessed monster packinghouse.

The FCC is proposing Internet regulations for Verizon, AT it’s content
carried over telecommunications. And thus it is only the government’s
business when it is falsely advertised, or when monopolies use their power
to abuse competitors. The FTC doesn’t harass little guys who are honest
about their wares. Clearly the FCC has no interest in those
issues; it’s
the FTC’s day-to-day work.