tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9069955.post6844421092131698367..comments2023-10-26T08:02:44.948-04:00Comments on Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State: Neutralism, Not Net NeutralityDon Pescihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11167988001948356357noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9069955.post-90008728981667755822015-05-05T13:29:41.454-04:002015-05-05T13:29:41.454-04:00The international and trans-chronological Egalitar...The international and trans-chronological Egalitarian anti-private-property Movement seeks to "regulate" existing private property. Where private property rights in a particular (new) context are as yet undefined the Movement employs licensing of "public" property in lieu of private rights. The result in the latter case is the destruction of the resource. See, for example, the fish population of George's Bank. <br />It is true that the argument for the constitutionality of federal regulation of telecommunications is (almost) plausibly based in the "interstate commerce" clause, but I think it impossible to believe that the states that ratified the Constitution would have countenanced the evisceration of their power for the socialist objective just because interstate commerce was in some way implicated.<br />--------------<br />By Milton Mueller<br />June 3, 1982<br />Executive Summary<br /><br />The Communications Act of 1934 subjected the telecommunications industry to a degree of central planning unprecedented in the United States. The recent trend toward deregulation reflects an almost universal belief that this experiment in central planning was a failure. Nevertheless, all attempts at reform, even those promulgated in the name of deregulation, have left the backbone of federal regulation untouched: centralized allocation of the frequency spectrum.<br /><br />The Communications Act, like the Federal Radio Act that preceded it, claims the “airwaves” as the property of “the public,” forbidding private ownership and market exchanges of radio frequencies. This claim of public ownership has given rise to a centralized system of licensing, which provides the legal and technical basis for many of the FCC’s other rules and regulations.<br /><br />The Federal Communications Commission is the successor to the Federal Radio Commission, which was created by the 1927 Radio Act to allocate frequencies after broadcasting technology emerged in the early 1920s. The FCC inherited the FRC’s frequency allocation powers in 1934, when the other telecommunications services were added to its domain. Control of the frequency spectrum plays a surprisingly large, and insufficiently appreciated, role in the FCC’s regulation of telecommunications in general.<br /><br />http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/property-rights-radio-communication-key-reform-telecommunications-regulationpeter brushnoreply@blogger.com