Big mistake.
Government regulation kills innovation.
Do you really want the technology sector to end up looking like the healthcare system or the state run education system?
Everything government touches turns to crap.
To believe that government regulation with make anything better is not very intelligent.
In contrast, I'd suggest that in this case, government regulation might actually promote innovation. It'll help get rid of the dirty money-milking schemes and promote increasing revenues with real forward progress
Americans have the unusual belief that it's a good idea to elect and appoint members of government that believe government is good for nothing and can't do anything right.
For some reason this attitude has not led to effective, efficient governance.
A "free market in law" is either (a) not a free market (as participation in a transaction is not fully voluntary for all participants), or (b) not law.
> as participation in a transaction is not fully voluntary for all participants
What transaction are you referring to not being voluntary? Transactions in the economic sense are by definition voluntary. Without a monopoly on law, people hire courts of their choosing to settle disputes. They are not compelled by a third party to settle disputes in the third party's court. Most importantly, they are not compelled by a third party to use the third party's law. They may each have their own laws even.
> Transactions in the economic sense are by definition voluntary.
No, they aren't, which is why we distinguish with the term "free market" the platonic ideal of an economic situation in which all transactions are fully voluntary.
> They may each have their own laws even.
If each party may have their own laws, those aren't actually "laws" in any meaningful sense.
I find it interesting that that article highlights exactly why the historical systems described as polycentric legal systems (which are not, in any meaningful sense, a "free market of laws") tend toward natural monopoly and solidification into state law, apparently without realizing it, stating that defectors from such a system "would then have to either accept the jurisdiction of its courts or suffer ostracism from the community of law-abiding folk."
Of course, that effect not only applies to accepting some of the available choices in a polycentric system, but also accepting both the particular "law" (a rule system that becomes binding retroactively only after a dispute occurs and a forum chosen is hardly "law" in the normal sense, but...) and particular courts preferred by the most powerful groups in the community.
> I find it interesting that that article highlights exactly why the historical systems described as polycentric legal systems (which are not, in any meaningful sense, a "free market of laws") tend toward natural monopoly and solidification into state law, apparently without realizing it, stating that defectors from such a system "would then have to either accept the jurisdiction of its courts or suffer ostracism from the community of law-abiding folk."
Huh? Law is enforced whether polycentric or monopolistic. I don't see what that has to do with the evolution of monopolistic statutory law.
Yes. The telecoms are government regulated, and they suck. Now the internet can be regulated likewise, and start to suck. Any time the government offers something, it expects much in return.
I'd rather have Google, et al, provide a market solution to this, by aggressively expanding Fiber without regulation, and laying down a secondary network to compete with Comcast/Time Warner. As it stands this is starting to look more and more like an attempt to maintain power for the traditional shitty telecoms, while also taking a slice out of Google's pie.
Do you really want the technology sector to end up looking like the healthcare system or the state run education system? Everything government touches turns to crap.
To believe that government regulation with make anything better is not very intelligent.