10 Ways Government Stifles Competition
Obama’s push to regulate the Internet like a public utility will stifle competition and innovation. Obviously, we have not seen this play out yet, but we do know what to expect, considering our lengthy experience with public utilities. In order to meet the president’s goal, the FCC intends to classify the internet under Title II, as an old-fashioned telephone monopoly. This ignores our New Deal experience with the treatment of Ma Bell. Under President Clinton’s 1996 Telecommunications Act, The Internet was classified as a “Title I” information service, with little regulation. The outcome was that, by some estimates, the Internet’s contribution to the economy exceeded that of the federal government by 2010. Taking Obama’s incompetent approach and turning the internet over to a government bureaucracy is guaranteed to transform it from a thriving, open, creative, and competitive market into a money and power machine for lawyers and lobbyists, not to mention the regulators themselves.
