[arin-ppml] Policy Proposal 2008-6: Emergency TransferPolicy for IPv4 Addresses - Last Call

[Leo Bicknell]

In a message written on Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 07:03:08AM +0900, Randy Bush wrote:
> the market in ip space is black because we self-righteously protect our 
> control of the market from entry with amateur social excuses and amateur 
> policy making.

You would agree with the following two statements then?

  - ARIN would function better as a title registrar.
  - The free market can allocate resources best.

The thing I find odd about people who believe both of these things
is they seem to have been for "needs based" allocation in the past.
If indeed the market would do a better job of allocating space then
would it not have been more efficient to not have needs based
allocations, but rather quickly distribute all of the space via a
lottery, auction or other system?  That would have allowed us to
have a much smaller ARIN in the past, and also prevented who knows
how many meetings discussing allocation policy.  The market could
have figured out all of those things "automatically", at much lower
cost and effort, right?

More to the point, if we believe the free market is so good at it,
why do we persist in needs based allocation, 1 year timeframes, and
the like.  Should we not switch to a title registrar situation now,
either giving away (via lottery?) or selling (via auction?) all
remaining space; since that would be more efficient?

Did we get it wrong from the start?  Should ARIN never have existed
in a role other than title registrar?

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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