[arin-ppml] Spectrum and IP address reservations / More from NERA

[tvest at eyeconomics.com]

On Jul 25, 2009, at 8:59 AM, Randy Bush wrote:

>> Remember that the institution whose policy development process you're
>> seeking to influence here is the product of cooperative, non-market
>> decision making.
>
> what are you smoking?  90% of he players here are up to our necks in  
> the
> market.
>
> randy

Hi Randy,

No one denies that -- not me anyway. 90%+ of the players in the  
conventional economy are neck-deep in market opportunities/pressures/ 
demands too.
They also rely absolutely on the continued functioning of various (now  
mostly national) currencies -- either their own, or someone else's --  
to make those interactions possible, and meaningful, and (at least  
potentially) profitable. And generally speaking, on most days most of  
those currencies do "work" exactly as they're expected to -- even  
though all 200+ of them are currently managed through non-market  
mechanisms (many through direct gov fiat, some like the US Federal  
Reserve Bank System, though private "industry self-governance"  
mechanisms).

In this narrow*** sense, the relationship of the RIRs to the IP- 
mediated economy is very much like the relationship between the  
various (mostly national) monetary policy administration mechanisms  
and all of the other private players in the national/global economies,  
all of whom need need that stable liquidity mechanism to pursue their  
various private commercial interests. The fact that the one  
institution most closely associated with maintaining the liquidity  
mechanism for the conventional economy is not a private, profit- 
seeking enterprise doesn't imply anything about the rest of the  
conventional economy, either.

What I need is to smoke some of whatever it is that makes people think  
that  such coordinating mechanisms can just be abruptly privatized  
without severely injuring, if not killing, the economies that they  
support. In case you hadn't noticed, they ran that experiment in the  
conventional economy over the last decade or so, after most of the  
system management positions were captured by individuals who wanted to  
be placeholders, because they knew that the market could take care of  
itself...

TV

***Anyone still reading these threads will probably know that I think  
that there are many more / more important parallels than this, but  
none of those other claims is implicated by or necessary to this one  
specific comparison.