[arin-ppml] IPv4 Depletion as an ARIN policy concern

[William Herrin]

On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 9:54 PM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
> A priori, the concept of "too much" is literally meaningless.
> If the market is functioning (i.e. sufficient levels of liquidity,
> appropriate ways to bring together buyers, sellers, etc.) the
> price passively reflects what a willing buyer is paying a
> willing seller. It could be $1 million per address and if transactions
> occur it means that someone thinks an address is worth that much

Hi Milton,

Long before it hits $1M per address, the US Congress will step in and
smack us down for facilitating the hording of an economically critical
resource. If it's all the same to you I like ARIN to take a more
proactive stance before that happens.

Besides, the past 24 months events in the world financial markets have
pretty well put paid to the notion that there's no such thing as too
much.

That having been said...

> A more serious measure of an "ineffective" market is one
>where no transactions take place at all. Or there are legitimate
>reasons for intervention when and if a price spike is part of a
>panic or some kind of temporary emergency shortage, etc.
>But in neither case could one specify a specific number.

Would you prefer to see a measure of transactions per month instead of
dollars per address so that the dollar value can float as long as the
transfers still happen? Are there additional useful ways to measure
liquidity in the presumed transfer market that we should consider?

If it's a useful measure then you can specify a number. For example,
we could talk in terms of number of address transactions relative to
the free pool assignments today. If the rate of addresses changing
hands falls to 10% of the rate of free pool assignments now and if it
isn't because IPv6 adoption has happened then the address transfer
market has probably frozen up, recommending further action by ARIN to
get things moving.


> Just be aware of the complexity and interdependence with which one is dealing.

I rarely fail to. But let's not make Nick Biddle's mistake either. Any
ten year old can accurately tell us, yes or no, whether carrots are
affordable at the grocery store. We need only encode that sensibility
into words and numbers. Suggesting that we require PhD economists to
continuously evaluate the situation in a way we can't quite explain is
a recipe for political interference.

Regards,
Bill Herrin



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