[arin-ppml] Spartan allocation proposal for transfers

[Matthew Kaufman]

So, first off, during the time ARIN has addresses still available, the 
rental price is zero. But the claim (on the next graph) is then that 
because the expected rental price is higher in the future, the market 
price is at its maximum.

Except for two things: first, because ARIN still has addresses 
available, there's not much demand for addresses with prices much above 
zero (the Microsoft deal notwithstanding)... and if "need" is still 
required for *both* addresses obtained from ARIN and addresses obtained 
on the open market, there's even less reason to buy them. Unless they 
*are* being bought, at the forecast maximum price, and the transfers 
just aren't being recorded... hmm.

I do not that the theoretical results in the graphs and the earlier 
paragraphs all assume a completely open and transparent market (which I 
suspect also requires that there be no needs assessment prior to 
transfer), and yet there's substantial evidence that the only market 
we've seen start to form so far is pretty much at the opposite end of 
that spectrum with regard to knowledge of who is willing to sell what, 
and who is actually buying. And never mind that it also requires 
"complete information", which I take it includes things like knowing 
whether or not trying to unilaterally switch your services to IPv6 will 
be successful or not, rather than finding out late in the game that you 
too need some extra IPv4 to make it through a transition that is lasting 
longer than anyone initially predicted. (This is exactly the IPv4 demand 
spike that I think will happen, personally... the first round will be 
speculators against either future sales or rental, the followup will be 
the people who really *need* the space but didn't think they'd ever find 
themselves in that situation for one reason or another.)

Meanwhile, a policy such as is proposed in the paper is still possible 
to be worked around by name changes, transfers under alternative 
policies (such as 8.2), or simply failing to list the transfers (or 
rentals).

All in all, an interesting demonstration of economic theory when taken 
to its theoretical limits, and raises some possible ways to attack the 
disaggregation problem (if there is such a problem), but I question 
whether or not this theory and reality will have much to do with one 
another.

Matthew Kaufman

ps. I note that since, eventually, the unified world government as 
aligned with the  United Federation of Planets will offer free housing 
to everyone on Earth, we should, for the past several decades or more, 
have been observing the beginning of the monotonic decrease in home 
prices to zero, using this same theory.