[arin-ppml] Encouraging IPv6 Transition

[paul vixie]

On 5/11/2012 6:06 PM, Mike Burns wrote:
> +1
> There is a lot of thrashing about to solve problems most naturally
> solved by a market.

mike, i heard the ceo of general foods quoted on the radio a while back,
saying "we feed a billion people every day". as i consider various
approaches, i don't think anything other than market capitalism would
bring enough efficiency and motivation into the equation to do a job
like that one. let the record show that i am a died in the wool
capitalist and that i can quote ayn rand more accurately and more
relevantly than any tea partier or libertarian.

this discussion is not about markets. we're talking about stewardship of
a scarce and artificial resource that's fundamental to the world's
global commerce system and also to human society's nervous system. to
the extent that a market can help, NRPM 8.3 opens a responsible way to
do that, by requiring that recipients of transferred resource show a
more or less immediate need for that resource, as called for in RFC
2050, which was the last revision of guidance by the community who
created this artificial resource.

in an unstewarded market, recipients could be speculators, hoarders,
price manipulators, or worse. examples of this kind of market include
the california electric power deregulation experiment of about ten years
ago in which hoarding speculating price manipulators like enron made
tons of money but the resource (electric power) was more expensive and
less available than before the market was opened. i'm not insisting that
that is inevitable in an unstewarded internet resource market, but i can
tell you that the 'thrashing about' that you see here on PPML and at
ARIN's Public Policy Meetings is working very well in my opinion: we
have a stable investment climate for IP network builders because they
know what the supply is, what the rules are, and how the rules can change.

moving up-thread to a response i had not initially seen:

>> [vixie] the arin community's local austrian-school economist is dr.
>> milton
>> mueller, and he has indeed made the points you describe. unconvincingly
>> from my point of view, but let's not forget about him altogether.
>
> Indeed.  I'd revisit his suggestions.  A market, when left to its
> devices, solves these problems with remarkable speed and little
> difficulty.  It does so by leveraging all the knowledge, experience,
> requirements, and resources of its participants in a way that no
> series of conjectures, assertions, plans, and surveys are able.

see above.

paul

-- 
"I suspect I'm not known as a font of optimism." (VJS, 2012)