Economic Voodoo

Economics is thought by many to be a science of absolutes. But in reality

economics is a study in tradeoffs. Economists present options based on a term
called “ceteris paribus,” meaning all other things being held equal or constant.
But as we know, other things are never held constant. The world is a dynamic and
ever changing place and there are unintended consequences to every action,
which is why economists will seldom agree. Internet regulation is no exception to
the idea of disagreement, mainly on its impact of the economy in the aggregate.
There are constant innovations in technology that will have impacts in ways that
no one can fully predict. But that hasn’t has stopped some from trying to set in
place controls to avoid any such unpredictability, which has created a battle
between more efficient business models and the status quo.
The battle for control over the electronic frontier can be divided into several basic
and interrelated factions. On one side is the entertainment industry, which
enjoyed an unprecedented level of control for many years and has come to view
innovation and efficiency as a threat to their ability to control a revenue stream
and their close ally the federal government, which has its own interests to
protect. On the other side are more efficient and innovative companies, such
as Netflix, Google, Wikipedia, andFacebook. But perhaps most forgotten is you
and me, the consumer.
The idea of private industry and government working together is not a new
concept. The idea was implemented by Vladimir Lenin, he called it the
“Commanding Heights” of the economy. Lenin’s idea being that the government,
by heavily regulating private business, could create a more equitable system. As
we know now the idea did not work and resulted in shortages in every sector
and many people died from starvation(warning graphic content). The
entertainment industry seems to not let that fact restrain their attempts to
regulate the internet by using the government as their enforcer. It has been
proven that deregulation increases economic activity across the board. The
implementation of the DCMA was a sort of deregulation that gave us the
explosion of economic activity responsible for sites like You Tube,Facebook, as
well as the ability to blog.

There are numerous examples throughout history where relaxed regulation has
lead to increased economic growth. In their coauthored article for National
Review Online “Innovate or Legislate,” Reihan Salam and Patrick Ruffini wrote
about the role deregulation played in the success of the internet by saying, “The
world’s most deregulated industry has, not coincidentally, seen corporate
empires rise and fall with astonishing speed” (Salam, Ruffini). They go on to
explain that not only does the innovator benefit from deregulation but so does
society as a whole, by stating “Yet the chief beneficiaries haven’t been Silicon
Valley billionaires. Rather, they’ve been citizens, workers, and consumers who’ve
been given the power to choose something other than the status quo” (Salam,
Ruffini).