What Anti-Regulators Aren't Complaining About (and more)

A letter to:

Planet Money Staff,

Show #116, like many others had plenty of mentions about the troubles of regulations. With the high degree regularity of that we hear free market and (de)regulation mentioned one might forget the other major way that sweeping government policy effects markets, creating incentives, "picking winners". We don't hear these free market, deregulation self declared fiscal conservatives ranting about how corporate welfare has created monopolies. We don't hear about how these monopolies stifle regulation, buying up patents and shelving them, creating an environment where new ideas don't have a chance to rise to emerge in the form of new business. Is it not true that If a business spends money on it, they must offer value. Shouldn't lobbing expenses be an indication that big business is pulling big brother into the market too much.

Currently I see the Internet as the largest engine of innovation. I have been watching the discussion about Net Neutrality carefully. My opinion is that it is the wrong fix for the right problem. What we really need is simpler policy that makes fiber work like other public resources. Perhaps the public street model. The trouble is that the industry is happy with it's corporate welfare. While it asks not to be regulated, it takes money. I like the argument that we should do with telecommunications what we did with banks that took bailout money. We should say, "If government programs create favorable markets then you also must accept regulation. Give up the government programs and you will no longer be regulated."

These ideas connect with a few topics that I would love to hear discussed on planet money:
Copyrights vs. Creative Commons (open source) - Copyrights promise an innovator the rights to make money from their innovation for a reasonable amount of time. If they are necessary, why have Creative Commons licenses been adopted by many innovators.
Google - A new (GenX) model for business. The Google innovation is much more than its founding idea, index the whole web. Google captures creativity in the way they structure work and their workplaces (20% time). Crowd sourced ideas. Google gets the larger public and smaller developer communities to participate in improving their products. We can all see the "Big" in Google, but I have yet to find the "evil". Has the promise of the human potential movement in HR arrived?
Charter Schools - As a teacher, I have done some digging, looking for signs that charters are solvent and providing quality innovation with little to say for it. Is the market capturing innovation as promised here?
Thanks for providing short, simple and powerful content,

Tim Patterson