When I grow up, I want to be as cool as Reason magazine's Nick Gillespie. In the video below he gives succinct summaries of the problems of this most recent and allegedly "light-touch" power grab by the Federal Communications Commission.
(By the way, all meaningless metaphors used by government officials such as the current FCC chairman are unenforceable for future generations of officials.)
Which is why Reason's third "reason" here, "Mission Creep" as a danger to FCC regulation of the Internet is a huge problem, and something the public rarely understands about government: its growth is almost inevitable.
I admire the pluckiness of libertarians in fighting the growth of the state, but in recent years I have become more dour about the prospects for our government and society to avoid decline. Despite even the empowering magic of things like the Internet.
Bureaucrats, however well intentioned, believe they can "help" with almost anything and relentlessly seek to insert themselves into private decisions. Those less well intentioned also see numerous opportunities to expand their power.
One reason the public doesn't understand this is because in essence the problem is highly philosophical. More specifically, epistemological. Government officials trying to help in a way allegedly free from self-interest (not true) concentrate more power in the hands of those with less knowledge than the entirety of the marketplace.
Freedom is a way of crowd-sourcing our problems; with more individuals handling smaller pieces of the logistics of delivering products and services. In a bureaucrat's way of seeing things, that means they have a less "comprehensive" view of the market, which requires a handful of nobles to facilitate (to their own benefit) greater "global coordination" and other such nonsense.
No comments:
Post a Comment