It looks obvious

Tom Evslin’s post about ala carte broadcasting is great in many levels. It discussing the motives of the FCC Chairman for his recommendation and explaining why the suggested ala carte channels broadcasting is much less then what the market and technology can provide. In a way Tom’s suggestion is that the market will lead to more global approach of the current on Demand services or Tivo. I completely agree with his and Jeff Jarvis’s observations that

: “I think the marketplace will take care of this in the form of a la carte program downloading and purchasing on the internet. The fact that I can watch Desperate Housewives via iTunes albeit at a high price broke the lock that cable MSOs had on programming.”

I would like to focus on one remark in Tom’s post stating that:

“Of course, if the FCC would stop protecting the last mile cableco-telco duopoly, then we wouldnt need commissioners to suggest alternatives that would spring like froth from the waves in the chaos of a competitive access market.”

The sad story is that the FCC involvement in the name of the public good is ones and again creating monopolies and do not protect the consumers. The real competition in the telecom market was not thanks to the telecom act of 1996 but despite it. This Suggestion was not, as Tom Evslin point too, made because of the public good but to serve the interests of the telecom companies that tries to enter the TV market.
As I pointed out in my post about wireless Philadelphia the government activity in the market creates the monopolies and lead for more government control. This type of control on the public limited resources is typically leading to censorship and limits the freedom of what we can say or consume.
The logic is very simple. The first step is the claim that some resource is important enough so the market cannot regulate it by itself and only the government can control it efficiently. The government involvementleading to use of taxpayer money and therefore the taxpayers have a say on what it is use for. The results of the government regulation and funding are therefore leading to the involvement of interest group that hasan opinion on how their money being used. At the end we are shocked when the government control leads to regulations and fine on someone like Howard Stern.

If the FCC was interested in the best interest of the public, and not in consuming more control, it should simply get out of the way.

Technorati Tags: FCC, Government Regulations, Libertarianism, Free Market