I had dinner with some folks the other night, including one man who I am told might be a FCC commissioner if we have a Democratic administration next year.
During our conversation, I was advocating free market telecommunications policies. He told me that I was dealing with a theoretical world, while his clients paid him to deal with the real world. But I noticed that his real world was actually a world constrained by his own views on public policy. In other words, his “real world” consisted of the world constructed by regulators, complete with all of its regulations that restrict creativity and hinder innovation, with no possibility of change.
In this world, he and his clients can earn money by understanding the rules and regulations better than others. Thus any other reality – such as one with less government regulation – is labeled as impractical because it breaches his constraints. It is not that my limited government world can’t or shouldn’t exist; it is just that its existence would breach his constraints and make the world less profitable for his clients, so it is disparaged and all possibilities that might disrupt his world are discarded.
Free market advocates ought to be used to this by now, and most of us are. But this criticism shows how important it is that we dot our i’s, cross our t’s, and do our homework when proposing recommendations in the policy world.
– Bill Peacock