I agree that it has outlived its usefulness. But when was the last time we actually got rid of a government agency? The Interstate Commerce Commission, almost three decades ago?
8 thoughts on “Abolish The FCC?”
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I agree that it has outlived its usefulness. But when was the last time we actually got rid of a government agency? The Interstate Commerce Commission, almost three decades ago?
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The Rural Electrification Administration was abolished in 1994 but its functions live on in the Rural Utility Service. I don’t know of any other examples offhand.
As for the FCC, it does look like it has outlived its usefulness and should be downsized if not completely eliminated. Not holding my breath on that one, though. A serious look at the alphabet soup of federal agencies would find many of them that couldn’t justify their existence by any rational analysis but who continue to exist due to bureaucratic inertia and political influences.
ISTR that the Tea Taster and his entire board* were quietly done away with in the twilight days of the Clinton administration. But if anything, that only proves your point, because Reagan had specifically used the Tea Taster’s Board as an example of a useless government agency that did precisely nothing, and yet even he had been unable to get it disbanded.
*Nobody is quite sure on this, but consensus among scholars is that at some point in the early 19th Century they were responsible for grading the tea imported to the US. Possibly the Monroe or Van Buren administrations placed a high priority on the import of tasty hot beverages…
I do not agree that the FCC has outlived its usefulness. We need someone to take radio transmitters away from people who mess up the available frequencies so much that no one can use them. We also need someone to make sure the em noise emitted by all the electronic toys and gadgets is kept to a low enough level that they allow communications to take place.
That being said, the FCC should have no jurisdiction over any part of the Internet. They do need to control emitted radiation such that we can all use wireless Internet access. They should not have anything to do with the information that is being transmitted wirelessly.
I don’t care if it’s the FCC or some other agency, but some regulator has to make sure the ISPs don’t use their monopoly power over Internet access to extract rents. Recently an internal report was leaked where Verizon was considering a business model that charged based on the web services you accessed, rather than for bandwidth?
You want YouTube? Pay. You want PJTV? Pay up. And not to the content providers, just to Verizon, or Comcast.
That sort of thing would be an awful abuse of monopoly power, a huge cost to internet users, and it would kill off innovation in the Internet sector. That’s why net neutrality is so important. Some regular must ensure this, or the ISPs will surely abuse their power.
Net neutrality is regulation and the FCC is a regulator. We should and can easily get rid of both. The reason for the FCC was thinking that spectrum was limited which it was with older technology. Newer technology allows sharing of spectrum without interference.
Let free enterprise and technology solve our problems, not government.
The only dept. the government needs is defense. Get rid of all the others.
make sure the ISPs don’t use their monopoly power over Internet access to extract rents
They don’t have a monopoly when competition can exists. Mergers are a danger.
And yet the freaking Comcast/NBC one sounds like it is going through without a murmur.
Corporate tax rates need to be reorganized focusing on whether you can exert monopoly power (which happens well before there’s complete dominance) in any of the markets you serve.
Ken – “Let free enterprise and technology solve our problems, not government.”
But what about the guy still using old technology transmitters or the guy deliberately misusing technology to cause problems.
There are many areas where I live with so much em noise that radios, cell devices, wifi, etc. do not work. We have traffic controllers bleeding all over the spectrum from time to time. They only get fixed because when the FCC gets a complaint they make the offenders fix the problem. Somebody needs to be in charge with the authority to keep things usable. They do not need to regulate what is being transmitted but need to be sure things can be transmitted and received reliably.