[governance] Letter to Rod Beckstrom

[Milton L Mueller]

> don't tell us that policies favoring social justice imply the
> soviets. True, they imply that a market economy shouldn't be a jungle
> of uncontrolled economic liberalism.

Ah, but you make the same mistake, only more so. You assume that economic liberalism means no social obligations and no nothing. And you're more stuck in this than I am. (And please don't lecture me about universal service obligations in a liberalized environment - I literally wrote the book on that.)

The point is that the dismantling of telephone monopolies was done to promote economic liberalism, and often it meant scaling back or even rejecting certain forms of social "justice" regulation or, at least, choosing to try to achieve the same ends through means that were more efficient and impinged less on economic freedom. And as a result we got a positive sum game in which there was far more growth and far lower prices and more diversity and many other benefits to the public, most of which were _not_ produced by regulatory obligations but some of which were. And it is a historical fact that the impetus to do this did not come from the left, and never would have come from the left; typically the left gets in the way of such changes because of its dedication to static social redistributive bargains and its endemic hostility to markets in any form. 

But, if you are saying that you favor expanding and harnessing economic liberalism as long as some basic social obligations can be taken care of then we will have very little to argue about. Somehow, we keep arguing at a more fundamental level so I think that's not what you are saying. ;-) 

--MM

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