We must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
Les Routledge
What Would Happen If Alberta Refused to Ship BC Gas to Market?
Christie Clark is on really thin ice with her position.
Nuclear Power an Option for Australia
AUSTRALIA will have to consider a nuclear-powered future by the end of the decade
1% Correct – 99% Misguided
What we need today is a movement to convert repossessed properties into affordable rental housing.
Featured News
The Renewable Part of Hydrogen is the Hype
Once again, the world is staging ClimateFest 26, aka the United Nations Conference of the Parties, where peddlers of alternative energy schemes try to plunge their dippers into the river of climate change funding that flows around the world. This funding is generated...
Small Gestures Speak Louder than Great Deeds
The age-old expression that actions speak louder than words conveys an important insight: character is best judged through action. Anyone can say or promise anything but doing requires ability and skill, discipline and commitment. So, the simplest test of character is...
Usage Based Billing Around the World
Start offering some service innovations instead of one-size fits all pricing models.
Guest Post on Regulating ISP’s
My colleague Roland Renner has put together a commentary on the issues surrounding the recently announce decision of the Supreme Court to rule on role of ISP’s in Broadcasting.
Supreme Court to rule on ISP’s role in broadcasting
The Supreme Court announced http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Court+rule+ISPs+role+broadcasting/4500632/story.html that it will rule if Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) distributing video services should be subject to the same laws as traditional broadcasters. The decision is connected to other issues of importance in the world of telecom, Internet and entertainment content and how they will develop in Canada.
Geist on Bell’s New UBB Plan
A necessary but not sufficient action.
Bell’s New UBB Plan
In response to the CRTC’s call for comments relating to the UBB proceedings, Bell has revised their proposed approach that they name Aggregate Volume Pricing. Instead of forcing independent ISP’s to mimic Bell’s retail pricing model, they have now proposed to implement usage-based pricing at the wholesale level. Several news reports have reported this revised approach as Bell backing down.
“With our filing today, we are officially withdrawing our UBB proposal,” said Mirko Bibic, Bell’s head of regulatory affairs. “Let’s move on, in my view, and use the CRTC hearing as an opportunity to approve those principles and get the implementation details right.”
Netflix on Bandwidth Caps
Netflix has joined the discussion about bandwidth caps and UBB in Canada.
For his part, Mr. Hastings said he believes data caps have little impact on traffic management because the real problem points for ISPs are peak usage times, and monthly data caps do little to alter the times at which customers use the Internet.
“This idea of capped Internet really makes no sense from a network management or policy sense,” he said. “Really, the costs on the Internet are driven by wherever the peaks are … So it’s really inefficient to use caps to manage network bandwidth. All you care about is peak bandwidth.”
Food Versus Fuel is Passe
Over time, we have read a lot about the food-versus-fuel discussion including here at the Frontier Centre.
While I can agree that market distorting subsidies should be eliminated, I do not buy into the narrative that using agricultural production capacity to produce energy is inherently evil.
Soaring food inflation is the result of “immoral” policies in the United States which divert crops for use in the production of biofuels instead of food, according to the chairman of one of the world’s largest food companies.
Free Market Environmentalism
Over at Grist, there has been a discussion emerging about the relative merits of command-and-control regulation versus “free-market environmentalism” that is supported by secure property rights.
Before being shoved aside in the 1970s by the more politically attractive federal statute law, common law made it clear that no polluter had the right to impose unwanted costs on the owners of private property. Centuries of legal precedence affirmed that people had a legal right to have their property free from pollution. Upon examining the history of the common law, economists Roger Meiners and Bruce Yandleconcluded that the common law “can protect the environment more effectively and fairly than can congressional statutes and bureaucratic regulations.”
This article digs into the issue of transaction costs and to me that is the key of making a common-law, property-rights based model work.
False Economy – Tobacco Taxes
Have they conducted a cost-benefit assessment?
Is the World Getting Greener?
The red colors absolutely dominate indicating an increase in vegetation status