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I see no problem with the general idea. Indeed, it seems
to me it captures an important truth about any sector of the
economy. Though the subsectors may compete over rents, the
prosperity of each subsector depends on the prosperity of the
others—at least it does so unless some wholly disruptive
technology replaces one of the subsectors. American wheat
producers, American railroads, steamship lines, and wheat
consumers around the globe participate in a virtuous cycle;
medical device inventors, hospitals, doctors, and patients
participate in a virtuous cycle. Innovation, to be sure, is
especially robust in the information technology and
application sectors, but a mutual relationship between
subsectors pervades the economy.
There is an economic classification issue that the
Commission does not really tackle: whether broadband
internet access is like transportation or is a platform in a twosided market, i.e., a business aiming to “facilitate interactions
between members of . . . two distinct customer groups,” David
S. Evans & Richard Schmalensee, The Industrial
Organization of Markets with Two-Sided Platforms, 3
COMPETITION POLICY INTERNATIONAL 151, 152 (2007), which
in this case would be edge providers and users. (Two-sided
markets are barely discussed at all, with the only mentions of
any sort in the Order at ¶¶ 151 n.363, 338 & n.890, 339
n.897.) Although the Commission seems at one point to
characterize broadband internet access as a two-sided market,
see id. ¶ 338, it nowhere develops any particular
consequences from that classification or taps into the vast
scholarly treatment of the subject. The answer to the question
may well shed light on the reasonableness of the regulations,
but in view of the Commission’s non-reliance on the
distinction we need not go there.
I do not understand the Commission to claim that its new
rules will have a direct positive effect on investment in
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