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FriendFeedForget Internet taxation, privacy, infrastructure, anti-trust law, and the digital divide. I've got a real policy initiative for the boys in Washington to consider. It's time for President Clinton to nationalize Ebay.
Consider the possibilities. Ebay is undoubtedly a national resource of immense and growing power and potential, the leading online marketplace where millions of ordinary Americans trade their goods in a friction free environment. As such, it fairly cries out for regulation; indeed, it seems fairly certain that the next few years will bring "Ebay" anti-fraud legislation at both the state and federal levels. It's a company that operates loosely under highly-recompensed "management" but its real management is its usership, a wide and self-policing populace that sustains the Ebay phenomenon. Apart from keeping the servers up much of the time and running some bank accounts, Ebay (the company) is just a tiny fraction of Ebay (the community).
There are many precedents, of course, for nationalization in time of public crisis or during particularly disastrous labor disputes, and Presidents of varying political stripes have not hesitated to use it. Okay, it's not exactly a time of national crisis, I'll admit. But clearly, Ebay has become something more than a Website, and if it should teeter, well I don't want to think about it. The consequences would be enormous, and the market for Pokemon cards would collapse overnight. And since Washington seems to be -- on the eve of national elections -- obsessed with doing something, anything, to be part of the Internet revolution, why not add Ebay to the Federal ranks?
There, do I have your attention? Good, because for far too long, this industry has paid little more than passing attention to what are shaping up as the key business policy decisions of our time. Let me tick off the issues that will clearly affect our business in the coming years:
* Privacy over digital media.
* The national digital infrastructure
* Education and training for the technology workforce
* Reform of the U.S. Patent Office
* Access to networks and the digital divide
* Taxation of Internet commerce and services
To date, the industry has been content to let a few of its more active executives join "self regulation" panels and blue ribbon task forces to study these issues. Meanwhile, Congress is getting itchy -- and when it does, its members, Republican or Democrat will pursue willy-nilly regulation. Add to that the basic disdain for government held by much of the power elite of the industry, and we have a recipe for disaster.
Let me just say two things bluntly: There is no way that a group of appointed industry executives can ever represent the wider population better than an elected government. And there is no greater threat to the ongoing success of the U.S. Internet industry than ad hoc piecemeal regulation aimed at helping individual companies and interest groups.
To the first statement. A marketplace is not a democracy. If it is governed at all from within, its aim is purely the enrichment of its members, not the society in which it operates. In the case of the United States, the commercial marketplace enriches democracy and historically, it has either engaged government or been engaged by government. We do not have a "pure market" economy. Historically, the more the power of the American marketplace has increased, the more regulation has also increased. Despite our rabid capitalism, Americans have always favored commerce tempered by representation. When Bostonians tossed tea into the harbor from British ships, it was not an act against all regulation, just unfair, tyrannical regulation. Taxation didn't tip the tea; voiceless taxation did. We like the SEC, the Fed, and the regulation of certain key industries.
Voiceless taxation of another kind is what we'll have if we turn over telecommunications and Internet policy to an incestuous group of "industry representatives" who bang the drums for "self regulation" and profess shock and outrage any time an elected body representing the whole of the people dares to look into the practices of the dot-com world. I do not wish to be governed by any industry inquisition, especially an industry that hates government intervention except when it's needed to attack a certain competitor in Redmond.
Let's face it, the policies under consideration now, at what is still the dawn of the Internet age, will have wide and lasting consequences for this generation and the next. Frankly, it makes me nervous whenever I hear of a group of industry leaders gathering to "make policy" on an Internet issue: privacy, domain name registration, infrastructure, obscenity and content ratings, you name it. But it makes me just as nervous when members of Congress, responding to complaints from America Online or any other individual companies or groups, attempts to begin the near-certain coming regulation of the Internet in a lame, piecemeal, partisan fashion.
I am all for wide-ranging constructive engagement across the board on any and all of these issues, and I applaud the growing number of Internet business leaders who are spending their time on these important topics. But at the end of the day, here's who I want to have a say: the masses of users, consumers, surfers -- well, okay, let's just call them citizens. And the way they have a say is through the elected representatives of this Republic.
As an industry, we need to be more involved in wide-ranging business policy decisions. But we must not delude ourselves with the notion that a demi-government of the Internet will succeed, or that it has anything whatsoever to do with democracy. And we must urge Washington not to attempt a piecemeal regulation of the Net. Clearly, a national online agenda is needed that balances the rights and needs of commerce and community.
Sadly, there are those in this business who believe they know best and that everyone else, especially those wicked dot.gov types, should keep their noses out of the industry. That's why a display of power may well be called for, Constitutional power.
Yes, there may be just one way to make that apparent to the industry-as-democracy folks -- Mr. President, nationalize EBay now.
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