FCC Chairman Tilts the Seesaw Toward Regulation
by
Randolph J. May *
September 22, 2016
Early in his tenure, in his maiden speech at Ohio State University in December 2013, Tom Wheeler, the Obama administration's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman, articulated what he called his "seesaw" rule: "When competition is high, regulation can be low." Since then, Wheeler also has regularly touted what quickly became a monotonous incantation: "Competition, competition, competition."
When I hear Wheeler's "competition, competition, competition" mantra, or think of his seesaw rule, a favorite Abraham Lincoln quote comes to mind. In April 1864, Lincoln said: "We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing."
It is now abundantly clear that in declaring for "competition," Wheeler intends the word to have a particularly narrow meaning, one that doesn't comport with the understanding of many respected regulatory economists and experts. And Wheeler has a seductive purpose in mind as well: By employing an unrealistically narrow view of market competition, his seesaw construct almost invariably tilts toward more regulation.
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Here's an idea for a fix: With a modest change to the Communications Act, Congress could prevent the invocation of meaningless incantations such as "competition, competition, competition" from substituting for rigorous economic analysis that fairly accounts for the dramatic changes that have taken place in most segments of the communications marketplace. Five years ago, I suggested, in recognition of the increased consumer choice that has occurred in the last two decades, that Congress should require the FCC to presume, absent clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, that effective competition exists in most communications market segments.
This simple rebuttable evidentiary presumption would not in itself determine the outcome of any particular proceeding. But it would make it more difficult to avoid evidence-based findings of effective competition by employing ill-founded stratagems designed to tilt the FCC's seesaw towards more regulatory power grabs.
* Randolph J. May is President of the Free State Foundation, an independent, nonpartisan free market-oriented think tank located in Rockville, Maryland. FCC Chairman Tilts the Seesaw Toward Regulation was published in The Hill on September 22, 2016.
A PDF of this Perspectives is here.
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