In message <[email protected]>, "Mike Burns" <[email protected]> wrote:
>We tried the method you've espoused below for thirty years and >the result were a huge amount of wasted address space. Once the market >was adopted, many of those addresses found a useful place in the routing >table. Well, it's sort of a Catch-22. Mike, you're absolutely right that once there was a free market, a lot of stuff came off the shelves and started to be used productively. But can any of us say with confidence that once there was a free market, a lot of this commodity (IPv4) that was sitting on shelves didn't just stay there -because- of the open and free market... because the "owners" of those blocks effectively became speculators, just waiting arond for the scarcity to become more acute, and for the price to go up? (I confess that I never in my life took an economics class, but it seems to me that the entire field is chock full of head-scratching conundrums like this... situation where you are damned if you do and damned if you don't.) >The free pool era is dying, let's put a fork in it as quickly as >possible We've seen the corruption engendered by the bait of the >free pool in multiple registries now, including our own. Just curious Mike... Does this opinion on your part extend also to IPv6? >Your old-fashioned method of address distribution would get some >addresses to those in need, I will concede that. However, so will >leasing addresses, with that demonstration of need being the lease >payment. Will you concede that those who pay to lease addresses need >them? Even if nobody else does, I certainly will. But of course that's not the only issue. The current Cloud Innovation v. AFRINIC thing is in some ways confusing as hell because it has brought to a head -multiple- long-standing issues that have then gotten all tangled up with one another, making it difficult for anybody to tease apart the various separate issues. One of these is what might be called "equity", i.e. the social desire to help Africa, a continent and a people who have been on the receiving end of so much exploitation and malevolent evil, over the centuries, at the hands of others. Another issue is the right and proper role of RIRs. Last but not leas (and perhaps the most troubling and most difficult to crack open in a way that does not merely reveal our individual biases) is the question of the proper role of what I will just call "speculators" within any free market. Contrary to what some might say, I think that when it comes to IPv4 addresses at least, it most certainly -is- possible to distinguish "speculators" from actual and legitimate end users and/or legitimate brokers & middlemen such as yourself. As I understand it, the current system requires people to document their equipment purchases. No equipment purchases? You're almost certainly just a speculator. So then the question becomes two-fold: (1) Do we want speculators in this marketplace? and (2) Is there any actually feasible way to keep them out of the "free" market even if the collective "we" firmly decided that we wanted to do so? I personally don't have answers to any of these questions. I would only offer up the observation that I am aware of at least a few speculators at this moment in time, and it would be an understatement for me to say that their actions seem to me to be both glaringly untoward and also unhelpful. But if you ask me IN GENERAL whether "speculators" are a necessary and even useful component of a free market, I cannot say they are not. And it seems I may not be alone in leaving open this possibility: https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/07/09/the-theranos-implosion-and-robert-shiller-on-short-selling-and-complete-markets/ Regards, rfg _______________________________________________ ARIN-PPML You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the ARIN Public Policy Mailing List ([email protected]). Unsubscribe or manage your mailing list subscription at: https://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/arin-ppml Please contact [email protected] if you experience any issues.
