LIQUIDITY, WEALTH CREATION & ONLINE CHOICE
Distributed ledgers deploying block chains are the speediest, information superhighways generating greater liquidity, creating egalitarian wealth, stimulating aggregate demand, and remediating Internet and broadband market power abuses.
Distributed ledgers and blockchains rationalize and liberalize interactive computer services, those vast lines of business enabling communications and innovating search, social media, instant text and mobile communications, logistics, sourcing, fulfillment, and online shopping by enabling robust online choice.
Distributed ledgers and blockchains are timely in connection with the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, Senate Bill 2992 and House Bill 3816, to inject competition in and across interactive computer services (a “covered platform” in draft bills).
Although one searches in vain for a term of art like “structural separation,” “lines of business” scores a half dozen mentions each and all mandating non-discriminatory, common carrier-like terms of service, interoperability, and unconditional goods, services, data and meta data access on a “covered platform;” that is, an interactive computer service.[i]
This is wholly legible. It was one thing to structurally separate a historic, regulated monopoly like American Telephone & Telegraph and quite another to attempt to mandate structural separation of enterprises, which pioneered innovative Internet and broadband communications and commerce, thriving on the value of the data and meta data their patrons willingly give over in return for access no matter how draconian, arbitrary and capricious their patron standards and practices.
While many yearned for new entrants to take on dominant, first movers, their market power and lobbying prowess plus the public policy and legal challenges of mandating structural separation have confounded effective legislation.
Rather cleverly, the pending legislation proposes to mandate competitive interactive service provision and markets from the inside out through non-discriminatory, common carrier-like standards and practices.
Should Congress enact and President Biden sign the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, liberalized markets would animate Internet and broadband communications for the 2020’s across interactive computer services, the Internet and wireline and wireless broadband networks.
Distributed ledgers enable flourishing markets for any and all enterprises in access, interoperability, and non-discriminatory commercializations of liberalized lines of business specified in the proposed legislation from dominant incumbent to new entrant.
Blockchains deliver timestamping for each and every market participant.
These capabilities suppress and police fraud.
Another road ahead could emulate The Telecommunications Act of 1996 liberalizing local telecommunications and removing legacy lines of business restrictions on former Bell Operating Companies dating from the 1984 AT&T divestiture.
That history draws attention to financialization. Wall Street thrived on initial public offerings (IPOs) of new competitive local exchange carriers (clecs). Incumbent local exchange carriers (ilecs) merged, employed regulation to drive clecs out of business and oligopolized unregulated broadband network lines of business with the cable television industry.
New interactive computer service entrants can compete in liberalized interactive computer service lines of business, float IPOs, consolidate, attempt to sell their network effects, and exit rather like clecs.
The nimblest would achieve market advantage by adopting distributed ledger and blockchain capabilities.
Distributed ledgers and blockchains are invaluable for successful implementations of the proposed legislation, too.
First, American Innovation and Choice Online Act legislation is inescapably retrospective. When Louis Dembitz Brandeis rationalized investment and innovation in capital intense, large scale manufacturing as architect of Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom, Brandeis invented 20th century market administration and regulation: industrial concentration is acceptable unless and until a corporation abuses its market power to suppress competition. Brandeis struck a balance. Until a Sherman Act injury or a Clayton Act abuse had been inflicted, bigness and big business were fine. If an industrialist willfully violated federal statute, however, regulators could then examine, evaluate, rule and enforce. In 1914, Brandeis’ brilliance paved the way for establishment of the Federal Trade Commission to investigate and police market power abuses like price discrimination, vertical monopoly, and interlocking directorates. The pending legislation necessarily adheres to this legacy approach.
But, distributed ledgers and blockchains assure real time monitoring to compensate for this orientation.
Second, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act may reasonably be described as Covid-era legislation. It was introduced into the Senate in October, 2021 following the astronomical profits of Amazon and Facebook, among others, due to forced isolation during 2020 and 2021 prompting consumers to purchase goods and services online and prior to the Federal Reserve Board decision to terminate zero lower bound interest rates.
For all the potential benefits in terms of competitive interactive computer services (covered platforms), consumers now shop, and money costs money in 2022.
Distributed ledgers and blockchains respond to these realities. Consumers will be able to monetize their intent to purchase one or another good or service and to sell search data and meta data. This will generate liquidity. Because credit and debt now cost real rather than nominal wealth for the first time since the 2008 asset crisis, real time, accurate information and metrics on investment and debt vehicles are indispensable for borrowers and creditors.
Third, total factor productivity for goods nets out at zero and hovers around 1.4% across work from home and contact service sectors. As Robert J. Gordon and Hassan Sayed point out “for the nine quarters of 2020-22 taken together, productivity growth in the goods group is near zero, in work from home services is a strongly positive 3.3 percent, while in contact services is a mediocre -2.6 percent. The average across the three groups is 1.3 percent… The paper predicts also that continued rehiring will result in significant negative productivity growth in 2022:Q2 and likely in subsequent quarters, having the effect of further reducing the 2020-22 average productivity growth rate down from 2.1 percent closer to the 1.4 percent average of 2005-19.”[ii]
There is and may for some time be distinctly specific approaches and vehicles to generate value-add (wealth, margin) for new entrants seeking to disintermediate dominant interactive computer service incumbents due to these productivity trends.
Greater granularity precisely of the sorts that distributed ledgers enable and blockchains track will emerge more importantly achieving wealth from disintermediated data and meta data.
For instance, distributed ledgers and blockchains are especially useful cultivating productivity gains and growth in work from home services. In near zero or negative goods and contact sectors, efficiencies will drive value.
These fresh, 2022 factors – mobility and the cost of borrowing amid heterogenous, modest productivity -- combine to appreciate and enhance the values of speed where distributed ledgers and blockchains contribute and support network elements and effects.
Hence, distributed ledgers and blockchains distinctly reward agile, nimble new entrants and afford wide participation for incumbents effecting liquidity and wealth across online choice.
https://www.amazon.com/INTENT-Paradigm-Hugh-Carter-Donahue-ebook/dp/B088KMQP91
https://www.amazon.com/WHATS-HAPPENING-Fresh-Paradigm-Decade-ebook/dp/B09C448P2W
https://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/public/
https://cicilline.house.gov/
https://article3project.org/
#charlesbabbage @ibm (@FT) (@WSJ) @StampaFinanziaria @bookkeeping360 #BookkeepingFacts #systemdynamics @S_D_Society #quantumcomputing #quantum #computing @3plcentral
#Blockchain #Fintech
(@blockchaincapital)
@DCGco @VitalikButerin @rogerkver @PanteraCapital @blockchaincapital @kleinerperkins @Andreessen Horowitz @LibertyCityVentures @WinklevossCapital @FoundationCapital @bftp-sep #Bessemer.venture.partner
https://www.delltechnologies.com
https://www.cdw.com
https://www.shi.com
https://www.softchoice.com
https://corp.ingrammicro.com
https://www.router-switch.com
https://www.cisco.com
https://www.juniper.net
https://www.fcc.gov/general/telecommunications-act-1996
ENDNOTES
[i] . SEC. 3. UNLAWFUL CONDUCT.
(a) In General.—It shall be unlawful for a person operating a covered platform in or affecting commerce to engage in conduct, as demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence, that would—
(1) preference the products, services, or lines of business of the covered platform operator over those of another business user on the covered platform in a manner that would materially harm competition;
(2) limit the ability of the products, services, or lines of business of another business user to compete on the covered platform relative to the products, services, or lines of business of the covered platform operator in a manner that would materially harm competition;
(3) discriminate in the application or enforcement of the terms of service of the covered platform among similarly situated business users in a manner that would materially harm competition;
(4) materially restrict, impede, or unreasonably delay the capacity of a business user to access or interoperate with the same platform, operating system, or hardware or software features that are available to the products, services, or lines of business of the covered platform operator that compete or would compete with products or services offered by business users on the covered platform;
(5) condition access to the covered platform or preferred status or placement on the covered platform on the purchase or use of other products or services offered by the covered platform operator that are not part of or intrinsic to the covered platform;
(6) use nonpublic data that are obtained from or generated on the covered platform by the activities of a business user or by the interaction of a covered platform user with the products or services of a business user to offer, or support the offering of, the products or services of the covered platform operator that compete or would compete with products or services offered by business users on the covered platform;
(7) materially restrict or impede a business user from accessing data generated on the covered platform by the activities of the business user, or through an interaction of a covered platform user with the products or services of the business user, such as by establishing contractual or technical restrictions that prevent the portability by the business user to other systems or applications of the data of the business user;
(8) materially restrict or impede covered platform users from uninstalling software applications that have been preinstalled on the covered platform or changing default settings that direct or steer covered platform users to products or services offered by the covered platform operator, unless necessary—
[ii] “A New Interpretation of Productivity Growth Dynamics in the Pre-Pandemic and Pandemic Era U.S. Economy, 1950-1922,” National Bureau of Economic Research, July, 2022.