Cap and Trade for the Internet

By George Gilder

The FCC’s regulatory plan will reduce investment in new bandwidth.

Under Chairman Julius Genachowski, Al Gore’s old friends at the Federal Communications Commission are out to reinvent the Internet. In the name of a bogus crisis in broadband deployment, the FCC is today lathering on an array of network stimuli and subsidies as part of a new “National Broadband Plan” that will transform this current font of U.S. economic growth into a consumer of taxes and a playground for pettifogs.

This subsidy plan comes on top of previous ill-defined “network neutrality” requirements that would bar carriers from charging different prices for different forms of Internet content. Whether spam, TV programs, …