Swanson: Innovation doesn't come from Government -- Read his new great op-ed

Entropy Economic's Bret Swanson has another great, clear-thinking op-ed that I recommend you read, this time in RealClearMarkets.com entitled: "Entrepreneurial Innovation and the Internet."

Bret incisively captures the amazing and dynamic nature of innovation in the currently unregulated Internet ecosystem, and cautions against Washington imagining that the Federal Government can do better than free market competition can with top-down innovation micro-management from slow-moving bureaucracies.

His piece also helps spotlight the huge disconnect over where innovation comes from. 

• FreePress, Public Knowledge and other net neutrality proponents imagine that Government regulations, restrictions and limitations on the freedoms of property owners somehow magically will foster more net innovation by those who don't believe in private property.
• Google, eBay and Amazon imagine that they can increase overall Internet innovation, if the FCC would only require broadband providers and potential competitors to seek permission from the FCC, (and by proxy -- permission from Google, eBay and Amazon) before they implement any network innovations in the marketplace.      

It is naive to think that FCC regulation can surgically micromanage what innovation is good and allowed and what innovation is "bad" and discriminatory -- before the fact.

• Policing innovation in the name of non-discrimination is a slippery slope that will lead to ever increasing government regulation of the Internet.

The message is simple: Internet regulation would stifle not encourage Internet innovation.