[LINK] Would making the internet "Sender pays" help?

[Jim Birch]

Kim Holburn wrote:

> Would making the internet "Sender pays" help, you know, stop spam and
> stuff?
>
>
> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/12/sender-pays-rule-doesnt-necessarily-increase-telecom-investment/
>
> > Of course, correlation is not causation. The observed correlation could
> be based on other factors, such as a country's average income or its region
> of the world. But Dourado found that even after controlling for these
> factors, there was an inverse correlation between long-distance billing
> rates and telecommunications development. In short, when you give a
> telecommunications firm more money, there's no guarantee it will invest the
> cash in improving its network.
>

There's an interesting piece on Paul Krugman's blog today on this kind of
simplistic "evidence" approach, in his field of macroeconomics.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/evidence-in-macroeconomics/

You can't take a simplistic correlation of a few factors across wildly
different environments as a proof of anything if you do not consider the
(known or suspected) real drivers in each individual environment, along
with your preferred handy statistics.  We all know that businesses will
invest to increase projected future profits and government invest to meet
social expectations, so these factors would need to be looked at in each
individual case: Does utility income level provide a better explanation of
investment level than these well known factors.  Which is more or less the
end conclusion anyway:

"Rather, Dourado suggests the quality of a nation's telecommunications
network is dependent on the quality of its domestic institutions. Some
countries have telecommunications industries that efficiently put new
revenues to work on network improvements. Other countries have corrupt or
incompetent telecommunications incumbents that will upgrade their networks
slowly no matter how much money they're given. He argues that regulatory
reforms, not more cash, are needed to improve global network quality."

This is essentially the situation of Telstra cosily sitting on the copper
network for a few decades because there was no income incentive to upgrade
it.  I guess a government-driven investment solution to the problem like
the NBN isn't exactly what a libertarian outfit like Mercatus would
advocate (but there you go.)

Jim