One man’s market failure is another man’s market for goods.
In other words, just because you believe a service should be offered, but is not currently being offered, does not mean that this is a failure of markets. It simply means you think there is opportunity that is not being served properly (perhaps this is an indication that you should spread your entrepreneurial wings and fill this “void”).
This was best summed up in a pithy post from Iceberg.
Which brings me to my latest hobby horse: network neutrality.
In the past, I have publicly sparred with Mike Masnick over this issue (he is the editor of Techdirt).
In short: while we see eye-to-eye on many subjects, we are miles apart on how this regulatory scheme should play out.
Yesterday he suggested that “the free market had failed the US when it came to broadband.”
However, as many of the comments point out: the telecom industry is not by any stretch of the imagination, a free-market. It is highly regulated and cumbersome to partake in. And more regulation is certainly not going to enable free enterprise to do what it does best.
For more background on this see: What To Think About Reregulation?