So the essence of it for the regulator would be that you’re allowed to talk about increasing competition but not allowed to talk about decreasing competition.

Makes sense. Thanks.

Private firms love to conspire against the public. Their firms are a conspiracy against the public from the outset. But in a competitive market, that conspiracy against the public serves the public better than anything else, including as Smith observed conspiracies for the public. That is, if we wanted to help the public out, at least in a competitive market, the best way to do so is help yourself out.

People outside business routinely underestimate how much collegiality there is in business, (I’m thinking particularly of small business) and it’s not in an attempt to raise prices, it’s in an attempt to lower costs – from which everyone wins.) Businesses too usually overestimate the extent to which they have an interest in competing as opposed to cooperating (again I’m talking not of attempts to raise prices or do down their customers, but attempts to help each other out in other – cost reducing – ways.)

I suppose this success was partly due to those CEOs talking to each other.

But why doesn’t it turn into Smith’s conspiracy against the public? When airlines (and they are just the latest) do it they are fined mind-boggling amounts. What, precisely, is the distinction?

The piece was run up very quickly and wasn’t trying to be too programmatic, but the point you make on club goods is a good one.

Thanks for the responses Patrick. On point 6. I wasn’t thinking of any new departure, just the fact that, just as Harry has pointed out we shouldn’t ignore the contribution that clubs can make, so at a time of great change and the opening up of new possibilities, we shouldn’t ignore the role that philanthropy could play. It’s of course much more vigorous and better funded in the US than here.

One of the points Clay Shirky, whom I’ve linked to on this blog, makes is that Web 2.0 makes new connections possible, by lowering the cost of failing to make them. To clarify, most meetups on meetup.com are a failure – they don’t go ahead. But the fact that they can be mooted at such low cost on meetup.com means that vastly more of them go ahead than might otherwise. Meetup isn’t philanthropic, but perhaps there are many philanthropic analogues of this. But I was really trying to open up discussion, I don’t have anything very definitive to add.

1 At least cut back copyright extensions to something reasonable, like 50 years capped, for example, or the author’s lifetime, or both.

2 Making all government-funded code, besides security-sensitive stuff, open-source seems like a no-brainer.

3 An easy answer would be to have more 2020-type things. I would prefer to have summer-camp style scholarship programs for bright and/or dedicated but ‘disadvantaged’ young people to spend eg 4 or 6 weeks a summer on a physics or engineering or chemistry or maths ‘camp’ with eg second and third year uni students doing most of the facilitating/teaching – this would increase breadth and depth of networks and radically increase penetration.

4 Yes but have you read Yes Minister? Yes, absolutely, and organisations like ASIC need to do this with urgency. Also it is tempting to say that draft legislation should be on the web for at least (eg) three weeks prior to parliamentary debate so that the community can comment. The downside is that in the cases of most legislation, ‘stakeholders’ already comment and non-’stakeholders’ are often rarely able to understand what the legislation in question achieves – maybe this is where the focus should be: maybe the EM should be available on the web in fixed-wiki form so that the original text can’t change but people can insert comments wherever they like?

That is just in relation to legislation which is not really your point – but in the case of legislation this is already broadly within the current processes – it would be much more complicated to insert web-2.0 into actual departments. OTOH, much more could be done within departments, for a start.

5 Google has already done this and facebook is completing it. There is room for work such as your ideas on standards, but I would focus on improving the ability of the general public to understand the information already available to them – ie education.

6 As opposed to the public goods it already focuses on? I assume you mean funding the development of software, etc? Many philanthropic institutions will do this indirectly, eg through university funding. Maybe research funded to at least 50% by tax-exempt entities should be compulsorily open-source and not able to be fully patented/copyrighted, or perhaps compulsorily licenced for non-profit use? This risks conflicting with other goals in this sector but perhaps could be managed.

You pay a fixed fee for access to cover the costs of the club and then have unlimited access at zero price. The ABC could be run along these lines – a $100 fee per year then all the ABC media you like.

Club goods can nicely fill gaps in the supply of public goods – e.g. private nature reserves owned by a club – that have members who have conservation interests stronger than the average tax payer who meets general community needs by voting for a party which reflects his/her average conservation interest.