Reed Hundt Quotes
Everything important happens on the margins.
“Margins” means edges. This quotation is very important for understanding the politics of telecommunications. In most subjects of political attention, it is important to observe what the majority of people should be doing and to look for national or regional trends. However, in technology in general and communications technology in particular, the important trends and occurrences almost always occur with a small group or a few people who first utilize, develop, and improve a technology. That technology then very rapidly diffuses into the society as a whole with all the regulatory and political problems that occur. So politically we must watch and regulate the margins because if not, technological progress occurs much faster than political progress. See {633622}.
Reed Hundt, Chairman, Federal Communications Commissions (Democrat), Describing communications technology, Lecture, Georgia Tech University, April 2005
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Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. The nature of telephone technology made it easy for companies to obtain monopolies for different areas of the country. When there is a monopoly, there is a huge tendency for the controlling company to charge very high prices and have poor customer service as the usual competition required for quality performance under capitalism is nonexistant. So in 1890, there was the same resentment of the telephone companies, that existed over a century later when there was still a monopoly. Regulation helped somewhat, but the capabilities of the monopolist began to include lobbying and campaign contributions so that typically, in the 21st century, the local telephone companies had much control over the State Commissions that were supposed to regulate them. Long distance service, whose monopoly was broken up by the Federal Courts became a wonderful service for customers and the prices were a tiny fraction of what they had been under their old monopoly.
Regulators, like any other group of people, with the exception of an inventor or innovator and his/her team, are ALWAYS way behind the innovators. However, typically the regulators are not even up on innovations after their creation for several years. They generally are not appointed or hired for their technical skills, and Congress rarely provides enough of a budget to hire enough staff to give them the time to keep up with the field. For a professor in a University, this alone requires about half of his time. No agency can allocate that kind of time. Worse, is the ultimate regulators are the legislators—Congress at the Federal level. They often do not invest enough time to read the regulatory legislation upon which they vote, much less keep up with the fields they regulate.
- Born: March 3, 1948
- Nationality: American
- Profession: Public Servant
Reed Eric Hundt is an American attorney who served as chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission from November 29, 1993 to November 3, 1997. Appointed by President Bill Clinton, he served for most of Clinton's first term. He was succeeded by William Kennard.
