On 8/9/19 4:03 PM, Matthew Petach wrote:
> ...apparently Amazon has become a public utility
> now?
>
> I look forward with bemusement to the PUC
> tariff filings for AWS pricing. ^_^;;
[...]
And it wouldn't be the PUC, as Amazon is a company national in scope.
It would be something like the FCC. Public Utility Commissions are at
the local (usually county) or state level.
That was somewhat the point.
Public utilities make some amount
of sense when there's a local natural monopoly.
With a global company, there's no such thing
as a local natural monopoly in play; how would
you assign oversight to a global entity? Which
"public" would be the ones being protected?
The city of Seattle, WA, where Amazon is
headquartered? The State of Washington?
The United States, at a federal level? What
about the "public" that uses Amazon in all
the other countries of the world?
There's no way to make a global entity a
regulated public utility; we don't have an
organization that has that level of oversight
across country boundaries, unless you start
thinking about entities that can enforce *treaties*
between countries.
And I'm not sure I'd want our Ambassadors
being the ones at the table deciding how best
to regulate Amazon. :/