Owen,
From my (admittedly biased) perspective, it would seem there are two options:
A) The socalist approach B) The capitalist approach
And, generally, I would have to say that for a resource such as IP addresses and Internet registration services, option A is certainly better suited to the task at hand.
Why option A is "certainly better suited" ?
Every time someone (who me?) brings up option B, we go chasing merrily down one or more of the following ratholes:
1) we need to conserve route table space, lets charge for that, not addresses (irrelevant)
Not irrelevant. Highly relevant, but not the right solution to that problem either.
Why this is not "the right solution" ?
2) AT&T (or some other evil speculator) will buy up all the address space (and ISPs are just going to sit idly by?)
Depending on the situation, it might be difficult for them to do anything effective about it. It is a real danger, and could easily occur.
Why do you think this is "a real danger, and could easily occur" ? Yakov.