Digitizing communications created millions of jobs and vast wealth. This innovation had been stifled for a century by a Federal monopoly that mandated rotary telephones. In 1982, the courts enforced the Constitution, breaking the Federal communications monopoly.
The history of digitizing communications will be repeated in transportation.
- 1919: President Wilson, by Executive Order, socialized and monopolized communications, power, and transportation infrastructures as “natural monopolies.”
- 1968: The technology existed decades before commercialization, see Mother of All Demos (watch for 4 minutes starting at minute 29 if pressed for time).
- 1982: Courts declared the Federal communications monopoly unconstitutional.
- 1983: Frank Caufield asked Jim Kimsey to help run a company he invested in. What became AOL (and others) began commercializing the shift to digital communications.
- 1989: Federal controls were restored to free.
- 1990: Web servers hit the tipping point.
- 1994: Public awareness hit a tipping point after the Today Show, “Allison, what is the Internet anyway?” aired.
- 2007: Digital cell phones on digital networks swept aside cell phones on the analog network.
Digitizing mobility will create millions of jobs and vast wealth. Transportation innovation has been stifled for a century by a Federal monopoly that still mandates the 25 mpg efficiency of the Model-T.
- 1916: Violating the Constitution’s “post Roads” restriction, The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1916 removed efficiency as a market force and triggered the process that resulted in:
- Creating an unconstitutional Federal highway monopoly that has blocked network innovation for a century.
- Replacing 46% of the 400+ ton-mpg railroads with 25 mpg roads.
- Foreign oil addiction.
- Oil-wars since 1991.
- Climate Change.
Q: Why were Federal monopolies over energy, communications, and transportation created?
A: With the 16th, 17th (1913), and 18th (1919) Amendments the Constitutional restraints on Federal consolidation were broken. The Constitution’s Divided Sovereignty (Federal over war, the people and States over crimes and commerce) was broken.
- Selling a beer became a Federal crime.
- The great innovations of Ford, Edison, Bell, and the Wright Brothers became locked into Federal monopolies.
- The unlimited taxing powers of the Federal government to fund its limited sovereignty to wage war and suppress paths to war began to be mixed with the commercial self-interests of those funding elections.
- The more power that was consolidated by Federal authorities, the more power was desired.
- A century-long path was created leading to Climate Change, foreign oil addiction, perpetual oil-wars, $22 trillion in Federal debt, oil-dollar funded terrorism, and more.
Recommendation: Repeal the 17th Amendment and enforce the 21st Amendment’s repeal of the 18th Amendment. Restore the Constitution’s Divided Sovereignty.
Sovereignty is a monopoly of violence, the power to coerce compliance:
- People sovereign over all liberties not enumerated as sacrificed in written Constitutions.
- States sovereign over crimes and commerce.
- Federal sovereignty (monopoly of violence) over issues of war and paths to war.
It is in the nature of governments to be a monopoly. Constitutions limit government monopolies to suppressing wars, crimes, and civil disputes which cannot be resolved by moral conduct. The US Constitution’s Preamble, post Roads, Necessary and Proper, Commerce, Ports, and Amendments 9 and 10 clearly document what Madison and Hamilton explained in the Federalist Papers:
Federalist #51 (Madison):
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
Divided Sovereignty, two types of governments to monopolize two types of violence, is mandated by the Constitution of United States of America:
- War: The Federal government is granted sovereignty to monopolize violence to coerce peace and wage war.
- Crimes and Commerce: States’ governments granted sovereignty to punish crimes and enforce resolution to commercial disputes.
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”
Federalist #46 (Madison):
The federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers, and designed for different purposes.
Federalist #51 (Madison):
“Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
Federalist #28 (Hamilton):
“Power being almost always the rival of power, the general government will at all times stand ready to check the usurpations of the state governments, and these will have the same disposition towards the general government. The people, by throwing themselves into either scale, will infallibly make it preponderate. If their rights are invaded by either, they can make use of the other as the instrument of redress. How wise will it be in them by cherishing the union to preserve to themselves an advantage which can never be too highly prized!”
American Constitutions divided monopolies of violence between two types of governments to monopolize two types of violence, wars and crimes.
[The people have found it necessary to use these two types of governments to wage war on the other in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.]