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FB: Imagine if they'd have applied this principle earlier: FED EXP would have been prohibited ... and airways ...
They did apply that model earlier, but interstate regulation of ground and air transportation was effectly dismantled by the Reagan Administration as soon as they came in in 1980. It was one factor in America's economic recovery. When they speak of the deregulation in the Reagan Revolution, that was most of it. Previously, the situation was right out of Atlas Shrugged. Carriers filed tariffs for rates to haul freight over specific routes. Anyone could challenge the tariff and the ICC would decide. The ICC could investigate on its own, of course. So, if you make huarache sandals in Albuquerque and you have a market in Boston, and I have a truck, I can carry your footwear from A to B -- but no stopping in Cincinnati along the way. And if Ed Thompson makes "Jamaican Beach Sandals" and has Wolf carrying them from Albuquerque to Boston, then Ed can sue Wolf for the low rate I give you, or you can sue Wolf forcing him to carry yours or Ed can file a complaint against you for an unfair rate or I can do that to Wolf. We lived like that for 100 years under the Interstate Commerce Act. And as the Interstate Commerce Clause is still understood now as then, it could apply to anything... and does... Just that the ICC was demobilized under President Reagan.
You are old enough to remember REA Express. Before World War I, there were freight forwarders. They gathered small lots all over town, hired a railroad car, packed it for the railroad, and the train took it to some city where another freight company unloaded it and delivered it. Before interstate highways, this was highly effective and profitable for everyone. When the USA entered World War I, the federal government nationalized the railroads -- and the freight forwarders. (They also seized all radio receivers and transmitters.) After the war, they gave the railroads back. but kept all the freight forwarders under one company, the Railway Express Agency. Agency, as in government agency. It was nominally "private" but under ICC regulations, there was no competition. It was a hassle for UPS in the early days, but UPS finally won in the marketplace. Constant bankruptcies and reorganizations finally killed REA in the mid-1970s.
Telecommunication (radio and television) is still regulated along these lines.
The reason you have a cell phone now and for a few years you had an answering machine is because of the Modified Final Judgment of Judge Bell that broke up the legal Bell monopoly. They had "car phones" and answering machines and fax and data lines -- but no one could afford to use them. You must remember 300 baud modems and Xmodem protocol. Hackers invented them to utilize the voice grade lines because "data grade" was a business rate service. Businesses paid more for service so that consumers could pay less, in return for which, of course, Bell enjoyed a monopoly.
I'm just saying, these unificators did not invent anything: they're just trying to implement a known model, and, yes, it is the Soviet agriculture model.
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