NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Mr Rogers on Externalities... was "Captain Kangaroo" on File Sharing
Its a beautiful day in this network neighborhood, a beautiful day in this neighborhood... Hi neighbor. Glad we could be together again. Today we are going to talk about externalities. Now, I know when you walk your dog, you are happy to let little Mr Tinkel wander around this beautiful neighborhood, smelling the lamppost and barking at other dogs. And when Mr Tinkel does his business on someone else's lawn, well, someone has to clean it up. If you clean it up, you're doing the right thing. You're being responsible. Bob Dog does the same. But if you leave that little present from Mr Tinkel on your neighbor's lawn, now someone else has to clean it up. This is called an "Externality". A big word which means your action has a negative effect on others. Thus King Friday XIII has to pay X the Owl to clean up Mr Tinkel's little gifts, and the rest of neighborhood suffers. Now I notice you are getting a lot of packages from Mr Torrent's delivery service sent to your house, using it to share stuff with friends around the world instead of having your deliveries from Mr. McFeely. If its your stuff which you are sharing, Mr Torrent saves you money. Lets say that Mr Torrent says "I will save you $1 when you want to share this with everybody, because you will no longer have to pay Mr. McFeely to deliver this stufff". You would say "sure". But what if Mr Torrent, in saving you $1, takes a dime from 500 people? [1] Well, to you, this doesn't matter. Mr Torrent has helped you, and you saved a dollar. But to society as a whole, Mr Torrent cost everybody else $49. This is an externality. So you understand why the people who's dimes are stolen are naturally mad at Mr Torrent, and would want him to go away? Especially when he promises to deliver stuff for thousands of people? Now lets say you are getting stuff from Mr Torrent. Mr Torrent has a lot of connections, and can deliver it to you very quickly by using lots of trucks. But in the process, he cloggs the roads for everybody else, because each truck causes its own bit of congestion, and he also sends twice as many trucks as Mr. McFeely to move the same amount of stuff. Your stuff gets there, but everyone else sees a traffic jam and gets stuck in traffic [2]. So you understand why the people in charge of the roads want special traffic lights to reduce the number of trucks Mr Torrent can place on the road? Again, this is an externality. Now I'm not saying "Don't Use Mr Torrent". Mr Torrent can save YOU money when shipping your stuff around, and get you stuff really fast. He's good at that. For you, he is cheaper and faster than Mr. McFeely. But don't be suprised when those who are responsible for the roads Mr Torrent is clogging, and those who's dimes Mr Torrent is stealing, decide to act against Mr Torrent. This could be as simple as putting Mr Torrent's trucks onto a country road away from the other traffic, placing spike-strips in the path of his deliery trucks, or charging you for the extra trucks Mr Torrent sends from your house. Or it could be simply using a rocket launcher to blow up Mr Torrent's and if an occasional car gets hit by shrapnel, those who own the roads say 'oh well, thats the breaks, we'll just buy off the police'. The lesson is simple: externalities create conflict. Especially inefficient externalities, that is, the cost you impose on others is significantly more than the benefit you receive. So now you understand, neighbor, how externalities can cause neighbors to dislike each other. In the end, I believe the best way to deal with externalities is to shift the costs back to a responsible party, often with the costs magnified to make the effect clear. So please pick up after Mr Tinkels, unless you want a flaming gift bag courtesy of Lady Elaine Fairchilde on your porch. Thank you Neighbor. [1] If you believe Brett Glass's numbers that bandwidth to a retail ISP costs $100/Mbps/month, but to a colo it costs $2/Mbps/month, and the bulk P2P program is perfectly symmetric (no extra uploading/work), its exactly a 50-1 magnification in aggregate cost. This is an unavoidable externality as long as bandwidth costs to a retail ISP are significantly greater than bandwidth costs to a colo facility. Even assuming 10x rather than 50x, the math for bulk P2P is awful: it costs the system $10 for every $1 saved. And as it costs 100x to send 1 fiber to 100 places, but 1x to send 100 fibers to 1 place, this externality will amost certainly remain. [2] Again, this is unavoidable if the bulk-data P2P program uses multiple TCP connections and isn't really REALLY clevel about doing congestion control. And as such would reduce the performance of the P2P app, there is no real incentive for the P2P programs to do such things anyway.