We'll find out in due course whether Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole can deregulate as boldly as Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, who kicked off serious economic deregulation in the 1970s. Nor can the decommissioning of America be blamed on right-wing capitulation to big business. We've just learned the hard lessons of commissariat collectivism, in much the same way as the Hungarians and the Czechs. Consumers end-run the regulators. Fed up with prices that force them to subsidize residential consumers, factories and hospitals cogenerate electricity in their heating plants.
Technology outwits the regulators.
Regulators are cannibals. As commissions proliferate, they undercut each other. Direct broadcast satellite, cable's competitor, is booming under the hands-off watch of another bureau of the same federal commission. Regulators invest badly. They direct utilities to put billions in overpriced power plants, inefficient wires and extravagant service out to the very last ranch at the end of nowhere.