Murray Lytle P.Eng is a former Commissioner of the National Energy Board.The corruption of the English language is not a new phenomenon, and some might argue that the ease with which English words can be “conformed” to cultural changes is a strength of the language. I beg to differ.For example, gay is no longer a happy, emotional state of mind. Babies are fetuses when we want to kill them. Fascist and Nazi is anyone with whom we disagree. The list of corrupted words is a long one. Here are two that are on my mind: public interest and sustainability. What is public interest? As a former adjudicator of the public interest, I spent a good deal of time reading and thinking about this question. At a minimum, it involves balancing competing world views, preventing majority interests from crushing minority interests, understanding and defining public goods and controlling free riders from living parasitically off of the public. Defining and regulating the public interest is not an easy thing to do. For example, should ride-share programs be allowed to offer a taxi service in Calgary without having drivers undergo regulation and licensing like that of taxi cabs? Should Canadians be allowed to live under the military protection of the United States without paying additional taxes to that nation? Should drug companies be forced to allow other companies to copy their products before they have recouped the costs of research and development? Should landowners be forced to allow passage of oil wells, pipelines, and power lines over their land without a reasonable hope of compensation for damages even if the pipeline, well or powerline owner goes bankrupt?Patent and copyright laws exist to manage the free rider issues of an open economy. The tension, of course, is to balance the protection of business interests with the desire to renew the economy by Schumpeter's creative destruction. The discussion of the public interest very quickly gets to a concept called the Pareto optimum. How many roads with how many lanes should the City of Calgary provide to achieve a Pareto optimum in vehicular transportation? There are no easy answers to that question because the analysis involves examining the allocation of resources not only within today’s budget but also the budgets of a great number of tomorrows.I think that it can be fairly argued that one public good is the emotional and intellectual well being of the children in a society. Today there are any number of assaults on our children and most of these assaults come from free riders. It is alleged that the owners of large social media sites like Facebook and TicToc will not allow their children to interact with these programs, yet they are happy to structure the algorithms of the programs to entrap growing numbers of our children. They are accessing a free public good (our children), imposing a cost on them (mental health degradation) and paying nothing for the immense profit this returns to them. What are we to do?I suppose it starts by recognizing that, according to my argument, this is an issue of public interest that should be opened to regulation. I don’t argue for kicking such companies out of the public ether because that strategy doesn’t work. However, causing toxic free riders to start paying their way is clearly a public interest determination. Perhaps Mr. Trudeau would have had more luck with Bill C-10, his tilt at the social media companies, if he had discussed their free ridership in the context of juvenile mental health rather than degradation of a free press. A press that servilely accepts the constraints of government handouts is not a free press. Therefore, they are not a public good needing protection to buttress the public interest and so his legislation failed for want of public support.I am just spitballing here, but I would support a tariff on social media companies sufficient to supply and maintain the infrastructure required for young people to meet face-to-face with peers in safe environments that focus on sports and social interaction. The kinds of activities that were, in the mists of time, enjoyed by my cohort. The kinds of activities that produce stable and healthy citizens. Maybe they would just sit around in the coffee bar and text each other. I think something needs to be done for these kids beyond paying the internet bill. This is a letter I would like to sign;Dear Mr. Zuckerburg, If you are going to entrap our children in a fake social environment that is too unhealthy for your children then you must pay to remediate the damage you are knowingly doing to ours. You can capture their data and trap them as adults, but, as children, they are no longer a free public good. A few billion per year will suffice.”Who knows? The social media companies might see the positive publicity as a good thing and happily pay up. I would even let them be called Facebook Clubs.Murray Lytle P.Eng is a former Commissioner of the National Energy Board.
Murray Lytle P.Eng is a former Commissioner of the National Energy Board.The corruption of the English language is not a new phenomenon, and some might argue that the ease with which English words can be “conformed” to cultural changes is a strength of the language. I beg to differ.For example, gay is no longer a happy, emotional state of mind. Babies are fetuses when we want to kill them. Fascist and Nazi is anyone with whom we disagree. The list of corrupted words is a long one. Here are two that are on my mind: public interest and sustainability. What is public interest? As a former adjudicator of the public interest, I spent a good deal of time reading and thinking about this question. At a minimum, it involves balancing competing world views, preventing majority interests from crushing minority interests, understanding and defining public goods and controlling free riders from living parasitically off of the public. Defining and regulating the public interest is not an easy thing to do. For example, should ride-share programs be allowed to offer a taxi service in Calgary without having drivers undergo regulation and licensing like that of taxi cabs? Should Canadians be allowed to live under the military protection of the United States without paying additional taxes to that nation? Should drug companies be forced to allow other companies to copy their products before they have recouped the costs of research and development? Should landowners be forced to allow passage of oil wells, pipelines, and power lines over their land without a reasonable hope of compensation for damages even if the pipeline, well or powerline owner goes bankrupt?Patent and copyright laws exist to manage the free rider issues of an open economy. The tension, of course, is to balance the protection of business interests with the desire to renew the economy by Schumpeter's creative destruction. The discussion of the public interest very quickly gets to a concept called the Pareto optimum. How many roads with how many lanes should the City of Calgary provide to achieve a Pareto optimum in vehicular transportation? There are no easy answers to that question because the analysis involves examining the allocation of resources not only within today’s budget but also the budgets of a great number of tomorrows.I think that it can be fairly argued that one public good is the emotional and intellectual well being of the children in a society. Today there are any number of assaults on our children and most of these assaults come from free riders. It is alleged that the owners of large social media sites like Facebook and TicToc will not allow their children to interact with these programs, yet they are happy to structure the algorithms of the programs to entrap growing numbers of our children. They are accessing a free public good (our children), imposing a cost on them (mental health degradation) and paying nothing for the immense profit this returns to them. What are we to do?I suppose it starts by recognizing that, according to my argument, this is an issue of public interest that should be opened to regulation. I don’t argue for kicking such companies out of the public ether because that strategy doesn’t work. However, causing toxic free riders to start paying their way is clearly a public interest determination. Perhaps Mr. Trudeau would have had more luck with Bill C-10, his tilt at the social media companies, if he had discussed their free ridership in the context of juvenile mental health rather than degradation of a free press. A press that servilely accepts the constraints of government handouts is not a free press. Therefore, they are not a public good needing protection to buttress the public interest and so his legislation failed for want of public support.I am just spitballing here, but I would support a tariff on social media companies sufficient to supply and maintain the infrastructure required for young people to meet face-to-face with peers in safe environments that focus on sports and social interaction. The kinds of activities that were, in the mists of time, enjoyed by my cohort. The kinds of activities that produce stable and healthy citizens. Maybe they would just sit around in the coffee bar and text each other. I think something needs to be done for these kids beyond paying the internet bill. This is a letter I would like to sign;Dear Mr. Zuckerburg, If you are going to entrap our children in a fake social environment that is too unhealthy for your children then you must pay to remediate the damage you are knowingly doing to ours. You can capture their data and trap them as adults, but, as children, they are no longer a free public good. A few billion per year will suffice.”Who knows? The social media companies might see the positive publicity as a good thing and happily pay up. I would even let them be called Facebook Clubs.Murray Lytle P.Eng is a former Commissioner of the National Energy Board.
