The New Utilities: Private Power, Social Infrastructure, and the Revival of the Public Utility Concept
The New Utilities: Private Power, Social Infrastructure, and the Revival of the Public Utility Concept
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新公用事业：私人电力、社会基础设施和公用事业概念的复兴
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发表时间：
2018
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
K. Rahman
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
K. Rahman
从围绕金融监管和太大而不能倒(TBTF)金融公司问题的新一轮争议，到美国联邦通信委员会(FCC)对互联网服务提供商的“网络中立”规定的冲突，以及最近关于谷歌、Facebook和在线平台的问题，我们正处于一场关于如何监管现代形式的私人权力的更大规模的政策和政治辩论中。这场辩论涵盖了不同的法律和政策领域，其根本问题如下：我们应该如何构思和监管新形式的集权私人权力，特别是当这些公司控制着许多社区、选民和经济行为者所依赖的获得重要服务的条款时？借鉴历史上进步时代关于私人权力和公用事业的概念，以及当前关于金融监管和网络中立的辩论，本文提供了一个总体框架来回答这个问题。
首先，文章认为，像TBTF这样的金融巨头和互联网服务提供商之所以与众不同，是因为它们代表了一种对基础设施商品的私人控制--基础设施商品构成了许多社区和选民所依赖的大部分现代社会和经济活动的支柱。其次，文章指出了21世纪公用事业监管框架的三个关键要素，该框架旨在解决私人控制基础设施产品的问题：防火墙；强加公共义务；创造公共选择。第三，白皮书将这些原则应用于互联网平台背景下关于私人权力和基础设施的紧急辩论，有助于证明它们的重要性，为如何解决谷歌、亚马逊或优步等新技术巨头提出的无数担忧提供了新的线索。这些公用事业概念为理解和竞争各种部门的私人权力提供了一个可移植的、跨实质性的法律和政策框架。第四，这种方法还为我们当前关于21世纪私人权力问题的法律框架和文献增添了一个重要的缺失补充，特别是通过重新调整商法和经济政策的方向，使其重新聚焦于权力和不平等问题。此外，这些概念有助于将越来越多的诊断不平等的法律构建的文献与开发能够消除广泛存在的经济机会、福利和权力结构性差距的机制的愿望联系起来。
From the renewed controversies over financial regulation and the problem of too-big-to-fail (TBTF) financial firms, to the clash over the FCC’s ‘net neutrality’ regulations on internet service providers, and more recent questions about Google, Facebook, and online platforms, we are in the midst of a larger policy and political debate about how to regulate modern-day forms of private power. Encompassing different areas of law and policy, the underlying issue in this debate is the following: how should we conceptualize and regulate new forms of concentrated private power, particularly when these firms control the terms of access to vital services — such as finance, broadband internet, or information — upon which many communities, constituencies, and economic actors depend? Drawing on historical Progressive Era concepts of private power and public utility, as well as current debates in financial regulation and net neutrality, this article provides an overarching framework to answer that question.
First, the article argues that what makes firms like TBTF financial giants and internet service providers distinct is that they represent a form of private control over ‘infrastructural’ goods — goods that comprise a backbone for much of modern social and economic activity, upon which many communities and constituencies depend. Second, the article identifies three key elements of a 21st century framework for public utility regulation designed to remedy this problem of private control of infrastructural goods: firewalling; imposing public obligations; and creating public options. Third, the paper, applies these principles to the emergent debates over private power and infrastructure in context of internet platforms helps demonstrate their importance, shedding new light on how to address the myriad of concerns raised by new technology giants like Google, Amazon, or Uber. These public utility concepts offer a portable, trans-substantive legal and policy framework for understanding and contesting private power in a variety of sectors. Fourth, this approach also adds an important missing complement to our current legal frameworks and literatures on the problem of private power in the 21st century, particularly by reorienting business law and economic policy back towards a focus on the problems of power and inequality. Moreover, these concepts help bridge the growing literature diagnosing the legal construction of inequality with the aspiration to develop mechanisms that can undo widespread structural disparities of economic opportunity, welfare, and power.