[rpd] IPv4 Soft Landing BIS

[Jackson Muthili]

On Sat, Jul 29, 2017 at 2:15 PM, Mark Tinka <mark.tinka at seacom.mu>
wrote:
>>
>> On 28/Jul/17 21:02, Owen DeLong wrote:
>>
>> Let’s use a better analogy… This is more like a store being
>> operated in a time of shortage. Let’s use eggs for the
>> example.
>>
>> As a store owner, you know that there is a looming shortage of
>> eggs because of some horrible disease that has afflicted all of
>> the local chickens and egg production is less than 1/4 of
>> normal.
>>
>> Would you limit the number of cartons of eggs each customer
>> can buy and prohibit customers from getting in line again if
>> they need more eggs? Would you tell the commercial bakery down
>> the street that you will not sell them 12 dozen eggs because
>> you might have families coming in tomorrow that might need
>> eggs?
>>
>> No, you’re going to pocket the cash as fast as you can and
>> sell the eggs to whoever wants to buy them.
>
> Not to go completely off-topic, and certainly irrelevant to the
> ongoing discussion about this policy proposal, but; I (and a few
> others on this list, I'm sure) spent some of their early
> childhood growing up during some kind of war in their country.
> For me, it was when Obote was being ousted by Museveni, 1985,
> Uganda. Rationing of goods and food was the norm at pretty much
> every shop, large and small.
>
> When I lived in Zimbabwe, 2005 - 2007, rationing of goods and
> food was the norm at pretty much every shop, large and small.
>
> Even now, in South Africa, there are certain items on the
> shelves - in supermarkets - that will have a notice attached to
> them to limit the number of units a single person can purchase,
> in case of a national shortage, e.g., milk.
>
> In pure capitalism theory, one wants to get rid of capacity as
> quickly as possible, as it's cash in the hand and makes business
> sense (the same way I want to get rid of as much bandwidth as I
> can when I build that capacity). But as I've seen in recent
> decades, for some reason or other, it isn't always the case.
>
> Again, I'm just questioning the analogy, not the policy
> proposal... still making my mind up about the latter.

I admire your subtlety and rationale behind your reasoning.

A scarce resource needs to be distributed fairly.

The situation we are in now can result in a few big companies
depleting the entire continent's scarce resource at the expense of
those smaller but growing companies that will need but will not
afford. Arguments about imaginary operators are flawed. There is
current many small operators that constitute majority of AfriNIC
membership who will be maligned at the expense of those that can
potentially consume most of the scarce resource.

We must apply the principle of distributive justice toward a
resource that has become scarce. It is only fair.

J

>
> Mark.