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C00002 00002	THE MORALITY OF THE PUBLIC POLICY COMMUNITY
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THE MORALITY OF THE PUBLIC POLICY COMMUNITY


	There is this thing that calls itself the "public policy
community", and sometimes it seems to me to be too big for its
boots.  It seems to set no limits on its right to plan other
people's lives.  Of course, it sees that some plans may encounter
resistance to their execution, but if this resistance can be overcome
by "public education" and "suitable incentives", then it is regarded
similarly to a resistant layer of rock.  If the plan involves
denying the public something, for its own good of course, by
preventing it from being produced, then probably there will be
no resistance.

	Consider CB radio.  It arrived in the U.S. without much
notice by the then nascent public policy community.  It now
has too many users to be eliminated by bureaucratic fiat, so
it suffers only occasional sneers from the community.  In Britain,
however, there has never been legal CB and the public policy
community has evidently decided that CB is a bad idea.  Unfortunately
for them, many thousands of CB radios have been imported from
the U.S. and are in illegal use, and there is strong pressure for
the legalization of CB.

	CB is a mixed case, because it involves the use of a public
resource - namely the airways.