m "unfair" competition from the giant cable companies, Bell companies, and wireless carriers. If this fails, new legislation could be drafted-repeating the history of the Robinson Patman Act in 1936-in the telecom post-2000 "depression." Even the Bell companies are far from secure. If the new VoIP services over cable induce subscribers to drop their traditional local service, the Bell companies may see their revenues continue to decline unless they can retain customers through an aggressive broadband strategy. If they fail in this attempt, they too could become advocates of protective regulation, A Look Back and a Look Forward arguing, for example, that the new cable company telephone services com- pete "unfairly" because the cable companies have not had to suffer the bur- dens of being the carrier of "last resort" or to support the failing CLECs with below-cost wholesale services. The dynamic technological change in this sector could leave many companies exposed to the cruel winds of change from which they would be induced to seek government protection. The economic lesson from the history of regulation is that regulation and competition are a bad emulsion. Once the conditions for competition exist, it is best for regulators to abandon the field altogether. This is par- ticularly true in a sector that is undergoing rapid technological change and therefore requires new entry and new capital. The politics of regulation favor maintaining the status quo, not triggering creative destruction. U.S. Telecom Regulators as Tax Collectors The regulation of prices and entry conditions generally presumes the threat or existence of a "natural monopoly" or a "dominant" market position. But in the current telecom marketplace, there is SO much competition across platforms-fixed-wire, wireless, and cable television-that carriers are not likely to be able to exercise monopoly power in traditional voice/data ser- vices or in the new broadband services. Indeed, it is not clear that regula- tors are constraining prices in any of thes