ost-reducing benefits of a successful innovation, while leaving the incumbent to bear the costs of most unsuccessful investments on its own. Why would investment not then stagnate?" Unbundled access also reduces the investment incentives of new entrants as well as incumbents. TELRIC bases UNE access prices on the costs of a hypothetical, most efficient network. Justice Breyer observed that this pricing approach essentially guarantees that new entrants will find it more cost-effective to obtain unbundled access to elements of the existing network than to build or buy those network elements elsewhere. Furthermore, new entrants must take into account the fact that any future technological improvements will cause UNE access rates to fall still further. Thus, any firm considering building its own facilities faces the real possibility that regulation will place it at a cost disadvantage, as TELRIC ensures that other competitors will be able to take advantage of any cost reductions that take place in the future without having to undertake the risk of making any investments. This not only will harm any new entrants who invest in facilities; it also induces firms to compete by sharing the existing network even though lower-cost alternatives exist. Although the FCC claims that unbundled access "will sometimes 'serve as a transitional arrangement until fledgling competitors could develop a customer base and complete the construction of their own networks," Justice Breyer asks, "Why, given the pricing rules, would those 'fledgling competitors' ever try to fly on their own?" (Verizon, 535 U.S. at 550-51, quoting FCC 1999i, p. 3700). Last, Justice Breyer acknowledged that unbundled access leads to an extremely thin form of competition: That is because firms that share existing facilities do not compete in respect to the facilities that they share, any more than several grain producers who auction their grain at a single jointly owned market compete in respect to auction services. Yet rules that combine a strong monetary incent