The Cato Institute claims to be an advocate of free enterprise, by which we are meant to think free and open competition. (That's the logo from one of their standard online products.)

Nope.

They are, in fact, huge supporters of untrammeled business power, of oligopoly. Hey, where do you think their funding comes from, rabbits?

Here's a great example. It's a blog they call Tech Liberation. It takes a few clicks to learn this is a Cato shop, but they're not really hiding it.

The piece is by Adam Thierer (left), who works full-time at Cato as "director of telecommunication studies.". Its theme is the latest round of telecom mergers. Its message is don't worry, be happy.

"We can safely conclude that the communications / broadband networking business can be very competitive with 2 or 3 or even 4 major backbone providers in each region providing some mix of voice, video and data services."

Evidence for this? A Wall Street Journal piece noting that SBC wants to get into cable television. Other than that, a lot of chirping crickets. And some very nasty lies.

Want a taste?

The networking business is for big boys. REALLY big boys. And there are only going to be so many big boys that will ever be able to stick with it and turn a profit to be able to keep those networks functioning properly while also planning for future upgrades. We learned this lesson the hard way over the past decade as we witnessed the FCC conduct a grand experiment with infrastructure sharing in an effort to create more competition in the telecom business. The idea was simple: Let’s provide small telecom resellers every possible incentive to share the networks owned by incumbent telecom companies so that we can create the illusion of competition. It was obvious that this scheme was never going to produce any legitimate new network competitors, but what was so interesting about this misguided episode was that it didn’t even produce any reliable “fake” competitors either. The resellers that were given access to existing networks were never able to concoct a legitimate business model to convince investors (or even that many customers) that they were worthwhile investments. These resellers create networks built of paper instead of honest-to-God networks. As a result, almost all of them have gone under. Again, the hard lesson here was that the networking business is not a Mom-and-Pop operation.

That's one paragraph of Adam's, cut-and-pasted as written. (That key marked Enter, Adam? It makes multiple paragraphs. Try it sometime.) But don't just buy my interpretation. Please, read the whole thing.

The CLECs and small ISPs were not killed off by nature. They were not killed by the forces of competition. They were killed off by government refusing to do its job, at the behest of lobbyists from the "big boys." The big boys refused to obey the 1996 Telecom Act and re-sell capacity. The government let them get away with it.

Here are some facts, Adam.

• It is NOT expensive to build wireless broadband infrastructure.
• It is cheap and getting cheaper.
• The Bells know this.
• Think of it as Moore's Law in action.

This is why huge corporations spend millions on lobbyists, and no doubt (indirectly, of course) on people like you, sir. (Nice suit, by the way.) They want to convince the rest of us that up is down, that telecommunications is ruinously capital intensive, that the Bell System should be put back together again (this time without any nasty price controls) and that resistance is futile.

The test of all this will likely come from outside the U.S., because Adam and his cohorts have convinced the elites, who in turn control our politics, that oligopolists should control the American economy.

The test will come from countries that are requiring competition in Europe, those that are enabling multiple wireless systems like China and India, and those who don't have any choice, as in Africa and South America.

Those countries are going to grab broadband wireless with both hands. They will allow free competition. They will encourage it. They will, if necessary, mandate it. They will create as many cellular licenses as they need to keep competition going. They will endorse WiFi and WiMax.

And within a decade, probably less, the people of Mogadishu, of Gabarone, and of the Indian hinterland will be able to get more bits, for less money, than residential customers in Silicon Valley.

Count on it, Adam.