Get Ready for the Internet Robber Barons

[Commentary] The United Nations has long craved the power to tax, and the Obama Administration's decision to give up US oversight of the Internet domain-name system and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, may end up giving the UN that power.

There are political and strategic issues -- involving security, privacy and censorship -- associated with international control of the Internet. Should the U.N. end up in charge, it would have a chokehold on the global economy and a vast stream of revenue that would make it even more unaccountable than it already is. Can anyone doubt that within just the next few decades the Internet will be the essential infrastructure for participation in even the smallest segment of the global economy? The revenue potential associated with controlling the "rivers" of the 21st-century-and-beyond will be enormous and will finance an ever-expanding international bureaucracy, likely under the aegis of the United Nations.

The robber barons of the 13th century were finally stopped only when the Rhine League, consisting of merchants and aristocrats, banded together to tear down their castles and hang them. The robber barons of the 21st century may be much more difficult to deal with.

[Borden is a professor of financial economics at the University of Nebraska/Kearney.]