Free markets stopped being a means to an end and became an end in itself early in the Cold War. Whether gTLDs spur "innovation" in whatever space ICANN is defin

Free markets stopped being a means to an end and became an end in itself early in the Cold War. Whether gTLDs spur "innovation" in whatever space ICANN is defining for us is irrelevant. At any rate, if ICANN was serious about "the magic of the free market" or whatever other nonsense, they would implement distributed DNS and then dissolve permanently. One quality of a healthy free market is that power is distributed such that no one entity can grab control of the entire economy. That's not the case here. Rather they are interested in: scamming money out of trademark-holders, and keeping enough power that they can act as the tool of the US government when the need arises (the need will continue to arise more and more frequently).