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Comment by unityByFreedom | Hacker News Reader

> Net Neutrality isn't partisan. Or rather, it doesn't need to be. There are reasons for both Democrats & Republicans to support it.

I completely agree. Most techies who support Trump see that removing net neutrality could worsen partisan media. The issue hasn't been raised on r/the_donald because they can't get enough people to support Ajit Pai's proposed "Internet Freedom" policy.

The only people who seem to support it are die-hard free-market folks who don't understand the internet, or, who are already invested in a business that would benefit from such a change.

Killing net neutrality will never benefit the consumer, only the big players.

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The free market argument is so frustrating to hear, and yet I do hear it from people...

You can't expect free market theory to work when you take net neutrality with one hand while giving ISPs the right to practically pen state legislation, deny access to lines and sue up and coming competitors into oblivion with the other.

You end up with the worst of both worlds: government sponsored unrestrained monopolies.

That's the underlying problem here. If most people had a reasonable amount of choice in ISPs, the large ISPs would be forced to actually provide value to compete. What we have right now, as far as Internet access goes, is not a free market; it's more along the lines of crony capitalism.

Because we have virtual monopolies/duopolies across most of the United States, customers can't get away from any sort of shady stuff their ISP pulls, meaning we have to regulate it out of existence.

This is why I oppose net neutrality on principle. In practice, however, I feel it is unfortunately necessary due to the existing regulations. The ideal solution would be to remove the existing regulations and thus remove the need for net neutrality (since new competition would finally be allowed to easily enter the market), but I simply don't forsee that happening in my lifetime.

There is misconception that "free market" means "no regulation". Actually free market theory works (perfectly) under extremely specific conditions, see for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition

Often government regulation (not intervention) can be useful to get closer to such ideal conditions for the market to work efficiently. One example is taxes that cancel externalities. Can net neutrality also be justified in that way?

So, the only possible explanations for disagreeing with you is stupidity or malice. It must be really nice to have so high confidence.

I feel strongly about this issue. If that's reflected in my choice of words, so be it.

That doesn't mean all of the above isn't simply my opinion and perception.

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