Ask HN: Should we ban free shipping? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should we ban free shipping?

Most people on HN seem to support net neutrality. But what about delivery neutrality?

If Netflix can't provide free streaming by paying to send you packets, then Amazon shouldn't be able to provide free shipping by paying to send you packages.

Think about how unfair this is to small businesses who can't negotiate such deals with shipping companies, and have to charge their customers more for delivery. Surely, they won't stand a chance against Amazon if this continues.

Given that most of you want to ban free streaming, would you also want to ban free shipping?

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When it comes to the internet, I’ve already paid my ISP for the delivery of those packets.

If package delivery was something I’d already paid my Package Delivery Provider (PDP) for. Packed Delivery Neutrality would mean:

- I wouldn’t want them picking and choosing who I got my packages from.

- If my PSP also sold goods, I wouldn’t want them purposely slowing down packages come from a competitor.

I'm only paying my ISP so much money because there are no other options (thanks to net neutrality). If there were cheaper subsidized options, I would highly consider them.

What if I only order stuff from Amazon and don't want to pay a PDP for delivery from other stores? Should the government make that illegal?

> I'm only paying my ISP so much money because there are no other options (thanks to net neutrality).

No. This is thanks to you living under a monopoly, which seems to be a natural equilibrium state for infrastructure. Net neutrality has nothing to do with monopoly holder extracting as much as they can get away with. You would see exactly the same if you were getting your water from mostly unregulated private company.

Then why the hell are we fighting for net neutrality when the real problem is that ISPs are monopolies? Net neutrality won't do anything to fix that.

Because net neutrality is an important issue on its own, that's why.

You don't close fire departments left and right just because they don't fix poverty or world hunger.

Neutrality is a fix for a monopoly. Monopolies won't get fixed because of the geographical scale and the politics involved.

The UK 'unbundled' its internet about 15 years ago, where each (usually around 10 in urban areas) ISP has equal access to the line between a local exchange and the end user. They also buy bandwidth on the big pipes between the local exchanges and the internet, or lays their own pipes. It's the true fix, where neutrality is a realistic fix (that you might need either way).

  I'm only paying my ISP so much money because there are no other options

In France we have different operators. Is there really no competition where you live ?

In the US it is pretty rare to have a choice of Internet service provider.

Do I get a point for spotting the straw man?

Don't net neutrality advocates precisely want to prevent Netflix from subsidizing access to their sevice through some ISPs?

This is like paying to have a package shipped and amazon raising prices because the shippers charge amazon for picking up the package.

Yes ! Even more, we could ban everything produced by private companies. Once unfair competition gone, maybe our governments will be able to finally launch new services

Small businesses can offer free shipping, they just have to build it into their prices, the way AMZN does.

B-but it’s called neutrality that means it’s neutral right?

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