Why I don't support Net Neutrality
think-liberty.com
think-liberty.com
I wanted to take a moment to discuss these arguments honestly
And then the author doesn't address AT&T blocking Skype, Comcast blocking P2P, Telecoms blocking Google Wallet, and on and on.
This is basically an article of whataboutisms. "ISP's aren't the problem with Freedom of Speech, companies are". Ya but if a private company (Facebook, Google, etc) blocks dissenting opinions, we can simply chose to read/visit another site. That's the point. If your ISP blocks a site, you don't have the choice to get another ISP.
ISPs aren't the only kind of company that has high barriers to entry and tends toward a natural monopoly/duopoly.
There are only 2 major search engines (Google and Bing, DDG uses Bing), only 1 major video sharing site (and 2 minor sites), only a few messaging services, only 1 major link sharing site (HN is great but not competitive with reddit).
Worse, most of these services are owned by the same few big tech companies.
The thing is AT&T and Comcast ended their blocking of Skype and P2P voluntarily once their actions were exposed. Turns out American customers generally don't like censorship. Made for a very bad public image. These ISP's probably then realized it was more profitable to NOT block packets.
You can still have local governments not give ISPs local monopoly over laid cables, but you can also have net neutrality, which says that companies shouldn't be messing with the traffic that passes through their pipes. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
Also, some have mentioned in other similar threads that sometimes the monopoly is (sort of) natural because no other ISP even wants to lay the cables in a certain area. I do believe that to be true, but I don't think it's "case closed," either.
Many other countries have solved this issue by either mandating that whoever is laying the cables would then have to license them to competitors (which could also bring them their return on investment faster), or they could have a public-private partnership, where the government invests alongside the initial company that is laying the cables, to reduce its costs, and then similarly they license them to new competitors later on.
Sure, only 21 states codify telecom monopolies into law, but in the rest without those laws, how much more choice is there? Let's not count the states where the government paid for dark fiber which is leased to the corporations to provide service for customers, because that seems to be taking the correct route. If that were to happen in other states, it would necessarily require either (1) taking over the telecom infrastructure and leasing it back to them, or (2) expensive buyouts of the telecom's infrastructure. It seems simpler and cheaper to regulate a monopoly in this case.
EDIT: Correction: the laws in these 21 states don't codify monopolies per se, but they make it impossible for cities to build their own infrastructure on some absurd basis that the cities are anti-competitive with respect to corporations:
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkvn4x/the-21-law...
EDIT2: Ignore any argument I was trying to make, as I may or may not have contradicted myself based on my mental shortcomings with regard to concentration and lack of medication.
Is this a problem that cannot be solved?
All in all net neutrality is just good regulation. It's basically disallowing ISPs from abusing their natural monopoly to extract rents from other companies. If you're going to regulate anything in this market at all that seems like a bare minimum.
Cable is like fiefdoms of old Europe and I'm they would like to keep it that way vs actually competing on the same lines
The only way this will get any better is by WISPs to become more common, which will take a lot of time and money.
Patently false.
Of the several million developed US census blocks, 100% have multiple ISPs offering 10Mbps+. [1]
In fact, I daresay it is easier to switch your ISP than to switch your social network. The hooplah around NN is an effective distraction; ISPs aren't even close to being the monopoly to worry about.
[1] https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-344499A1.p...
10Mbps would not be enough for me nor most of my (even non-technical) family members.
Beyond that, the ones that do offer faster speeds have a cap that I would go past pretty much every month. I even live in a fairly sizeable city. If I had another realistic option than cable, I would've already taken it.
The issue comes from the fact that a lot of ISPs are, for reasons above, basically monopolies. This is, by itself, a really bad thing™. Lack of NN just lets them blackmail everybody from both sides on top of having practically 0 competition.
EDIT: your link actually shows you're wrong. The graph on page 6 (which I assume you're referring to) shows that 100% have multiple choices of 3+ Mbps, not 10+. 10+ only has 97%. Sure, it's only 3%, but that's still not 100% and not "patently false".
In that document, they don't mention prices, anywhere.
Also, on that same page, they mention:
> A provider that reports offering service in a particular census block may not offer service, or service at that speed, to all locations in the census block. Accordingly, the number of providers shown in Figure 4 does not necessarily reflect the number of choices available to a particular household and does not purport to measure competition.
!!!
I won't say that is impossible to use that much.
But Netflix -- who, if anything, is pressured to overestimate -- advises only half that speed for streaming high-definition video. [1]
Twenty dial-up modems is more than enough to make for a workable internet, outside of 3+ HD video streams, downloading disk images, etc.
And don't forget that that 10Mbps connection is likely only 512K up, so you can mostly forget about cloud backups or uploading your video for friends to see.
Side note: Everyone downloads disk images these days. Windows' quarterly update files are 3GB which will take over 41 minutes to download at 10Mbps if you do nothing else at the same time.
As far as 20 dial-up modems: I don't see where you get 20 from or even why that comparison matters. We aren't just using geocities and AIM anymore.
HD video streaming is surprisingly not the most bandwidth intensive activity. Facebook is actually more intensive. As is online gaming. And HD streaming is especially easy when its done by netflix which already has a network non-neutral setup https://www.beet.tv/2013/05/netflix-2.html. You may think "well, that 10Mbs is the same whether or not it is being streamed from next door or across the ocean", but you'd be wrong, due to the fact that low latency network connections are much more efficient at using that bandwidth.
Because it's an easy out if there are issues: it's not Netflix's fault; it's your internet.
Get to the airport three hours early; talk your accountant; have plenty of bandwidth.
It's not like someone who has <10Mbs connection and finds netflix to be crappy is going to lawyer up and sue netflix and win.
Comcast is going to be the source of all of my problems if NN crumbles, so let's look at Century Link. I could be same amount of money to them, but I'd get like a 1/10 the speed if I was super lucky. As far as I'm concerned it's not a practical alternative at all given how we use the internet in my house and our financial limitations.
So then there's satellite, which is not a practical solution either. I'd probably end up paying more and have worse internet speeds than I would with DSL. AND I'd completely have to give up any sort of online gaming that I do. A great way to finally kick that WoW habit, but not really a practical alternative to Comcast.
Okay so what about mobile tethering? I already pay as much as I currently pay for Comcast each month for my cell phone and I've got like 3GBs of data total to use. Last month, with Comcast, I used close to half a TB. I'm not going to do the math for what it would cost me to do that with my mobile carrier, but it's more than I spend on all my other utilities combined, I'm sure. And that's, of course, assuming a carrier available to me is able to provide decent speeds or even allows tethering at all. So that's not a practical alternative.
So sorry I do not buy it. It's like saying "you don't need a water supplier! You've got Coke, beer, and coffee available to 100% of everyone!". Yes, technically those are liquids that consist of some water, but the price is going to be ridiculous, you're going to have kidney stones, and you're going to be fat.
But thinking about the technicals, the unit of a census block is basically meaningless. DSL can easily achieve 10MBit+ when close to a central office. There will tend to be a CO close enough to somewhere in each census block, making that class of speed technically "available". But this is ultimately meaningless when it comes to the actual distances involved for most of the people within.
I don't think this article is it.
Net Neutrality would guarantee ISPs that blocked access to union websites would be fined[1].
Yes Net Neutrality would stop cheap plans like those offered in Portugal. But it would mean that a new messaging app would have a chance of finding traction, since it wouldn't need to convince every prospective user to start paying more for their Internet first.
Net Neutrality would not solve the problem of consumers having 0-2 choices when it comes to ISPs. Solving that would require laying millions of miles of new copper/fiber or somehow relieving those ISPs of their buried assets and making them communal property. Most problems can't be easily solved, so we settle for managing the symptoms.
[1] - http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/telus-cuts-subscriber-access-t...
I found this to be interesting.
Those early rules were largely voluntary but the FCC did take companies to court to enforce them with varying levels of success. It was this variability and a judicial erosion of what was considered permissible along with some fairly egregious shenanigans by internet service providers that pushed the Obama administration to formally reclassify broadband as a telecommunication service to put back in place net neutrality rules that stood before in the days of dial-up.
We had immensely powerful private entities short-circuiting the avenues of democratic self-government (just like we do now!), and it took TR--a Republican, not a commie--to point the finger and do something about it. Of course, bring any of that up with them and they'll just quote one of their Austrian school bone-readers back at you as though they have just refuted you with pure logic. And even worse, Democrats and Republicans clearly worship at the same altar, just in a quieter way.
It's like people have more faith in questionable econometrics than in any innate sense of justice. Until something shakes the mainstream faith in money-money-money, the situation is going to get much worse before it gets any better.
Some people think these two positions are at odds with each other. I happen to think it's the exact opposite. A large monopoly with complete control is not too different than the absolute control of an overbearing government -- something libertarians are quite against.
Strangely enough, Nixon was also an aggressive regulator...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon#Domestic_policy
edit: AT&T was classified as a monopoly and constrained as such. Current companies step up to the line of monopoly but no further and operate mostly without constraint.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone#Landmark_regulatory...
I just simply don't trust the government to be the arbiter of that, and I don't trust a regulatory agency to be making wholesale decisions regarding the enforcement of Net Neutrality or regulating speech on the Internet.
That doesn't mean that the government has no responsibility to enforce fair trade and transparent advertising. And it doesn't mean that ISPs are angels with customer interests in mind.
I want purchasing options with a transparent understanding of what I'm purchasing and clear expectations on what's being delivered. And I want elected officials making laws that determine any regulation of the web, not an agency that allows elected officials to hide behind it's regulatory fiat.
While you may not like the idea of the market correcting bad behavior, I find the government is even worse (and slower) at correcting bad behavior (and it is almost always overcorrects).
Its nice to think "let the market handle it", and maybe in some cases that is true but there are pretty clear examples where that isn't true (like power generation and distribution). I could easily blame the government for the issues this causes in my state where the power company is far too powerful and lobbies to effectively, giving them too much sway over the government. Is that "the governments" fault or is it the fault of the people for not holding the government accountable for not looking out for the interest of the people enough?
I feel like those of us with cynical feelings about the government have a tendency to sit back and gripe but then not actually do anything to make it work better. I think that if we aren't actively trying to make the government better and work for us, we really don't have much room to complain (and I include myself in this because that has been me for quite a while, aside from voting and giving the bare minimum of thought to it I haven't really done anything useful).
If we sit back and let whoever wants to run things run things we can't be surprised when we don't like what we get. At the end of the day the government is what we want it to be and how badly we want it to be that. Garbage in garbage out.
> The most expensive part? Litigating the ability to share real estate on telephone poles with companies like AT&T and Comcast. This privilege granted to the ISP’s is granted by local government regulations. Thanks to these regulations, Google Fiber was only able to upgrade 33 of 88,000 telephone poles in Nashville.
He/she is making the point that net neutrality addresses the symptom, not the cause. The cause is government regulation in the first place, so net neutrality is regulation to fix a problem created by regulation (not necessarily my position, but that's what I get from the author).
Since there is virtually no competition in large parts of the world, it is very important to force the single monopoly to behave in the interest of the consumer with laws.
The regulations the author is talking about are not the same regulations that enforce net neutrality. Net neutrality has nothing to do with sharing telephone poles.
> The regulations the author is talking about are not the same regulations that enforce net neutrality.
But net neutrality does have to with sharing telephone poles, because if there were actually choice in ISP then net neutrality would not even be necessary since a different ISP could come around offering a better more free package. So in other words, he/she's advocating treating the cause rather than the symptom.
But that's the exact anti-competitive problem -- it's effectively incentivizing non-usage of new services that'd effectively compete with the packaged ones if given a level playing field to do so. If I buy the Netflix package because all I use the Internet for is streaming movies/films, a startup that'd somehow give me that utility in a better way wouldn't be worth switching to the full/unlimited package for.
'One of the most high-profile examples of abuse was Comcast throttling traffic to Netflix in order to extract a payment deal from the streaming video provider, which it eventually agreed to pay. And in 2012, AT&T blocked FaceTime on iPhones, claiming it was using too much bandwidth. In this case, critics argued it was an attempt to block a service that competed with its own voice services. And as the biggest ISPs keep gobbling up content-producers, like AT&T buying DirectTV and then providing free access to itscontent, the risks that ISPs will start prioritizing traffic only increase.
What? Providers couldn't do traffic shaping before 2015? You can't be serious. And could you provide a source a bit more serious than junk clickbait site with article starting with "worst lies"? I mean, I am ready to consider serious arguments, but not somebody who deals with it in terms of "beltway bullshit". I know a lot of swear words too, I just also know they are not argument.
> The capability is only in the past decade
What changed in the past decade? I am not aware of any changes in internet protocols, hardware or software that made it impossible before and possible now. If anything it's not harder due to proliferation of SSL and VPN (10-15 years ago almost nobody cared about SSL and VPN wasn't exactly a household technology that anybody cared about).
> One of the most high-profile examples of abuse was Comcast throttling traffic to Netflix
Netflix is not exactly a small business, is it?
1. Bandwidth has increased (slowly, but it has)[0] making streaming more prominent. More people are watching media on mobile devices, meaning less likely to use traditional media delivery services. The market delivered services catering to peoples desires as hardware (processing power, more and better GPU's in smaller and smaller devices), bandwidth and software (dynamic video quality changes and I'm sure lots of things I don't know about) have improved.
2. Maybe the capability was there 10 years ago to some extent but that is true of many advancements, it is a combination of social pressures and technology that push things. Just because streaming wasn't a thing while it was technically possible doesn't mean that you can discount the fact that it wasn't a thing and now it is. It takes time for new things to take hold and the beginnings of it probably started more or less as soon as the technology allowed for it.
3. It isn't now, which is why it could afford to pay up and survive, but what if it wasn't? I'm not sure what kind of point you are trying to make exactly.
2. Again, that makes the case that it only became necessary (or attractive) lately, but the capability always existed. In this case, given that the underlying causes for this still exist (namely, growth of bandwidth and proliferation of streaming) is it smart to ignore it and say that site that pipes out gigabytes of hi-res video is the same thing as site that has kilobytes of text and there can be no difference in handling traffic between them? I don't think it's the smart way to do it, neither technologically nor socially.
3. So not only Netflix is not a small business, it could very well pay what providers asked from it in exchange for the capacity. So where is that "small businesses are hurt" part again? I only see "large businesses figuring out pay structure and doing it just fine" part. That's the point I am trying to make - Netflix is not an example of "small business" that would be - or has been - hurt by absence of (strong) neutrality. It is true that in presence of strong neutrality Netflix could probably be more profitable (at the expense of other users of the same infrastructure and end consumers, which would then have to pay for increased infrastructure costs and capital investments needed to support it) but why would I want it to happen?
I think NN is important for now and for the future and I think there are valid reasons for that that don't depend on debating the history of internet protocols.
Given the scary level of media consolidation, and the investment that ISPs have come to have in media companies its not a stretch to consider that with the capability to prioritize different types of traffic and sources of traffic that they will choose to encourage the consumption of media from their own sources. Corporations are increasingly focused on shareholder value and this is a clear case where to not prioritize their own products and services would be to essentially throw away money. One thing I think we can count on is that corporations are smart when it comes to making money and it would give any ISP that owns media companies or stakes in media companies a competitive advantage if they choose to push those to customers by making their media cheaper and more available or making others media more expensive or less available.
Aside from just being contrarian (which I think a lot of people get a kick out of), I honestly can't see how anyone who is a consumer and doesn't own stake in a telecom company will think that removing NN is going to be good for them just because it wasn't abused back when it wouldn't have been as easy or profitable.
I don't think you will be convinced by any of this, I suspect you are enjoying being a non-conformist (much like the author of the article if I had to guess) but this is a high level view of where I, and probably many others are. I don't have the time or energy to write a 100 page essay proving beyond a reasonable doubt every single step with extensive history of how I got to where I am and honestly I don't think it is necessary. In general I'm pretty much exhausted with constantly having to prove things that it shouldn't be up to me to prove. I'm not a biologist but I'm constantly having to convince a intelligent-design proponent on evolution, I'm not a physicist or geologist but I'm expected to have to explain why I don't think the planet is 6000 years old. I'm not saying that you are into ID or are a young earth creationist, but your argument style reminds me of arguments I've had with people like that. Draw people out into debates over minor facts that non-expert will eventually fail to be able to explain, causing literally any conversation to become a draw (even if it started as a conversation, it is turned into a debate).
Of course this is the total point - to kill the conversation and end discussion, casting just enough doubt to delay any kind of decision on the issue. If every issue is confusing enough, any action is as good as any other action and you can assure that enough people will just tune out and allow people to get away with anything. I'm not saying this is your intent or that you consciously are doing it, but it works extremely well so its hard to expect people to not do it. I hope that we (people that care about issues and try to support positive changes) can come up with effective counters to this tactic.
Way to invalidate opponent's points by pointing they are driven by some kind of psychological flaw or behavioral defect in the opponent and basically are just trolling, without actually having to address them. And then blaming the opponent for "killing the discussion". What you mean by "discussion" then - everybody agreeing with you in their own creative ways? If you want to know "what's wrong with politics nowdays", it is this. Not factual rational debate, but instead finding a way to most conveniently dismiss the points and look good.
There are multiple studies that suggest the 2015 approach to NN is not reaching the goals and will do more harm than good - e.g. see a nice list here: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/11/tak... But discussing those is useless if it's all "tactics" for you that you need to find a "counter" - i.e. not discuss anything on merits but just find a right way to dismiss it. "We" (the people who agree with you) just need to find a way to make nobody pay attention to anybody disagreeing with you, and that would automatically make you right.
2010 [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_Open_Internet_Order_2010
That doesn't differ much from the 2015 one, which basically boiled down to:
• No blocking,
• No throttling,
• No paid prioritization,
• Explicitly allows "reasonable network management".
The 2015 Order was for the most part essentially a reimplementation of the 2010 Order using Title II authority instead of Section 706 authority, because the problem the courts had with the 2010 Order was that they said it went beyond what Section 706 allowed.
Here is a copy of the 2015 Order [1]. The actual rules are on pages 283-290.
https://www.scribd.com/document/258492433/Full-net-neutralit...
That wasn't in 2010 one. The only requirement is that it is not "unreasonable discrimination" - which of course means in fact "whatever District/Supreme Court wants it to mean" but in the meantime can be interpreted as "whatever you can plausibly find a solid business reason to do" (which excludes anti-competitive ones by "no blocking clause"). 2015 one seems to go much further and exclude much more.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1587058
In the authors' shared opinion, the economic evidence does not support the regulations proposed in the Commission’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Regarding Preserving the Open Internet and Broadband Industry Practices (the “NPRM”). To the contrary, the economic evidence provides no support for the existence of market failure sufficient to warrant ex ante regulation of the type proposed by the Commission, and strongly suggests that the regulations, if adopted, would reduce consumer welfare in both the short and long run. To the extent the types of conduct addressed in the NPRM may, in isolated circumstances, have the potential to harm competition or consumers, the Commission and other regulatory bodies have the ability to deter or prohibit such conduct on a case-by-case basis, through the application of existing doctrines and procedures. Hence, the approach advocated in the NPRM is not necessary to achieve whatever economic benefits may be associated with prohibiting harmful discrimination on the Internet.
I just wanted to take a moment to address some of the things that were written here.
Whataboutisms: The point isn't to divert, the point is to say that this is a problem that exists WITH net neutrality in place. The point is, the argument of free speech is being made a lot, and most of the arguments are overdramatic hypotheticals, all while freedom of speech is being shut down under Net Neutrality.
Our Instagram account: I know, it's shit-posty, but that's how you get people to like your IG account. I don't make the rules, people love shitty memes.
Anyhow, this article is just why I don't support net neutrality. I guess it can seem like hand-waving, but that's not at all what my intention was. I did as much research as I could on the matter, and I just didn't see enough that convinced me keeping broadband under title 2 was a necessity. I had been hearing a lot of arguments that didn't seem totally logical to me, so I addressed some of them as best I could.
Thanks again for the feedback!
Argument 1 ("Free speech will suffer without net neutrality”) boils down to "People say X will happen without net neutrality, X is happening, so we may as well let NN pass" [where X is "interruption of free speech"], while ignoring that free speech is not a binary and that circumventing net neutrality can be one way to deny free speech. Internet censorship is the most basic example of such a situation.
Argument 2 relies on the concept that not only should users pay for their bandwidth and services for theirs, but large services ought to pay once more for their bandwidth w.r.t. "interconnection fees" - but then again, the sentence being discussed ("These ISPs are monopolies, and they need to be regulated”) isn't relevant to NN.
Finally, when talking about Portugal he claims that "Portugal does have net neutrality", when the screenshot above is in direct violation of NN as defined in the link ("End-users should have the right to access and distribute information and content, and to use and provide applications and services without discrimination, via their internet access service.", Recital 6 of the "BEREC Guidelines on Net Neutrality"). At best, he is relying on a weird interpretation of this sentence, where "have the right to access" means "there is at least one plan which does that". Besides, the existence of a European regulation doesn't mean NN is enforced: the same regulation applies to Italy, but I can buy a plan boasting "free social&chat" and 10 GB towards select music services, through Telecom Italia no less (https://www.tim.it/ricarica-automatica).
As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.
We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.
Yeah, they do mention corporations:
Libertarians support free markets. We defend the right of individuals to form corporations, cooperatives and other types of entities based on voluntary association.
But corporations are created and recognized by the state, particularly for reasons of non-liability of their owners. That is a decidedly non-libertarian bargain. It isn't a libertarian space to argue in.
Really, someone has to explain how to argue for+against net neutrality from a libertarian POV, from first principles.
Others can probably do it better, but I'll try.
The (small-ell) libertarian argument from first principles against this legislation would be the same as the libertarian argument from first principles against any legislation; it is wrong for any person or entity to use violence or the threat thereof to coerce any other person or entity to do or not do something against their will, and legislation is basically a declaration of a government's intent to use its monopoly on violence against people doing or not doing certain behavior.
I do not abide by my government legislating internet access any more than I do anything else, even if it is "for my own good." So I do not mind it if net neutrality dies. (Though, truth be told, there is a hell of a lot of other legislation I'd like to be repealed first, if it can't be done all at once.)
But you're talking about corporations which are already state created entities. You've already bargained with the state to create this entity, the purpose of which is to avoid personal liability for losses incurred by the corporation. You got something in that bargain. You gave something up, too.
So you are applying liberatarianism with respect to something which is inherently unlibertarian, the corporation. An example:
If Joe sells BigCorp $1M of widgets and BigCorp fails to pay and goes out of business, Joe is without recourse against BigCorp's owners because it is a corporation. There's a law (any legislation) which prevents him from getting his money.
You can't pick and choose. You're either a libertarian or you're not. Libertarianism doesn't apply to corporations.
I wasn't specifically, but that's besides the point. From a fundamental principle, libertarians don't want a government to designate and classify collections of people and determine their legality, no. But regardless, if you have a group of people that consists of what we colloquially - not necessarily legally - would call a corporation, small-ell libertarianism does not permit a government to be able to commandeer its behavior any more than that of an individual.
You're actually reversing the directionality and stating the contrapositive - being able to call something a corporation does not imply it should be shielded from government interference. For example, government bodies themselves can be considered (and often are even legally constituted as) corporations, and obviously libertarianism has much to say about constraining those!
This is not simply an academic distinction - this entire debate hinges on whether individuals actually have a choice between ISPs, or whether the local ISP basically constitutes a de facto government. Furthermore, most incumbent ISPs were even built using government money and privileges! We wouldn't be having this debate if there were a vibrant market for Internet access.
Everything should be shielded from government interference. That's the point.
> Furthermore, most incumbent ISPs were even built using government money and privileges! We wouldn't be having this debate if there were a vibrant market for Internet access.
Agreed. Governments (if they must exist) should not grant funds, tax breaks, or monopoly privileges to ISPs or any other service providers.
Except, implicitly, government itself. A "libertarian IRS" does not mean an IRS that is unfettered by Congress.
> Agreed. Governments (if they must exist) should not grant funds, tax breaks, monopoly privileges to ISPs.
The problem is that these things have already been granted, and these government-founded corporations are basically wriggling out of their charters (/contractual obligations) more and more.
"Libertarian IRS" has as much meaning as "vegan foie gras." I have no idea how to parse this statement.
Cicero made his legal bones prosecuting Verres who had plundered Sicily. Yes, it was a province but Sicilians were also Roman citizens and it was a Roman province. Verres actually crucified Sicilians at the beach facing Rome. Not a nice guy.
Do you actually understand anything about libertarianism at all?
I have no idea what a libertarian society would do since it is a theoretical construct. You could have a libertarian city or even state but somehow practice falls well short of theory. Y'all prefer to live here rather than there. I too prefer to live here. Must be a reason for that.
You can't imagine a libertarian IRS. Yeah, well it does sound kinda funny. But then I can't imagine a libertarian corporation either and again, I understand plenty about libertarianism. I only understand Delaware C corporations in each of the 50 states.
Secondly, no, if BigCo has defrauded Joe, Joe has every right to sue for restitution. I have no idea where you got the idea that I'd disagree with this concept from what I'm saying. Again, I suspect you're over-thinking things.
As for my BigCo example, yes, you can sue BigCo but you cannot sue BigCo's owners. They are shielded from personal liability for BigCo's debts.
This actually happens in the real world with contractors. Plumbing123 LLC owned by Low Life Larry goes out of business to be followed by Plumbing124 LLC also created by Low Life Larry.
Do you see a libertarian argument against legislation?
If so, then that's all you need to see, because that's all there is to see.
When you created your corporation, you got an entity, and a collection of rights and also a collection of rules. You freely entered into that agreement with the government to get this. Now you're trying to libertarian your way out of that agreement.
Why, though? You asked for an argument against net neutrality from libertarian first principles. I gave you one that's so basic that it applies to all other government legislation as well. So if you'd like, you could take it as an argument against corporations as a government construct as well, since such a construct comes about by legislation. Does that satisfy you?
If I must make my argument under the assumption that legal corporations exist and must continue to exist, that really doesn't change anything. Libertarians still fundamentally don't want the government to tell people or groups of people what they can or can't do, regardless of how that group came about.
If libertarians were on record and known for objecting to the corporation itself as the infringement on individual liberties that it is, then that would be one thing. But applying libertarian principles to something which is an inherently unlibertarian government construct is just nonsense.
Libertarians are on record for that, including myself (at least) in this thread.
> But applying libertarian principles to something which is an inherently unlibertarian government construct is just nonsense.
Agreed, but you're the only one trying to square that circle here. You're overthinking it.
EDIT: Actually, I don't agree. To go back to my previous comment, ideally - in Libertopia - corporations do not exist as a legal entity, so we don't have to worry about this contradiction. But if we must live in a world where they do exist, it is not a logical fallacy to wish for them to be as free as possible, just as with everyone else.
Because in the present day people have a freedom to associate, and organizations that are not legally recognized (and hence not legally protected) are possible.
That's an easy one. ISPs may artificially degrade the quality of service to or block some sites and not others depending on whether the ISP agrees with the content on that site, whether the owners of the site give the ISP a kickback, or a host of other non-technical reasons.
It seems like the author of the article hasn't made a reasonable effort to understand the opposing viewpoint.
2nd point: An ISP failed to invest in the infrastructure it needed to provide the service it promised but something something net neutrality.
3rd point: Companies should be regulated, but not by the government. They should be sued, by the people.
Honestly.. this kind of drivel is so tiring. Can libertarians please go away, or at least stop using resources and infrastructure that only exists because of public funding and government intervention.
Although this is one area where the interstate commerce clause seems to genuinely apply it would be interesting to see what would happen with some areas following NN and some areas not and what results...
I think the real key here is that gov't regulation is not a good substitute for genuinely competitive markets.
The difference being that Net Neutrality exists in EU, and instead of an "unlimited" package being much more expensive, it is the lesser packages that are cheaper. Subtle, I guess, but big difference.
Most consumers don't give a fuck though, which is really bad.