I always found it amusing that the FCC claimed they didn’t have a right to regulate Net Neutrality, but they do have the right to prevent individual states from regulating Net Neutrality.
For instance, under the US constitution, freedom of expression limits all levels of government.
There are some cases where affirmative rights granted to the federal government also limits the power of the states.
For example, the Supreme Court found in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) that not only does Congress have the right to regulate interstate commerce, but only Congress does, and that States can't create their own rules for commerce between each other.
(The FCC can claim they don't have the right to enforce Title 2, but that's really for the Supreme Court to decide.)
I think it's worth noting that Title 2 classification is not Net Neutrality, and that the Title 2 classification was based off of an idea of 'forbearance', that the government has granted itself broad sweeping regulatory powers over telecoms but promises not to use a lot of them (rate setting, etc).
Title 2 classification had a lot of problems, and real Net Neutrality legislation is preferable.
If you believe that nobody should do X, where X could be any public policy on a gradient (whether it's sales tax, income tax, etc), then sure you'd consider this as a bug, but it helps in figuring out the good solutions much faster.
The Democratic Party, by way of contrast, never talks about states' rights, but supports various individual initiatives that align with their federal policy.
There are very few people who care about states' rights as a concept divorced from particular policies.
By traditional conservative thought, a county would only be hurting themselves by setting a minimum wage that's too high; companies and their jobs would leave if it wasn't competitive. Of course, if raising the minimum wage didn't kill jobs, others could point to it as evidence that it may be feasible to increase it statewide. So it's gotta go.
[commentary: I grew up in a conservative family, but I don't recognize the modern Republican Party.]
[1] http://www.thegazette.com/gov-branstad-signs-bill-to-roll-ba...
I don't think even Ronald Reagan would recognize the modern republican party.
Some pedantry on word choice: federalism is more like equal state/central gov power; confederalism is pro-states rights.
1- https://theintercept.com/2018/02/05/the-nunes-memo-and-katie...
A better approach would be to simply break up all the big ISPs and telcos, of course.
Sonic.net doesn't have to worry about Floridian regulations, but Comcast has to worry about Californian and Floridian regulations because they have operations in both States. That said, they are also large enough to take on that extra burden and still profit, with no loss of competitive advantage.
I'm not worried about making it easier for ISPs to expand across State lines because I don't live in 50 different States. I live in one, and I want the right package of regulations for the place that I live, not the millions of places I don't, for every ISP in my area, not the hundreds to thousands that aren't.
It seems plausible that the FCC shouldn't be able to regulate or control policy on net neutrality and that their control of the internet is basically because at the time questions of regulation came up there was not better place to stick the internet. However, now that the internet has become an effective necessity I'd imagine placing it's control under something more akin to the Public utilities commission may make the most sense.
edit: Maybe the real solution is public internet projects, I have heard of several that seemed to go quite well.