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Comment by educationdata | Hacker News Reader

There is no reason to believe this small amount of money is the explanation of his position.

Who do you treat more favorably, people who just happen to pay you a collective amount of around $200,000 or people that yell at you but otherwise effectively can't do anything to stop or even discourage you? Yeah, I bet ISPs accidentally signed checks to politicians without intending for it to cause them to be treated favorably, just out of the good of their heart.

Dropping the sarcasm now, because it's obnoxious, but honestly, it's silly to pretend nobody knows what's going on here. Frankly though singling out ISPs here is silly, I'm sure most big businesses do exactly this same thing and we all let it happen so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I despise McConnell, but I think it's just as plausible that he genuinely believes that net neutrality goes against his ideology (free market, low regulation) and Comcast et. al. make their donations because his ideology futhers their desired outcomes, as opposed to donating to bring him to their side.

I would assume the problem is that for the consumers, even if they are a larger group - it’s way more expensive to collect the same amount of money to lobby for the opposite.

So obviously it’s way easier to hold an extremely narrow point of view because it’s so easy to get campaign money for it.

$200,000 is a very small amount of money in grassroot crowdfunding.

Against net neutrality is not "an extremely narrow point of view".

Possibly. But that doesn’t excuse his refusal to have the Senate vote on it.

McConnell has no ideology besides accumulating power.

If it is really just because of money, why can't companies supporting net neutrality donate to him and other senators to get the law passed in the Senate? There are way more companies can do this than a few ISPs, and they have tons of money. Your simplistic view does not hold water.

Many of the companies that are "pro net neutrality" or at least are incentivized to support it have many, many, many other concerns for lobbying, legislation, and budget. Engaging in a race to the bottom over a single issue is probably not a strategy that people are willing to take.

ISPs on the other hand have few other issues quite as important.

It's true that ISPs may have fewer issues, but there are just too few of them. On the other hand, there are way more "pro net neutrality" companies and net neutrality is not the least important issue for them.

The big tech companies most affected by this law actually don't care too much about it, because it disproportionally hurts startups that are competing with them or will compete with them in the future.

Netflix, Google/YouTube, Amazon/Twitch etc. will be able to afford to pay ISPs extra for the fast lanes.

Startups and companies that could never take off because of appearing slow to their potential users cannot afford lobbyists and political donations.

I've seen instances of political favoritism for as little as 15k USD in campaign funds...never underestimate a man's willingness to sell himself.

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