You're pretending that this argument is about people who want to "stream Netflix 24 hours a day" and that everyone in the country will be doing so.

And even if people tried to stream Netflix 24 hours a day, it makes more sense to throttle the connection then to just toss around ridiculous overage charges as if the problem is the amount of data being downloaded in a month is the problem rather than the amount of bandwidth being consumed at peak times.

Sure, people can increase their cap by buying the "insurance", but with the low level caps, that basically becomes the true price of the connection for anyone who isn't using their internet for trivial uses (from a bandwidth) perspective. It's there in the hopes that you worry about going over your cap and being screwed in charges rather than as some benevolent gesture on the part of the ISPs. If they had any decency, they would just automatically upgrade your connection to the higher level if you go over the initial cap. Why is that such an unreasonable action to take?