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Comment by lwkl | Hacker News Reader

The road-tax is neutral, it doesn't matter what goods you transport. Imagine charging the producers of the most transported goods to pay a fee in addition to the road-tax and otherwise blocking their goods being transported for the rest of the month.

Net neutrality asks the internet to work how road taxes work. You pay for a certain bandwidth (a truck) and you can transport whatever goods you want with that. It doesn't matter if you go to walmart 5 times a week or split your trips to costco, walmart and target. Or maybe whole foods has a deal with the state that makes the people driving trucks to them exempt from the additional fee.

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Note that roads are not neutral in the “net neutrality” sense, since emergency vehicles are prioritized. There’s a cogent argument against net neutrality on similar grounds: i.e., prioritizing traffic with prioritized purpose, especially in the face of congestion.

Networks aren't neutral either, even under net neutrality rules: you might lose your data uplink of the tower is at capacity and someone dials 911.

I'm a proponent of weakening net neutrality for when lives are at stake, but that's hardly ever the case on the internet. The problem is that most non-neutral treatment is the result of business interests rather than the greater good.

In addition to what was noted by a sibling comment (emergency calls are given higher priority than your standard commercial voice or data traffic), there is specifically an exemption listed in California's Net Neutrality law [0] for emergency traffic.

> 3103. (a) Nothing in this title supersedes any obligation or authorization a fixed or mobile Internet service provider may have to address the needs of emergency communications or law enforcement, public safety, or national security authorities, consistent with or as permitted by applicable law, or limits the provider’s ability to do so.

[0] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

In what way is “emergency vehicles need special access” similar to “we need to charge Netflix more because ISPs oversold their networks while failing to upgrade”?

Toll roads charge more for larger vehicles. Vehicle registration may be more expensive for heavier vehicles or vehicles with more wheels. Meanwhile, toll roads may have just as much traffic issues and no guarantee of average velocity.

How is that not similar to ISPs throttling?

Not that I care much either way. I care more about localities and states encouraging or enforcing monopolies.

That’s not similar to ISP throttling because you’re paying for the scale but a flat fee for any use of that same scale.

The toll road doesn’t forbid trucks or cars painted red just because traffic on the toll road is heavy. Paying for the size of your vehicle isn’t like throttling; it’s like paying different amounts for different bandwidths.

It’d only be similar to throttling if the toll roads charged different amounts based on the contents of the vehicles.

Also HOV, express lanes, toll roads, and other private roads

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