Hacker News Reader

Comment by Pewpewarrows | Hacker News Reader

Just to play Devil's Advocate, this is what I'd imagine the average Libertarian response to this would be:

In a free market the consumers hold the power. An ISP that didn't restrict Internet usage or tier what it offered would become in-demand, and would profit and succeed more than the others. In other words, the market would correct itself towards those ISPs that espoused the principles of staying neutral. If that didn't happen, then net neutrality isn't a big enough concern to drive the average consumer's purchase.

It's a simplified generalization, but take from it what you will.

View on HN

That argument would hold sway if being an ISP did not have such a huge barrier to entry. Having to run physical cables GREATLY reduces the pool of business that can afford to enter that market. This of course, reduces the number of competitors, and the market pressure to compete.

So should we have "neutrality" in every market with large barriers to entry? Drug neutrality? Railroad neutrality? Automotive manufacturing neutrality?

Actually that seems like an interesting idea! If we did, maybe we could have non-proprietary car parts for instance? Better drugs? Fewer patent monopolies granted?

Am I missing something fundamental in your point?

No. You just have a much more expansive view of the role of governments in the markets than I do.

More important than the cost is the restrictions state and local governments have. Big ISPs have the right to lay down cable, it's nearly impossible for anyone except a huge ISP/Utility to get those rights.

But in a libertarian world the government wouldn't stop competing ISPs from competing. But yeah, half-libertarian policies like regulating ISPs to prevent competition but not regulating other aspects is problematic.

The libertarian response is that Congress doesn’t restrict speech. Telling people what they must or must not say violates this.

The First Amendment says nothing about markets or competition. If Congress thinks it can address improve the telecom markets, great. But the idea that the 1st amend doesn’t apply because some market is suboptimal is a non-sequitur.

Fortunately, we live in a democracy first and the free market is just a tool, not our form of government.

In a democracy, the people hold the power through their votes, not consumers through their (very unevenly distributed) wallets. Those are very different choices made for very different reasons.

We live in a Constitutional democracy, with what has evolved into a deliberately difficult for amending that Constitution. A group of people holding the (temporary) power to change policy cannot vote down the 1st Amendment, for instance.

Another argument: Legislating that ISPs must treat all their bits as equal may cause ISPs to lose the flexibility needed to optimize their networks. Laws that inhibit freedom of private companies may look like a good solution to certain problems, but they often have unintended side effects that decrease the efficiency and effectiveness of the company.

Allowing market forces to work solves the original problem, and does not create laws limiting freedom and innovation in the company.

This is my problem with net neutrality (and I'm not even a libertarian!). The Internet service model is such a moving target --- and (I personally think) it's so not what (many) neutrality advocates think it is --- that legislating it seems counterproductive.

Service providers should not be allowed to use local monopolies to harm competition in other markets or to form cartels in them, but legislated "neutrality" doesn't seem like the right way to ensure that.

Absolutely. Water companies regulate water usage of their customers. You're going to find that regulation is needed on any shared resource.

You're free to get a leased line that is private and just yours, but you will pay significantly more for that. The Internet lends itself so obviously to packetization and shared wires that it takes an extreme case to justify using a private network rather than sharing a public one.

There needs to be regulation to stop (say) the DSL company from impacting VOIP traffic. But a completely unregulated network will lead to the torrenters destroying the VOIP traffic just as fast.

For market forces to work, there needs to be a market.

Maybe we should do what they did in the UK, and require the owners of the physical layer to the homes to lease lines and space in their switching centers at a reasonable price to independent ISPs. Then there would actually be a competitive market for ISPs, and then we could let market forces provide net neutrality for those who want a neutral ISP.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com