The thing is, the problem of net neutrality has a pretty clear solution. You force companies to carry all traffic equally, give no special treatment, etc. It's not perfect, but it works.
What's the solution to the problem of a lack of competition?
What's the solution to the problem of a lack of competition?
Either you remove restrictions on infrastructure building (ie, once one company is allowed to lay fiber or coax, any company must be allowed), or you have public ownership of the lines, or you compel the private owner of the lines to sell bandwidth on their lines at a state set rate.
None of which the US government is particularly good at. Which is a shame really.
That is not a solution, it is an intention. The solution is how do you go about "forcing" companies to carry all traffic equally. This is utterly unenforceable and unmeasurable. Also, I have a moral problem with your willingness to "force" someone to do something because of your worldview. That kind of solution does not scale (you either think you could have a monopoly for every market and force them to do what you want, or you think we're all better off through the natural competition for paying customers).
> What's the solution to the problem of a lack of competition?
Stop government from interfering with the market. This solution is much clearer in my opinion. Monopoly comes from the government as it gives particular rights and benefits to this or that corporation. Let corporations fight against each other for the customers' money and you'll be enabling people to choose what they want, by voting with their dollars.
Just think about all the voluntary actions you take throughout the day. Then someone says you must do something different now, or a pay a price. They would need to have a pretty good reason, right?
So you should care because I am advocating a philosophy that is cogent and supporting of a peaceful society, while what you are arguing is the opposite of that.
Please show an excerpt where I imply that my morals are relevant to your opinions.
When I say 'I have a moral problem with your willingness to "force" someone to do something' I mean 'I can refute it on moral grounds'. The refutation being, forcing someone/a monopoly/a group of people/a corporation to act against its incentives is perverse (it minimizes freedom) and especially so when there are alternatives that are not perverse and that maximize freedom, which is competition.
I think you're overcomplicating this.
Consider the ramifications: with voluntarism as nearly the only requirement, libertarianism is a substrate for communities to layer additional rules on top as befit their values: socialist communes, gun-free zones, drug markets, shared libraries, required weapons training, a Greek-style local democracy, whatever. Two communities can be diametrically opposed in their values, sharing only the common tenet that everyone participates voluntarily.
Of course it's impossible to pull off: can kids born in each community be considered voluntary participants? Can someone revoke their rights for the rest of their life with the stroke of a pen? How does someone traveling through these places even keep track of the laws (we see this with states already)? Lots of difficult/impossible/senseless questions arise. But it's a thought experiment: absent religious considerations, is there a more moral system that allowing everyone to voluntarily interact with others in only those ways that are mutually beneficial?
Those details aside, if allowing as many people to craft their life experiences as voluntarily as possible is of merit, investing great power in a central power governing over 300 million people is an extremely poor way to achieve it.
First, to clarify, it's not innguest's moral problem; it's a quandary at the intersection of ethics and politics. If you care about ethical questions at all, this one's meaty: it tugs at the threads of social organization, sanctioned force, individual liberty, international law, and capitalism.
Second, innguest has rationally advocated a position; that's reason enough for me, at least, to pause and consider.
Third, if you're in the US, you have something directly at stake in this argument. Sure, the politics may already be decided on party lines, favors, and lobbying, but as the citizenry we owe it to ourselves to form a coherent political philosophy to serve as the yardstick informing us just how bad the government's decisions are.
Fourth, there should be a huge bar to clear for any party looking to impose invasive rules on someone else using the hand of government. The folks writing the laws are almost uniformly not subject matter experts; they act in self-interested ways that are well known; any proposal will be highly adulterated by the time it passes; any new law becomes a precedent for the next; and unknown consequences are rife, particularly with rights and the economy. I'd be highly critical of anyone willing to advocate this without deeply considering all facets, including innguest's points.
And finally, while morals are of course subjective, they should at least be held to the standards of justifiability and internal consistency; I don't believe this net neutrality push meets those requirements. If government enforces this on cable companies, can it determine which products Walmart carries, and which go on the prized middle shelves? Maybe it's only for monopolies, though...but then, I have no fewer than 4 choices to get Internet to my house, so it's not a monopoly. Unless it's only service of a particular quality. Who sets the quality requirements? And should the provider really not have the ability to charge more for heavier usage of the pipes? You pass something like this, you better have answered all of those and literally hundreds of others, and guaranteed that in every law where that happens, most of the answers are arbitrary.
I don't understand how it is unenforceable and unmeasurable. We already know certain ISPs do it today and we can test for it. I can test it at my own home by turning my VPN on and off. And the FCC can enforce it like it enforces everything else: fining. You might as well say we might as well allow everyone to use all wireless spectrum however they feel, because forcing them to use certain bands for certain types of information is "unenforceable and unmeasurable". Testing that is also hard, yet we still have rules and we still fine people for it.
>Also, I have a moral problem with your willingness to "force" someone to do something because of your worldview.
First, it's a corporation, not "someone". Secondly, if you wish to do business in most civilized areas, there are certain rules you must abide by. A good example is "forcing" a company to not dump toxic waste in river. Some things are done for the common good of all, and one of the things governments are supposed to do is balance that with interests of the few. Just like how dumping waste in rivers is against the law, so too could the government force ISPs to be a common carrier.
>Stop government from interfering with the market.
Given the incredibly high cost of entry into this business, I'm curious why you think that without government interference, any company would be able to compete. If I were to start up my own local ISP today, I'd be faced with two choices: run my own fiber/copper or lease it from Comcast. Running my own cable is of course insanely expensive, and probably not a good investment. Meanwhile, without the government forcing Comcast to play nice, they would have no incentive to lease their cable to me at a decent price, or at all.
I totally agree that, in some cases, the government does things that enable anti-competitive behavior. Towns signing contracts with Comcast to be a sole-provider, or lobbyists helping draft laws that prevent municipal internet are some examples. However, completely removing any regulation and letting the already established conglomerates run amok is not going to get us any additional competition in this case.
Awesome. Then put up a website with your reports and make your case to convince people to switch to better ISPs. Why do you need the Gun of the State to do that for you?
> And the FCC can enforce it like it enforces everything else: fining.
A fine is not a deterrent, it is a disincentive. A disincentive is combined with other forces that a corporation takes into account when choosing how to act. For instance, the FCC has a "ban" on cursing on TV, but you may still choose to do so and pay the fine. So it is not a deterrent. Not to mention it is condescending (and this has real implications in society, as it discourages people from thinking by themselves) that the FCC thinks they can decide for me what I should and shouldn't be exposed to.
> You might as well say we might as well allow everyone to use all wireless spectrum however they feel, because forcing them to use certain bands for certain types of information is "unenforceable and unmeasurable". Testing that is also hard, yet we still have rules and we still fine people for it.
And you think the only way to sensibly share the wireless spectrum is by giving the government a monopoly over the sky and letting them force people to use it in a certain way? First of all this is a terrible idea on moral grounds. There's no incentive for the government not to abuse this power in the form of censorship or cronyism by benefiting a broadcasting company that will provide funds for a presidential government and so on. So many bad scenarios derive from giving this monopoly to a gang with a license to kill (a few more: it discourages innovation, it raises the barrier to entry, it raises prices unnecessarily (money that would be otherwise usefully applied elsewhere), and it places communication in the hands of unregulated regulators). FCC was not always the way, and radio waves have not always been regulated, and people did just fine. Something else to blame Hoover for (he also thought, like you, that the government needs the FCC to "prevent interference" among users of these bands). I would apply the principle of homesteading to frequency bands as it seems to me (I haven't done much reading on this) to be the same problem as the allocation of land problem.
And arguing "yet we still have rules and we still fine people for it" does not address my points. This is just a status quo fact, not an argument.
> First, it's a corporation, not "someone". Secondly, if you wish to do business in most civilized areas, there are certain rules you must abide by. A good example is "forcing" a company to not dump toxic waste in river. Some things are done for the common good of all, and one of the things governments are supposed to do is balance that with interests of the few. Just like how dumping waste in rivers is against the law, so too could the government force ISPs to be a common carrier.
But the government you deem necessary has turned corporations into people, so it is someone, because a corporation can only lose as much money as it has in its coffers and the people hiding behind the government's license to incorporate cannot be held responsible for what "the corporation" does. So it is someone, unfortunately.
Then you make a fallacious status quo argument - "most areas have rules". So what? I'm arguing those rules are immoral and you're not addressing my point.
You're also mistaken if you think the only way to enforce non-pollution is through rules and fines. Again, those are disincentives, not deterrents. It works better if you create positive incentives not to pollute in the first place. This is a huge topic and I'm already over-extending myself, so I'll stop here.
I disagree with several of your premises: that governments are supposed to be concerned about the "common good" (whatever they decide is the most profitable definition thereof), that dumping waste in rivers should be illegal (who decides what "waste" is? how does fining after-the-fact help keep rivers clean? what is the incentive to keep clean something no one owns?). So I don't think you're making a strong case.
> Given the incredibly high cost of entry into this business
It is only high because the government skews the market by regulating it. There's demand for higher speed, lower priced internet than what the current monopolies offer. But you think this is an insurmountable problem that the entrepreneurs will never be able to solve? That's just it, we know for sure it's expensive to open up your own ISP, therefore let's make that illegal? I believe more in people and their ingenuity to come up with solutions to even problems that were once (or are now) deemed impossible, or as you put it, "insanely expensive".