Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
What's next? Telling certain stores they cannot build in high traffic areas because it's unfair to the businesses on the streets with less traffic?
Using your example under net neutrality there is nothing preventing anyone from building the biggest store they want or building a massive highway to their front door. The issue is what's happening in the residential side of town, without net neutrality those that control the streets in the residential side of town would be able to manipulate the flow of traffic onto those highways on the business side of town.
If we force them to give everyone the same speed,...
This has nothing to do with net neutrality. You can buy a fire hose or garden hose with net neutrality, what you do with that hose is up to you and not dictated by the ISP.
Building a broadband infrastructure capable of meeting consumer demands costs money. In the absence of a way for broadband providers to charge some sort of fees or tolls to certain companies, the alternative is that the costs are passed on to everyone. Is it fair that someone who doesn’t even subscribe to or use Netflix should pay more for broadband in order to support it?
If a broadband provider like Comcast can’t negotiate a deal with a service like Netflix and collect additional fees to fund the necessary network infrastructure, it has to bear the cost of upgrading the network itself. That cost would then be passed on to all Comcast customers regardless of whether they actually subscribe to Netflix or not.
The push for net neutrality doesn’t seem to make much sense. We’re not talking about throttling rival services, or reducing broadband speeds for customers—just enabling the broadband provider to share the burden for network upgrades with the service that benefits and profits from those upgrades.
I mean let's face it what we have here is the government saying YOUR monopoly is not good, but our monopoly is good.....look at the history of the government concerning monopolies ....the Rockefeller monopolies...made him break up his companies.....all because of greed.....or MA-Bell (bell Telephone...all the baby bells are nearly remerged back into other monopolies ...or when the government goes after Microsoft because they have a monopoly OS, but supports the monopoly of apples IOS......But if monopolies are bad, why should we trust the U.S. government, the largest monopoly of all?
We’re talking about the same organization that spent an amount equal to Facebook’s first six years of operating costs to build a health care website that doesn’t work, the same organization that can’t keep the country’s bridges from falling down, and the same organization that spends 320 times what private industry spends to send a rocket into space. Let’s try a thought experiment–think of an industry that has major problems. Public schools? Health care? How about higher education, student loans, housing, banking, physical infrastructure, immigration, the space program, the military, the police, and the post office? What do all these industries and/or organizations have in common? They are all heavily regulated or controlled by the government.
they government needs to decide, do they allow monopolies or not....not the selective decision making the government is currently doing
Internet bandwidth is, at least currently, a finite resource and has to be allocated somehow. We can let politicians decide, or we can let you and me decide by leaving it up to the free market. If we choose politicians, we will see the Internet become another mismanaged public monopoly, subject to political whims and increased scrutiny from our friends at the NSA. If we leave it up to the free market we will, in time, receive more of what we want at a lower price. It may not be a perfect process, but it will be better than the alternative.
in the end its the individual customer who will lose out here, because their cable/internet provider bill will become so high they cant afford it....so much for the 'internet is free'
This certainly seems to be a well thought out, informed post. Thanks
Net neutrality seems like a simple concept: the company that links your computer/tablet/smartphone to the internet should not be able to discriminate among users and providers in the level of connectivity service provided. That is, we should all be able to send and receive the same number of bits of data per second.
This is a bad idea for the same reason that only having vanilla ice cream for sale is a bad idea: some people want, and are willing to pay for, something different. Forcing a one-size-fits-all solution on the Internet stifles innovation by blocking some companies from turning new ideas or business models into successful products.
President Obama was quoted in his statement as saying that “We cannot allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas.” Yet, oddly enough, President Obama is happy to pick winners and losers in the marketplace for energy services and ideas where he is working hard to make offshore drilling, coal, and shale oil losers while attempting to turn solar, wind, and other renewables into winners. He has similarly interfered in the auto market, both by spending billions to avoid Chrysler and GM from becoming losers and by forcing auto manufacturers to meet gas mileage standards which eliminate many possible car choices from the marketplace.
The last thing we should want is liberals or a government agency picking winners and losers on the Internet. And enforcing net neutrality is picking winners and losers even if it looks like it is just “leveling the playing field.” He may think it is not, but it completely blocks certain business models and stops any possible innovation that might emerge if given the option of seeking differential access to bandwidth.
The key point that President Obama has missed along with all the rabid supporters of net neutrality is that ISPs and the companies that control the Internet backbone infrastructure that knits everything together do not have the power to pick winners and losers either. Consumers decide what products and services are successful because we adopt them. If an ISP blocks Netflix because of the bandwidth it requires, consumers who want Netflix will take their business elsewhere. If enough people do so, the ISP will have to change policies or go out of business.
As the former chief economist for the FCC, Thomas Hazlett, pointed out this week in Time, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter , LinkedIn (and many, many more success stories of innovation) all emerged without the benefit of net neutrality. In the time when the government might have been ensuring a level playing field for the Internet pipe into our homes, smartphones and mobile devices completely changed how most people connect to and use the Internet.
The problem with government regulation of the Internet is that by the time the government studies how it works and what is needed, technology has moved on.
Who believes that the government can write a regulation that will still fit the bill in three years when none of us know what the dominant formats, companies, and technology will be that far in advance?
More choices are good for consumers. We win from having multiple flavors of ice cream in the store. We benefit from the large variety of cars available for purchase. The fact that most people cannot afford some of those models does not mean they should be removed from sale. Similarly, the fact that some businesses or consumers may choose to pay for better access to the Internet is not a bad thing. Some people pay more to fly first class, but they do not interfere with my travel in coach.
As long as the government enforces the antitrust laws and ensures that consumers can choose among methods and providers for how they connect to the Internet, consumers can pick winners and losers by voting with their time, their eyeballs, and their dollars. No government needed, thank you very much.
I mean let's face it what we have here is the government saying YOUR monopoly is not good, but our monopoly is good.....look at the history of the government concerning monopolies ....the Rockefeller monopolies...made him break up his companies.....all because of greed.....or MA-Bell (bell Telephone...all the baby bells are nearly remerged back into other monopolies ...or when the government goes after Microsoft because they have a monopoly OS, but supports the monopoly of apples IOS......But if monopolies are bad, why should we trust the U.S. government, the largest monopoly of all?
We’re talking about the same organization that spent an amount equal to Facebook’s first six years of operating costs to build a health care website that doesn’t work, the same organization that can’t keep the country’s bridges from falling down, and the same organization that spends 320 times what private industry spends to send a rocket into space. Let’s try a thought experiment–think of an industry that has major problems. Public schools? Health care? How about higher education, student loans, housing, banking, physical infrastructure, immigration, the space program, the military, the police, and the post office? What do all these industries and/or organizations have in common? They are all heavily regulated or controlled by the government.
they government needs to decide, do they allow monopolies or not....not the selective decision making the government is currently doing
Internet bandwidth is, at least currently, a finite resource and has to be allocated somehow. We can let politicians decide, or we can let you and me decide by leaving it up to the free market. If we choose politicians, we will see the Internet become another mismanaged public monopoly, subject to political whims and increased scrutiny from our friends at the NSA. If we leave it up to the free market we will, in time, receive more of what we want at a lower price. It may not be a perfect process, but it will be better than the alternative.
This...and it bears repeating ad nauseum, maybe with a sledgehammer to make sure people get it.
THE PROBLEM THAT NEITHER SIDE GETS is the FCC and protected monopoly of the big telecomms and their "last mile" of copper/fiber going back to 1934. Workingclasshero, Mircea, myself and maybe a few others seem to be the only people who understand that neither "Obama's MOAR FCC NOW!" nor the GOP's "leave teh telecomm monopoleez alone cuz free markets, m'kay?" are a solution because just as workingclasshero so astutely points out - it is a fight over whose monopoly will control your internet - Leviathan or Big TeleComm. Obama and his cronies, of course, favor Leviathan being god-king, and the GOP, as is their wont, favor King Telecomm...but this whole "neutrality" debate you all keep getting miserably wrong is a fight over which monopoly owns you.
The truly neutral solution is to drop the monopolistic protection of the last mile of copper/fiber, release the unused spectrum for wireless broadcasting and open it to innovation, and STOP STOP STOP protecting the telecomm monpolies on pushing packets through space.
This issue is not resolved by limiting how one provider must handle packets, but by allowing anyone to push those same packets on new, innovative broadcast mechanisms. NetFlix doesn't much care who directs their packets. They'll send them out to anyone. Let new providers pop up who promise faster NetFlix and YouTube speeds, at a lower price, and watch Big Telecomm crap their pants and cry foul over their beloved last mile nonsense, investment cost that the government must pay back, unfairness because legacy costs, etc.
Stop arguing over which monopoly should own you, and look instead to breaking the both monopolies' hold on you.
In this case, you have chosen to redefine what constitutes a "free market" even though virtually every economist on the face of the earth disagrees with your insistence that it doesn't involve the government....
The Free Market does not require government.
Your first clue should have been that Free Markets existed before governments.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Votre_Chef
(on the contrary, government is a necessary component to a free market, or else consumers would have no confidence in it at all
All that is required for Markets is a neutral body to provide a neutral forum to enforce Contracts.
It is the enforcement of Contracts through jurisprudence that creates confidence.
If I am to risk Capital -- be it cash, land, livestock, machinery/equipment, vehicles, ships, aircraft or whatever --- I want a written contract that clearly states everyone's duties, responsibilities and obligations toward the fulfillment of the contract. Should that contract be breached, I want the remedies specified in the contract to be upheld and enforced.
That's especially true for land.
If I give you cash for land, then you had best be able to demonstrate that you have the right and authority to convey that land. That requires a neutral body as a depository of records to record land deeds and transfers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Votre_Chef
--Smith and other early capitalist economists went to great lengths to explain why confidence in the market was absolutely necessary for the system to flourish and government had to regulate it properly to ensure confidence).
The views of Smith and others regarding the role of government is invalid and it most certainly is not applicable here in the United States.
In case you forgot, Britain is a monarchy.
"Monarchy" is anathema to "republic", and doubly so to "federal republic."
The views of monarchists like Smith et al who were inculcated in monarchy are not inherently universal, and thus not applicable to republics --- ie any non-monarchy.
Their views are also antiquated.
Smith's world is nothing like the world today.
If Smith would be born in the US in the 20th Century, would he regard government in the same way?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Votre_Chef
It's not a free market if ISP monopolies...
Who created ISP monopolies?
Oh, that would be government.
Can you say "circular argument"?.....
Should all radio stations be required to operate at exactly the same power? Or if you can afford more power shouldn't you be able to up your transmitter? The other stations are still there, if they are worth listening to you can still find them.
Keep the government out of the operation of the internet. The power to control is the power to censor.
Should someone with a lot of money and an AM station be allowed to broadcast at 500,000 watts, drowning out all other radio stations in much of north America?
Keep monopolistic Comcast from deliberately throttling back Netflix traffic, thus screwing their own customers who chose Netflix over Comcast's own suite of television and movies via streaming. Not to mention extorting Netflix into paying more so they could deliver content to Comcast customers as promised.
You can find a whole lot of detail by Googling keywords "Comcast Netflix Streaming".[/quote]
In the end 2 things you can be sure of.
Option 1.
1. Netflix people will figure out comcast is screwing them over.
2. Move to verizon and or another internet provider
3. Comcast loses money and business
4. Comcast changes it policy and offers back full peak time speeds.
Its called the FREE MARKET
Now here is how the government would handle this.
1. Comcast would force the connection speed.
2. Comcast would increase prices and call it a fee, some net neutrality charge
3. Government then would demand all sales tax and intenet fee to "maintain" this policy
4. Comcast, verizon, and other internet providers lobby congress for new ways to LEGALLY change the laws that as a whole only benefit them.
In the end the first option was resolved with freedom of customers to choose their provider.
The second option waits for the government to take 10 years to break the internet.
In fact if new technology was created that ever took the power out of the current internet providers they would now lobby Washington to not allow it and demand it is regulated. So do you want new technology or be stuck with government would then approve.
As the customer demand changes from the cable companies not the government.
Should someone with a lot of money and an AM station be allowed to broadcast at 500,000 watts, drowning out all other radio stations in much of north America?
In this case you can have a 5 watt station sitting next to a 500K watt without them interfering with each other , net neutrality would not prevent this from happening. What it would do is prevent the guy selling antennas deciding what kind of reception you get from those stations.
I'm not demanding anything and by now you should know my position is the ISP's need to change their pricing scheme where the consumer pays by volume. If any company is offering me unlimited usage that's what I should get. The electric and water companies don't do this because they know it will be abused. Whether I'm paying for an unlimited service or by units they still don't get to dictate how I use that product.
.
That's precisely the OPPOSITE of what you argued about electricity and water.
What purpose does that serve? A byte of data is a byte of data, why should they be concerned about what that data is.
I have neither the time nor inclination to spend weeks teaching you about the operation of an ISP.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
