Shadow1980 said:
In this particular case? The ISPs are the ones to be most wary of. Besides, if I don't like the way the government doesn't do things, well, we have things like the democratic process, being able to petition the government for a redress of grievances, etc. Getting the change we want isn't guaranteed, but at least we have options. But ISPs are effectively monopolies in most places, just like pretty much any other utility. Around here, it's either Comcast or do without. There are no "free market solutions." There is no "voting with your dollars." Many businesses, monopolies especially, have little incentive to self-regulate. There's a reason why monopolies are heavily regulated, or at least they should be. There need to be rules to keep certain types of companies from abusing the fact that they have zero competition in most places, and, unfortunately for the "government is always the problem" types, the only body that can create and enforce such rules is the government. In the case of ISPs, there needs to be rules to prevent them from effectively ending the internet as we know it, which should be a free and open system where all packets are treated equal. ISPs shouldn't be able to control data like that. Their only purpose is to give people access to the internet, not regulate internet content themselves, throttling access to certain sites and giving priority to others. It shouldn't matter if it's posting on VGC or shopping at Amazon or streaming from Hulu or searching on Google or reading news on Yahoo or playing games on Xbox Live. While we can quibble about how it's enforced and who does the enforcing, at the end of the day net neutrality is essential for the internet if we want it to keep being about the free flow of data and information.
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Sorry, but it's plainly ludicrous to think that Imperial Washington is more responsive to criticism or vulnerable to backlash than even the worst corporation. It is, after all, the biggest monopoly going.
The bolded is begging the question. Of course most monopolies are heavily regulated. It seems like everything is these days. But this is a chicken and egg situation because, almost without exception, the biggest dog around never has the adversarial relationship with the regulators that the "regulate more!" crowd imagines it does. Far from it. They are usually exceptionally cozy with them. As was the case with Enron, which is precisely why things got so out of control. It is the smaller companies who can't comply with onerous regulations (or hire the lobbyists who help write them, and hey, didn't Comcast just hire a former commissioner of the FCC?) who get drummed out of business, leaving these lumbering behemoths to continue to rule without fear of smaller, nimbler competitors. In the end, regulations end up creating and sustaining far more monopolies than they have ever ended by "encouraging competition".
So I remain skeptical and find that this whole thing has more than a whiff of the old lady who swallowed a spider to catch the fly about it.
