Again not so simple in this case. New companies need to buy up bandwidth in bulk from the few large companies that own the networks. This is not to protect the companies already there, this was to stop them from over charging to prevent competition.

It's working to keep medication costs low here. Government isn't all bad. It's needed to crack down on monopolies and cartel forming.

In an ideal world the government would own the infrastructure and lease it to any company with equal pricing while maintaining the infrastructure. Just as roads are public domain, country wide glass fiber network should be as well. The power grid is still being privatized though, with the government imposing caps on how much companies can charge, somehow hoping that will lead to innovation and improving the ageing power grid. Yet if they raise taxes to improve the power grid they might not be elected next term. Complicated issue.

Sven, no disrespect, but Mises proved some decades ago that the only monopoly/cartel that formed and sustained without the help of the government intervention was the diamond mining.

Nope, it proves that government are effective at creating then and favoring larger corporations.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/22/16691506/portugal-meo-internet-packages-net-neutrality-ajit-pai-plan

"The plan Khanna tweeted is called “Smart Net,” and as he correctly notes, it offers monthly subscription packages with names like Messaging, Social, and Video. Each of the five categories includes several big-name apps, including Netflix, FaceTime, Spotify, and Google Drive.

But based on Meo’s website, this doesn’t look like buying cable channels for the internet. It’s an add-on to general-purpose mobile subscriptions, which let you access any service — including the ones above. The idea is apparently that if you’re into apps like Snapchat and Facebook (or... LinkedIn, I guess), you pay around $8 a month to specifically get more “Social” data, so you can use your regular allotment for everything else. It looks a lot like the “Vodafone Pass” service in the UK, where subscribers can pay for unlimited access to a similar stable of services.

Techdirt explains this nuance, as does Quartz. But Khanna’s original tweet — the pithy statement that’s getting passed around context-free on social media — doesn’t. It implies that Meo is blocking or limiting certain “packages” unless you pay for them, the way that you can’t watch HBO without the right cable plan. His office didn’t immediately respond to an email asking for clarification.

http://www.9news.com/news/local/verify/verify-what-does-portugal-have-to-do-with-us-dumping-net-neutrality-/494021679

Portugal apparently does have net neutrality.

The claim from Rep. Khanna, repeated in the aforementioned stories with headlines like "If you want to see what America would be like if it ditched net neutrality, just look at Portugal" and "Without net neutrality in Portugal, mobile internet is bundled like a cable package" is false.

Not only does Portugal actually have net neutrality, the example is apples-and-oranges.

Splitting the "net into packages" or selling it "bundled like cable" means that you'd be blacked out from using certain services unless you pay extra.

If the FCC goes through with its plan to end the US net neutrality rule, it might be possible for companies to try to do something like that-- depending on what (if any) replacement rules the FCC puts into place.

But it's not happening in Portugal.

What's happening there is the same kind of thing that's already happening here, regardless of the rules on neutrality.

© 2017 KUSA-TV

I've randomly been polling friends, co-workers, and family about net neutrality. It's amazing how many people aren't aware of this yet they're about to be affected big time.

Nope man... the proof Mises done is that Monopolies doesn't occur naturally (except the single case), every single case he could narrow to government intervention creating it one way or another, so the rules government make doesn't prevent any monopoly, but in some situations create or nourish then.

But has capitalism ever existed without government intervention? People make that case for socialism/communism, but wouldn't that mean that one would also have to conclude the same for that?

Capitalism as we know, as far as I can analyse, always had some form of government presence. But on the case of Mises showing it wasn't just generic existence of government, was more like specific actions in specific markets that make room for a specific monopoly

That is looking small picture and not looking at what conditions led to that situation.