4 ms·

Net neutrality IS a government assisted monopoly but in the favor of consumer instead of provider. I don't think people who support net neutrality will be able

by tn13 10y ago

Net neutrality IS a government assisted monopoly but in the favor of consumer instead of provider. I don't think people who support net neutrality will be able to bring arguments in support of free market policies for ISPs.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
"Net neutrality IS a government assisted monopoly" It seemed to be the opposite to me. A monopoly is a single supplier that dictates everything, esp price and service. Net neutrality is more like free market where it blocks artificial restrictions to boost benefits for consumers.
- sremani 10y ago
  The point become regulations are actually a firewall for incumbent. The more regulation you have the up-start is unlikely to enter and complete. Uber brought disruption through rough-shodding taxi regulation.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    This story illustrates why that isn't true. The Uber story is totally different.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Not all regulations are the same in nature or effect. The introduction of regulation that introduce restrictions on who can compete has eliminated nearly all competition and most innovation in them. Most areas have 1 or 2 providers that charge high prices for low speed and service. The regulations like net neutrality that eliminate restrictions on what users can do increase innovation in the space.
- dv_dt 10y ago
  There used to be a consideration of monopolies that tried to hold them back from "Restraint of Trade" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restraint_of_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restraint_of_trade). The wikipedia page hints that it has been subsumed into modern "competition law" but really it feels like it's dropped away completely as a consideration. Once you sell a internet connection to a customer, it seems to feel like a restraint of trade if you start messing with the traffic of some companies but not others. Though I suppose it's not clear how this applies between state governments and cities.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    That's interesting. I'll have to think on that.
daeken 10y ago
> Net neutrality IS a government assisted monopoly The definition of monopoly ("the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service") makes this clearly false. Net neutrality is a policy, supported by legislation that gives the FCC the power to enforce that policy. In no way is that related to monopolies.
- russell_h 10y ago
  Right, I'm not quite how you make the leap that "Net neutrality IS a government assisted monopoly". It does seem to me that net neutrality makes it effectively impossible for ISPs to differentiate, because they're all compelled to sell the same product - dumb pipes. This will likely make it difficult for two ISPs to exist in the same market, but it doesn't preclude competitors from entering the market at such time as the prevailing ISP becomes abusive. In other words, it's not worse than the status quo.
  - duaneb 10y ago
    > It does seem to me that net neutrality makes it effectively impossible for ISPs to differentiate, because they're all compelled to sell the same product - dumb pipes. If ONLY they viewed themselves as a dumb pipe, I could actually shop on relevant metrics—price, availability, bandwidth, latency—and I would be happy to switch to the best available ISP in the market. As it is, it's actually very difficult to find any numbers on availability, bandwidth, and latency. Instead, I'm forced to compare prices and offerings. The offerings are actually an UPPER bound on bandwidth, rendering comparison meaningless for comparing ACTUAL bandwidth. The pricing advertised is often not for internet but some "bundle" of varied services, most of which will drastically increase in price after the first year, and only one of which (broadband internet) I actually want. For instance, I see ads for FiOS all over the damn place—successfully suckering me in, I might add—but in spite of living in residential, downtown city for the last eight years of my life I've never actually found a place I can actually get fiber. ISPs are already impossible to differentiate in terms of actual value. Selling dumb pipes can only improve.
    - deleted 10y ago
mindslight 10y ago
> I don't think people who support net neutrality will be able to bring arguments in support of free market policies for ISPs Au contraire. Net neutrality supports market efficiency, the same way that building a national highway system did. Incumbents want to raise their margins by decommodifying their services to confuse the market. Now, creating regulations itself is inherently anti free market (just as collecting taxes to build highways was). Perhaps in the future we'll have ISP startups competitively bonded with prospective subscribers, and private covenants assuring what types of traffic will pass (although why would subscribers choose anything other than "all", given the majority expense of a last-mile ISP is the fanout). But until that prospect is even on the horizon, it's a moot point. Any proponent of free markets, even a dedicated ancap, should support the approach that results in markets actually functioning freer.
- utternerd 10y ago
  I love your logic, highly persuasive and I tend to agree. My only concern has been and will remain until proven otherwise, that like many things "Government", Net Neutrality while having the best of intentions will slowly be eroded by corporate interests and lobbyists. Eventually destroying it's original intent, and leaving us in a worse, or much more complicated position than when we started. Hopefully not.
  - mindslight 10y ago
    I agree, and I think pretending that incumbent ISPs have free market virtues is that erosion happening right in front of us! Personally, what I think we really need are better protocols designed to resist inspection by transit providers. The end to end principle fundamentally arose from engineering efficiency concerns, and its original implementation was never meant to be resistant to intermediate parties. But now that the industry is popular and computation has gotten cheap, the expense of a DPI box is dwarfed by the increased profit an SP can make by selling discrete "services" just like the Ma Bell good old days. Such protocols also need to be widely adopted, so that ISPs can't just block them and still retain 95% of users.
__jal 10y ago
> Net neutrality IS a government assisted monopoly but in the favor of consumer instead of provider Can you explain how that works? Who, exactly, is the monopoly referenced in that sentence? It sounds like you mean that whatever is being referenced by the identifier "net neutrality" (guessing recent FCC decisions, but it is not clear) tilts the market towards consumers in ways that you believe are anti-free-market, but that has nothing to do with monopolies or antitrust. If that is what is meant, I completely disagree - it is the legacy telco/cable companies who need a refresher in antitrust issues. They are the only ones I see using the government to restrict competition. Putting a floor on baseline requirements offered by market participants (such as actually offering the service advertised, or not extorting cash from third-party internet ventures) has nothing to do with restricting competition, any more that mandating lead-free paints in cribs or seatbelts in cars. (Yeah, I know some people still rant about seatbelts, but not on antitrust grounds.) It has to do with constraining market participants who have already had a long history of preferential government treatment to not leveraging that into yet more ways to extract rent.
tn13 10y ago
Government assisted monopoly is basically using government's coercive power to deny a party to chose from alternatives. When government forces ISPs to be "neutral" an forgo the additional revenue it essentially denying the ISPs to exercise their innovation to benefit the voters. There is no difference between government mandating net neutrality and government banning Uber to help local Taxi companies. I think people mistake net neutrality for fairness because they think a lot of people benefit.
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  Yes, net neutrality is not fairness, it's an attempt to use more regulations to fix a problem caused by previous regulations, that monopolized the whole market.
  - tn13 10y ago
    Finally someone gets it on HN!

by tn13 10y ago

nickpsecurity 10y ago

"Net neutrality IS a government assisted monopoly" It seemed to be the opposite to me. A monopoly is a single supplier that dictates everything, esp price and service. Net neutrality is more like free market where it blocks artificial restrictions to boost benefits for consumers.

sremani 10y ago
The point become regulations are actually a firewall for incumbent. The more regulation you have the up-start is unlikely to enter and complete. Uber brought disruption through rough-shodding taxi regulation.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  This story illustrates why that isn't true. The Uber story is totally different.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Not all regulations are the same in nature or effect. The introduction of regulation that introduce restrictions on who can compete has eliminated nearly all competition and most innovation in them. Most areas have 1 or 2 providers that charge high prices for low speed and service. The regulations like net neutrality that eliminate restrictions on what users can do increase innovation in the space.
dv_dt 10y ago
There used to be a consideration of monopolies that tried to hold them back from "Restraint of Trade" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restraint_of_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restraint_of_trade). The wikipedia page hints that it has been subsumed into modern "competition law" but really it feels like it's dropped away completely as a consideration. Once you sell a internet connection to a customer, it seems to feel like a restraint of trade if you start messing with the traffic of some companies but not others. Though I suppose it's not clear how this applies between state governments and cities.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  That's interesting. I'll have to think on that.

daeken 10y ago

> Net neutrality IS a government assisted monopoly The definition of monopoly ("the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service") makes this clearly false. Net neutrality is a policy, supported by legislation that gives the FCC the power to enforce that policy. In no way is that related to monopolies.

russell_h 10y ago
Right, I'm not quite how you make the leap that "Net neutrality IS a government assisted monopoly". It does seem to me that net neutrality makes it effectively impossible for ISPs to differentiate, because they're all compelled to sell the same product - dumb pipes. This will likely make it difficult for two ISPs to exist in the same market, but it doesn't preclude competitors from entering the market at such time as the prevailing ISP becomes abusive. In other words, it's not worse than the status quo.
- duaneb 10y ago
  > It does seem to me that net neutrality makes it effectively impossible for ISPs to differentiate, because they're all compelled to sell the same product - dumb pipes. If ONLY they viewed themselves as a dumb pipe, I could actually shop on relevant metrics—price, availability, bandwidth, latency—and I would be happy to switch to the best available ISP in the market. As it is, it's actually very difficult to find any numbers on availability, bandwidth, and latency. Instead, I'm forced to compare prices and offerings. The offerings are actually an UPPER bound on bandwidth, rendering comparison meaningless for comparing ACTUAL bandwidth. The pricing advertised is often not for internet but some "bundle" of varied services, most of which will drastically increase in price after the first year, and only one of which (broadband internet) I actually want. For instance, I see ads for FiOS all over the damn place—successfully suckering me in, I might add—but in spite of living in residential, downtown city for the last eight years of my life I've never actually found a place I can actually get fiber. ISPs are already impossible to differentiate in terms of actual value. Selling dumb pipes can only improve.
  - deleted 10y ago

mindslight 10y ago

> I don't think people who support net neutrality will be able to bring arguments in support of free market policies for ISPs Au contraire. Net neutrality supports market efficiency, the same way that building a national highway system did. Incumbents want to raise their margins by decommodifying their services to confuse the market. Now, creating regulations itself is inherently anti free market (just as collecting taxes to build highways was). Perhaps in the future we'll have ISP startups competitively bonded with prospective subscribers, and private covenants assuring what types of traffic will pass (although why would subscribers choose anything other than "all", given the majority expense of a last-mile ISP is the fanout). But until that prospect is even on the horizon, it's a moot point. Any proponent of free markets, even a dedicated ancap, should support the approach that results in markets actually functioning freer.

utternerd 10y ago
I love your logic, highly persuasive and I tend to agree. My only concern has been and will remain until proven otherwise, that like many things "Government", Net Neutrality while having the best of intentions will slowly be eroded by corporate interests and lobbyists. Eventually destroying it's original intent, and leaving us in a worse, or much more complicated position than when we started. Hopefully not.
- mindslight 10y ago
  I agree, and I think pretending that incumbent ISPs have free market virtues is that erosion happening right in front of us! Personally, what I think we really need are better protocols designed to resist inspection by transit providers. The end to end principle fundamentally arose from engineering efficiency concerns, and its original implementation was never meant to be resistant to intermediate parties. But now that the industry is popular and computation has gotten cheap, the expense of a DPI box is dwarfed by the increased profit an SP can make by selling discrete "services" just like the Ma Bell good old days. Such protocols also need to be widely adopted, so that ISPs can't just block them and still retain 95% of users.

__jal 10y ago

> Net neutrality IS a government assisted monopoly but in the favor of consumer instead of provider Can you explain how that works? Who, exactly, is the monopoly referenced in that sentence? It sounds like you mean that whatever is being referenced by the identifier "net neutrality" (guessing recent FCC decisions, but it is not clear) tilts the market towards consumers in ways that you believe are anti-free-market, but that has nothing to do with monopolies or antitrust. If that is what is meant, I completely disagree - it is the legacy telco/cable companies who need a refresher in antitrust issues. They are the only ones I see using the government to restrict competition. Putting a floor on baseline requirements offered by market participants (such as actually offering the service advertised, or not extorting cash from third-party internet ventures) has nothing to do with restricting competition, any more that mandating lead-free paints in cribs or seatbelts in cars. (Yeah, I know some people still rant about seatbelts, but not on antitrust grounds.) It has to do with constraining market participants who have already had a long history of preferential government treatment to not leveraging that into yet more ways to extract rent.

tn13 10y ago

Government assisted monopoly is basically using government's coercive power to deny a party to chose from alternatives. When government forces ISPs to be "neutral" an forgo the additional revenue it essentially denying the ISPs to exercise their innovation to benefit the voters. There is no difference between government mandating net neutrality and government banning Uber to help local Taxi companies. I think people mistake net neutrality for fairness because they think a lot of people benefit.

zzzcpan 10y ago
Yes, net neutrality is not fairness, it's an attempt to use more regulations to fix a problem caused by previous regulations, that monopolized the whole market.
- tn13 10y ago
  Finally someone gets it on HN!