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>And that’s what you are sacrificing by adding middle men. That’s what the NN debate is about. Inserting middle men, into the system. This makes sense, if you

>And that’s what you are sacrificing by adding middle men. That’s what the NN debate is about. Inserting middle men, into the system. This makes sense, if you are talking about someone who already has some level of internet access. But consider the person who doesn't. Either they can get internet from a middle man, or they can't get internet. To that person, Wikipedia using a middle man is definitely more valuable than NN. Perhaps if NN is so valuable that we should protect it, then we should protect it by competing and offering a free internet with no middle man instead of using government regulation to ban the middle man. Offer the end user a better choice. If it isn't worth the price it would cost us to do it... then NN might not be that valuable.

intended 10y ago
I'm surprised you focused only on that point and followed it up with "Wikipedia with middle men is more valuable than NN" My whole point is that the internet is much, much more than Wikipedia. Giving that up is simply a bad choice. ---- As for your point on govt regulation. - Telecom is a textbook example of an industry which has barriers to entry and a tendency towards monopoly. You have to have regulation to compensate for the inherent structural issues of the market. Secondly there are free versions of the net being offered and discussed, Mozilla has one, which conform to NN. But The middle men still want NN broken so that they can seek rents. This results in the old cable tv model, which is exactly the kind of poor system the internet iterates over. I keep being surprised by how people bring these incorrect and inappropriate analogies to this discussion (free market, choice). I feel now, that it's free market-ism which causes this problem - a belief that by allowing the market and firms to figure it out, there will be some better outcome. Which is so odd to hear from Americans given The history of every telecom auction, the promised roll out of fiber, the tax breaks and many more.

intended 10y ago

I'm surprised you focused only on that point and followed it up with "Wikipedia with middle men is more valuable than NN" My whole point is that the internet is much, much more than Wikipedia. Giving that up is simply a bad choice. ---- As for your point on govt regulation. - Telecom is a textbook example of an industry which has barriers to entry and a tendency towards monopoly. You have to have regulation to compensate for the inherent structural issues of the market. Secondly there are free versions of the net being offered and discussed, Mozilla has one, which conform to NN. But The middle men still want NN broken so that they can seek rents. This results in the old cable tv model, which is exactly the kind of poor system the internet iterates over. I keep being surprised by how people bring these incorrect and inappropriate analogies to this discussion (free market, choice). I feel now, that it's free market-ism which causes this problem - a belief that by allowing the market and firms to figure it out, there will be some better outcome. Which is so odd to hear from Americans given The history of every telecom auction, the promised roll out of fiber, the tax breaks and many more.