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i know its supposed to be a general truth, that regulation raises costs. i mean how can it not, since in the absence of regulation costs would be minimized. bu

i know its supposed to be a general truth, that regulation raises costs. i mean how can it not, since in the absence of regulation costs would be minimized. but can you explain why forcing Netflix (just for an example) to negotiate transit with every provider large enough to demand it helps lower any costs? presumably transit competition? or how turning 'the internet' from a generic access method into a giant menu with a checkbox by every internet address helps lower cost? maybe because we'd be forced to examine all the options and our spending habits and select only the bundles we need? and what about transitive services...probably need to shift pretty hard away from the whole micro services model, maybe i don't subscribe to the particular oauth channel your application needs. doesn't this additional server and client side provisioning requirement create a huge barrier to entry? doesn't that weaken the whole competition argument? i guess what i'd really love to see is some kind of defense for the cable-tv model of the internet beyond 'regulation bad, free markets good'

Singletoned 9y ago
> i know its supposed to be a general truth, that regulation raises costs. i mean how can it not, since in the absence of regulation costs would be minimized. There's lots of cases where a lack of regulation causes higher prices. Such as monopolies and oligopolies. Remember that companies seek to maximise profit above all else. They only lower prices if it helps them to maxmise profits.
aaronchall 9y ago
We have heterogenous consumers - for example: One user accesses email a couple of times a day. Another constantly views twitter and loads heavy home-pages of their news sites. Another bounces around on sports news and streaming games (perhaps illegally). Another watches Youtube and Netflix, while scanning Facebook. Another mostly torrents. Right now, we have user pays. I think deregulation could/will rebalance these things. - Our emailer will get a cheaper package. - The news sites will get pressure to lighten up - more video compression, more care about image sizes. - Youtube will probably be forced to share ad revenue with ISPs - probably leading to more ads. - The illicit video streamers will probably be very unhappy as their bandwidth goes way down. - The torrenters will probably be asked to pay more. - Maybe we get more infrastructure. - Maybe we get monopolies busted up. IDK, all of this is speculation. So are all the loudly trumpeted possible downsides (of which I am truly fearful as well.) But I just want some non-hysterical even-handed exposition. Is that too much to ask?
- convolvatron 9y ago
  thats kind of what i was asking for (some concrete argument) aren't all the things you bring up solved by usage based billing in the current model? thats pretty different than selective transit.

Singletoned 9y ago

> i know its supposed to be a general truth, that regulation raises costs. i mean how can it not, since in the absence of regulation costs would be minimized. There's lots of cases where a lack of regulation causes higher prices. Such as monopolies and oligopolies. Remember that companies seek to maximise profit above all else. They only lower prices if it helps them to maxmise profits.

aaronchall 9y ago

We have heterogenous consumers - for example: One user accesses email a couple of times a day. Another constantly views twitter and loads heavy home-pages of their news sites. Another bounces around on sports news and streaming games (perhaps illegally). Another watches Youtube and Netflix, while scanning Facebook. Another mostly torrents. Right now, we have user pays. I think deregulation could/will rebalance these things. - Our emailer will get a cheaper package. - The news sites will get pressure to lighten up - more video compression, more care about image sizes. - Youtube will probably be forced to share ad revenue with ISPs - probably leading to more ads. - The illicit video streamers will probably be very unhappy as their bandwidth goes way down. - The torrenters will probably be asked to pay more. - Maybe we get more infrastructure. - Maybe we get monopolies busted up. IDK, all of this is speculation. So are all the loudly trumpeted possible downsides (of which I am truly fearful as well.) But I just want some non-hysterical even-handed exposition. Is that too much to ask?

convolvatron 9y ago
thats kind of what i was asking for (some concrete argument) aren't all the things you bring up solved by usage based billing in the current model? thats pretty different than selective transit.