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What's the point of having more money if you can't spend it on better goods and services? We don't have car neutrality laws to prevent rich people from paying m

What's the point of having more money if you can't spend it on better goods and services? We don't have car neutrality laws to prevent rich people from paying more for Ferraris.

vmarsy 9y ago
I don't think your comparison is correct. > Assuming you have 10mbit internet access for $N/month: > * Paying +$20/m for 100mbit internet: OK > * Paying +$20/m for 100mbit access to "Top 100 websites": Not OK In your car comparison, it would be like : Assuming you pay for a VW Golf $10000 * Paying +$200k for a Ferrari: OK * Paying +$200k for a Lamborghini: OK * Paying +$200k for a Ferrari but +$200k for an equivalent Lamborghini but with an added +$300k of fee just because the container ship company moving the car from Italy to the U.S. asked an extra $300k simply because the container is filled with Lamborghini instead of Ferrari: Not OK Container companies would never do this because Lamborghini would simply put its containers on the container boat of a concurrent company, because there's competition. But for consumer-facing ISPs, there's plenty of documentation that shows that in many areas around the country, some ISPs have a monopoly, and so for many users, they cannot go to another ISP if they aren't satisfied with their only choice.
- 794CD01 9y ago
  In other words, the problem is not that people are allowed to pay different prices for different products, but rather the lack of a competitive marketplace? Now we're getting somewhere!
int_handler 9y ago
That's not a valid comparison. Different websites can and already charge different amounts of money for their services. However, we do not have Premium Luxury Highways where rich people can drive their Ferraris at 100 MPH while regular plebs sit in traffic all day.
- c517402 9y ago
  Texas State Highway 130 - You can pay the toll, drive your Farrari at 100 mph and have only a small chance of being pulled over. You can drive at 95 mph on one stretch and have zero chance of being pulled over. From Wikipedia: "The highway is noted for having a speed limit of at least 80 mph (130 km/h) along its tolled section. The 41-mile (66 km) section of the toll road between Mustang Ridge and Seguin has a posted speed limit of 85 mph (137 km/h), the highest posted speed limit in the United States."
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- 794CD01 9y ago
  Toll highways and carpool lanes basically are what you describe. Yes, people hire strangers to sit in their car to use the carpool lane.
  - losteric 9y ago
    Toll highways are the exception, not the norm. They are also a little different because they are part of the network - your isp deals with peering with other ISPs, and some ISPs do charge more... That price is reflected in what the consumer and end host pay for service.
eslaught 9y ago
I think the net neutrality case would be more like getting a $10k discount when you opt in to buying a Prius that goes half speed when you try to drive to any large store other than Walmart. And imagine that there was a law saying that in your city, you were only allowed to drive cars made by Toyota. That's more like how the internet is in the USA: there are local monopolies restricting who you can go to for internet service, and now your ISP also wants to restrict what websites I go to (or with what speed). That's why this strikes as so objectionable.
- pyre 9y ago
  Not only that, but many of those local ISPs monopolies have been going on for decades, so even opening the market up to competition gives them an unfair advantage since they have had decades to invest monopoly revenue in their infrastructure.
- 794CD01 9y ago
  In other words, you should probably be focusing on repealing the stupid law that requires you to drive a Toyota?
  - eslaught 9y ago
    Yes, but don't tear off the band-aid until the wound has healed.
pyre 9y ago
Do rich people pay more to get priority access to water and electricity during high usage periods? I'm not talking about just paying higher rates (i.e. poorer people will ration their usage while rich people will just pay more and no care). I'm talking about "rolling brown-outs" or "water usage rationing" scenarios. Do rich people get to pay more to not have to ration usage during those periods?
- CWuestefeld 9y ago
  This is a good question, and it also touches on the question of "gouging". Imagine some natural disaster, and everyone is being evacuated. The local convenience store is selling out of ice, as folks try to pack up enough food and stuff for their time away. It comes down to the last bag of ice, and we've got two customers. A frat boy got in line first, wanting that ice to keep his beer cold. He takes the ice for $2 and leaves, happy. The last guy is diabetic. He'd have willingly paid ten or even a hundred times that amount to keep his insulin fresh. But because the convenience store wants to keep pricing fair for everyone, the guy who REALLY needs the stuff wasn't able to signal the greater value he puts on the ice, and so the system fails him. The ability to use pricing to communicate value, including the ability to substitute other goods or downstream value of goods incorporating a resource, is crucial to the functioning of the market. And the most obvious problem with socialism is that it attempts to forgo this information, making the decisions by fiat or by guess, when it's impossible to centralize the knowledge that pricing derives through an emergent distributed calculation. Read more in Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society": http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html
  - throwawayjava 9y ago
    > and so the system fails him. At least in the USA, this is a solved problem. The federal, state, and/or local government step in and provide disaster relief, including access to ice and/or medications. And the diabetic gets to live without parting with his life savings for a cup of ice. > through an emergent distributed calculation. Diabetics are not electrons in a calculator. There's a general pattern to both the argument you're making here and the argument you made about remote surgery. You're dreaming up a completely non-existent and totally hypothetical possible harm that the status quo already has exception handling mechanisms for, and providing it as a reason for ignoring much more systemic and plausible harms.
liveoneggs 9y ago
and you get access to the common carrier of cars around your city: the road. Maybe you'd prefer if ferrari paid to have dedicated ferrari lanes that went to dedicated ferrari restaurants
- 794CD01 9y ago
  If they didn't interfere with my own usage of normal roads and restaurants, I might be a little jealous but otherwise wouldn't mind. If your real objection is that they would interfere, you should base your argument on that instead of saying that rich people shouldn't be able to pay more money to get better things, which is in total opposition to basically the entirety of modern American society.
losteric 9y ago
Net neutrality laws apply to the road, not the car. It doesn't matter if you have a Ferrari or a Corolla - the streets don't care. Everyone can use the street and must follow the same laws. If you have a Ferrari (gigabit internet), you bought the ability to accelerate quicker and go faster... But the same laws apply. Biased internet is paying to have every light green and kick people off the road...
- 794CD01 9y ago
  Not really. Richer people can use toll roads while the poor might take a longer route that doesn't cost money. The poor might follow laws that the rich break because they can afford to pay the fines. But I think this is approaching the limits of the analogy's usefulness.
  - losteric 9y ago
    Again, the analogy is the road not the car. Anyone can use toll roads - it doesn't matter what car you drive, where you came from, or where you're going, the price is the same for everyone. Price per mile, flat rate, whatever - if it's non-discriminatory, it's neutral! Non-neutrality is when a toll road charges more because of the car you drive, where you came from, what you're carrying, or where you're headed - or letting certain people jump the queue based on those criteria. It's not OK to give a discount to BMW drivers because they drive a BMW. If BMW drivers are the only ones that can afford the price - that's OK. But if a Corolla driver comes along and pays the price, they better get exactly the same service. (The analogy does break down at vehicle weight - cars can be long/short and heavy/light, packets are only long/short)
    - 794CD01 9y ago
      What you're decribing plainly doesn't happen. That's part of why people buy fancier cars in the first place - to be treated better by those who judge them on it. But that's also the part I don't really care about. I was objecting specifically to the original point that rich people shouldn't be able to buy better treatment.
inetknght 9y ago
Those Ferraris drive on the same public roads that everyone else drives on. They can pay the same fees to race on private roads.

What's the point of having more money if you can't spend it on better goods and services? We don't have car neutrality laws to prevent rich people from paying more for Ferraris.

vmarsy 9y ago

I don't think your comparison is correct. > Assuming you have 10mbit internet access for $N/month: > * Paying +$20/m for 100mbit internet: OK > * Paying +$20/m for 100mbit access to "Top 100 websites": Not OK In your car comparison, it would be like : Assuming you pay for a VW Golf $10000 * Paying +$200k for a Ferrari: OK * Paying +$200k for a Lamborghini: OK * Paying +$200k for a Ferrari but +$200k for an equivalent Lamborghini but with an added +$300k of fee just because the container ship company moving the car from Italy to the U.S. asked an extra $300k simply because the container is filled with Lamborghini instead of Ferrari: Not OK Container companies would never do this because Lamborghini would simply put its containers on the container boat of a concurrent company, because there's competition. But for consumer-facing ISPs, there's plenty of documentation that shows that in many areas around the country, some ISPs have a monopoly, and so for many users, they cannot go to another ISP if they aren't satisfied with their only choice.

794CD01 9y ago
In other words, the problem is not that people are allowed to pay different prices for different products, but rather the lack of a competitive marketplace? Now we're getting somewhere!

int_handler 9y ago

That's not a valid comparison. Different websites can and already charge different amounts of money for their services. However, we do not have Premium Luxury Highways where rich people can drive their Ferraris at 100 MPH while regular plebs sit in traffic all day.

c517402 9y ago
Texas State Highway 130 - You can pay the toll, drive your Farrari at 100 mph and have only a small chance of being pulled over. You can drive at 95 mph on one stretch and have zero chance of being pulled over. From Wikipedia: "The highway is noted for having a speed limit of at least 80 mph (130 km/h) along its tolled section. The 41-mile (66 km) section of the toll road between Mustang Ridge and Seguin has a posted speed limit of 85 mph (137 km/h), the highest posted speed limit in the United States."
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
794CD01 9y ago
Toll highways and carpool lanes basically are what you describe. Yes, people hire strangers to sit in their car to use the carpool lane.
- losteric 9y ago
  Toll highways are the exception, not the norm. They are also a little different because they are part of the network - your isp deals with peering with other ISPs, and some ISPs do charge more... That price is reflected in what the consumer and end host pay for service.

eslaught 9y ago

I think the net neutrality case would be more like getting a $10k discount when you opt in to buying a Prius that goes half speed when you try to drive to any large store other than Walmart. And imagine that there was a law saying that in your city, you were only allowed to drive cars made by Toyota. That's more like how the internet is in the USA: there are local monopolies restricting who you can go to for internet service, and now your ISP also wants to restrict what websites I go to (or with what speed). That's why this strikes as so objectionable.

pyre 9y ago
Not only that, but many of those local ISPs monopolies have been going on for decades, so even opening the market up to competition gives them an unfair advantage since they have had decades to invest monopoly revenue in their infrastructure.
794CD01 9y ago
In other words, you should probably be focusing on repealing the stupid law that requires you to drive a Toyota?
- eslaught 9y ago
  Yes, but don't tear off the band-aid until the wound has healed.

pyre 9y ago

Do rich people pay more to get priority access to water and electricity during high usage periods? I'm not talking about just paying higher rates (i.e. poorer people will ration their usage while rich people will just pay more and no care). I'm talking about "rolling brown-outs" or "water usage rationing" scenarios. Do rich people get to pay more to not have to ration usage during those periods?

CWuestefeld 9y ago
This is a good question, and it also touches on the question of "gouging". Imagine some natural disaster, and everyone is being evacuated. The local convenience store is selling out of ice, as folks try to pack up enough food and stuff for their time away. It comes down to the last bag of ice, and we've got two customers. A frat boy got in line first, wanting that ice to keep his beer cold. He takes the ice for $2 and leaves, happy. The last guy is diabetic. He'd have willingly paid ten or even a hundred times that amount to keep his insulin fresh. But because the convenience store wants to keep pricing fair for everyone, the guy who REALLY needs the stuff wasn't able to signal the greater value he puts on the ice, and so the system fails him. The ability to use pricing to communicate value, including the ability to substitute other goods or downstream value of goods incorporating a resource, is crucial to the functioning of the market. And the most obvious problem with socialism is that it attempts to forgo this information, making the decisions by fiat or by guess, when it's impossible to centralize the knowledge that pricing derives through an emergent distributed calculation. Read more in Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society": http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  > and so the system fails him. At least in the USA, this is a solved problem. The federal, state, and/or local government step in and provide disaster relief, including access to ice and/or medications. And the diabetic gets to live without parting with his life savings for a cup of ice. > through an emergent distributed calculation. Diabetics are not electrons in a calculator. There's a general pattern to both the argument you're making here and the argument you made about remote surgery. You're dreaming up a completely non-existent and totally hypothetical possible harm that the status quo already has exception handling mechanisms for, and providing it as a reason for ignoring much more systemic and plausible harms.

liveoneggs 9y ago

and you get access to the common carrier of cars around your city: the road. Maybe you'd prefer if ferrari paid to have dedicated ferrari lanes that went to dedicated ferrari restaurants

794CD01 9y ago
If they didn't interfere with my own usage of normal roads and restaurants, I might be a little jealous but otherwise wouldn't mind. If your real objection is that they would interfere, you should base your argument on that instead of saying that rich people shouldn't be able to pay more money to get better things, which is in total opposition to basically the entirety of modern American society.

losteric 9y ago

Net neutrality laws apply to the road, not the car. It doesn't matter if you have a Ferrari or a Corolla - the streets don't care. Everyone can use the street and must follow the same laws. If you have a Ferrari (gigabit internet), you bought the ability to accelerate quicker and go faster... But the same laws apply. Biased internet is paying to have every light green and kick people off the road...

794CD01 9y ago
Not really. Richer people can use toll roads while the poor might take a longer route that doesn't cost money. The poor might follow laws that the rich break because they can afford to pay the fines. But I think this is approaching the limits of the analogy's usefulness.
- losteric 9y ago
  Again, the analogy is the road not the car. Anyone can use toll roads - it doesn't matter what car you drive, where you came from, or where you're going, the price is the same for everyone. Price per mile, flat rate, whatever - if it's non-discriminatory, it's neutral! Non-neutrality is when a toll road charges more because of the car you drive, where you came from, what you're carrying, or where you're headed - or letting certain people jump the queue based on those criteria. It's not OK to give a discount to BMW drivers because they drive a BMW. If BMW drivers are the only ones that can afford the price - that's OK. But if a Corolla driver comes along and pays the price, they better get exactly the same service. (The analogy does break down at vehicle weight - cars can be long/short and heavy/light, packets are only long/short)
  - 794CD01 9y ago
    What you're decribing plainly doesn't happen. That's part of why people buy fancier cars in the first place - to be treated better by those who judge them on it. But that's also the part I don't really care about. I was objecting specifically to the original point that rich people shouldn't be able to buy better treatment.

inetknght 9y ago

Those Ferraris drive on the same public roads that everyone else drives on. They can pay the same fees to race on private roads.