6 ms·

I am not stating he is somebody Obama would have chosen to lead the FCC, but Obama saw fit to appoint him. A democratic majority senate saw fit to approve him.

• mrgordon 9y ago
  As far as the Obama appointment, let me be a bit more specific. It has been customary for a looong time for the majority party to allow the minority party to appoint two members of the FCC. In fact, legally the majority party can only have three of the five seats. So even if Obama/Congress had gone against tons of precedent and not accepted Pai as the nominee, McConnell would have just sent another similar nominee in his place. There was nothing to be gained by being obstructionist other than slowing down the appointment. I’ll look into the sources you provided and reply to that portion after I’ve had a chance to watch them. As far as Google Fiber, I think there are several reasons it hasn’t gone well. It was far more difficult and expensive than expected for them to roll it out. This had to do with many problems getting permits, digging and laying fiber, and getting sued by existing ISPs. Then the existing ISPs (who are far better at marketing their services and already have a huge user base that rarely switches providers) immediately increased bandwidth or decreased prices as soon as Google moved into new areas. Thus the consumers greatly benefited when Google Fiber arrived in their town but they had little incentive to actually switch to Google. For example, Time Warner announced in North Carolina that it was boosting its customers from 50 mbps to 300 mbps (for no additional charge) as soon as Google announced they would start rolling out fiber. See http://www.zdnet.com/article/i-wish-google-fiber-was-in-my-neighborhood/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/i-wish-google-fiber-was-in-my-n... Let’s also not forget most ISPs are also large TV and phone companies so they can offer bundles or loss leaders that a new entrant like Google cannot. This is a great rundown of the many reasons why Google Fiber hasn’t gone well: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-google-fiber-failed-5-reasons/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-google-fiber-failed... I really don’t think it was regulations that caused their biggest issues. In fact, if there had been additional regulations requiring shared access to utility poles and other infrastructure then they could have actually tried to compete on a level playing field. Instead you see things like in Louisville and Nashville where “Google faced lawsuits from incumbents over the use of existing infrastructure like utility poles to hang its fiber cables.” I’d love to hear from Pai how undoing net neutrality will suddenly get Google and much smaller players access to utility poles and other basic requirements for launching service.
  • indubitable 9y ago
    Just blindly accepting whomever the minority party nominates is not a part of 'custom.' Letting the minority party select who is nominated is. But nominees are indeed rejected, though often it doesn't come to a vote. Voting is often a formality as decisions are agreed upon beforehand, so for rejections see the numerous appointments that are left to "withdraw." You're definitely right about the reasons Google failed to compete, but we can look at it even more fundamentally. The major problem is that people, for whatever reason, were insufficiently incentivized to sign up. When regulations are overly precise in what and how a product must be offered, it ends up turning competition into an RPG style stat check on scale. Could you make a McDonalds style hamburger cheaper than McDonalds? Not a chance. Fortunately, you're not required by the government to create hamburgers in the same style as McDonalds and so there is room for competition in ways outside of price alone. This not only enables competitors, but also requires that McDonalds not take their own success for granted. If their style of burger is no longer what their demographic desires, they can easily lose - fast. So essentially deregulation opens up two mirrored possibilities. The first is if the monopolist begin to really carry out the doomsday scenarios some people are fearing, that's damn sure going to incentivize people to swap when possible. And similarly, the lack of regulation enables far more creative offerings. The cliche example is a nearly free email-only type package, but really there is no limit to what could be achieved particularly with partner companies and motivated investors. And these offerings would not be so readily matched by the monopolists since their value is far more difficult to gauge, and the value to ISP themselves would also be a dynamic value. E.g. an ISP partnered with Netflix would receive a different level of value from from a certain package than Comcast would from the same package. Again, I'm not really convinced this is a reasonable enough argument to give up net neutrality -- but it's an argument that I think is fully cogent and viable. The thing that concerns me is that people aren't really even discussing his views -- instead just demonizing him, and justifying their own behavior by claiming he doesn't even have consistent views which is plainly absurd. We should be able to civilly disagree. And indeed as it looks like net neutrality is almost certainly going away, civilly accept loss. In any case it will be a great test to see who was right -- and if Pai's statement that bad behavior itself will be regulated against is something that he will stay true to, if necessary. If it does indeed become a serious issue it could even be a topic in the 2020 presidential race -- Pai's term expires in 2022.