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We had the exact same arguments when rail lines were built out. The rail line operators could suddenly decide who won and who lost in _every other_ industry tha
by lovich 8y ago
We had the exact same arguments when rail lines were built out. The rail line operators could suddenly decide who won and who lost in _every other_ industry that required shipping goods, because they were changing prices based on their other businesses. This is bad for consumers and bad for competition.
Now ISPs are effectively digital rail lines and with the repeal of net neutrality they can decide who wins and loses in every other industry that requires the internet. The exact same arguments apply, and the fact that the ISPs are already in the content market in many places and have been
caught throttling competitors, shows that they are ready to abuse this position immediately
Edit:added emphasis to first paragraph
- lovich 8y agoAre there bot rings on hackernews? I've gotten over 40+ upvotes but no comments. I've seen the behavior on Reddit, but never on hackernews in the few years I've been here
- roflc0ptic 8y agoBot rings aside, this is a topic many of us have deep feelings about. Your comment provides a historical example of something we feel in our bones. I don’t know the history so have nothing to add, but I support pointing out the extant absurdity of Comcast getting to fix a market, so I upvote.
- mikestew 8y agoIt happens once in a while. I think my post about participating in the 2013 Boston Marathon garnered over 100 points and only one or two comments. I have other examples. Sometimes a post can be very informative and worthy of a quick click of the mouse, without requiring further comment.
- swasheck 8y agoI upvoted you but have nothing salient to add to the conversation above what you've articulated.
- e_proxus 8y agoI don't often upvote, but I've many times thought the same. What you you wrote is spot on, therefore I gave you my upvote. Regarding the matter, I think it's a fair comparison. Sure, there's some virtuality to data traffic as opposed to physical shipping for example, but there's always a physical dimension there as well. Free markets and competition never fully works where there's limited resources (in this case, the space and availability of network infrastructure). In addition, physical infrastructure can be blocked by competitors in many different ways, hindering new players trying to compete.
- frickinLasers 8y agoIt was a fantastic parallel I hadn't considered before, so I upvoted.
- djsumdog 8y agoI really agree with this analogy. We are in such a weird state in America because we think Capitalism is some kind of natural state where everyone plays fair, when the reality is, the State has always had to regulate competition to make sure it's actually competitive. The US broke up AT&T, American Standard Oil, US Steel and several others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_antitrust_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_antit... Galloway has a great talk about why we should break up big tech, because that's how capitalism is suppose to work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NyFRIgulPo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NyFRIgulPo
- lovich 8y agoI don't think we disagree? The railroads were forcibly regulated by the government so that they no longer had that power. The government is back stepping on that view when it comes to Net Neutrality.
- Florin_Andrei 8y agoTLDR: The attractor for the "free market" as a dynamical system is a few supergiants lording it over the vast multitudes. A steady stream of corrections is needed to make sure the system doesn't end up in that particular ditch.