Capitalism is great when it's many companies competing. That's the kind of capitalism I support. Capitalism isn't so great when a highly in demand market is lar

Capitalism is great when it's many companies competing. That's the kind of capitalism I support. Capitalism isn't so great when a highly in demand market is largely geographically controlled by very few, with that control also being largely governmentally involved because part of its product is now essential infrastructure. There are thresholds for when how markets operate starts to have effects that have sizeable socioeconomic effects. I don't think it's hyperbole to claim that the Internet is now an essential part of U.S. commerce with itself and the world. Whenever we talk about physical commerce, like stores or driving to work, we generally agree we need some form of government oversight and regulation so that the commerce can keep flowing. For example if a highway has a wreck it can prevent millions of dollars being earned all across the board. This is in part why we have road safety standards, and standards for the vehicles that can be on it. I think the internet is similiar in some ways. We now use it for work in lots of places. For government applications, and to buy and sell a significant amount of goods. Entertainment is included as services and goods. When we consider commerce flowing freely we have to also consider the real bottlenecks to it in relation to monopalistic control. Is netflix's bandwidth actually a significant stress for Comcasts networks? If it is, is it because netflix's bandwidth is inherently too large for what Comcast can realistically afford, or is it because Comcast does not want to innovate and/or improve their infrastructure? I was surprised when I found you can get a 1Gb/s dedicated line through Cogent or Hurricane Electric for about $150. This is transit network that has very low latency, and they're much smaller companies than U.S. ISP's. Residential internet is not dedicated, it's shared. I don't have the data on how much is actually used but I highly suspect only about 1/20th is used by most people overall, if not less. I think as it stands right now, it's ISP's lack of competition leading to lack of effort to provide a good product. Given their position and lack of effort they are the ones who are actually hurting free commerce. If they are hurting free commerce then what should be done about it? Well, as I originally stated, ISP's are in the business of infrastructure. You don't have realistic alternatives that do allow that commerce (In this case, bandwidth). So, do we just ignore commerce for the country being limited, or do we force the hand? I think forcing the hand is a bandaid, but a true solution, competition, is much further out of reach. Any time anti-monopalization is brought up you get the same notions of 'free market' saying no, when monopalization puts down free markets.