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>> The important point is not necessarily the mechanism, but rather the intent and a good-faith effective effort to keep things fair and underpinned by public-g

>> The important point is not necessarily the mechanism, but rather the intent and a good-faith effective effort to keep things fair and underpinned by public-good policy objectives. > Regulatory bureaucracies, especially in the United States because of our political and legal norms, can't be expected to police intent and good-faith. Someone should tell the FTC and SEC ;-) BTW, I generally agree with the rest of your post. But it's really not that hard to imagine a world where ISPs are mostly municipal departments or non-government organizations that aren't profit-motivated and generally 99.9% of the time act in good faith. Like, IDK. Look at HAM radio or most gov-run community centers or lots of open source projects or 100s of other examples. It's possible for non-profit-motive to produce good outcomes. And in that world where ISPs are just these little pieces of local and regional bureaucracy -- like the county community center or public works departments -- you can imagine all sorts of reasons why a net neutrality rule isn't necessary, and where isolated violations of net neutrality effectively achieve this or that goal. Eg a city with limited upstream bandwidth blocking Netflix during the day so that it can offer free broadband to every student during a pandemic without increasing any expenses or laying any new fiber. I think the extreme pessimism about the possibility of non-market-actors actually doing things competently is mostly manufactured bullshit, and manufactured by the exact people you're complaining about.

wahern 6y ago
> Someone should tell the FTC and SEC I concede your point regarding the FTC, and to modern consumer protection regulatory systems in general (though I have other problems with those). But the SEC is an exemplar of how our politics cripples agencies which can only function well by peeking behind the curtain, so to speak. The SEC has neither the resources nor mandate to match the power of the industry it regulates, which is why it mostly just goes around issuing the financial industry equivalent of parking tickets. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) would be another great example, but it barely even got off the ground before it was almost completely neutered. Beyond the FTC, most consumer protection regulation successes have been at the state level. The IRS is a good example, especially of the dynamic in evolution. It has to walk a fine line between applying consistent, clear rules and catching tax avoidance schemes by looking to the underlying substance of financial schemes rather than just the mechanics. And for the past couple of decades it's increasingly struggled to do that effectively, though mostly for political rather than legal reasons (taxation is one of the few areas where courts still accept intrusive, individualized examination by regulatory agencies as a matter of course).

wahern 6y ago

> Someone should tell the FTC and SEC I concede your point regarding the FTC, and to modern consumer protection regulatory systems in general (though I have other problems with those). But the SEC is an exemplar of how our politics cripples agencies which can only function well by peeking behind the curtain, so to speak. The SEC has neither the resources nor mandate to match the power of the industry it regulates, which is why it mostly just goes around issuing the financial industry equivalent of parking tickets. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) would be another great example, but it barely even got off the ground before it was almost completely neutered. Beyond the FTC, most consumer protection regulation successes have been at the state level. The IRS is a good example, especially of the dynamic in evolution. It has to walk a fine line between applying consistent, clear rules and catching tax avoidance schemes by looking to the underlying substance of financial schemes rather than just the mechanics. And for the past couple of decades it's increasingly struggled to do that effectively, though mostly for political rather than legal reasons (taxation is one of the few areas where courts still accept intrusive, individualized examination by regulatory agencies as a matter of course).