Net Neutrality question.

[silverhandorder]

Can it be used by AT&T and such to get monopoly going again?

edit: I remember reading an essay on this here so hopping to the person still being around.

[lynnf]

Can it be used by AT&T and such to get monopoly going again?

edit: I remember reading an essay on this here so hopping to the person still being around.

hey, don't look now, but the monopoly is already going again -- SW Bell sucked up some of the other baby bells and Cingular wireless, after all that trouble we went to to split them up.

now, how can that be, under anti-trust laws?

bought-and-paid-for system, that's how


lynn

[dannno]

Can it be used by AT&T and such to get monopoly going again?

edit: I remember reading an essay on this here so hopping to the person still being around.

The legislation hasn't been written yet, so the answer is an unequivocal YES, and history has proven that the industry will most certainly use Net Neutrality to gain monopoly advantage.

[hugolp]

Can it be used by AT&T and such to get monopoly going again?

edit: I remember reading an essay on this here so hopping to the person still being around.

Yes, that is what regulations are for.

Sometimes they even write a law that it is quite good and politically marketeable, and then they keep changing it over the years. Once the goverment steps in money talks.

Even the original law that enacted the Federal Reserve wasnt that bad, believe it or not. It demanded 140% reserve (in a certain way) over the paper money it printed. Over the years the law was changed until it became the monster it is now.

This is how they do it. They know people have a life and can not be reading pages and pages of regulations every day (Bush aproved 9 pages of regulation a day on average in 2007).

[silverhandorder]

Yes, that is what regulations are for.

Sometimes they even write a law that it is quite good and politically marketeable, and then they keep changing it over the years. Once the goverment steps in money talks.

Even the original law that enacted the Federal Reserve wasnt that bad, believe it or not. It demanded 140% reserve (in a certain way) over the paper money it printed. Over the years the law was changed until it became the monster it is now.

This is how they do it. They know people have a life and can not be reading pages and pages of regulations every day (Bush aproved 9 pages of regulation a day on average in 2007).

I liked this very much. The more research I do the more I am realizing I need to start educating my self in subject matter as if it was for my career.

I think we can convince a lot of liberals to our side by explaining how AT&T can use this to their advantage.

[LibertyMage]

Can it be used by AT&T and such to get monopoly going again?

edit: I remember reading an essay on this here so hopping to the person still being around.

You mean this essay?

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=215801&highlight=net+neutrality&page=3

Net Neutrality is aimed more towards ISPs from what I have seen. I will, ultimately, result in less competition.

[kpitcher]

hey, don't look now, but the monopoly is already going again -- SW Bell sucked up some of the other baby bells and Cingular wireless, after all that trouble we went to to split them up.

now, how can that be, under anti-trust laws?

bought-and-paid-for system, that's how


lynn

You're absolutely right. The last mile delivery in this country is a duopoly at most. You have a Baby-bell-that-is-bigger-than-ma-bell-ever-was or a cable company. In a lot of areas you have just one of those choices. This is by legislation, it's illegal for a true startup to lay new phone lines to your house. It's impossible for a startup to compete against such entrenched companies that have the laws written to protect them. Free market would be nice, corporatism is horrid.

The idea behind net neutrality is a good enough idea. However if we had true choices it wouldn't be an issue. In a free market world, if Comcast won't let you watch netflix ondemand you'd simply use some other service.

All the argument of net neutrality is a handy way to ignore the underlying problems of the lack of competition. If enough people started asking WHY there is no competition to their local cable or telephone company then the gig may be up.

[Fox McCloud]

This is a rather difficult issue to support or oppose; it's a perfect case of "damned if we do, damned if we don't" for anyone of a deep libertarian creed.

on one paw, it'll reduce competition and most likely increase prices by a bit (not as much as the ISP lobby would likely have you believe though), not to mention its coercive in nature and in essence says, at its core "I have a right to the ISP's property if I subscribe to them" which is a blatant violation of property rights, in general.

on the other paw, if we don't have it, it is likely that, in the future, you'll see ISPs blocking certain protocols, or degrading certain services so their own appears (or really is) better than a 3rd party (example: Comcast starts degrading VoIP packets so you have to go with their own service...it CAN be done, and it wouldn't be that hard). Net neutrality would prevent this kind of crap from going on.

As said by kpitcher; this really wouldn't be a problem if we had a truly free and unregulated market-place; if there were a need for 15 broadband providers in the same area, there'd be that many; if there were a need, truly, for only one, there'd be only one.

check out this article: http://mises.org/daily/2139

the problem is an incredibly old one that goes all the way back to the 1800's with the granting of the monopoly rights to the telephone to bell's company. Once this expired, the company successfully lobbied Congress to grant AT&T a legal monopoly on all telephone service (they argued telephone service was a "natural monopoly"), which Congress granted.

That said, no one wants to look at the core origin of the problems these days; they see a problem and want to take the easiest, most direct, and quickest action they think will solve the problem, which, 9 out of 10 times, involves government coercion.