asterism
Congress != Progress
I am sure you must be right. Maybe we should privatize all the roads in the country. Let the private market charge take them over and make improvements, innovations, charge tolls for their use and then they could ask business to kick in a little extra money and they just might have to close the road in front of their competitions. Don't worry about it though, the free market will make sure it works great... its not like them having a local monopoly with no real competition will affect the outcome.The government initiated and funded the creation of the internet. Government authorities allow for the internet backbone to exist and much of its distribution network just like other utilities or roads. Telecoms have made giant profits from their investments and the governments largess.You wake up early, you pick up your iPhone and check your VZ-Connect page, you got 7 VZ-Likes on the cat video you posted, you would have gotten more, but an FCC censor found it objectionable and removed it. Not for the first time, you find yourself yearning for the days of Facebook. But after Verizon was named the exclusive backbone carrier by the FCC, weeks after President Obama issued the Executive Order making the internet a Title II utility. Facebook held on for awhile, but the FCC revoked their netcasting license after repeated violations of the net neutrality seditious content rules. Verizon quickly replaced Facebook with VZ-Connect, which was monitored by FCC content custodians.
You need to send Aunt Martha a thank you note for the sweater she sent you for your birthday. So you log on to VZ-Banking to check your balance. Aunt Martha is half a country away and the long distance charges for an email to her will be in the hundreds of dollars. Your balance is low, but you keep the message down to just a few words to keep the costs down.
A pile of mail is in the corner and you dread your Verizon bill. Opening it you see the usual $200 base charge, along with TTY charges, Baseline services taxes to provide internet to families on assistance. The netuse tax has gone up again, now $73.42 for a month. The tax is needed to pay the FCC regulators. But what you really dread are the long distance charges, email in the same zip code is still free, but a per mile charge for email outside of the zip code adds up quickly.
You are tempted to log on to VZ-Chatter and post a complaint, but last time you complained about your Verizon bill you got a stern letter from an FCC guardian advising you that such complaints have no place on the internet.
On the bright side, hand written letters through postal mail have made a resurgence.
Would we allow other utilities to use extortion as a revenue stream?
Can you pay to :
1 lower water pressure to a competing car wash?
2 Dim the lights of a competing retail outlet?
3 Close a bridge to a competing restaurant?
No.
Please explain why people who normally speak of the greatness of free markets want to let giant corporation stifle competition by manipulating a pseudo-government entity (the internet) that was designed to be common carrier.
The government initiated and funded the creation of DARPA, ARPANET, and NSFNet not "the Internet." The government-funded backbone of ARPANET and NSFNet was transitioned to the privately funded Internet due to deregulation of the telecommunication rules that governed wireline and wireless communications.
I don't use Wikipedia as a source often, but in this case it provides a good place to start for those who want the basics and are willing to read the various documentation links.
History of the Internet - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
Just because the government started it as a defense project doesn't mean they own it by fiat now - should they start to impose new rules on the consumption of Tang today? The government never designed a computer system to be used as a means for consumer commerce and entertainment. Nobody in the government ever envisioned Google, Netflix nor even USMB.
The government tried to regulate telecommunications and always asserted authority over that fiefdom until the citizens demanded something else so much that even a liberal Democrat (in his time) was compelled to sign a Republican bill into law deregulating it. What was the result? The largest talking points Democrats have about how good they are - the dot com revolution.
Smart regulation works, especially when it's mostly deregulation. Net Neutrality is not smart regulation.
There are plenty of private toll roads in the country today. Get back to me when any of them do what you just described. In many situations toll roads work better than public roads (not all or even most of course) because the tolls are collected from those that use the roads instead of having giant slush funds for "maintenance" that actually get diverted to other projects.