Tom Wheeler Resigns from the FCC

I think things like net neutrality can have market solutions if we divorce the last mile operators (to become a utility) from customer ISPs, who merely operate a contract with various backbone networks to connect their clients to servers they want.

With last mile paid by taxes, ISPs are only dealing with the cost of backbone transit rates, where there is vibrant competition (and the market seems healthy). This competition to make a good transit deal (to get a cut from clients) is healthy as well, and is how much of the world operates. I think that switching off the US rent-seeking model to something like that would be a long-term solution to issues like net neutrality.

Change the incentives to change the behavior.

The real explanation is we should use the free market to solve our problems, and government for the portion where a market cant properly operate (ie, the last-mile netwotk).

We seem to have no problem letting the other natural monopolies like electricity, water, sanitation, education, mail, roads, bridges etc etc etc be run by the government as part of the commons. But we freak out when the government runs the internet because big brother.

I might suggest that the real issue is not the bits whizzing around but who is watching. Which would mean that net neutrality is a smokescreen. Fix privacy with free https everywhere (among other things) and people might just realize that they don't need to pay 30% more for advertising and dividends on what could otherwise be a commoditized utility like everything else.

Companies build private roads. To drive on those roads, they install a toll-booth at each entrance onto the road (like your house, office, warehouse, shops, etc) - every vehicle gets charged to enter the road network.

Large road companies usually come to some agreement that they'll join their roads at large intersections, but don't install toll-booths there, because it's good for each of them - after all, they still bill every car entering their road network, and better connections between road networks means more users of the road (and thus more revenue).

Usually when roads get congested, they make them wider, and where two road networks meet - each company pays to upgrade it's side of the road network.

This is how things have worked until recently.

Some road companies have decided that instead of upgrading their network, they'll make many of the lanes reserved for 'preferred road network users'.

Now, if you order from a store affiliated with the road company - things will work like they used to. But if you order from an unaffiliated store - that delivery will take much longer (or maybe not happen at all, if the road is too congested and the driver turns around and goes home)

Yeah, but isn't it in the private roads' owners benefit to reduce congestion, so they create HOV lanes? And what if they want to promote certain kinds of cars like electric and hybrid and therefore allow them to drive in the HOV lanes? Shouldn't they be allowed to?

Edit: Not that I necessarily agree, but this seems like a flaw in the analogy.