Today is the last chance to comment on the proposal to kill net neutrality

> See, that's where your argument makes no sense. ISPs don't want to argue prices with their customers. They want to extort businesses that have never decided to be their customers.

In every willing exchange of data, both the transmitter and receiver are the ISPs' customer.

> And you're assuming peoples' motives ... because selling your fun little game or whatever would require you to sign agreements with every single ISP in every single market that you want to target.

> ...Google, Facebook, and Amazon are large enough that throttling them or blocking them would lead to a customer revolt.

> This is about business you and I don't yet even know about, because it doesn't exist, or because it's small.

This argument is clearly all about our mistrust of monopolies. You clearly don't trust ISPs as a whole, presumably because there is naturally no competition. If you and I don't know a small site exists yet, how is the ISP gonna know? And small businesses aren't going to be targets, for the same reason the IRS doesn't target the small fish with its big guns.

Setting the economics aside, if one is worried about ISPs ability to target free speech by surcharging a particular site, then how is getting the federal government more involved the answer?

I just want to point out that this view isn't necessarily wrong, but it's one-sided and reads like talking points from an ISP lobbyist.

You can view Google and Netflix as "capitalizing on ISPs". You could also view it as the ISPs customers demanding more bandwidth from their ISP that they pay.

ISPs like to talk about their "innovations", but what does that even mean? Personally, I want them to provide me with a high bandwidth link to the internet at low cost. The less they do, the happier I'll be.

What innovations do you expect to happen if net neutrality is rolled back? I expect that every ISP will threaten to deprioritize traffic from every content provider unless they pay up. I believe it'll lead to a worse internet experience overall for internet users and raise barriers for new content providers to be able to compete on the internet. That's not the kind of innovation I want.

It's been well established that terrible service and high costs are related to how much of a monopoly the ISP has in the area. Many areas of the US only have 1 or 2 choices of ISP. This shouldn't come as a surprise to any free market capitalist. Why would an ISP upgrade a network or lower prices when it has no competition? Low competition means that consumers lose. When Google Fiber wants to expand to an area, the established ISPs fight hard to make sure they can't compete. If they do reach an area, that area immediately experiences network upgrades and reductions in prices.

A company doesn't just "pass their costs to consumers" and tack on a set percentage for their own profits. A company's job is to increase the profits for it's shareholders. If a CEO is not doing everything legally within his power to increase the profits for shareholders, he can be replaced. Prices for services and money spent on maintenance are set based on what they've determined will net them the maximum amount of profit. If they managed to extract even more money from content providers, what motive do they have to lower prices or upgrade service for customers in a monopoly area? None. None whatsoever.

Sometimes the government has to intervene in a market (like anti-trust laws) in order to create a fair market for companies to compete. And that's OK and every free-market conservative should recognize that fact and agree that it's a good idea if they just think about it for a while.

Although the book is long, the essay which I pointed to, which is the most poignant to the point of American democracy, is the only the first one (which is 52 pages long). The second essay concerns the benefits of using science (this term used broadly) to understand human society, and a rejection of the tolerance of some other methods. The third essay concerns what kind of political action should be tolerated in society, and the author argues for the tolerance of the Left wing, which is regarded as subversive, and positing that this subversive element is increasingly blocked in modern capitalist society through mass media, and this blocking may need to be cleared using apparently anti-democratic means such as the silencing of Right views.

The sense of the first essay is that pluralistic democracy functions in such a way that groups, once recognised, have some of their needs met at various levels of bureaucracy, however none of them get all that they ask for and all of them get a little. What they ask for tends to affect only their own group with little overreach. Although this seems like a good idea, it also functions on the principle of simply blocking out those "fringe", "radical", "extreme" groups which aren't regarded as legitimate; it does not do this by denying their claim to the platform of groups, but it does this by denying their existence or plight in the first place. The author uses the examples of those left in poverty in America before Kennedy and those who campaigned for disarmament before the Cold War. As examples of groups on the platform, he uses religious ones (Protestants and Jews in particular) and ethnic ones.

He argues that there is another model of pluralism, which he calls the 'referee' model, which contends that so far as the government is instituted to merely protect interest groups from colliding, it favours the stronger ones over the weaker ones. He writes in support of this,

>In the field of regulation of labor unions, for example, the federal agencies deal with the established leadership of the unions. In such matters as the overseeing of union elections, the settlement of jurisdictional disputes, or the setting up of mediation boards, it is the interests of those leaders rather than the competing interests of rankandfile dissidents which are favored. In the regulation of agriculture, again, the locally most influential farmers or 1eaders of farmers' organizations draw up the guidelines for control which are then adopted by the federal inspectors. In each case, ironically, the unwillingness of the government to impose its own standards or rules results not in a free play of competing groups, but in the enforcement of the preferences of the existing predominant interests.

I don't think my summary is adequate, as I first read the essay a long time ago, and I'm not sure if I completely agree with it or not (the author cites Durkheim when he talks about the flaws and advantages of classical liberalism and conservatism, how they together spawn pluralistic democracy) so I would recommend reading it if you get time.

Edit: as for the importance of the first essay, from my point of view not much has changed, though I can't say for sure beacuse I only hear about America on the news. As for the last essay, I would say that it is extremely important considering the current political climate in Western countries, though many (especially on HN) would disagree with my view.

http://gizmodo.com/the-secret-deals-that-mean-you-have-to-wa... The big fish already do pay because ISPs hold their customers hostage. They've "opened new revenue channels" by realizing that they can just pay a small amount for lobbying efforts so FCC and friends will leave them alone to make a larger amount from content sources.

And when ISPs eventually resort to requiring you insert a root certificate to use the internet at all, your ISP will judge you.