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FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

nytimes.com

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Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#211

Post by Dylan16807 »

lolinder wrote: post #182
Dylan16807 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a group that suddenly decided to throw all previous social norms out the window and upend social order That's a different front, though. Even if it's a response to those things, the level of "don't cooperate even on issues where you agree/used to agree" has not been the same between parties.

Well, OP was responding to this: > when half the populations entire political identity is “whatever we think will make the other side angry”? The idea here is that Republicans are somehow out to spite the Democrats more than vice versa, and I frankly don't see it. Both sides believe the other to be acting in bad faith, and honestly from my perspective it certainly looks like both sides are acting in bad faith. We've…

Spite is only one kind of bad faith, and when it comes specifically to spite it doesn't seem to me like it's balanced between the parties.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#212

Post by yterdy »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #100
jrockway wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair Congress does some work. They have avoided 2 government shutdowns. They funded the war efforts in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. They passed the infrastructure bill. The reality is, they just don't care about net neutrality. I'm still mad that they haven't passed the bill that gets rid of DST (or rather, gets rid of standard time). Everyone wants it in both parties. Just get it done. Even more annoying is th…

> They funded the war efforts in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Aaaannnndd?... You're just going to leave out the banning of TikTok while claiming a victory for sending my money to other nations for wars I do not want to fund? And another thing , government shutdowns are problems created ENTIRELY BY CONGRESS for never operating under a proper budget since 1997. All they're doing is fighting each other over a massive sh…

>"Infrastructure projects" is just another term for crony capitalism. Just look at funding for telcos to build out infra, or EV charging stations, or solar panels, or anything else they fund as "infrastructure." It's always just a massive kickback scheme, and nothing gets built.

This is the most baffling one. Everyone seems to forget that they also failed to pass the bill that contained the provisions that most working and middle-class Americans wanted. I've had multiple conversations where the counterargument was, "Well, at least they got part of it passed." No, that's actually worse. We got all of the expensive giveaways without any of the mitigating funding and policies. We literally would have been better off if nothing had passed.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#213

Post by dotnet00 »

vkou wrote: post #206
dotnet00 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In right wing circles Biden is often perceived as a puppet for 'elites', too old and senile to make his own decisions. Every other tweet about him seems to get people joking about how he had to go to bed early or how they had to drag him out to make a speech. I was a bit young to carefully follow Manmohan's term, but I recall that one of the comments I often heard from adults were that he was clearly too old for offi…

It's funny how his speech is an indicator that he is too old for office, when his opponent's speech is so frequently and completely unhinged[1], that it sounds like a self-parody. --- > [1] I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No…

Yep, it's pretty ironic, the only difference between the two (in terms of showing their age) is that Trump is more energetic (animated?), but energy doesn't translate to coherence.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#214

Post by rchaud »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #13

I'm happy this reversal occurred, but I am exhausted by the continuous flip-flopping of legislation depending on which party is in charge. Feels like we're stagnating as a nation by going in a circle rather than finding commonality to go forward. Maybe it's always been this way though and I'm just getting old enough to be bothered by it?

Hard problems are considered unsolvable by today's Congress (except for military funding bills), so they focus their energies on 'red meat' for the voting base (abortion resrictions, affirmative action), or for wealthy donors (tax cuts, SC nominations).

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#215

Post by whatshisface »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #86
Bjartr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The supreme court has a long history of overturning its rulings years, or decades, later https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overru...

An implicit assumption of the American political order is that a body that makes policy also has the ability to unmake that policy. I think that's good because otherwise there would be a land rush to create policies that are irreversible or have a higher bar for reversal than enactment. These policies would inevitably become out of date and reversing them could be politically impossible. The big exception to this was…

The Constitution was very difficult to get ratified. For one thing, it was recognized that it had to be unanimous. Don't forget it was replacing an existing political order of the Continental Congress + state governments.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#216

Post by vkou »

massysett wrote: post #198
vkou wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are flipfloppimg because the legislature is paralysed, so only the executive can function. This is a fundamental issue with the American form of government. Parliamentary systems which have the executive made up of members of the legislature have way less flip-flopping, finger-pointing, and paralysis. The governments they produce are more reflective of current public sentiment, end up with more than two parties, a…

This "paralyzed" legislature just passed, by large margins, a large amount of foreign aid and a very significant provision on a popular social media platform. Before that it spent billions of dollars on covid aid. Throughout that time it has appropriated billions of dollars to keep the government running. This "paralyzed" narrative is something the press and politicians like to push because it serves their ends, thou…

> Throughout that time it has appropriated billions of dollars to keep the government running.

In no other country is it considered an accomplishment for a government to debate a budget, agree on it, pass it, spend it, and then three quarters of the way through the year refuse to pay for the spending it agreed on, manufacturing a crisis that sometimes gets resolved at the eleventh hour, and sometimes results in a multi-week disaster and government shutdown.

If a company had a department that ran that way, every single director and manager in it would be fired after the first time it happened. It has so far happened three times (Including once when the Republicans fully controlled congress), and has been threatened every year.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#217

Post by [deleted] »

tivert wrote: post #135
jmyeet wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... I am exhausted by the continuous flip-flopping of legislation depending on which party is in charge. By design, Congress is unable to do anything. It's either one party (always the same party) being completely obstructionist, even other presidential appointments, or if a rotating villain who defects and stops any meaningful legislation. Power has moved to the courts and to the states. Again, entirely by design.…

> By design, Congress is unable to do anything. It's either one party (always the same party) being completely obstructionist, even other presidential appointments, or if a rotating villain who defects and stops any meaningful legislation. Don't pretend like the Democrats wouldn't be just as obstructionist if it suited their political objectives. What we actually have is lack of consensus, and excessively polarized f…

[deleted]

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#218

Post by lolinder »

feoren wrote: post #167

This flip-flopping happens because there is no commonality to find. One of the only (effectively) two major political parties of the United States is completely uninterested in governing. They have no policy. They have no plan for governing; they don't like governing. Their only goal is the piecemeal selloff of government powers to the highest bidder, and they convince their stalwart followers of this by making sure…

This comment isn't directed at OP, it's directed at anyone reading this who might be tempted to get swept up in OP's stereotypes without thinking critically about them. I'm writing this as a left-leaning moderate who grew up among staunch conservatives and understands their philosophy very well.

Conservatives sincerely believe that government bureaucracies are less efficient than a free market economy. That's not a cover or a motte and bailey, it's legitimately and literally true. Conservative politicians dismantle government when given the opportunity because that's what their base wants them to do because, again, their base sincerely believes that the government is bad at most things it does.

It's true that Republican politicians (like most politicians) are mostly charlatans who are intentionally creating circumstances that reinforce the belief in the ineffectiveness of government, but OP's stereotype of conservative voters as simply wanting a "daily dose of other people suffering" is baseless, wrong, offensive, and extremely counterproductive.

This stereotype is a misrepresentation of the other core tenet of conservative philosophy, which is that what is right and wrong is not up to humans to decide, it comes either from God or from long-standing and proven traditions. Conservative opposition to LGBT rights and similar have nothing to do with wanting to see people suffer, they have to do with their deep-seated belief that some things are simply wrong because something greater than us has said so.

They can be wrong in that deep-seated belief, but it's unfair of OP to characterize it as sadism.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#219

Post by EcommerceFlow »

The whole net neutrality discussion seems pretty hypocritical in hindsight, since huge portions of people who furiously supported NN stayed silent or encouraged censorship after 2016 (including the sitting president of the united states) on Facebook, Twitter, IG, etc.

Why would someone only advocate for an open, unrestricted internet at the hardware/ISP level? The whole point of NN was to ensure ISPs couldn't act as gatekeepers, yet people are fine with trillion dollar tech companies (that hold enormous market share) gatekeeping certain content now?

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#220

Post by smsm42 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #103
smsm42 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when half the populations entire political identity is “whatever we think will make the other side angry”? I assume those are the guys who are voting for the party opposed to one you're voting for, correct? > actively stifling progress is not actually funny Another thing that is less than funny is assuming that there's some universal definiton of "progress" and those who disagree are just doing it out of stupid stu…

> I assume those are the guys who are voting for the party opposed to one you're voting for, correct? Except that it wasn't the same way one or two decades ago. And the republicans have changed a lot more than the democrats on that front.

Except it was. The parties have been calling each other every dirty word in the book since forever. You can sample how it looked like about 150 years ago: https://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2012/11/running-for-governor....

> And the republicans have changed a lot more than the democrats on that front.

Of course, your team have always been standing for the common sense but the other team is just crazy now. Long gone are the times of Bush presidency, where the parties lives in almost perfect harmony, and the worst thing the President could be called by the opposing politician is "this esteemed and honorable man is sometimes mistaken". If only would could go back to those golden times.

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