This person misses the entire point of the argument for Net Neutrality - Yes it can be convenient if you know ALL of the apps and or services you'd like to use, however the entire internet being visible means putting small companies you have not yet heard of on nearly equal footing - giving them the chance to compete against the giants of commerce and sometimes (yes, sometimes it happens) WIN! The beauty of the inter…
Ben isn’t attacking the concept of Net Neutrality, he’s instead attacking Title II classification. Ben puts forward a few arguments.
First, he starts off with an offensive piece of matter, that regulatory burden from the 2015 Title II classification has a cost, and that cost is felt innovators who want to enter the market and by everyone who’s deprived of those potential services.
This directly removes small businesses chance to WIN — the ‘entire point of net neutrality’ as you put it.
Secondly, Ben attacks the notion that things in our pre-2015 status quo were bad enough to warrant Title II classification and the regulatory harms he outlined. He does this by showing that no significant harm existed before 2015, and by showing that the regulation has no solvency.
Ben shows three examples of net neutrality issues resolving themselves in the free market before these regulations were in place, showing that these harms were already in check. Then, even better than just a listicle of past cases, he gives you a mechanism that disincentives companies from violating net neutrality. Because of their fixed costs, they’re not in the market of alienating users.
Small businesses still don’t have the chance to WIN — the ‘entire point of net neutrality’ — in 2015 regulation because more harm is caused by zero rating, which isn’t affected by the 2015 classification.
You make a claim that ‘the rules Ajit Pai wants in place’ would allow Walmart to buy out Amazon at the ISP level.
Again, this is an example of something that the status quo wouldn’t have allowed to happened. You’re ‘postulating about future harms and foregone opportunities’ and then creating policy, but we already have a robust system to stop this behavior. FCC complaints like Vonage & Madison River solve, anti-trust solves, and our media ready-and-willing to raise a ruckus solves again.
I should also add that Ajit Pai isn’t proposing rules, he’s proposing removing rules, and going back to pre-2015 internet days. If the worst example you can come up with is a hypothetical Amazon vs Walmart, instead of a literal example, even though we lived in that world for 25 years, I think that speaks volumes.