Net Neutrality II (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: Net Neutrality II (2014)

#31

Post by soVeryTired » Thu, Nov 30, 2017, 11:06 AM UTC

nothrabannosir wrote: post #28

soVeryTired wrote: post #19

Bunch of muppets with advanced expertise in what amounts to convex optimisation theory. What exactly qualifies them to weigh in on how the internet should be run?

This is a very alienating position. If I were ever to find myself part of a group, talked about as you did, it would be very tempting to just write off the entire “other group” and their opinion, based purely on that statement. If you have a good argument to make, why resort to an ad hominem? For better or for worse, this is a democracy and their point of view matters. Let’s try winning them over to ours.

On one hand, I agree with what you're saying. On the other, I don't think I'm going to apologise for venting my frustrations. Take a look at the range of topics this 'panel of experts' are polled on [1]:

Health insurance

Standardised testing

Sports stadiums

Robots and artificial intelligence

California's Drought

These people are not experts on these topics. They're basically mathematicians. Most of them likely made their name proving facts about their mathematical models. Remember that these are models that have a lousy track record describing the real world. And yet it sounds incredibly persuasive to run a headline stating "Economistis united on proposition X".

Here's a suggestion. Let's have a panel of experts, but we'll include one economist. We'll also include a social scientist, an engineer, a banker, a lawyer, a government policy wonk, and a social worker. The media can poll them, and might actually get a plurality of views.

[1] http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel

Re: Net Neutrality II (2014)

#32

Post by alexasmyths » Thu, Nov 30, 2017, 11:51 AM UTC

averagewall wrote: post #26

alexasmyths wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, absolutely not. In the ultimate 'free market' - your healthcare would be priced based on your earnings, and it would be ~90% of your after tax take home pay. Why? Because you'll pay. There's good reason we generally don't allow price discrimination, or things like collusion, it's not rocket science. If the Telcos could price discriminate willy nilly over the information that goes through their pipes - then 100% o…

> it would be ~90% of your after tax take home pay. Why? Because you'll pay. What's to stop a competitor offering it for 89%? And so on until the market finds its fair price.

Because there is an oligarchy in broadband and in many other industries and massive barriers to entry as well.

In broadband, it would be completely stupid for carriers to compete on price because ultimately - they are competing with themselves. You reduce prices one day - the next you have to go lower - and so on.

It's better if they keep prices high and compete on other things.

It's easy to have implicit collusion if they are only 2 or 3 players.

Often, due to access rights there might not really be any competition in specific areas.

I worked at a small telecom switch company. We made a lot of gear that didn't make any sense just to get around regulations.

Example: we made a very expensive voice and dsl and t1 switch on a board. It was crazy expensive, didn't make sense. But the carrier wanted it, because if they had individual DSL cards (or something like that) - they'd have to allow CLEC (local exchange carriers) to compete. So they paid 2x for their networking gear to avoid competition.

The big money is in monopolies, oligarchies, and keeping competition away through legislation, barriers to entry etc..

Re: Net Neutrality II (2014)

#33

Post by saas_co_de » Thu, Nov 30, 2017, 12:00 PM UTC

erik_seaberg wrote: post #15

saas_co_de wrote: post #2

Economists think that you should let markets set prices. shocking. What is strange is all these free market people in tech who only like free markets that don't apply to them.

When two willing parties are prevented from doing business, this is a market failure. Certain rules are required to maintain a free market, and "you can't pay to exclude competitors" probably tops the list.

I am not sure what any of that has to do with net neutrality but it is also not entirely accurate.

In the short term, if supply is fixed, then you can always pay to exclude competitors by outbidding them.

For instance: the reason google makes so much money is that market incumbents bid above value (they lose money) on google ads to prevent new competitors from gaining market share and then they subsidize that money losing behavior with their profits from existing customers.

Should the government regulate what prices google and facebook charge for ads because that controls whether or not startups can get their products in front of customers just as much as the pipes.

Re: Net Neutrality II (2014)

#34

Post by erik_seaberg » Sat, Dec 02, 2017, 10:01 PM UTC

saas_co_de wrote: post #33

erik_seaberg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When two willing parties are prevented from doing business, this is a market failure. Certain rules are required to maintain a free market, and "you can't pay to exclude competitors" probably tops the list.

I am not sure what any of that has to do with net neutrality but it is also not entirely accurate. In the short term, if supply is fixed, then you can always pay to exclude competitors by outbidding them. For instance: the reason google makes so much money is that market incumbents bid above value (they lose money) on google ads to prevent new competitors from gaining market share and then they subsidize that money l…

There's a big difference between "relatively few people know about my product" and "outsiders conspired to make sure my product could not function". And I don't believe anyone is bidding so high that it's impossible to win even a fraction of pageviews.