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Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

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Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#311

Post by cookiecaper »

altcognito wrote: post #271
notdonspaulding wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education, Police, Fire, Healthcare do not have natural monopolies. Still a good list to have around so we can argue about where the line should be drawn. Kudos!

Healthcare is a highly imperfect market, and that's what makes it subject to either huge amounts of regulation, or outright external management. Consumers are very ill informed. Ccosts are not displayed, treatments options are not well defined, and knowing all of the options and understand them requires more time and education than is reasonable for most cases. Education is tricky, and honestly, I don't know any bett…

None of these attributes are incumbent in the nature of delivering health care. They're just things that are part of the system today. As you stated, in today's health care system, true costs are obscured. The exact problem is that nefarious corporate forces have removed most of the real market elements by adding layers of indirection (health insurance), which allows everyone in the industry to maximize their dollars billed and push some paper around, and leaves a great many people totally screwed. The issue is that there's just enough variance and division that there isn't a unified, whole-hearted call for reform, because it works great for 30% of people, works mediocre for 40% of people, and completely leaves the last 30% destroyed. I believe that those ratios are calculated and intentionally kept in place to prevent unification and meaningfully addressing the issue on a social scale.

Health care has become a perverse industry because its market properties were destroyed not by government, but by malicious corporate conglomerations out to maximize their own profit at the expense of human life. People forget that one of the purposes is government is to prevent private organizations from growing too powerful and interfering with the general welfare of the people, because the narrative is rarely framed this way, but it's a very important governmental function. I don't think socialization is the answer, but something has to be done.

I think health care needs to be brought back down to earth, and we should outlaw all non-catastrophic health insurance products. The insurance racket has completely destroyed that market. There are other elements that have caused the health market to get completely out of whack, but insurance is at the very core of the issue, and it has to go away.

When almost half of the country's bankruptcies are due to health care debt, simply sick people trying to stay alive, we have a real social problem that we need to address.

Of course, we did the opposite of this and made it illegal not to have health insurance, only further inflating the size of the monstrosity that has leeched and destroyed the system in the first place. I don't believe writing a blank check, like the other countries have done, is the way out. I believe the way out is going back to a what-you-see-is-what-you-get approach, and forcing medical providers to charge rates people can actually afford, as their business will immediately plummet if they don't seriously rework their billing structure to become affordable again since people will actually be paying it now.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#312

Post by [deleted] »

josh2600 wrote: post #54
Arjuna wrote: post #46

Awesome response to the C&D, via spokesman Jonathan Friedland: "This is about consumers not getting what they paid for from their broadband provider. We are trying to provide more transparency, just like we do with the ISP Speed Index, and Verizon is trying to shut down that discussion."

Playing Devil's advocate here for a second: If Netflix is 35% of global internet traffic at peak capacity (as per the Akamai CEO's comments at a number of events), is it really fair to treat them like every other company? That is to say, if Netflix is really the sole driver of Network upgrades, why does Verizon have to subsidize their costs of business? I'm not taking the stance that this is correct, only querying as…

[deleted]

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#313

Post by [deleted] »

josh2600 wrote: post #54
Arjuna wrote: post #46

Awesome response to the C&D, via spokesman Jonathan Friedland: "This is about consumers not getting what they paid for from their broadband provider. We are trying to provide more transparency, just like we do with the ISP Speed Index, and Verizon is trying to shut down that discussion."

Playing Devil's advocate here for a second: If Netflix is 35% of global internet traffic at peak capacity (as per the Akamai CEO's comments at a number of events), is it really fair to treat them like every other company? That is to say, if Netflix is really the sole driver of Network upgrades, why does Verizon have to subsidize their costs of business? I'm not taking the stance that this is correct, only querying as…

[deleted]

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#314

Post by drewcrawford »

Silhouette wrote: post #231
toomuchtodo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent question. Anything that doesn't have a natural monopoly. I can say with certainty that the following should be socialized or delivered in non-profit ways: * Water * Sewer * Power * Internet * Healthcare * Fire * Police * Roads * Education (added per /u/CodeMage) Feel free to chime in if you can add anything I forgot.

It's interesting that you seem to view providing Internet access as a natural monopoly. While (from what I see as an outsider) it seems to be common in the US for households to have only one practical ISP available, that is certainly not the only model possible. For example, here in the UK, we have the formerly nationalised telephone network provider required to allow individual ISPs access to key parts of its infras…

The reason that Americans view Internet access as a natural monopoly is because there is a monopoly--the city. ISPs have to negotiate rents from the city government. While it is possible for a city to offer fair-access terms they have largely discovered that they can demand rents much higher than you would expect by keeping the number of tenants small.

These rents comprise something like 5-10% of city revenue. And so everybody gets what they want:

* The city gets a free 7% budget bump, and doesn't care who pays for it as long as it's too complex to be an election issue

* ISPs get a monopoly, and don't care that they play the scapegoat because consumers have no other choices anyway

* Citizens get better government services at lower tax rates. Sure, they pay for it via a backdoor tax on internet access but nobody really notices that and they direct their anger at the ISP rather than the elected government

Really the only way to throw a wrench in this system is something like Google Fiber. Nobody wants to be the elected official that turned Google away, because that is actually a sound-bytey enough issue that could come up at re-election. And Google, as a company that doesn't really care about being a profitable ISP, will only move in to a city if it gets a pretty good deal on the rents.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#315

Post by cookiecaper »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #129
josh2600 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you draw the line? What shouldn't we socialize?

Things that work better when they are socialized than when they are privatized. Like healthcare.

Health care only works "better" when socialized if you believe that health care really should be so expensive that they have to print extra money explicitly to pay for it. There's no reason that has to be an integral property of health care. Turns out that most of the time, we don't need hospitals the size of college campuses (incidentally another thing that is completely unaffordable). The reason things cost so much is because true costs are obscured, just as they would be in a socialized system, by insurance.

IMO non-catastrophic insurance should be abolished, the government should overcome the supply chain cycle ("Sorry, I have to charge $500 for this MRI because this machine cost me $4 million") by producing its own functional medical equipment and selling it at or under cost, and health providers need to get back to reality and charge face rates that real people can pay directly. And we all need to come to terms with the fact that some of the extravagance probably needs to be toned down.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#316

Post by aleem »

31reasons wrote: post #232
saganus wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then doesn't that mean that it's also easier to put a cache in front of those overused switches and solve the problem much more easily? I guess the core issue here is that, from a customer's point of view, the ISP is selling me inet access, regardless of where the data actually goes, so it is the ISP's responsibility to keep their end of the bargain (to provide inet access). As a customer I should not care how is…

Good point about U > T. It also happens in Gym business where they oversell their gym capacity betting that 80% of their customers will be too lazy to come exercise everyday. Now imagine if I sell a motivation pill that makes you go to gym everyday. It would be absurd if Gym companies send me a cease and desist letter because i am overburdening their facilities because everyone who takes my pill wants to use their gy…

Playing the devil's advocate: what if the higher contention ratios lead to 50% reduction in gym membership fee? All other gyms follow suit and consumers and gyms both benefit from the realization that not all members will be in the gym at the same time. Marketing departments start vying for consumers who they know are unlikely to attend everyday and lure them with annual sign up discounts.

Fast forward 3 years later, you come out with your pill and throw a wrench in the works. Now gyms realize they have to go back to the old pricing model because the economics have changed. Consumers will no doubt become upset at the prospec of having to pay more. Some gyms take a wait and see approach to see what other gyms will do. Your pill started it but really, it's not your fault or your problem.

What should the gyms do?

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#317

Post by cookiecaper »

cmelbye wrote: post #118
josh2600 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An ISP's job, as a private company, is to maximize shareholder value. The circuit consumers are sold is a "best-effort" connection in stark contrast to, say, a T1, which is a dedicated circuit. It's also very hard to prove that Verizon is throttling, versus, say, simply physically underprovisioning the connection. With respect to public money, I think you've hit the nail on the head. The crux of the Net Neutrality de…

> I'm constantly fascinated by the way folks consider socializing the telecom industry to be incredibly reasonable and socializing, say, the healthcare industry to be insanity. Is it really the same people arguing for that? First and foremost, the telecom industry is nothing like the healthcare industry, and they shouldn't be reasoned about in the same way. Common carrier status has precise laws and legal meaning sur…

Agreed, it's not necessarily an issue of full socialization. The government can issue rules that ISPs must abide without taking them over completely.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#318

Post by cookiecaper »

josh2600 wrote: post #128
mantrax5 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An ISP's job, as a private company, is to maximize shareholder value. You lost me there. "There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer." ~Peter Drucker (whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation) “On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy… yo…

That's true except in markets where saturation has been achieved. In a market with 80-100%+ saturation, the per subscriber revenue does not increase year over year. In these cases, creating a customer doesn't actually increase shareholder value because there aren't enough customers that can be created to combat the atrophy of existing revenue. Jack Welch was hugely successful in creating and competing in new markets…

The issue is that value doesn't necessarily mean money. In terms of money, is Apple really the most profitable company in the world? We know that it's not, so why do they have the highest market cap? Because people value their shares for more than just the present dollar value. People want to be part of Apple regardless of its profitability.

The negative shareholder value argument depends on a summary characterization of all investors as people who only care about money. Not all investors are like that. You can create shareholder value out of anything that your shareholders value, which is not to say that "shareholder value" should even be a serious metric. It's just a narrative that anti-corporate people have drummed up.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#319

Post by cookiecaper »

whoopdedo wrote: post #217
zacinbusiness wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maximizing shareholder value is less important than offering good customer service. Corporate greed is so disgusting.

Except where the executives view the shareholders as their customers and the end users as the product.

Which nobody does.

Re: Netflix replies to Verizon cease and desist letter

#320

Post by ghshephard »

nitrogen wrote: post #297
dclowd9901 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your last point, the problem with a subscription service (any subscription service) is that the more it's used, the less its profit margins. A company that is subscription based actually has an interest in their customers using the service as little as possible . It's completely backward (see: gyms, insurance, etc.) The only way to incentivize a company to provide the best service possible is to tie the use of the…

$2/GB That's a ridiculously high price. You'd pay $2 for every hour of streaming-quality HD video watched, quite a bit more for download-quality HD.

I pay $25/14 GB pretty consistently here in Singapore. Ironically, in Singapore, it's cheaper for me to pay for traffic on a pre paid SIM, than it is to pay for it with a pre-paid account. Works out great when we're downloading 50-60 GBytes/month. $100/month gets us 56 gigabytes @ about 20-30 mbits/second.
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