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Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

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Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I see. So this is the local equivalent for voting for a small party in a country with many more parties in the running for a coalition. That makes some sense, but at the same time it would mean that you are also voting for a lot of stuff that is reprehensible and probably against your own interest. Because once the votes are counted your vote will not be counted as a 'single issue' vote but as a total mandate for…

So your solution is what, not vote? Everyone in America faces this dilemma, it's the problem with our two party system.

Get involved in grassroots politics. Support municipal or state-level candidates who have potential to be federal candidates down the road. Doorknock for candidates who you feel represent you. Tell your friends and family who you're voting for and why. Vote in primaries. Always vote in general elections.

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#52
post #5

This seems like the way that this should be addressed. The case against Net Neutrality was made almost strictly as a case of regulatory overreach and overly burdensome regulations that inherited irrelevant restrictions and unenforceable provisions designed for specific telecom use cases that don't apply to ISPs. The first issue is clearly addressed by a legislative approach -- it stops being regulatory overreach when…

I feel like the root problem is lack of competition at the ISP level. If we had that, net neutrality regulation would likely not be necessary. Instead we're trying to fix a bad regulatory environment with even more regulations.

The market conditions are set up for what is called a "natural monopoly". Its inefficient for new companies to build wires to an already wired up neighborhood.

Companies therefore become de-facto monopolies on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. The exception are cities where a dense population of people can support additional carriers for sake of competition. But at a basic level, the economic conditions just make the ISP problem complicated.

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Frankly speaking, all options to deal with natural monopolies kinda suck. Socialism simply has the government take over for example, so the legal monopoly is at least owned by the people.

Capitalism can't solve the problem. Its more efficient for companies to wire up other neighborhoods. Why become a competitor when you can simply become a monopoly holder somewhere else?

An interesting blend of capitalism / socialism is to have the wires owned by the municipality, or perhaps a highly-regulated entity (such as a utility company). The law is then rewritten to state: "It is illegal to be both a physical-wire company AND an ISP at the same time", or something to that effect.

Physical wire companies are then forced to rent out their wires to different ISPs. For example, if Verizon owned the wires of an area, they'd be forced to reorganize and split-off the wire-owning portion into a "Verizon Local utility coporporation".

Then, "Verizon Local Utility Inc." (now an independent company) will sell the time on the wires to various ISPs, like Verizon or Comcast.

ISPs will still be responsible for interfacing with the population, as well as bandwidth, routers, and other such details on the data-center side. The local-utility company will be responsible for physical maintenance of the wires, with a strict regulation regime to ensure that they provide equal-opportunity access to large ISPs, as well as any startups who wish to enter the space.

Its certainly "more regulations" towards this problem. But I've never heard of a more complete solution than this kind of scheme. Its not necessarily "Socialism" either, because the US has a long-record of tightly regulating local Utility companies, due to similar economic issues (the concept of local power companies being a natural monopoly. The "deregulation" schemes that exist today to allow local residents to buy solar energy or nuclear energy, delivered by local wires under a tight regulation / utility regulation scheme)

So its American, its a familiar model to many municipalities, and it works in practice. As demonstrated by power-companies and phone companies of ages past... as well as a few European countries who have adopted this scheme.

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Under such a regime, "Net Neutrality" can become an ISP's defining trait. And we can let the market decide if its worth the cost. If people want a "Net Neutral ISP", they simply pay for the competitors who offer such a service. So the overall regulatory burden is lowered, IMO.

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm presuming purple (being red + blue) means a district that could either way? Lucky you. Here we don't have elections that matter because thanks to redistricting and gerrymandering, the outcome (along party lines) is well established.

Not quite true. If there is a wave election in November, gerrymandering backfires and ends up losing you more seats than you hope to gain through it. You pack the districts so that you win with 55% to 45%, except for a district here or there which will go 10% to 90%. In a wave election, it only takes a shift of 5-6% in those gerrymandered districts for them to be lost.

You are pretending that a 'wave election' is a thing that people decide to do, instead of a label applied after the fact as a descriptive aid after the occurrence of the circumstances you describe. In other words, this is circular logic.

In practice, heavily-gerrymandered districts rarely swing parties, and when they do, they almost always swing back.

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#54
post #5

This seems like the way that this should be addressed. The case against Net Neutrality was made almost strictly as a case of regulatory overreach and overly burdensome regulations that inherited irrelevant restrictions and unenforceable provisions designed for specific telecom use cases that don't apply to ISPs. The first issue is clearly addressed by a legislative approach -- it stops being regulatory overreach when…

I think the way you're looking at this is really important, and something that's being lost in the vehement support of NN. Intellectual honesty demands that we admit that there really are problems with NN as it had been implemented. Trying to fit the technology of a massive packet-switched data network into very specific regulations designed for an ancient circuit-switched primarily voice network really was a kluge.…

> Intellectual honesty demands that we admit that there really are problems with NN as it had been implemented. Trying to fit the technology of a massive packet-switched data network into very specific regulations designed for an ancient circuit-switched primarily voice network really was a kluge.

It would have been, had that been done, but it wasn't, so it wasn't.

The specific regulations applied to the telephone network under Title II weren’t applied to the internet, an entirely new set, specifically crafted for the internet and largely following the same outline as the net neutrality regulations adopted citing Title I authority in 2010 were.

The idea that PSTN regulations were being applied to the internet is an outright lie that was told by net neutrality opponents designed to manipulate the opinions of people who have ould trust the people selling the lie and not actually read the order and the regulations it included themselves.

So, while you may make the argument in good faith belief that it is true, I cannot agree that intellectual (or any other kind of) honesty required repeating this tired old lie.

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#55
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite true. If there is a wave election in November, gerrymandering backfires and ends up losing you more seats than you hope to gain through it. You pack the districts so that you win with 55% to 45%, except for a district here or there which will go 10% to 90%. In a wave election, it only takes a shift of 5-6% in those gerrymandered districts for them to be lost.

You are pretending that a 'wave election' is a thing that people decide to do, instead of a label applied after the fact as a descriptive aid after the occurrence of the circumstances you describe. In other words, this is circular logic. In practice, heavily-gerrymandered districts rarely swing parties, and when they do, they almost always swing back.

[deleted]

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#56
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite true. If there is a wave election in November, gerrymandering backfires and ends up losing you more seats than you hope to gain through it. You pack the districts so that you win with 55% to 45%, except for a district here or there which will go 10% to 90%. In a wave election, it only takes a shift of 5-6% in those gerrymandered districts for them to be lost.

You are pretending that a 'wave election' is a thing that people decide to do, instead of a label applied after the fact as a descriptive aid after the occurrence of the circumstances you describe. In other words, this is circular logic. In practice, heavily-gerrymandered districts rarely swing parties, and when they do, they almost always swing back.

You are pretending that there aren't circumstances that have an observed relation to systematic deviations from median election results that people can observe to understand that a wave election is more likely to happen in a particular election.

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#57
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I follow American politics pretty closely for a foreigner and it would appear to me that if the house is on fire the color of the sidewall isn't top priority.

That is mighty patronizing of you to tell someone that their concerns aren’t worthy enough. A majority of Americans who are registered to vote don't. There is an abundance of apathy in the U.S. toward the political process. Here we have someone willing to go so far as to contact their elected representative and you respond as you did. Off the top of my head I can’t name another issue that has support by majorties of…

I'm not a foreigner and I think the comment you're responding to is spot on.

Are we just supposed to pretend that all issues are equal? People aren't going to die because the nets aren't neutral. People are going to die based on our health care policy, whether we go to war, whether we can prevent nuclear proliferation.

The author of the comment you call patronizing made no statement on whether or not he's happy that people are involved in the political process. I know I'm happy about it, but I also think single issue voting on net neutrality is stupid. These views are not linked.

In summary, net neutrality is important but there are more important issues in America at the moment. It's not patronizing to point that out.

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so why would you let your vote hinge on that one issue? Single issue voters make policy, and this is a case where the small weight of my vote could tip a scale and actually accomplish something. Plus, I hate our current state of extreme polarization, and I value politicians who have the independence to go against their party. If he'll do that, it's another aspect I'd like to reward.

Ok, I see. So this is the local equivalent for voting for a small party in a country with many more parties in the running for a coalition. That makes some sense, but at the same time it would mean that you are also voting for a lot of stuff that is reprehensible and probably against your own interest. Because once the votes are counted your vote will not be counted as a 'single issue' vote but as a total mandate for…

Republicans are reprehensible? By your logic we can never make any progress unless citizens vote for a platform perfectly aligned with their own values. That degenerates to everyone voting for themselves.

IMO absolutist stances like this miss the entire point of politics which is to strike compromise in the face of disperate ideologies. Sure the two party system is broken, but the way to make progress is to focus on relevant issues one at a time instead of the entire platform.

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I follow American politics pretty closely for a foreigner and it would appear to me that if the house is on fire the color of the sidewall isn't top priority.

To many peoole, neutrality isn't a color of the sidewalk issue, it's a house on fire issue, because it concerns control of communication content in a major channel of public communication by a narrow band of actors vs. guaranteed freedom for lawful communication on that channel.

It is ok for net neutrality to be someone's number 1 issue as long as they recognize that they are likely viewing issues from a position of tremendous privilege.

Re: Senate votes to reinstate net neutrality

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your solution is what, not vote? Everyone in America faces this dilemma, it's the problem with our two party system.

Get involved in grassroots politics. Support municipal or state-level candidates who have potential to be federal candidates down the road. Doorknock for candidates who you feel represent you. Tell your friends and family who you're voting for and why. Vote in primaries. Always vote in general elections.

I mean, that's not exactly an either or thing... For the average voter with a family and career you have:

* Two parties

* Candidates to choose from in those parties with slightly different platforms trying to capture appeal based on big-ticket trending issues

* No one person you could possibly agree with on all things unless you are voting for a hardliner and blindly drink the party koolaid

So I mean really, if your vote is all you can offer and you have no hope of getting someone from your preferred party elected, the next best thing is to try to support your preferred candidate.

I mean, so there are two games going on here. The biggest lie is that politicians have convinced the public that they are in the same fight to get their party in control. Except really you have:

* Politicians trying to get their party in control and stay elected

* Citizens trying to get things they care about addressed, improved, whatev

It's the whole "We won't vote for Hillary 'cause Democrats even though we don't like Trump" problem, but it goes both ways..

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