| | Here are some previous threads on net neutrality and related issues:
What's the Big, Hairy, Deal??
Emergency control of the internet
Net Neutrality is not a big joke
Net Neutrality Regulation Moving Forward
What we want to have in the U.S. and in every society is an Internet that is not private property, but a public utility."
And here is a repost of mine from a thread which quickly devolved into violence:
You remember that good old policy of "local competition"? The one that required the local Bell companies to sell their services at a fraction of cost to the long distance carriers so that the long distance carriers could pretend they sold local service?
The rationale was that ATT was that a disadvantage to the Bells because ATT's long distance had to gain access thru the local carriers. Of course that situation was caused when rather than simply ending the Ma Bell monopoly, the feds artificially split up long distance from local, and divested ATT of the regional Bell companies. To fix the problem they created, the feds created yet another worse mess.
Of course, the problem was that the "local competition" scheme was thought up by MCI lobbyists. It so happened that MCI's home state was Mississippi, home of Senate Majority leader Trent Lott. And the funny thing was, MCI had never been divested of anything, so there was never any question of compensating it for lost customers. The scheme was nothing other than outright theft, mandated by the FCC.
Well, since the scheme was based on "signing up" as many customers as possible with no actual intention of providing any service, MCI ended up losing money and customers hand over fist. Turns out Bernie Ebbers was orchestrating a fraud whose scale not even Madoff could come close to. MCI had said it would only use the local Bells lines until it had built its own local network. No network was ever built. MCI drained all the capital out of the local Bells, delaying their fiber optic roll-out by two decades. And ATT, one of the most reliable blue chips in history was bankrupted trying to compete. Hundreds of thousands lost their pensions and saw their IRA's collapse.
Well, guess what? "Net neutrality" is nothing less than a scheme by certain content providers to pull the exact same stunt, only this time with internet access instead of phone service. You want to see more huge frauds, another couple trillion dollars of the economy put under the yoke of pull pushers, and another stock market crash?
There's an easy rule of thumb. When regulators come up with an incomprehensible scheme to fix a problem no one ever knew existed and they label it with a name that only a narrow minded bigot could question, you can assume that the plastic cup they are offering you is filled with sweet refreshing Cool-Aid.
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