FCC: Net Neutrality Critics Are Flat-Out Wrong

aardvark sandwich said:
re: food shit

It would be easy to have a market version of food inspection without the force of government, on small local levels.
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So easy it could never happen IRL. Why? Because inspections cost money, and no producer will pay for it. Who's going to pay for the agency? The smaller and more local the level the more underfunded whatever agency you imagine-the less likely they are to be able to do their job thoroughly and properly. This of course ignores the issue that most food sold is not produced at a "small local level", it is imported across county and state and national lines by large chain corporations.

The reason we have these regulations and inspections mandated is because the "free market" has shown each and every time over the last 250 some years of American history that it values bottom-line immediate $$ profit over consumer health and safety. Businessman don't care about being a positive good to their workers and society, they care about their own pocketbooks above all else. We have the word "snake-oil salesman" in the English Lexicon as a result-because con artists are as American as Apple Pie.





I can imagine a world where everyone gets along peacefully, there's warp drive, and there's no poverty or crime. But I acknowledge that what I'm imagining is the realm of fantasy.
 
Skripka said:
So easy it could never happen IRL. Why? Because inspections cost money, and no producer will pay for it. Who's going to pay for the agency? The smaller and more local the level the more underfunded whatever agency you imagine-the less likely they are to be able to do their job thoroughly and properly. This of course ignores the issue that most food sold is not produced at a "small local level", it is imported across county and state and national lines by large chain corporations.

The reason we have these regulations and inspections mandated is because the "free market" has shown each and every time over the last 250 some years of American history that it values bottom-line immediate $$ profit over consumer health and safety. Businessman don't care about being a positive good to their workers and society, they care about their own pocketbooks above all else. We have the word "snake-oil salesman" in the English Lexicon as a result-because con artists are as American as Apple Pie.





I can imagine a world where everyone gets along peacefully, there's warp drive, and there's no poverty or crime. But I acknowledge that what I'm imagining is the realm of fantasy.
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250 years?

lulz, trying to get one over is as old as human history. Probably older than that since even animals do it.

What I care about is truth in advertising/labeling. This should be a matter of contract law, which is one thing the federal government is actually supposed to do - carry out the protection of individual property rights. If you sell me a product you have labelled as 100% ground beef but it turns out to be 20% horse, you have harmed me. I want you compensate me for the harm or, if found to be willful misrepresentation, be punished in a manner so as to serve as a deterrent for future transgressions.

What I don't need is a federal agency telling me what I should or shouldn't eat, or giving massive federal subsidies to corn production and then whining when corn is in everything.
 
heatlesssun said:
Agreed to and paid for by the people they are regulating?
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A restaurant would buy insurance, but the insurance agreement would mandate whatever strictures in the contract to include agency inspections. The decision of what agency would be set by the insurer, or an agreement would be made between the insurer and the restaurant prior to signing said contract. Obviously an insurer would not allow the restaurant to choose the agency by themselves to avoid collusion.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
A restaurant would buy insurance, but the insurance agreement would mandate whatever strictures in the contract to include agency inspections. The decision of what agency would be set by the insurer, or an agreement would be made between the insurer and the restaurant prior to signing said contract. Obviously an insurer would not allow the restaurant to choose the agency by themselves to avoid collusion.
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So what you're suggesting here would have food safety regulation written into millions of corporate contracts and agreements. If you think government is secretive and non-transparent, corporate contracts tend to be much worse.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
A restaurant would buy insurance, but the insurance agreement would mandate whatever strictures in the contract to include agency inspections. The decision of what agency would be set by the insurer, or an agreement would be made between the insurer and the restaurant prior to signing said contract. Obviously an insurer would not allow the restaurant to choose the agency by themselves to avoid collusion.
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Here's my ultimate criticism of corporate self-regulation. Why doesn't all of this wonderful incentive driven genius think about regulation until disaster strikes? And the answer is simple. There's no incentive to do so until it's too late. Not that government is any better but government regulating things before disaster would be 1000 times harder than after.
 
No.

Agency advertises what they do to consumer, consumer wants food inspected by that agency.
 
heatlesssun said:
Here's my ultimate criticism of corporate self-regulation. Why doesn't all of this wonderful incentive driven genius think about regulation until disaster strikes? And the answer is simple. There's no incentive to do so until it's too late. Not that government is any better but government regulating things before disaster would be 1000 times harder than after.
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If you have actually been paying attention to the world today, we have a very reactive government.
 
Not really.

You pass the first round of inspection, nothing happens.
Fail the second, pre-agreed punitive measure happens. There could be a capital pool held by a third party via smart contract, for example.
Nothing about that changes anything for either agency, that is between the restaurant and the insurer.

I'm not actually saying this the most efficient system, just that I see it as a possibility.
Someone far smarter than me would design a more efficient system.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
If you have actually been paying attention to the world today, we have a very reactive government.
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If you don't want government to react to disasters then why would you want government to try to prevent them? If government is always the enemy then its always the enemy.
 
We had a free market approach to food, health and safety inspections.

That's why the government does it now.

You're living in a fantasy world. There's a huge agency problem (misalignment of interests).

Also, if there are no government standards, what exactly qualifies as passing an inspection anyway?
 
aardvark sandwich said:
Not really.

You pass the first round of inspection, nothing happens.
Fail the second, pre-agreed punitive measure happens. There could be a capital pool held by a third party via smart contract, for example.
Nothing about that changes anything for either agency, that is between the restaurant and the insurer.

I'm not actually saying this the most efficient system, just that I see it as a possibility.
Someone far smarter than me would design a more efficient system.
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I'm not saying that this can't work. It's just that like you're always saying about government, why not be pro-active about it? Indeed corporate concerns do have the nearly the political quagmire to deal with if they want to self-regulate effectively.

But ultimately a capitalistic model is about making money. Effectively privatizing safety is about making money from safety and the safer something is the more money there is in it. There's something not right about this model. True efficiency would be less money going into safety as something becomes inherently safer, thus reducing costs, not increasing them.
 
I noticed everyone calling any alternative to what we have a 'fantasy' advocate disallowing any alternative. That doesn't seem like progress to me.
 
not that any of this really matters in the end. the country is going down the shitter faster than ever and its going to be a fun time. Our government is a joke now, run by mega corporations. Its nearly a one party/dictatorship kind of thing now.

so in the end, net neutrality won't matter much when people won't even be able to use the internet and the government will only allow you to see the information they deem fit....like China.
 
Bigbacon said:
not that any of this really matters in the end. the country is going down the shitter faster than ever and its going to be a fun time. Our government is a joke now, run by mega corporations. Its nearly a one party/dictatorship kind of thing now.

so in the end, net neutrality won't matter much when people won't even be able to use the internet and the government will only allow you to see the information they deem fit....like China.
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I've always wondered where were these glory days when things were so much better. Maybe for some but certainly not for everyone.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
I noticed everyone calling any alternative to what we have a 'fantasy' advocate disallowing any alternative. That doesn't seem like progress to me.
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Mainly because you are not factoring in the profit motive. A perfect example of why the profit motive always seems to screw stuff up would be what happened to big 3 ratings agencies (all privately run companies) during the Great Recession.

The ratings agencies job is basically to tell everyone if someone is selling crap or not. Basically if this was food their job is to detect shit in the burger and tell everyone about it by applying a rating. However, the functions of these agencies or their primary function failed to provide adequate protection in the financial market. Why? Money. The ratings agencies make money by applying a rating to financial assets for companies that would like to sell stocks, bonds, etc. Well during the mass bundling of crappy mortgages they stood to make tons of money by looking the other way and not applying junk status to much of what was being sold.

That is why you need someone or something to act on behalf of the citizenry. Preferably the person or entity isn't providing the service of watchdog for the purposes of making a profit.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
I noticed everyone calling any alternative to what we have a 'fantasy' advocate disallowing any alternative. That doesn't seem like progress to me.
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The role of government and free market enterprise have been debated long before we were all born and will no doubt be long after we're all gone. But I do think that generally there are areas where there's recognition that free market. i.e. a for profit venture, may not be the best way to handle like everything.

For profit food safety? Not saying it can't work but I think I'd have more confidence in it working before such a thing became an issue. The issue of regulation almost always comes up after something screwed up happened before the issue of regulation comes up. The history of food safety, or lack there of, was particularly egregious.
 
kac77 said:
Mainly because you are not factoring in the profit motive. A perfect example of why the profit motive always seems to screw stuff up would be what happened to big 3 ratings agencies (all privately run companies) during the Great Recession.

The ratings agencies job is basically to tell everyone if someone is selling crap or not. Basically if this was food their job is to detect shit in the burger and tell everyone about it by applying a rating. However, the functions of these agencies or their primary function failed to provide adequate protection in the financial market. Why? Money. The ratings agencies make money by applying a rating to financial assets for companies that would like to sell stocks, bonds, etc. Well during the mass bundling of crappy mortgages they stood to make tons of money by looking the other way and not applying junk status to much of what was being sold.

That is why you need someone or something to act on behalf of the citizenry. Preferably the person or entity isn't providing the service of watchdog for the purposes of making a profit.
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You don't have to go back that far. Look at the ratings agencies during the 2008 housing meltdown. Indeed lock at the financial industry as a whole. The parts that had relatively strong regulation and oversight didn't have NEARLY the problems of parts that didn't.
Heck even within the same company you could see this effect, AIG. The primary standard insurance and well regulated business was fine. The financial instruments ops which was without much oversight or regulation took all of the huge risks.

I don't even propose that government regulation is the answer to all boom and bust cycles. But I think it can help to prevent a bust cycle from becoming completely catastrophic. It's interesting that ultra free market types seem to have little problem with these kinds of cycles but these kinds of cycles create enormous uncertainty. And the only thing that's worse than government when it comes to free market capitalism is enormous uncertainty.
 
Bigbacon said:
not that any of this really matters in the end. the country is going down the shitter faster than ever and its going to be a fun time. Our government is a joke now, run by mega corporations. Its nearly a one party/dictatorship kind of thing now.

so in the end, net neutrality won't matter much when people won't even be able to use the internet and the government will only allow you to see the information they deem fit....like China.
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While I agree on the corporatocracy and one-party-ish system we have now, our system doesn't seem to have much of an issue with free speech provided there's also enough misinformation to counter it so that there's no unity to take action on anything important.
 
heatlesssun said:
The role of government and free market enterprise have been debated long before we were all born and will no doubt be long after we're all gone. But I do think that generally there are areas where there's recognition that free market. i.e. a for profit venture, may not be the best way to handle like everything.

For profit food safety? Not saying it can't work but I think I'd have more confidence in it working before such a thing became an issue. The issue of regulation almost always comes up after something screwed up happened before the issue of regulation comes up. The history of food safety, or lack there of, was particularly egregious.
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I appreciate that you can at least engage in the thought exercise, unlike others here.
 
XvMMvX said:
Man there are some straight up communist on [H] now.
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gov't owned fiber last mile is that different then the interstate highway system OR wireless spectrum
the isps are still privately owned/ public traded
just that this lets any isp jump in
the major backbones would still be the same

the fiber it self could then be handed of to the local power utility to manage over time

again this is last mile only
 
Elios said:
gov't owned fiber last mile is that different then the interstate highway system OR wireless spectrum
the isps are still privately owned/ public traded
just that this lets any isp jump in
the major backbones would still be the same

the fiber it self could then be handed of to the local power utility to manage over time

again this is last mile only
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The difference is that the highway system was built by the Feds with Federal funds. For the government to legally absorb the last mile internet infrastructure they should BUY IT. No way Congress is going to cough up the funds for that. If they just take it over without buying it then it would be Communist like and would certainly end up in the courts (and Congress would likely over ride the FCC if they tried to just take over the fiber without buying it)
 
kbrickley said:
The difference is that the highway system was built by the Feds with Federal funds. For the government to legally absorb the last mile internet infrastructure they should BUY IT. No way Congress is going to cough up the funds for that. If they just take it over without buying it then it would be Communist like and would certainly end up in the courts (and Congress would likely over ride the FCC if they tried to just take over the fiber without buying it)
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see so was the last mile just not so directly but the big isps did get a ton of fed AND state(looking at you Verizon) funding and tax cuts
 
tetris42 said:
I dunno, there's a lot of people that seem to think all government regulation is bad.
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I think there are a lot of people that think some (maybe even most) government regulations are bad, but all (that I think is a very small group of hard core anarchists) ... certain types of government regulation make sense in a large country like the USA (federal rules on immigration, trade, etc) ... do most people want all 50 states trying to cut their own immigration laws or have Texas try to restrict trade with China while California allows it ... some regulation does make sense, but that doesn't mean we need to regulate everything or that federal level regulations are always the best approach :cool:
 
Verizon got MASSIVE tax incentives and fed+state funding to cover the old Ball Atlantic area in 100% fiber...by 2005....
Verizon still has yet to keep there end of the deal
Verizon should be held to its contract or turn over its networks to the fed
 
Elios said:
gov't owned fiber last mile is that different then the interstate highway system OR wireless spectrum
the isps are still privately owned/ public traded
just that this lets any isp jump in
the major backbones would still be the same

the fiber it self could then be handed of to the local power utility to manage over time

again this is last mile only
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Its is not about last mile. You can see it in every debate on here from gaming companies to telcos.

PROFIT IS BAD is the mantra. Straight up disdain for anyone who has some dollars in their bank account. Perfect victim talking points like $200K/yr is elite rich or corporations are greedy for trying to turn a profit.

These major companies average about a 10-12% profit margin, that isn't exactly unreasonable.
 
The internet has become too important to every day life in our society to allow it to be controlled solely by the whims of profit hungry oligarchs

I have no problem with companies making money. I have a problem with companies Fing you to make money.
 
XvMMvX said:
PROFIT IS BAD is the mantra. Straight up disdain for anyone who has some dollars in their bank account. Perfect victim talking points like $200K/yr is elite rich or corporations are greedy for trying to turn a profit.
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For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.
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1 Timothy 6:10 NIV

The King James Version goes as far to say that the love of money is the root of ALL. Regardless of one's religious beliefs or lack of, the wanton pursuit of wealth from the highest ranking corporate executive or government official to the poorest and least powerful without question has been a source of tremendous amounts of death and destruction throughout human history.
 
maverikv said:
The internet has become too important to every day life in our society to allow it to be controlled solely by the whims of profit hungry oligarchs
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The internet has become too important to every day life in our society to allow it to be controlled solely by the whims of power hungry oligarchs.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
The internet has become too important to every day life in our society to allow it to be controlled solely by the whims of power hungry oligarchs.
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True. But the history of regulation in this country is as you've said many times reactive. Power hungry oligarchs would typically size power as a matter of course, not as a matter of reaction to issues that by their nature bring government into the picture.

I agree that regulation is best handled by those that need the oversight. It would be much better if everyone without force made the correct decisions and choices without the need for intervention. The difference between the real and the ideal is where human existence lies.
 
tetris42 said:
I dunno, there's a lot of people that seem to think all government regulation is bad.
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Regulation can be bad either initially or in the future, so why add cost and complexity unless its really needed.

What do you think about the FCC commissioner refusing to answer questions before congress?
 
maverikv said:
The internet has become too important to every day life in our society to allow it to be controlled solely by the whims of profit hungry oligarchs
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+1, Keep in mind this also opens the door for future regulation.

Regulation can run a muck. 2nd graders in school suspended for making a gun hand symbol really?
 
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