Should the US Regulate Broadband Internet Access as a Utility?

aardvark sandwich said:
For some reason people seem to think greed magically goes away when you bring government into the mix.
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When you have good and competent politicians yes it does 'magically' make most or even nearly all the negative effects of greed in the form of white collar crime go away.

aardvark sandwich said:
I just prefer greed to have no authority.
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History has shown lassez faire/anarchic economies/governments result in the average citizen having generally a poor quality of life and/or significantly shortened lifespan so your preference is irrational + disliked by a overwhelming majority.

aardvark sandwich said:
You turn internet into a simple toll operator business, a company will be more than happy to comply with the regulation now that all their competitors vanished.
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Once they're regulated as a utility lots of the current BS the ISPs do like degrading service quality for streaming services, not upgrading equipment in rural areas, and overcharging become illegal and they can be forced to fix those issues or else the execs can get booted or even put in prison.

White collar criminals are deathly afraid of prison so a real threat of prison time + the associated wealth confiscation is very effective at curbing their excesses.

Also it should be noted that the ISP's generally already have regional monopolies or oligopolies so competition is already nonexistent or, at best, minimal.
 
Scythe said:
Broadband is a SERVICE. The government needs to stay out of it. Period.
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First you need to get the lobbyists out of the building, that are paid to bribe...I mean pay people to swing the vote in their direction.
 
mesyn191 said:
When you have good and competent politicians yes it does 'magically' make most or even nearly all the negative effects of greed in the form of white collar crime go away.


History has shown lassez faire/anarchic economies/governments result in the average citizen having generally a poor quality of life and/or significantly shortened lifespan so your preference is irrational + disliked by a overwhelming majority.


Once they're regulated as a utility lots of the current BS the ISPs do like degrading service quality for streaming services, not upgrading equipment in rural areas, and overcharging become illegal and they can be forced to fix those issues or else the execs can get booted or even put in prison.

White collar criminals are deathly afraid of prison so a real threat of prison time + the associated wealth confiscation is very effective at curbing their excesses.

Also it should be noted that the ISP's generally already have regional monopolies or oligopolies so competition is already nonexistent or, at best, minimal.
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Open a history book, close your eyes and open to any section. There you'll find plenty of historical evidence of the inherent problems with greed when it is mixed with political authority.
 
Semantics said:
Greed and narcissism doesn't make money, governments make money by creating an environment to which business can be done on equal footing and giving a solution to complaints outside of just shooting each other. Greed and narcissism corner markets and stifle competition, you know what's easier than competing with others? Removing them altogether from the picture.

Wonder why all these weak government, unregulated countries are whipping the EU economic zone, USA, Japan, China in the world markets. Oh wait they aren't.

Dogmatic idiot think in black and white and are blind to real solutions because of it.
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This is a sick mindset.
 
We should definitely privatize everything like the sewer system and the roads and get rid of all regulations and just protect property rights.

That way if someone I don't like buys a house I can just buy all the land around them and construct 50 foot concrete walls so they can't leave.
 
(broadband costs less than $5 a month to provide and is sold for $40 to $60 a month)
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Now this I did not know, you see you learn something new everyday.

I wonder what country has it for 5$ a month... hmmm
 
Greed is a problem even when no political authority exists which is why anarchy is so horrible. The greedy get to go out and do whatever they want and in effect become the 'law of the land'.

Organized political systems at least allow it to be controlled and mitigated.
 
mesyn191 said:
Greed is a problem even when no political authority exists which is why anarchy is so horrible. The greedy get to go out and do whatever they want and in effect become the 'law of the land'.

Organized political systems at least allow it to be controlled and mitigated.
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Controlled in the sense that it makes competition illegal.
Any closed system will always have entropy. The greed doesn't go away.
 
mesyn191 said:
Greed is a problem even when no political authority exists which is why anarchy is so horrible. The greedy get to go out and do whatever they want and in effect become the 'law of the land'.

Organized political systems at least allow it to be controlled and mitigated.
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Since when does anarchy make people greedy? And what base do you have to say there is no political authority in an anarchist utopian society?

It is similar to soviet rule only instead of the state controlling production and economy the workers do and they have councils which would be considered political authority, just not as currupt
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Don't be jealous that you're not as witty or charming when you advocate something weird to people who don't care.
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If anything, your position of "if you have nothing to hide you should be fine" and "lockup everyone who dissents" would make Cheney, Kissinger and any other tyrant proud.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
Controlled in the sense that it makes competition illegal....entropy. The greed doesn't go away.
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Monopolies existed before capitalism was an articulated economic theory and laissez faire was the only economic policy FYI.

Also you have to be reeeal careful when trying to apply other scientific theories laws (ie. survival of the fittest) to social, economic, and political constructs. I never said greed goes away either so you can dispense with that strawman too.

Zakarro said:
Since when does anarchy make people greedy? And what base do you have to say there is no political authority in an anarchist utopian society?
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If you think I said anarchy makes people greedy, or greedier, than you have misread my post completely. Same goes for your latter statement, tribal politics would still be a thing, but a central govt. on the order of the US federal govt. or one capable of regulating a ISP like discussed in the thread certainly wouldn't exist.

Zakarro said:
It is similar to soviet rule
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Woooow. Just wow. You're so wrong here the only thing I can reasonably do here is suggest you go read some papers on how centralized (it was notoriously centralized BTW) the USSR's govt. and economy were. They pretty much invented the whole economy/nation wide 5 yr plan thing.
 
They are monopolies and I worked for Intel for 14 years ... as long as they don't abuse their positions (and they were punished when they did)
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Yeah Intel was sure punished alright... They engaged in a LOT of illegal business practices around the world in the early 00s and essentially received a slap on the wrist ruling from the EU, which is STILL being held up in court today. This is why AMD couldn't gain any marketshare during that time, despite having faster and cheaper processors. If Intel had actually obeyed the law during that time, we might actually have real competition from AMD now for CPUs instead of things being so lopsided.

as an engineer I prefer to fix problems at the root cause level
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Well it depends on how far you want to go... The ROOT problem with ISPs is there are higher incentives to gouge people financially than there are to provide good service. This is a pretty deep problem though, would likely have to turn society upside down in order to fix it at the root, as this is hardly a problem unique to ISPs.
 
kbrickley said:
One other consideration, people are throwing out the common carrier rules as an example of how to regulate them ... the common carrier rules have essentially created a duopoly for mobile phones (ATT and Verizon control about 70% of the market between them) ... so given the current distribution of ISPs in the USA I don't think common carrier rules will affect much other than the net neutrality aspects, perhaps
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But you gloss over the fact that there are bunch of MVNO operators allowed to offer Service on the various big corporation-owned cell networks. You don't HAVE to go directly thru Verizon/ATT, you can go with Republic, or Lycamobile, or H2O, or Ting or any number of other Mobile Virtual Network Operators that just rent capacity on one (or more) of the big players' networks, and offer much different plans than VZW/ATT.
 
jpm100 said:
This should be true, if what was also true is that the anti-trust hammer had come down and broken Comcast and other ISP monopolies and oligopolies to bits.
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Agreed.

I prefer the free market sort things out on its own, but in order for there to be a free market, there needs to be actual competition, otherwise we just wind up with abuse, like we currently have.

Because of this I fully support regulating the crap out of internet access until such time there is more competition in the marketplace. (which may never happen).

I would insist that the FCC reclassify ANYTHING that connects you to the internet as common carrier (including mobile data). Anything short of this will only lead to continued abuses by the telecoms and their armies of high paid lobbyists.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
If anything, your position of "if you have nothing to hide you should be fine" and "lockup everyone who dissents" would make Cheney, Kissinger and any other tyrant proud.
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keep-calm-and-don-t-feed-the-troll-22.png
 
Semantics said:
Greed and narcissism doesn't make money, governments make money by creating an environment to which business can be done on equal footing and giving a solution to complaints outside of just shooting each other. Greed and narcissism corner markets and stifle competition, you know what's easier than competing with others? Removing them altogether from the picture.

Wonder why all these weak government, unregulated countries are whipping the EU economic zone, USA, Japan, China in the world markets. Oh wait they aren't.

Dogmatic idiot think in black and white and are blind to real solutions because of it.
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Smashing Young Man said:
This is a sick mindset.
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You are both wrong.

Government doesn't entirely create wealth, nor do the entrepreneurs entirely on their own.

Both are required.

You need a government to keep the peace and provide the security, infrastructure, educated populace, etc. that creates an environment for those with the ideas and the willingness to take risks to succeed. Without this, no one (or every few) do succeed.

Once this environment is created and maintained, you need the entrepreneurs to come in, invest and create something out if it.

The concept isn't "you didn't build that" vs. "I built it!". That's just an insane argument, and mostly a straw man, as (apart from you) I've only heard the "you didn't build that" argument as a strawman.

As with most things in life, the truth lies somewhere in between.

Successful entrepreneurs are usually successful for a reason, they had a fantastic idea, worked hard at it and made it happen. But there is also a good amount of luck involved. The pieces falling into place in th eright place at the right time. And if there isn't a society backing up the good environment for business it will never succeed either.

So successful entrepreneurs SHOULD have their rewards. That is perfectly fair. At the same time it is also perfectly fair that they be asked to pay their share to maintain the society that allows them to go out there and be successful.

And yes, those who are successful SHOULD pay more for this society than those who aren't, as they have reaped the biggest benefits of the society.
 
Either regulate it properly (pro-consumer not pro-telco) or nationalize the infratructure and lease it.
 
mesyn191 said:
Woooow. Just wow. You're so wrong here the only thing I can reasonably do here is suggest you go read some papers on how centralized (it was notoriously centralized BTW) the USSR's govt. and economy were. They pretty much invented the whole economy/nation wide 5 yr plan thing.
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Im not going to debate you on this, I lived in a place where anarchism actually worked for a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism

In fact the war that destroyed this the soviets and pro soviets were allied with the anarchists despite their slight differences....
 
Better give the property back to the people it never belonged to in the first place!
 
aardvark sandwich said:
Better give the property back to the people it never belonged to in the first place!
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If through political corruption, and abusing their customers, the companies earned the illegal/unethical/immoral incomes that paid for the infrastructure, the argument could be made that the people already paid for that infrastructure :p


Especially since they took billions from the government in order to expand infrastructure that was never expanded...
 
Zakarro said:
Im not going to debate you on this, I lived in a place where anarchism actually worked for a while.
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Your non-debate response is a non-sequitor reply to my comment. Also any system that has only ever held up for a few years in the real world before either falling apart in response to outside forces or internal in-fighting is a terrible system.

Zakarro said:
the soviets and pro soviets were allied with the anarchists despite their slight differences....
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They allied with anyone who would pick up a gun and shoot at whoever they wanted dead. Politically they had such wide differences both groups planned to try and kill the other as soon as it was opportune.
 
If there's one thing pretty much everyone has, especially the boonies, are Power/Telephone Poles.

Lacking that, there's tree's.

I don't know why some enterprising company doesn't specialize in providing internet to those in the boonies by using repeating wireless array's mounted upon said Poles and tree's.

Using power poles, the power is there. No wires needed. Sure, they would have to reach an agreement with the owning power company but damn. If we can put people on an international space station, surely we can tack wireless antennae's on top of a frickin' power pole.
 
The physical infrastructure is the exact same thing as the real highway system, but for electrons instead of cars. Some of those cars are you going to grandma's house, and some are commercial truckloads.

The infrastructure needs to be built and maintained by an independent government agency, such as the USPS.

From there any and all ISP's acting between the customer and the infrastructure can be independent free market private entities .... because an open market would allow true competition and free market economics.

What we have now is a total private system controlled by ... after decades of consolidation as is inherent in capitalism ... 5 giant corporations, colluding through mutual self interest to yield the worst of all results. The costs of this mismanagement of our system are monumental, draining needlessly $100's of billions per year from the economy, putting it into the pockets of the extremely wealthy. The telecommunications system has been turned into the money siphoning system of the Filthy Rich (tm) and has become (along with our energy systems) the most effective wealth transfer mechanism ever devised by mankind.

In the end, unchecked, it will lead to an economic civil war. It is already having a major negative effect on the ability of our democracy to function. The system has cancer but is to hobbled by the already out of control concentration of wealth, power and control of information that we may be powerless to reverse the slide into civil war and anarchy.
 
xX_Jack_Carver_Xx said:
The physical infrastructure is the exact same thing as the real highway system, but for electrons instead of cars. Some of those cars are you going to grandma's house, and some are commercial truckloads.

The infrastructure needs to be built and maintained by an independent government agency, such as the USPS.

From there any and all ISP's acting between the customer and the infrastructure can be independent free market private entities .... because an open market would allow true competition and free market economics.

What we have now is a total private system controlled by ... after decades of consolidation as is inherent in capitalism ... 5 giant corporations, colluding through mutual self interest to yield the worst of all results. The costs of this mismanagement of our system are monumental, draining needlessly $100's of billions per year from the economy, putting it into the pockets of the extremely wealthy. The telecommunications system has been turned into the money siphoning system of the Filthy Rich (tm) and has become (along with our energy systems) the most effective wealth transfer mechanism ever devised by mankind.

In the end, unchecked, it will lead to an economic civil war. It is already having a major negative effect on the ability of our democracy to function. The system has cancer but is to hobbled by the already out of control concentration of wealth, power and control of information that we may be powerless to reverse the slide into civil war and anarchy.
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I feel similarly.

Could you imagine if we lived in a society with only private toll roads?
 
While I believe the ISPs should probably be regulated as utilities, I think there is a deeper issue with the economy overall. With all the preferential treatment the banks, finance and investment companies get, tax treatment, etc, it's exponentially more profitable to not actually build anything, but instead just churn money from one place to the next and book "profits" after each move.

Even if there was a better regulatory environment for a competitor to enter (whether that is less or more), its so much easier to take all those billions and shove them at a hedge fund rather than actually attempt to build something.
 
TechLarry said:
If we can put people on an international space station, surely we can tack wireless antennae's on top of a frickin' power pole.
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Your analogy is amusingly fitting. Just because we can do something doesn't mean that there is economic reward in doing so.

Too much cost, not enough customers. People in the boonies just need to revert back to carrier pigeon. :D
 
Zarathustra[H];1040824865 said:
I feel similarly.

Could you imagine if we lived in a society with only private toll roads?
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Have you driven from NYC to DC before? :D
 
ABSOLUTELY YES. I have been pushing this for years.

Local broadband is inherently a monopoly in many areas.
This is precisely why water, electricity is regulated. Because it's the same situation

Before anyone repeats the "bright idea" that breaking up Comcast will "solve" the problem, it will just create a bunch of smaller more local monopolies.

I am very libertarian leaning, but I do believe that local hardwired broadband service should be treated as a utility for the same reason electric, water, gas is.

Government has it's place:
Utilites regulation (internet broadband included)
Roads
Police, Fire
Schools
Research
Public Safety
etc...

Note I did not say mobile broadband. This already has good competition, because it's much less expensive and easier to install new cell towers to create new competition.
Not true for local broadband in many cases.
 
Everytime this comes up the true problem is lost.

There needs to be an elimination of the gross conflict of interest. The fact that these ISPs are also cable TV provides still peddling their bloated ass ramming "packages" you have to buy to get the 10 channels you really want, while charging you for each TV you want etc etc etc.

This is the problem. These guys do not want you to have the speed to sit down and "watch the internet" (netflix). The threat that broadband poses to cable TV is real and is what is behind most of the price gouging going on.

The stucture is there in Urban areas, don't buy the bullshit that they can't handle the speed.

Right now we need to look to hopefully Google growing more and staying out of the cable TV bed and ESPN saying fuck you and cutting the middleman out. Imagine if ESPN just said "hey come subscribe to watchESPN for a direct $20 a month. This can't happen though because the cable companies control the Internet sooo.... we are fucked.
 
demingo said:
Your analogy is amusingly fitting. Just because we can do something doesn't mean that there is economic reward in doing so.

Too much cost, not enough customers. People in the boonies just need to revert back to carrier pigeon. :D
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True,

but there is no profit in the international space station either :p

And some things are worth doing just because of their benefit to society, even if they don't result in a profit. That is why community broadband is the solution to rural internet and it is absolutely disgusting that so many state legislatures are caving to telecom lobbyists and defeating it.
 
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