So you’re saying that the FCC is wrong when it states
Or are you saying Congress has never given the FCC that power to identify a problem and make up rules about it.
Or are you saying that Congress needs to SPECIFICALLY make a rule for a regulatory agency to deal with a problem. Like if a company is dumping tons of thallium into the water supply Congress has to legislate specifically that the EPA may fine companies dumping heavy metals into drinking water?
I’m saying you appear to be confused, but aggressive as opposed to apologetic about your confusion.
“Identify a problem and make up rules.”
vs
“Reclassify ISPs under Title II so they could then make up rules using Title II.”
Might there be some distinction between those steps? Or is it all simply “make up rules,” from where you sit?
Oh, mama!
No, it wasn’t.
If I opposed the method of applying Title II, then why would I oppose the method of NOT applying Title II? My argument is that applying Title II to ISPs was an end-run around the limitations the FCC faced in crafting rules. If the FCC says, in effect, “My bad, Title II does not apply,” then in what universe is that “the same method?”
Actually, after seeing the history; it is clear that the courts told in their conclusions, when they did not agree on using Title I for enforcing net neutrality, that they offered to the FCC that the FCC should reach for Title II when “coming back with pie”.
Then I think you’re switching away from the mechanism line of argument.
Because if it was the mechanism used to reclassify to Title II that you were opposed to, then the same mechanism was used to undo it. The mechanism line of argument cares little about the outcome. And since it was done in 2015, that becomes the status quo - water under the bridge so to speak. But to use the same method again that should be frowned on of you are concerned about the method. It’s either good or not, and one overreach doesn’t mitigate another.
That’s why I think it’s important to separate the two issues. Whether the FCC should have and exercise this power is one issue, and it’s independent of whatever ends they exercise them towards.
The principle of what they actually do with that power is another issue, but that’s not what you are concerned about.
I see the point, but it seems to me that if the second use is merely to nullify the first use, then this would be a special case: the intent is not to flout the norms of rule-making power, but to restore them.
Of course that is possible only by making your peculiar opinion as if it was a good reason to then to allow the FCC to do the reverse.
It is like watching an Ouroboros, interesting regarding cyclical issues, but pointless in this case really.
In the meantime, it is clear to me that there is a lot of not being able to see the forest for the trees, too much time involved in minutia there while ignoring the real swamp that is gumming the works.
Incompetency, ignorance of history and conflicts of interest are ruling in the current administration and the people they put in places like the FCC. They are counting that there is enough ignorance out there that allows the ones enforcing the rules to go for choices that end up helping local monopolies and to toss new industries under the bus by ignoring history, precedent and even logic.
And that is making the presumption that it is the wrong approach. It is “wrong” only by your definition of “wrong”, things that you don’t like.
I see it as there are several approaches, all of them legitimate, some more optimal than others.
Going through congress would have been more optimal, I grant, but only for the specific reason that the way it was done was more easily reversed.
And to that matter, with the current polarization and shenanigans to get things passed on a slim majority vote, congress is not all that stable either. Things that are passed by one congress can be changed by a subsequent nearly as easily as executive orders.
It was something that needed to be done, was supported by the majority of US citizens, and it was only that congress was refusing to do its job of representing the people that put them into office that a less than optimal route had to be taken.
Unless you can articulate your definition of “wrong” as being more than an ideological idea, then this is just a disagreement as to whether the perfect should prevent the good.
It seems to me that this means “If the outcome is one I like, then the use of a mechanism is not as bad as the use of the same mechanism to arrive at an outcome I don’t like”
So two wrongs can make an acceptable.
Nope.
Yours extends my special case into a general one.
It is ideological. No question about it: it’s not objectively obvious. Someone can easily say that the greatest good is served by rules that do good, regardless of how they come into being.
Not me, though.
…so when the FCC used a mechanism to eliminate a set of rules that were implemented by the same mechanism: how can you in good conscious support the former but oppose the latter?
But the FCC taking ISP’s under Title II didn’t come about through random mysterious ways, they came about specifically by following the law.
It is as if we both agree that we want to go to the mall. The interstate is shut down with gridlock though. I suggest we take a side road there, not optimal, but it gets us there, and it’s not like we were driving through the grass, making up our own roads as we go along, we were just taking a suboptimal path through roads that were already laid out.
If the only way to get there is to drive across the putting green, then we need to ensure that the ends are valuable enough to justify those means, it’s going to be a fairly high bar. For instance, if trump were to just go out and order a nuclear strike on russia or china under no provocation, well, there is no way within the framework that we have to prevent that, but I would hope that someone would cross the grass and prevent that from happening, even if it were to violate the framework of our country. So yeah, if the only way to get net neutrality actually ran afoul of the constituion then I would agree that we should not take those steps, I don’t see it as being as great an existential threat as starting a nuclear war.
As it didn’t run afoul of the constitution, and was actually fully authorized to do what it did by the laws and charter that was granted to it by congress, then I don’t see it as a “regardless of how they came into being” situation, as the way they came into being is very straightforward and legal.
The only downside to the FCC taking action as they did in 2015 is that another administration could reverse the decision. This is a bit of a gamble on the FCC’s part, but as net neutrality is something that the vast majority of the population of the country wants, a following administration, even if in disagreement on some ideological grounds, would have been happy to keep it in. It is only because this admin is looking to reverse everything done by its predecessor that such a reversal could take place.
What if the rules come about through an established and, under typical circumstances, normally acceptable framework?
As I said, an Orobourous of an argument from Bricker.
That the trees he sees are nice does not remove the fact that the forest is sick with bark beetles. Or in this case with bots that make a mockery of his earlier argument that proponents of net neutrality are there because of astroturfing.
One big item he as demonstrated not to be aware of is that there is ideology there all right, but it is coming from the ones that are abusing of their power to make or just listen to the real astroturfing that ignores what most experts and most of the public (a situation that is not so common nowadays with controversial topics) do agree with, that net neutrality is what it should be followed.
As I pointed to Bricker in the past, then about who are the people enforcing new voting laws, ignoring what the watchmen are doing or are because of their ideology is an irresponsible thing to do.
It is a special case fleshed out in post 706. I think the special case can be narrowly construed enough to see it as a legitimate exception. I do think there is at least a little bit of outcome based interest in accepting the special case and it’s not simply a mechanism based objection.
If police were to illegally enter a residence to steal evidence that would be bad. If police then broke into the same residence to return it, I’d still say that’s bad and simply undoing the previous wrong is not sufficient to justify the subsequent breaking in. Whether or not the FCC rule making is sufficiently different than breaking in is debatable.
I see. So, the way you think rule making should work can be changed in those cases you consider “special”. And I bet you make “special” cases for those things that you agree with.
I’m using “special case,” as the term is used in logic and math: when an element of a class of objects is qualitatively different from the rest of the class and thus can be said to belong to another class.
That’s actually a special case of a special case called a “degenerate class.” I thought to avoid that term here for fear of causing offense amongst those who might not understand the use of the term.
Fair enough. The problem with that assertion is, I can just as easily rebut it with “I think the FCC ruling ISPs as Title II is a special case based on what was happening with ISPs denying access to certain classes of services which hadn’t happened before. I don’t normally think that the FCC should over-regulate private companies, but in this (special) case, I think it’s good”
Carving out “special cases” for things you agree with seems a poor road to take, since those opposed to you can simply also carve out “special cases”