When you and a bunch of other people switch to Kenmore, it puts the other appliance makers out of business, at which point Kenmore can jack up their prices. Remember that in the hypothetical, Kenmore also provides the electricity. If there were lots of other electricity providers, you might have a point. But, typically, there aren’t.
Nowhere in your arguments so far have I seen you address monopoly power. Do you recognize that it exists? Is it a problem?
The trouble is that the former model is what is expected if ISPs exercise their new “right” to charge extra for people they may be in competition with.
No one complains when AT&T offers a sale, or discount, or bonus. But when they jack up prices in a targeted fashion, that seems like a bad thing to most of us.
Why would they? Craftsman and Black and Decker are the same company.
You’re changing the scenario, again. But it’s still not a problem to me. Schemes like this hardly ever work. The companies spend billions acquiring market share and then when they try to raise the prices again competitors spring up. The net result is that consumers are subsidized for years on money a company will never make back.
Monopoly power is an issue, but ISPs are clearly not a monopoly. Even if we restrict it to broadband, they still are almost always at least a duopoly and often there are three or more companies. Even if we ignore that, there’s a clear floor to how monopolistic broadband operators can act and that is “no worse than wireless service”. And even if we continue to ignore that, Google demonstrated that with sufficient motivation that they are willing and able to be an ISP. So the other floor is “not bad enough to piss Google off”.
Kenmore owns the power company, and they’re not subsidizing jack. They’re simply raising the price on all their power customers who have the temerity to dare not also be their appliance customers. The goal here is to use their power monopoly to run their appliance competitors out of business.
Another possible approach would be to throttle the power to non-Kenmore appliances, making them function like crap. This will drive customers away from the ‘broken’ appliances to the Kenmore appliances just as effectively without it being as obvious that Kenmore is responsible.
Really, the situation is analogous to if all the various roads in the country were owned by private companies, and there were currently laws in place preventing the road-owners from coming out and robbing or attacking anyone who dared use their road. Laws which you’re trying to repeal, on the grounds of “laws are bad and anarchy and corruption are good, and also there are lots of roads leading to MY neighborhood and I’m sure that not ALL of them will use their newfound freedom to rob people, and in any case if there are any problems more non-robbing roads will spring up like magic because roads are super-profitable now that their owners can rob people.”
Do you know why the power company cannot randomly decide to double everyone’s rates?
So…you can leave net neutrality in place, and avoid all that.
Or you can repeal, and trust that the ISPs won’t take undue advantage. BUT, if they do, some new technology MIGHT come about to replace them. Or, some other company might move in and lose money…out of the goodness of their hearts, I suppose.
How about we just leave it as is.
Not for the same reason ISPs can’t randomly decide to double their rates, that’s for sure.
Honestly I think that if ISPs are given the freedom to screw with the content they’re being asked to deliver (which, to be honest, is all that is happening when you disable net neutrality) that they won’t leap straight to charging end-of-line consumers higher prices. That would drive some small percentage of customers away. Instead they’d fuck up the content they’re supposed to deliver (except for their own content), and then generously offer the other content providers an opportunity to bribe them into stopping the fucking. Or they won’t, if the provider is their direct competitor in some other sphere, or if they simply hate them on principle. This will all go on without the average consumer being aware of anything, give or take that treis won’t be able to get decent quality streaming video anymore and his email won’t work.
If I can’t get decent quality streaming or my e-mail why exactly am I still paying Comcast any money?
It doesn’t have anything to do with them being regulated industries?
Tell me, would you be against deregulation of electrical rates as well?
Poof! A wizard appears and fills the sky with fucking balloons to solve a completely artificial problem. But as absurd as it is, nobody in this thread has offered any better rationale abolishing net neutrality, so congratulations. Here’s a balloon.
Excellent question! Perhaps you’ll switch to, oh, let’s say Joe’s Honest Internet Service. Who promises they won’t screw with your internet, though they totally can. But they won’t! Honest. Corporation’s honor.
And then they do anyway, just not quiiiite as bad as Comcast does.
But you’re savvy, and haven’t (yet) been acclimatized to the new crappy norm, so you switch to Fred’s Even More Honest Internet Service, Trust Us.
They’re worse than Comcast.
So you do what you would actually have done from the start and look around at reviews for the most honest/fast service. Turns out it’s Joe’s.
You decide that the free market is a powerful force, and will cause a new ISP to magically appear and serve your will. You rub a lamp, click your heels together, and then cancel all your ISP services because you know the new one will spring up.
In your suddenly copious free time you discover a love of reading, and become a fixture at the local library. You read many many books. A happy ending!
Google Fiber is a failure, and was doomed from the start. . Try again.
If I read this right, you’re saying that if we get rid of NN the internet will become so crappy that we all just give up on in and read books? That doesn’t strike me as a… shall we say particularly cogent argument.
Feel free to address my actual point whenever you would like.
treis, could you at some point address my questions? What, precisely, is the advantage in overturning net neutralty for the consumer? Is there any rational argument for upsetting the status quo?
“Oook, ook, regulation bad,” is not a rational argument.
Are you dissing books? :mad:
What’ll actually happen is that the internet will become so crappy that some people (the “If I can’t get decent quality streaming or my e-mail why exactly am I still paying Comcast any money?” types) will get so pissed they’ll go full medieval. But the vast, vast majority will recognize that the collective of ISPs has them by the nuts and they have no recourse - well, okay, some people will beg for net neutrality to be reinstated, but your type will have no choice but to suck it up and say “please sir, can I have some more?”
There are only three arguments I can see for believing that companies will not take advantage of their newfound powers to screw people for money:
That corporations are inherently moral.
That other honest companies will spring up - as in, make the investment of digging ditches and laying thousands of miles cable or fiber over the objections of the existing carriers and their bought politicians and other regulatory hurdles. That is, startup companies will do the thing that Google was unable to do.
They believe that while massive numbers of people WILL be screwed over, that circumstances or luck will conspire that THEY PERSONALLY won’t be screwed over, and fuck all those other people and businesses and the economy and the country.
The first two arguments seem delusional to me, and if you watch streaming video then honestly so does the third one - streaming video is an easy, easy target for throttling and shenanigans.
come on man, pretend they aren’t for the purposes of discussion.
I just thought of a good business plan for after NN is gone:
Remember not to mess up the ‘easily’ part of this. Fumbling that could really jack up your whole plan.