The addition of new interconnects is standard practice among ISP's.

It's also phenomenally expensive. It's also completely voluntary.

One can hardly fault Comcast for not wanting to invest a crapton of money to help a company who's effectively abusing their network infrastructure to try and steal their customer base.

Comcast wasn't "throttling Netflix for its users". Comcast had negotiated a peering point with L3 (Netflix's ISP) at a given bandwidth, and Netflix wanted to push more traffic to Comcast than their upstream ISP's link to Comcast could support.

That you *don't* want me to have such weapons, doesn't override the 2nd Amendment's protection that specifically prohibits you from interfering in that right.

In fact, the Constitution specifically contains an *expectation* that civilians would have force of arms equal to the military: Letters of Marque. The expectation being that civilians would have sufficient force of arms on board civilian ocean-going vessels to take down foreign-flag naval vessels.

However, understanding that in a free society the government is always in a position to decide what agreements it is willing to enforce in the interest of the free market. Without a system where disputes can be equitably resolved, private agreements are either not free or not effective.

Once you have third parties deciding what contracts between consenting adults are and are-not void, you -- by definition -- don't have a "free market" any more... Either they are all valid and enforceable or there is no enforcement at all.

In a free market there is either "enforcement of all contracts and agreements" or "no enforcement of such". As soon as a third party gets to pick and choose which contracts and agreements are enforced, the free aspect of the free market is removed, because *really* every agreement exists at the whim of an unrelated third party.

There is no possibility of a free market without rules governing the free market which keep it free.

The only "rules" that are even theoretically necessary are ones ensuring that all agreements and contracts are enforced. ALL, except in the presence of actual fraud (which, let's be clear, is not at issue here, but is in your shopkeeper example).

I agree with those that say the lack of competition is the real underlying issue, but you need rules to address that. I am not talking about more or less rules... just the right rules for the free market system we want.

And what I said elsewhere was that the right way to handle this -- in a way that both solved the problem and was pro-free-market -- was to have regulation which specifically attacked the actual problem -- competition. We've had 20-30 years of forced lack of competition, so another 20-30 years of, say, forced bundling should give "upstarts" the access to outside plant they need to start turning a profit, to the point where they can start either buying the infrastructure from incumbents, or building out infrastructure of their own.

You respect the free market process, you create actual competition, and you have a path towards removing the "outside third party" from interfering in folks' right to negotiate with each other for goods and services.

And unregulated communication networks aren't going to provide customers with the communication services they are paying for and which we all want.

Here's the thing: In a free society you don't have a right to force someone to provide you with "what you want". They provide you with "what they are willing to sell you."

If you don't like what they're providing, don't buy it.

Now, in an unregulated free market, we don't have Franchise authorities creating monopolies. And we've got to undo 30 years of those authorities doing so, so a path towards competition that creates a free and competitive environment (ie, forced unbundling, etc.) is perfectly acceptable.

But pretending that Comcast is "your bitch" and must provide you with exactly the configuration of network performance that is optimal to your personal needs isn't in any way acceptable.

If you have a "choice" of one ISP it's because your local Franchise Authority (your town/village/city board usually) has opted to only grant a franchise to one company. And they've done so without requiring that the one company provide any sort of unbundled service to foster competition.

Don't blame the ISP for your local politicians' inability to stand up for you.

'Threatened' gun rights are a red herring

As someone who has had to divest myself of lawfully owned property to accommodate new gun-control measures - no, they are not a "red herring".

And 'gun rights' are, to a large extent, the corporate interest of gun and ammo manufacturers, by the way

No, they're not. They've existed since the 18th century, long before there were corporate interests of gun and ammo manufacturers.

The proportion of the electorate that needs gun rights to extend to the building of personal arsenals is minuscule (well, maybe not that minuscule), but the outrage machine manages to get the whole gun loving cohort on board.

The proportion of the internet users who "need" Net Neutrality is minuscule, but the outrage machine manages to get the whole internet on board.

So, assuming you favor net neutrality, and are reading this thread because you want it preserved

Definitely assumes facts not in evidence.

The Democrats' agenda is far less corporatist than the Republicans'.

Nonsense, they just get funded by different corporations. I'll remind you that unions are corporations, too.

Who do you think is more likely to fix that...?

Anarchists. Would you like one of our fliers?

Good FCC regulations would

Good FCC regs would get the hell out of the way of the ISPs who -- really -- have done nothing to deserve what they're getting. This is a bad solution to solve a problem which doesn't exist.

Which is true right up until it stops being true, right?

Everything is unheard of and impossible until some folks actually, y'know, do it. It just hasn't happened yet. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it's not a good idea....

Or did the (admittedly flawed, but much improved for the era) 18th-century American ideal of individual freedom suck just because prior the the mid 1700s it hadn't been done.

Well said.

The only thing missing was a mic-drop.

Mostly having to do with the fact that the two main parties have written the rules to ensure that they stay in power.

When non-main parties have to fight to even get on the ballot, it's disingenuous to act like it's been a fair fight.

ProTip: Nobody who's going to get a lick of camera time in the upcoming election isn't someone whose "masters" are the "rich and powerful."

They make sure to make it impossible for anyone other than the Janus Party to participate.

I think you also forgot to mention that they confuse the gullible with "gun crime is at an all time high", or outright bribe them with "wouldn't you like this government program to give you back some of the money we stole from you", or "we need to protect you from internet censorship that isn't even happening."

They are the "Janus" party... two faces of the same organization -- those who want to consolidate power in their own hands.

Certainly the two "branches" of the Janus party each work on land-grabbing *different* areas of power, but look at their donor lists -- they're both consolidating all that power at the behest of the same people.

Think of it when like ... Sales and Engineering have radically different ideas about how something should work.... they both fixate on their personal world-views, but ultimately, they're both part of the same organization and power-structure.

You realize that nothing you describe above precludes the poster-child for the Net Neutrality movement, the Comcast/Netflix situation, right?

Nothing in your agreement with the ISP requires them to peer with the people you want them to peer with, at the capacity you want them to have.