If you are paying for 75/25 or 50/25 and they are throttling it at the borders of their network, then you aren't getting the bandwidth you are paying for... downgrade your service. That $10, $20 or more per month they aren't getting from you because of their throttling practices should get their attention.

I think you are underplaying the role that local governments play in restricting competition and the role of existing regulations as a barrier to entry. It isn't really all that expensive for a community or non-profit to hire a line crew and string some fiber optic cable and buy some equipment. Compared to something like running pipes underground for water and sewer and running a little wire on telephone poles is trivial. Perhaps the solution is to have more state wide regulation of telephone rights of way instead of leaving it up to municipalities or county governments. The patchwork of regulations and local agreements seems very prone to corrupt practices which is restraining competition.

Prove it. At this point with stagnation or even reduction of service from the Internet providers it isn't at all clear that private companies are doing anything other than gauging customers with the exclusive franchises or licenses they are getting from communities in order to be the only one running wires.

All evidence is pointing to it being better for communities to treat wired communications along public ways as a public utility.

Much is made about the private capital that is used to invest in installing all these wires, but it is the capital of customers which is paying back those original investments. I would say the customers who are actually paying for this should be the ones that decide how they want their communications network managed.

And a government's responsibility is to take action against a company which is committing wholesale fraud against its customers by selling them Internet Service which promises bandwidth speeds which they are then purposefully not providing in order to shake down their customers and companies trying to provide services to those customers more money.

A government's responsibility is to ensure that companies that are given government licenses and franchise agreements which restrict competition in certain geographic areas are providing the service that the people of that area want and need at a fair price.

A government's responsibility is to ensure that companies which get too big, hold too much market share and are too horizontally or vertically integrated are broken up so that there can be real competition and a real free market.

Maybe so. I am not a great fan of Lincoln. In many ways he acted like a tyrant and violated the constitution often times flagrantly during the war when dealing with individuals and dissent. And I believe a truly great person and president would have found a way to prevent civil war and bloodshed in the first place, or maybe it was an impossible task.

But the difference is and was that in the end that Lincoln decided to fight for Liberty instead of against it. He decided to make the civil war about freeing the slaves instead of just suppressing dissent in the South (and the North). Sure, maybe this was window dressing on what had been a rudderless and ruthless presidency and maybe he was late to the game, but perhaps the lesson is that while you are still president it is not too late.

Just like it is not too late for Obama to be the president to be remembered for sticking up for the constitution instead of defending those government violations of all our civil rights.

Right now what will Obama be remembered for? Revelations of wholesale violations of civil rights that he defended instead of putting a stop to? It would be like Lincoln fighting the civil war with hundreds of thousands of dead and then appointing a commission to explore ending slavery instead of issuing the emancipation proclamation.

Obama has the power with one executive order to have the same lasting effect as Lincoln did with his emancipation proclamation or with his Gettysburg address. An America without Liberty is an America without purpose.

Actually, the NSA is actively violating the constitutional rights of every single American by ordering all the companies we do business with to hand over all their records on us. It matters because when the rule of law, especially our fundamental rights, are not respected by those with the highest responsibility to uphold them, then the rule of law breaks down and then we get the rule of the strongest factions and the elimination of freedom for all. We might already be there, but I hope it is not too late to restore the rule of law without a new civil war or a new revolution.

That type of interferometer would be for detecting low frequency gravity waves. I think you would need some high frequency oscillating or vibrating mass in close proximity to a smaller detector in order to look for a physical threshold for the propagation of high frequency gravity waves.

The Doctor: "Yeah, it's fine, we're just entering conceptual space. Imagine a banana, or anything curved; actually don't, because it's not curved or like a banana. Forget the banana!"

A company I worked at paid significantly less. Also, even if particular companies are paying the "exact same salary" as other employees in the same or similar positions then the mere fact of increasing the number of prospective job seekers is going to dilute the market and reduce salaries for everyone. That combined with the fact that some companies are actually abusing the h1b system and paying reduced salaries reduces what the "market" rate is for those types of jobs.

So to me when I hear "more regulation" or "less regulation", or "big government" versus "small government" I hear two sides missing the point.

I think what we need is better government, not necessarily more or less, not necessarily bigger or smaller not necessarily more regulations or less.

Sure, In many cases I think we probably do need fewer actual pages of regulations, but ones which are more effective at accomplishing the public purpose. Tax law is a good example of law that needs simplification if just for the sheer insanity of the tax code. But you could look at environmental laws the same way. And then there are the actual numbers of regulators going around and enforcing the law, which is all part of actual executive part of "regulation".

If I had to make a generalization, it would be that we need more regulators with fewer actual lines of regulations to enforce.

I am a libertarian and an environmentalist. Here in Massachusetts, one of the more liberal environmentalist states by reputation and I've found that many many of our laws and regulations regarding the environment and wetlands specifically, boil down to the discretion of various boards and bureaucrats and the many many lines of language regarding criteria and standards are just window dressing to be cast aside by the discretion of multiple layers of obscure public officials as long as you have the money and connections to jump through all the right hoops. This has the insidious effect of favoring larger and denser developments near wetlands which is the exact opposite effect that you would want in order to protect the quality of your water and wetland habitats. Or then maybe in your community you have different officials with different standards which are actually upheld.

So yes, I do think as both a libertarian and an environmentalist we would be better served by fewer environmental regulations, but with criteria and standards that are meaningful and actually enforced in a more uniform way rather than with regulations that seem there solely to give jobs to environmental engineers and are there to reward the developers with the most connections, the most money and those that propose the biggest most potentially disruptive projects and can afford all the lawyers and "donations" to get the job done.

Saying or implying that corporations want less regulations is an oversimplification which is often not the case. It is often the case that more regulations give more power to those that had a hand in crafting them or to those companies that can afford the lawyers to use and get around those regulations. Burdensome regulations can become just another tool in the corporate tool chest which can be used as a barrier to entry to competition without accomplishing any public purpose. But it is that public purpose that we must focus our laws and regulations on.

Once you have determined a worthy public purpose, then the size or magnitude of laws, regulation and government should be a practical consideration more so than an ideological one, except to say that big enough to do the job should be the goal and anything bigger is depriving people of their property, wealth and livelihoods unnecessarily.

In a libertarian capitalist free market you would have a few options in order of preference 1) Ask them to stop which is your freedom of speech. 2) Point a gun at them and ask them not to or shoot them if they don't stop. 2nd amendment 3) Call the police and have them sort it out if there is still time or arrest them after the fact if they did not have permission. 4) Go to court to seek damages and/or a restraining order which the police would be obligated to enforce. Or were you thinking of something else?

You only need to hire lawyers because our laws have become so numerous, complicated, redundant, contradictory and cumbersome that if you don't hire a lawyer the guy that can afford to hire a lawyer will screw you on some technicality. Lawyers writing laws to further their own profession are partly or even mostly to blame for the current state of affairs, that and judges seem just as invested in protecting the legal profession over protecting the rule of law and maintaining an equitable system of laws. I think that one of the aims of libertarianism would be to make the courts more accessible to people in part by streamlining our laws, regulations and legal processes.

That said I don't see any reason why tort law would be the only recourse to someone harming you or depriving you of your property in some way. Libertarians don't believe in eliminating criminal law for things akin to murder, assault, theft and fraud... that is anarchy not liberty.

At its heart libertarianism is just about minimizing the threat and use of force by the government to just those things which are truly essential government functions. However, Laws which protect people from the use of force by others are one of those essential government functions.

Real libertarians don't believe you can pollute your neighbors land or your neighbors air without legal consequences. A person depriving another of the use of their property (such as by polluting it) or violating their rights would be at the heart of what types of things a libertarian would want laws prohibiting or punishing. As to whether the particular circumstances of one person depriving others of their rights are best regulated by laws, regulations, criminal law or civil tort those are practical matters not about the ideals of liberty.

As for the common good, libertarians just believe that charity is better than having the government put a gun to your head telling you what to give and who to give it to.

Personally, I wouldn't want to live in a society that just cold turkey dropped public welfare and benefits, but I think moving towards a system of voluntary charity and looking for ways to keep the government out of our homes and bedrooms is much much better than a system of forced taxation to deal with individual needs.

If the charities and social groups aren't up to the task, then as a practical matter I would rather see people taken care of then not, but I would also rather elect someone who sees that as a slippery slope of government coercion and dependency than someone who doesn't see the inherent (but sometimes necessary) evil in using force to take from one person to give to another.

In terms of practical policies, I think that libertarian values are simply put that government, taxation and the use of force by the government are sometimes necessary evils to be minimized as much as practical. Versus the alternative view that just sees government, taxation and the use of force by government as necessary without acknowledging the "sometimes" or evil parts of that statement.

There is nothing natural about a free market capitalist society allowing itself to be transformed from a society with more equitable distribution of capital into a society where very few people control most of the wealth and people are not really free to exchange goods, services and capital.

This is happening as the result of government regulations and because of public policies and not simply some sort of passive "deregulation" where the government steps back and does nothing. The government isn't deregulating. We have as much regulation as ever, it is just violently skewed towards protecting the vast and unbridled wealth of the rich while not diligently making sure that those without wealth have a level playing field in a free market.