Geeks everywhere who don't want to pay for the bandwidth they use have been betrayed by the FCC. The Federal Communications Commission, having been delegated the Constitutional powers of Congress to regulate Interstate Commerce, absolutely refused to tell all network backbone providers that they were unable to set their own rates for using their services.

"I can't believe the FCC won't make AT&T pay for all the bandwidth I want to use on my iPhone" says Liam McCrossen, who hacked his first iPhone years ago, and has only bricked two since. "Just because I want to see streaming video of the old COMDEX conventions doesn't mean I should have to pay for it." McCrossen, who hasn't taken any economics or business classes, is pretty sure the network providers will raise everyone's rates equally rather than just bumping up the cost of his unlimited data plan. "I'm also against paying for trash removal by the trash can" McCrossen opined.

The FCC has been unavailable for comment in their failure to "stick it to the man" and allow some companies to freely enter into contracts.

Yeah, Nixon would probably be thrown out of the GOP. He got the US off the gold standard, instituted wage and price controls, and ended the Vietnam war.

The USPS had to change how they operated for next-day mail service when FedEx and UPS came into the market through a loophole in the postal monopoly laws. Heck, USPS contracts with those two for some of their air transportation. And I don't know if you can count REA as a government success. The first commercial US nuclear power plant was built in 1958, and it only took the government 36 more years to string power lines in all the rural areas. Success!

Before commercial companies got into building the Internet infrastructure, the 'net was "for me, not for thee." The Department of Defense and the universities didn't bring the Internet into homes. Commercial companies did, because they thought they could make a profit at it.

And now we get to the rub. Your argument is based on the assumption that the government is inherently allowed to set all rules, except when someone can petition for not being regulated in some small area. My argument is based on the assumption that government regulation is only authorized in some small areas, and to exercise authority there the government has to make a specific action to remove that authority from someone else.

Your scenario has subjects, not citizens. And a whole lot more lobbyists.

No, I'm saying that you can't use the fact that _some_ regulation didn't get the outcome wanted as a complete excuse that _lots_ more regulation or nationalization are appropriate and logical follow on choices. Other choices include doing nothing, or undoing what was done before.

It hasn't even been established that there is a problem that requires net neutrality as a solution.

Of course I listed sources of monopoly power instead of types of monopolies. Under the definition on monopoly, any company or industry can become a monopoly, so the types of monopolies are unimportant. Anyway, we're talking about net neutrality, so that restricts any of the types of monopolies we'd have.

You state that we have monopolies here because of a combination of 1) high cost of entering the market, and 2) existing government restrictions to enter the market. Your solutions are both variants of complete government control. The first is fascistic (private ownership but complete regulatory control of the business), and the second is socialistic (nationalizing the business).

I reject that the cost of entering the market is too high. Computer automation costs continue to decline, there's plenty of dark fibre lying around, and plenty of historical examples in early electrification of multiple companies and how they were able to work out issues with multiple lines going to residences and businesses. Also, businesses such as phone companies are already forced to share their lines with other companies so you have choice in POTS and DSL companies, so other lines don't need to be run, and there are wireless and satellite options, too.

Which leaves us with regulation as causing the monopoly. It's pretty silly to argue that because the government has regulated an industry so much that it can't behave properly, that the only choice is to regulate it further, or nationalize it.

I haven't even seen that there are any good arguments that the consumers are being harmed and so require regulation!

And the all_mail_in_one_folder M2 mail client, with "labels" so you can filter just the messages you want to see. Which Google copied into Gmail.

Cool, last time I was marked "troll" it was because I quoted scientists in Newsweek. At least this time it was because I just stated an opinion.

Or perhaps you should take a free market economics one?

So, to be exhaustive, there are three basic types of monopoly. The most common is one where other groups are forbidden by law to enter the market. As you will see shortly, this is the version we were talking about through a quick process of elimination.

The second is where there are too-significant economic barriers to enter the market. We just discounted the last mile argument, and I've seen ISPs run in basements with cast-away servers, so that doesn't account for the "local internet" version of a non-free market.

The third is usually structured around a monopoly price, where one company has a price so low that it drives all other firms out of the market. The theory then leads you to believe the company racks up the price to gouge consumers, but it pretty well never happens. Again, we are talking about many ISPs, so a monopoly price has not taken effect.

Many definitions will caveat that there doesn't have to be only one company for a monopoly to exist -- it just has to exert significant enough control of the market to mostly control the price or conditions of the sale. This definition has very little practical value, especially since it expands the grouping usually represented by a prefix like "mono" to a group that can be "almost any size."

Any bets how long it'll be until "net neutrality" will force some content or providers to be given preferential treatment? My guess is less than a year after implementation until some group will be found to be under-supported and will be prioritized over everyone else.

The FCC commissioner says "the public should not stand for deals 'that exchange Internet freedom for bloated profits'?" His job is to help regulate the use of public property, not implement economic policy.

It's only a monopoly if a government has forbidden another company to enter that market. Don't confuse the costs of the last mile with government intervention and restriction of the market.

Eric Raymond (esr) has been saying this for a long time now.

The first thing we need to remember is no-one got voted out this year because of net neutrality. Yes, the Internet is massively important to the world economy, but most people don't have the technical or business expertise to understand the Internet at a deep, personal level.

So, if no-one failed to be reelected because of net neutrality, then why? The core of net neutrality is that 1) the market has failed in providing a "fair" Internet utility, and 2) therefore, government needs to regulate it. Now we're getting much closer to the answer. The same people who will encourage additional government regulation in one area are likely to encourage additional government regulation in other areas.

Government regulation is all about control. If you think the government has a lot to say about how you run your networks now and what data they can pull (even without a warrant), just wait until the government gets to decide if you run your network fairly. They'll have to, at least, look at the packet header level to get correct oversight. And your logs, and your contracts, and your business plan...

A theme in this election cycle was "no, government is not better able to make quick, informed decisions about what I want to do, than I am." Sure, no congressman is looking for work because he won't let you roll out the new linux kernel on your embedded linux router, it's because of all of the other things he's done to restrict your freedom of choice.

Net neutrality: it's the Obamacare of the Internet!

Great documentation makes a great open source software project. Postgres has it, and just gets used more and more. It's a reason why Django is so popular -- the documentation is fantastic.

Spend time loving your documentation and your users will love you back.