But the selective 'originalists' on the Court's right wing like to play dumb when it suits them.

The way the selective 'progressives' applaud every assertion of civil liberties, except when it's in the Amendment they find repugnant?

The most recent one that totally ignores the "well regulated militia" part of the amendment

Have you read the Heller decision? It doesn't ignore the militia clause. Quite the contrary, it goes into a long analysis of it, including historical context. It is an explanatory or prefatory clause, not a limiting clause. The 2nd Amendment exists, in part, to ensure that the cause of the first shots fired in the Revolution -- the Crown believing it had the right to go confiscate powder and shot from the colonists -- would never happen again. Powder and shot which was necessary for the colonists to be able to stand together against the lawful standing army of the colonies, the one commanded by British officers.

But I still await your citation of the 2nd Amendment ever being interpreted, in any SCOTUS decision since the formation of the Union, to support your reductionist view of the right. Let's assume you're right and I'm wrong, and this is all just a modern expansionist view. Show me where SCOTUS had previously established the view you think is appropriate. You're claiming it's an expansion, which means you must be able to show where SCOTUS had held in favor of a more limited view prior.

I suspect that there is a balance in physics somewhere... just that no one knows where or what that is yet.

This.

Just because we can't see the balance doesn't mean it isn't there.

Wait... ignore my comment below, because I mis-read your statement.

What on earth are you saying is a provably false assertion, and how do you think your knowing some non-owners of guns disproves it?

This is a provably false assertion. I know a large number of free citizens who do not own weapons.

I know women who've had abortions. That fact doesn't mean that the republicans aren't trying to take that right away. That fact doesn't mean that they've had some limited successes in some places making it more difficult to do so.

Sorry, logic fail on your part. Just because you know some folks with guns doesn't mean people aren't trying (and succeeding in some cases) to take people's guns away.

absurdly expansive reading of the 2nd amendment by the current, highly political, Supreme Court

Challenge for you - cite one -- just one Supreme Court decision that supports your absurdly reductionist reading of the 2nd Amendment.

We'll be here waiting for you.

No it's not "partial access" .. nobody has ever had, in any definition in the history of the internet, a guarantee of a congestion-free experience.

Unless they're advertising "a peering point with L3 that is rated at XXX Mbps", they are providing you with the advertised service - access to the Internet.

There will *always* be congestion points which are -- effectively -- oversubscribed from time to time. If one of those happens to be the Comcast/L3 peering point, that's how life goes.

Because until recently, no other service provider tried to so massively shift the burden of providing a massive amount of bandwidth onto other people's dime.

In order to supply this bandwidth, Comcast needs to create interconnects that are sufficient to supply it. Refusing to build the required interconnects with one specific provider is blatant spite.

They don't need to do anything other than what's spelled out in the contract or agreement you have with them. If you don't like it, go somewhere else. If you can't go somewhere else, blame your local utilities commission and franchise authority.

it also spends quite a bit of money making sure local governments maintain its local monopolies

Elect folks to your local government who have your interests at heart and not the corporations. Or better yet -- run yourself! Come on, it's not like they're dumping $10,000,000 into some city councilman's warchest.

Right. Voluntary because we didn't have any proper net neutrality rules in place.

Haven't had those rules in place in the history of the internet, and none of the "sky is falling" scenarios are even close to reality.

Or it would be, if Comcast didn't have a monopoly in many areas for high-speed Internet access.

If Comcast has a monopoly in your area, blame your local Franchise Authority for giving it to them and not insisting on unbundled access as a condition of that Franchise.

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.