If we let the free market sort it out, no doubt Consumer Reports will print an article revealing which ISPs deliver Netflix content at good speeds, and which ISPs deliver Netflix content at lousy speeds. It's no different than when Consumer Reports prints an article revealing which detergents do a good job of getting grass stains out of your clothes, and which detergents do a lousy job.

Are you arguing for a "Detergent Neutrality Act" that would force all makers of laundry detergent to offer equally-effective products?

In every other industry, heavy users get a bulk discount for commodities: The Sara Lee bakery pays a lot less per pound for flour than I do. The bauxite-smelting plant pays a lot less per kilowatt-hour for electricity than I do.

Why are you so worried that bandwidth providers will go against their own self-interest and set up a pricing structure that's completely different from every other industry? Why aren't you also fighting for "flour neutrality" and "electricity neutrality"?

How about allowing consumers to choose, instead of imposing regulations that may not benefit me in any way?

Simplified hypothetical example:

Mega-ISP offers three tiers of service:
1. 7 Mbps to all destinations - $30 per month
2. 40 Mbps to all destinations web services, with some exceptions: you get 7 Mpbs when visiting foo.com, foo2.com, and foo4.com - $50 per month
3. 40 Mbps to all destinations, period -- $60 per month

If a fast connection to foo2.com is important to me, I'd probably choose Tier 3. If not, I'd choose Tier 2 and save $120 per year. Let ME have that choice.

I can see how this will go down... "No matter how we reform the 'net, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your internet plan, you will be able to keep your internet plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

After reading this, please let me know what would be so awful about 100% toll roads.

All roads are already toll roads, in that their maintenance is paid for by gas taxes. What would be so awful about that money going to an efficient enterprise, as opposed to an inefficient bureaucracy?

We've been paying for roads by the mile for decades, via gas taxes -- an effective way of making people who drive more, pay more.

Do you feel that all electricity users should pay the same cost, regardless of whether they wastefully use many kilowatt-hours, or frugally use few kilowatt-hours? I'm guessing no. So why impose a completely different price structure for bandwidth (which is a finite resource, just like electricity)? Why penalize grandma for her thrifty usage pattern (she receives a few emails per week and never surfs the web), by charging her as much as someone who downloads movies several times per week?

Are you against arresting kids for writing the word "gun"? I have to wonder because Hannity, O'Reilly and Limbaugh regularly rail against schools' substituting zero-tolerance policies for the use of common sense. The arrest of young Mr. Stone is anything but a reason to rail against Hannity, O'Reilly and Limbaugh.

A better idea would be to give everyone breaks on the sillier stuff. I.e., repeal the sillier stuff.

We all know that Musk cares a lot about the environment. That's why he's Chairman of Solar City. So Musk's battery factory is not going to be a big polluter, and any regulatory regime that drives said factory out of the state is unreasonable.

California should make its regulations reasonable for all enterprises -- large and small, famous and obscure. Not only would that preclude accusations of "selling out"; it's just the right thing to do.

Your link contains an interesting graph, showing that CA unemployment has consistently been higher than the national average, since about 1990.

Imagine how much larger the surplus would be -- or how much lower tax rates could be, without impacting services provided by state government -- if CA unemployment had been consistently lower than the national average!

Reasonable regulations on fab plants are welcome. But if the parent post is correct (waste water from semiconductor plants must be cleaner than tap water), that's simply not reasonable. That would not be a case where the rest of the world ought to emulate California's unreasonable standards; it's a case where California ought to become reasonable.