It's not that it makes you a commie for wanting to eliminate these behaviors. The problem is that well-intention-ed legislation like this nearly always results in disastrous consequences. The real problem is the overabundance of local, state and federal regulations and policies that restrict access to public right-of-ways and create barriers of entry to new ISP providers. These are difficult for smaller companies to overcome.

The problem is these barriers make it possible for the ISP with local monopolies (gauranteed by government policy, not lack of competition in a free market) to charge this vig.

Imagine an area that has access to both Comcast and Google Fiber (there's a few springing up as Google can cut through red tape better than the little guys can). Imagine that both offer comparable pricing and bandwidths. Now your Netflix and Hulu is grainy on Comcast despite a high promised bandwidth, but your neighbors tell you their Google-powered Netflix works great. If you like your Netflix and Hulu, you'd leave Comcast and get the stuff through Google.

As a matter of fact, I'd be interested to hear of any places that have local competition where consumers are experiencing throttled internet speeds. I doubt that many exist.

The problem now is many areas have no other choice. Comcast competes directly with Netflix and Hulu for delivering content through their cable and on-demand services. In areas where you have no other internet choice, they can afford to reduce your service quality as a means to force you into their other services. You're not going anywhere as a broadband customer because there is nowhere else to go. However, with competition in the area, they could only entice you to use their alternatives through providing a better service and higher quality.

Net Neutrality laws are a wolf in sheep's clothing and attempt to address the symptom, not the problem. They would also provide a means for government censorship beyond what already exists. You don't want to open that door. Fix the regulation. Remove the governmental barriers to competition and these problems will sort themselves out.

Making the consequences ridiculously stringent is also a bit unrealistic. We've done similar things with our war on drugs with little social benefit. But you can diminish the incentive to hire illegals. Milton Friedman addresses both this and the welfare state with the negative income tax.

Basically it replaces all forms of welfare: minimum wage, social security, medicare, medicaid, section 8, food stamps, etc while still providing a social safety net for the truly needy. It also removes the need for a bureaucracy to administer these monstrosities.

In a nutshell: If you don't work at all you get a fixed minimum amount of money, say $20K just to throw a number out there. You are welcome to keep this and spend it on whatever you want.

Then when you get a job, you lose $0.50 of this subsidy for every dollar you make. So by the time you are making $40K, you're breaking even. And if you have a job, the subsidy is added into your paycheck just like your deductions are taken out now by your employer.

What this means is you always have an incentive to work.

Now under the current system, you wouldn't take $10/hr to pick strawberries if doing so means losing your welfare benefits and breaking your back.

However, a lot of those same people would be willing to do so if it meant they could keep all that and come out ahead. This will increase the willing labor force and provide affordable labor while improving the lives of those who otherwise would have stayed on welfare.

This also helps the person who is unemployable under a minimum wage. How can a business hire someone for $10 an hour if they are only providing $9 an hour worth of value? They'd go broke. But remove this restriction in this way and you still have an effective living wage, except now that otherwise unemployable person is productively working and learning new skills (which will eventually cause his labor to exceed the $10/hr value).

All good points. These algorithms are implemented to exploit market inefficiencies for financial gain. That is a good thing because they destroy these inefficiencies as they the market creates them, thus leaving a more efficient market. Sometimes someone makes a lot of money doing it. Sometimes they lose their shirt. But it's their money and they are providing a service. Fewer market inefficiencies means a more stable market for everyone.