And what he implied is that it would make it a more interesting engineering problem
Hmm, looking at fuel efficiency in NASCAR vs. NASA, NASCAR wins hands down. Sending a rocket into space takes a whole lot more fuel than a 500 mile NASCAR race. NASCAR must be a more interesting event and engineering problem than a spacecraft launch, then. "But, they're different things!" Yup, and so are Prius and NASCAR races, Bill.
Agreed. In this case, the google answer is terrible because the answer for "what time is it?" is no longer the same. The other solutions stick a whole second at the time of departure, so the math is always consistent. With google's answer, 23:59:23 - 23:59:22 != 1 second. Ew.
I didn't see a single pro-net neutrality comment that talked about The Fine Article. Lots, though, that stated anyone who opposes net neutrality is in the KKK, demonized the right wing, complained about corporate personhood, and complained that corporations have purchased the votes of Congress. The article talked about how a specific bureaucracy received a petition from those it now regulates, and told them "We thought about it and decided we're right. Go away." Normal discussions about the article would talk about strategy, "This seems like just a first step in the ongoing litigation so the corporations can say they tried to play nice," or the underlying legal aspects "wow, this administrative law thing is kinda cool, I hope we can pull more from the regular court system and get everything we like tried by the administrative branch and not the judicial branch, at least until Evil Republicans get the White House back."
You're embarrassing your own side. Please keep it up.
I understand the bumper sticker version of net neutrality says that every packet is equal under they eyes of the regulator, and will be treated exactly the same. VOIP 911 emergency calls must be treated exactly the same as pornography.
The second part of your paragraph doesn't make any sense. I certainly don't want to take private ownership of the Tubes and give it to the government. And certainly not to then lease out to companies to charge prices set by regulators for particular rates. One, you can't know the fair price unless you have a free market, which obviously isn't in place in your proposed scenario. Two, with government owning the infrastructure, we've then pretty much abandoned innovation. Sure, if smart techies got to write and implement the regulations and the infrastructure we might get there, but there's no way that happens in this scenario. Remember, we're talking about the current failure of the existing regulation not being good enough. What magic wand is going to make it better?
No, I think the FCC limited entry into the phone system to prevent "wasteful duplication" and "needless competition." (http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1994/11/cj14n2-6.pdf). These are the same arguments against Uber. The regulation system encouraged a monopoly, and then we got one. AT&T had the strength to enforce phone rentals because the government regulations encouraged regional monopolies. Perhaps not on purpose, but that's why the primary measure of a law or regulation is not the intent behind it, but its effects.
You said that a free market "does not truly exist," but the current situation "keeps screwing the customer more and more." So the only way to fix the current awful regulation is better regulators? Good luck with that. Remember, the very first time a net neutrality regulator gives preference over one piece of traffic over another, net neutrality regulation is broken. The regulations are then the exact opposite of what you want. How long do you think that will take to happen?
Did any companies that backed net neutrality make campaign contributions? If so, are they corrupt?
Perhaps open roads are pretty democratizing, too. Should we ban toll roads, or high occupancy toll lanes?
Those laws were bad, so you and I agree. Can you see why some don't trust Congress to fix (or not pass) bad laws, or trust that agencies won't make bad regulations?
Why did you have to rent your phone? Because government regulations and laws enforced a monopoly. Your example is crappy regulation, not a free market system. Yes, after a few decades, the regulation got better. I wonder what we'd have had without those decades of awful regulation?
Since there is no such thing in the U.S. as a national referendum on laws or regulations, do you have any other suggestions?
Since you asked, yes. A constitutional amendment ending corporate personhood and establishing that money is not speech.
Good. Let's wait to pass net neutrality after you ban corporations like the New York Times, and people aren't allowed to spend money to advance their opinions.
The thing that net neutrality advocates fail to do is to describe the regulatory system they want to put in place.
That's horseshit. We have a very nice regulatory model to put in place. It's called, "common carrier".
You're advocating a model like taxis where the regulators are overtly hostile to innovation, such as Lyft and Uber. Or if you want to go the utility route, where electric companies are forced to use a certain percentage of their electricity from favored producers such as wind farms and solar and rates are set by a centralized board. Maybe a slogan like "Net Neutrality, it'll be run just like the FAA!" would catch on.
Ah, the exceptions. Once VOIP 911 calls are mandated to be prioritized over other data, then you'll get medical data prioritized, which makes sense, because we don't want to kill people, and then
... the same big bad companies will lobby for their data, and net neutrality becomes the opposite of net neutrality. Whoops.
Good job inventing red herrings. "Net Neutrality is bad because bad people might do bad things in the future."
Free markets have utterly failed when it comes to infrastructure. Why should we trust it with something as important as communications?
We should trust free markets with infrastructure because they built the infrastructure we're using to discuss this. It's working pretty well. If you prefer a historical example, compare the great northern railroad with the first transcontinental railroad. The first was privately built and quite successful, the second received massive government subsidies, had shoddy construction, and was designed to scam the investors out of their money. As for red herrings, the phrase you're looking for is "regulatory capture," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.... If net neutrality comes into being, I can absolutely guarantee you Cisco, Comcast, and Google will be sending their armies (figuratively) to capture the agency.
Since there is no such thing in the U.S. as a national referendum on laws or regulations
We can change that: http://www.gallup.com/poll/163...
And changing it requires amending the Constitution, either with the normal Congressional and state ratification process, or a Constitutional convention. I suspect what you really want is national referendums, and net neutrality is just the way you're bringing it up today, since you didn't respond to anything about net neutrality, or even propose a solution to making it law or regulation that has any chance in the near future.
Put it on the ballot as a national referendum in 2016, you wanna see Big Pipes shit themselves.
Since there is no such thing in the U.S. as a national referendum on laws or regulations, do you have any other suggestions?
The thing that net neutrality advocates fail to do is to describe the regulatory system they want to put in place. Take the comic from The Oatmeal, for example (http://theoatmeal.com/blog/net_neutrality). "And I'm going to do that by being a super terrific A+ dude and explaining to you exactly how Net Neutrality works." There are lots of panels describing the goal, and none showing the way it would work. How is it run? How are complaints logged? How are ISPs monitored? What reporting mechanisms to ISPs have? What features will be mandated or forbidden in network devices? How is good versus bad traffic shaping to be defined? What are the penalties? What are the exceptions?
Ah, the exceptions. Once VOIP 911 calls are mandated to be prioritized over other data, then you'll get medical data prioritized, which makes sense, because we don't want to kill people, and then
The longer the title, the less important the job.
