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dirt claud
Social climber
san diego,ca
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Feb 26, 2015 - 02:50pm PT
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According to FCC Comissioner Ajit Pai:
First, President Obama’s plan marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet. It gives the FCC the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works. It’s an overreach that will let a Washington bureaucracy, and not the American people, decide the future of the online world. It’s no wonder that net neutrality proponents are already bragging that it will turn the FCC into the “Department of the Internet.” For that reason, if you like dealing with the IRS, you are going to love the President’s plan.
Second, President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet will increase consumers’ monthly broadband bills. The plan explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes on broadband. Indeed, states have already begun discussions on how they will spend the extra money. These new taxes will mean higher prices for consumers and more hidden fees that they have to pay.
Third, President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet will mean slower broadband for American consumers. The plan contains a host of new regulations that will reduce investment in broadband networks. That means slower Internet speeds. It also means that many rural Americans will have to wait longer for access to quality broadband.
Fourth, President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet will hurt competition and innovation and move us toward a broadband monopoly. The plan saddles small, independent businesses and entrepreneurs with heavy-handed regulations that will push them out of the market. As a result, Americans will have fewer broadband choices. This is no accident. Title II was designed to regulate a monopoly. If we impose that model on a vibrant broadband marketplace, a highly regulated monopoly is what we’ll get. We shouldn’t bring Ma Bell back to life in this dynamic, digital age.
Fifth, President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet is an unlawful power grab. Courts have twice thrown out the FCC’s attempts at Internet regulation. There’s no reason to think that the third time will be the charm. Even a cursory look at the plan reveals glaring legal flaws that are sure to mire the agency in the muck of litigation for a long, long time.
And sixth, the American people are being misled about what is in President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet. The rollout earlier in the week was obviously intended to downplay the plan’s massive intrusion into the Internet economy. Beginning next week, I look forward to sharing with the public key aspects of what this plan will actually do.
He is just an FCC commissioner, WTF would he know? Bottom line is if this was any other president that was a Democrat and especially not black you would be raising hell. You just let this fooker take control of what will be and not be available on the internet. There is not one thing you people have gone against "El Pendejo" for, he really can do no wrong.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Feb 26, 2015 - 02:54pm PT
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Disclaimer for above statements should be added.
Ajit Varadaraj Pai (born January 10, 1973) is a Commissioner at the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC). He was nominated for a Republican Party position on the commission by President Barack Obama at the recommendation of Mitch McConnell. He was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate on May 7, 2012 and was sworn in on May 14, 2012 for a term that concludes on June 30, 2016. Pai previously worked as a lawyer for Verizon Communications.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Feb 26, 2015 - 03:02pm PT
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If you own the railroads, your steel business will always beat the competition.
Maybe true, but not necessarily, Dave. If you have a monopoly on the railroads, you cannot earn more monopoly profit by acquiring a monopoly on steel as well. The only reason for the monopolist (whether steel or railroad) to acquire the other business is for efficiency of integration (which, by the way, can result from getting rid of a monopolistic service provider). This is basic industrial organizational theory, that, sad to say, few non-economists consider.
In all of the comments, I find happie's particularly insightful because they touch on what appears to be the real issue: do you trust a private company more than a regulator?
I do not trust regulators, and I do not trust monopolists, but I find very few true monopolies that do not have the muscle of the government keeping that monopoly. History, perhaps too ancient for many on this board to have experienced, guides me. I give you the following three examples of why I mistrust regulation:
1. The California Public Utilities Commission has regulated rates that have no particular relationship to marginal cost. Moreover, they have a history of regulation that has no basis in economic theory or evidence, such as the disastrous "deregulation" of retail electricity rates, but continued regulation of wholesale rates, including a regulated mandate that wholesale electricity could only be purchased on the spot market;
2. The Interstate Commerce Commission ("ICC") regulation of the railroads. Before the ICC, railroads that had the "last mile monopoly" equivalent of 100 years ago gouged shippers with monopoly rates. This caused competitors to spent large amounts of money entering markets and lowering costs. With the competition, some roads failed. Congress created the ICC to regulate the railroads to end monopolistic practices and avoid "ruinous competition." The idea was somewhat similar to what NutAgain! describes - avoid wasteful use of resources but keep things competitive.
Unfortunately, the first effect was to stop railroads from building new, competitive lines. With only bureaucratic restraints, the regulated price of freight dropped, but a new technology, namely trucks with internal combustion engines on paved roads, appeared. The ossified ICC didn't change railroad freight rates quick enough to prevent the new truckers from undercutting railroad rates. The ICC's solution was to regulate the truckers. Guess in which direction trucking freight rates moved!
Trucking was in no way a monopoly, and it also had a cost disadvantage over the railroads in moving freight long distances, but the ICC justified its regulatory imperialism. It wasn't until trucking was deregulated under the Carter administration that overland freight rates rationalized. All commerce benefited.
3. The Civil Aeronautics Board ("CAB") regulated air passenger and freight rates on all interstate flights. Federal regulation of civilian air activities started with safety regulation during the Coolidge administration, and expanded to rates and services regulation under the FDR administration. By the 1950's CAB regulation affected virtually every air market except a few solely within one state, and particularly the San Francisco - Los Angeles city pair. Enter PSA, whose rates were much lower, and service much more frequent, than those of any comparable CAB-regulated carrier.
The CAB justified its rates by saying they needed to charge higher than market rates on popular city pairs to insure the airlines had enough revenue to make up for the low-traffic routes the CAB also forced the airlines to fly. This amount to, as one commentator put it, "[h]aving impoverished grandmothers traveling between Los Angeles and New York subsidizing well to do businessmen traveling between small towns."
CAB fare regulation finally ended for the same reasons ICC regulation of truckers did, and the rates and services rationalized. Yes, air service in many small towns got more expensive and less frequent, but the overall drop in rates, and the consideration expressed above, that the subsidies implicit in the CAB fare and service schedules had no particular claim to fairness, led most everyone to prefer today's competitive madhouse to yesteryear's regulated but abusively high fees.
OK. I've merely shown that regulation is imperfect. But I've really shown more, because both the CAB and the ICC experience show that consumers got a better deal when the regulators got out of the picture.
Again, I find most monopolies on broadband come from deals between municipalities and would-be monopolistic ISP's. Instead of regulating how the ISP prices and services, why not bring in more ISP's and let the market do its thing. The experience with transportation of tangible goods strongly suggests the market will do a better job than the regulators.
John
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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Feb 26, 2015 - 03:19pm PT
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Net Neutrality Means NO Commi Muslim Obama Regulations!!!!
You are way off, neutrality means it's free of the regulations you talk about.
Please let us know when you get it, and then you can apologize publically for your posts.
I don't expect JE to apologize, he still supports Citizen's United, he can just deny the ramifications, and then blame the Dems for spending the same as the Big Buck Republicans.
Like they have a choice, if the opposition is going to spend 1 billion dollars, what choice do you have?
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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Feb 27, 2015 - 01:27pm PT
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The vote was 3 Dems outvoting the 2 Repubs.
Repubs were in favor of letting corporate interests screw the citizens.
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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Feb 27, 2015 - 01:33pm PT
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They voted. It's done. It's over. No much more to say.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Feb 27, 2015 - 02:51pm PT
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Haro!
So, let me get this straight. Government is evil and incompetent - unless it's packin', in which case...Support the Troops!
Saku!
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Feb 27, 2015 - 03:02pm PT
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Haro!
So let me get this straight - corporate monkeys are perfectly competent, even the ones at Comcast customer service, who make Seal Team Six look like the Tely Tubbies.
Saku!
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Feb 27, 2015 - 04:31pm PT
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@ Dave Koz upthread.
Your right I had a bug up my **z that day. Oh well, that's the way it goes sometimes. Sorry.
I guess at this point we'll have to see how it works out in 5, 10 years. I really hope the supporters of this regulation are right. Last thing I want is to say "I told you so." Really.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Feb 27, 2015 - 04:40pm PT
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Lawless: Having Been Shot Down by Federal Courts Twice In Attempting to Vote Themselves Powers Not Granted Them By Congress, Obama's FCC Violates the Law a Third Time and Once Again Pronounces Themselves Lords of the Internet
—Ace
The left has been agitating for this endlessly, and twice before -- in 2010, I think, and then again in 2014 -- the FCC acted unconstitutionally to assert power over the Internet, bequeathing upon themselves a jurisdiction never delegated to them by Congress.
In 2014, the last time a Federal Court told the FCC it was acting unconstitutionally, there were suggestions that it would try again a third time, this time by using a different tactic.
It has now in fact used that tactic. The internet is an "information service" over which the FCC has no power. So the FCC has decided, on its own authority, to declare the Internet a "telecomunications service," over which it does have authority.
Note that Congress did not make this important change in definition. An agency charged with executing the law as Congress passes it has decided that it itself would change the law.
We are no longer a democracy, and as there is no longer even a fictive consent of the governed in our laws, there no longer exists any philosophical basis for obeying the government. Now obedience is simply required by practical considerations: because they will kill or imprison you if you don't obey.
Whether this move is good or bad is besides the point. But it is, you know, as bad as you would guess.
Peter Suderman considers the possibility that this Will To Power Grab will itself be struck down in court; I suppose the odds of that are good, but I do wonder at what point people stop resisting fascist tyranny, and simply give in to it, when the out of control and frankly terrifying government demonstrates that it simply will not stop until it collects all political power into its hands.
In the meantime, though, it means that the FCC has taken an unprecedented and fear-reaching step in order to make good on one of the Obama administration's long-running political priorities--a step that solves no significant existing problem, but is instead designed largely to fend off hypothetical harms, and give the agency far more power over the Internet in the process.
As Commissioner Pai told ReasonTV, the move is a "solution that won't work to a problem that doesn't exist." It is a solution, however, that is now in place, and is sure to create some problems of its own.
What is truly shocking is the complete disdain this Administration has for the rule of law and for our constitutional processes. They understand that these are the moves of a fascist tyranny, and they're okay with that.
We no longer live in a democratic republic, in which the ordinary citizen can be said, at least constructively, to have consented to the laws which bind him; we now simply live under whatever laws the gangsters occupying our government have decided to inflict upon us.
Beginning in 2009, the American Government went to war with the people it supposedly "served;" in 2015, it won that war.
Posted by Ace at 03:11 PM Comments
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Larry Nelson
Social climber
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Feb 28, 2015 - 06:35am PT
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Dave Kos wrote:
Here are some people - people that I'm sure none of you have ever seen before on the internet - that can help explain: LOL, that was great. Also thanks for your insightful graph of the Comcast scandalous behavior.
JEleazarian wrote:
OK. I've merely shown that regulation is imperfect. But I've really shown more, because both the CAB and the ICC experience show that consumers got a better deal when the regulators got out of the picture.
John,
Like you, I have a natural skepticism toward regulators, understanding that regulation is necessary in many things but that regulation can also be very counter-productive in many different ways. I believe that capitalism does not eliminate corporate greed, but it does render it relatively harmless when applied without government special favors, and has brought more people in the world out of poverty than any other economic system.
However:
The first time this internet regulation was struck down by the courts was because it was classified as an information service.
This time the case for net neutrality is based on the internet being a public utility. There are some merits to this side of the debate.
In rural Alaska, some users of skype have seen their bandwidth restricted by the ISP because the ISP's toll charges for their phone service was impacted by the use of Skype. Of course this was possible because of the monopolistic nature of phone and internet service in rural Alaska. Not sure how you fix this, because service in these areas is not very profitable, yet people need the internet for many essentials of life today, so rural service in Alaska is subsidized by government.
Dave Kos's graph on the Comcast squeeze of Netflix is another example of an ISP unethically looking to be the gatekeeper of what they see as a money spicket.
In addition, many of these ISP providers have been given tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks (subsidies) to improve their infrastructure. Their track record in carrying this out is abysmal.
In today's world, the internet truly is a utility. While I agree with many of your points, the nature of internet infrastructure does not lend itself to the same competition as most other industries. I am afraid that these big corporations overplayed their hand as if they were a Clinton Foundation on this one.
We'll see how the courts proceed.
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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I don't get the debate here. Only one of two things were going to happen: 1) Telecom giants become the sole overlords of what is, deny it or not, a vital public utility, or 2) the Federal government steps up and say "no" using their only available option. What's the kerfuffle?
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apogee
climber
Technically expert, safe belayer, can lead if easy
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Ted Cruz calls it the 'Obamacare' of the Internet. Does that explain it?
It's politics, clear & simple...anything that the Republicans can spin against Obama, and they're gonna use it.
There's no room for rational thought here.
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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No Apogee, it doesn't! Are we discussing the fact that the Fed stepped in to stop the republicans and the telecoms from screwing us? Cause that parts over. It's been stopped. So, is the debate here centered around the way Fox and friends tries to spin it? Because that's not really a debate at all.
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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Actually, Dingus, I'm taking the time to try to figure out what you guys are trying to accomplish with all this. So show some respect, pal.
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apogee
climber
Technically expert, safe belayer, can lead if easy
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"So, is the debate here centered around the way Fox and friends tries to spin it? "
Yes. Exactly.
Pretty much any Republican would bitch and moan about how fecked up their internet had become if that ruling hadn't occurred the way it did, and the private corporate interests were allowed to privatize yet another public utility to their own profit-oriented advantage.
But because Hannity & Co told them that this is just another socialist Obama plot, they fall in line with it....hook, line, and sinker. No room for rational thought here...just partisanship for the sake of partisanship.
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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Wow. If we're going to discuss our satisfaction, or lack of satisfaction, with how fox news and the conservative media present current events, we're going to need a lot more threads. A way, way way lot more threads. So many, in fact, that it probably deserves it's own forum.
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