Comments on: Net Neutrality Developments

By: undlarakhar

undlarakhar — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 23:40:10 +0000

What net neutrality legislation, if passed in its idealized form (and obviously, it would not get passed in its idealized form) would do is to prohibit service providers from blocking the voluntary download of applications or favoring one sort of traffic over another. At its heart, this is a commons issue. 80% of all of the bandwidth out there is consumed by 20% of the users. We hit on something here and ran right over it. Debating this topic from a libertarian point of view is problematic. We don’t live in a libertarian society, many assume that we are slowly headed towards socialism. If I may make an oversimplified analogy, net neutrality is like deciding on what flavor of ice cream to order in a world where there is only vanilla and chocolate. I’m sorry to those that think this is a valid libertarian argument, it is not, in a libertarian world Net neutrality would be a mute point. You cannot argue a libertarian philosophy inside of a socialist regime and not look like the fool you seem to me. Its like being in a quantum mechanic course and arguing a point based on Einsteins’ general relativity. Does this make sense to you psudo-libertarians or libertarian-lite types? It might help if we libertarians could elaborate the various state regulations and laws that have given current network providers more market power than they would have in a truly free market–taxes, minimum wage laws, implicit and explicit subsidies, the legacy of government-granted monopolies, pro-union legislation, and various other regulations that disproportionately shackle and hamper smaller companies and potential competitors; regulations that help the existing, larger companies by increasing barriers to entry into that field; state taxes, IP laws, and regulations that stifle dynamic change, innovation, and competition. A true libertarian response to this issue is to call for the elimination of all forms of corporation, tax funded subsidies, IP law, wage and hour legislation, mandatory worker benefits, labor union legislation, minimum wage, incorporation statutes [note: this does not mean I think that limited liability is a privilege conferred by the state on corporations], and so on. Instead of supporting a “net neutrality act” pause to ask: what is the state’s role in causing the industry to be the way it is?

By: Against Net Neutrality | LibertarianChristians.com

Against Net Neutrality | LibertarianChristians.com — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 21:32:31 +0000

[...] interventions that gives rise to the problems net neutrality pretends to address. (See my posts Net Neutrality Developments and Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality (both reposted below); also Harvard’s Yochai Benkler on [...]

By: Against Net Neutrality | syntech finance blog

Against Net Neutrality | syntech finance blog — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 18:15:30 +0000

[...] that gives rise to the problems net neutrality pretends to address. (See my posts Net Neutrality Developments and Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality (both reposted below); also Harvard’s Yochai [...]

By: Against Net Neutrality

Against Net Neutrality — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 17:53:45 +0000

[...] by Stephan Kinsella on April 7, 2010 @ 11:06 pm · 0 comments[edit] [...]

By: Pirate-slaying censorship bill, COICA, gets unanimous support

Pirate-slaying censorship bill, COICA, gets unanimous support — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 14:43:26 +0000

[...] is a bad, and unlibertarian, idea. (See my posts A Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality and Net Neutrality Developments, and Geoffrey Allan Plauché, CrunchGear vs. the Tea Party on Net [...]

By: Harvard’s Yochai Benkler on Net Neutrality and Innovation | syntech finance blog

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 21:10:21 +0000

[...] posted recently about Net Neutrality–see Net Neutrality Developments and A Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality. There’s an interesting [...]

By: Harvard’s Yochai Benkler on Net Neutrality and Innovation

Harvard’s Yochai Benkler on Net Neutrality and Innovation — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 20:18:58 +0000

[...] posted recently about Net Neutrality–see Net Neutrality Developments and A Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality. There’s an interesting discussion about this and [...]