[splintercell]

Never said that. Also Net Neutrality regulation isn't the only thing preventing ISPs from blocking all the websites they want willy-nilly.

What ISPs want is ability to charge more for priority services (which includes but not limited to 'express lanes').

What NN supporters think this would mean is that ISPs will block websites.

Anyone has a right to block any content on their private property. Newspapers can censor articles. TV can only air what they wanna air. You can chose to listen to whichever radio station you wanna listen to. Until the ISPs promise you to not block any website, they have a right to block any website or deprioritize it for that matter.

When ISPs sell you an internet package, a 'feature' in non-NN world they would wanna provide you is: 'No blocked sites' in addition to Fiber, fast speeds, low prices, etc.

Any internet package which has blocked content on it, and blocking wouldn't be done proactively or blacklist-based, but rather like Free Basics was. Only a certain whitelisted sites were allowed. Any such package would be priced lower than a no-blocked sites package. Why? Because fewer people would want it. Discrimination of data also allows investment into the internet infrastructure. It's like Facebook ads are paying for the internet for the poor people.

Imagine this, you find out that people in New York love Mangoes, but there is nobody supplying them with Mangoes(and only super rich people are able to afford Mangoes). You find out that the city of Chicago has a LOT of Mangoes and available for very cheap. So you take your savings, buy a truck, drive to Chicago and bring a truck full of Mangoes to NYC. The question arises, since everybody from rich to the poor want Mangoes, at what price do you sell them?

If you auction the Mangoes to the highest bidder, then only the super rich will be able to afford it, if you sell it at a minimal profit(since lets say you're not in it for making profit) then while everybody will be able to afford it, only a few people will be able to acquire them until you bring back the next batch.

If you want to be able to provide Mangoes to maximum number of people, the smartest strategy is to sell them to the highest bidder, and then use the extra money you're getting to buy more trucks and make frequent trips.

This is exactly what Net Neutrality prevents from happening. When discriminatory services are provided, it allows for more services to everyone. You think that Microsoft will be able to pay to block GMail, where as what will happen will be more like UPS's regular mail vs overnight delivery. Amazon will not pay UPS to ship things through regular mail if UPS started accepting money from Walmart to slow down or block Amazon's packages.

[skewart]

"Anyone has a right to block any content on their private property."

A lot of people would argue that broadband infrastructure shouldn't be considered plain old private property. It's an essential component of a well-functioning society, so it should be among the few things that are collectively managed and supported - like water, fire departments, and the criminal justice system.

I don't think anyone knows whether or not allowing telecom companies more freedom to set prices and provide services however they want would ultimately be better for society than the kind of compromise a lot of places have now. I think it could be worth some experiments.

That said, net neutrality is a known system that more or less works. It's reasonable to be very cautious about any massive change to the current internet ecosystem.

Fire departments in many cities in the US used to be private companies that offered subscription services. They maintained their own infrastructure and sought profits and growth. Eventually cities decided that the fire service market was special in a number of ways that made it better treated as a public good. People were pretty happy about municipal fire departments. [1]

[1] I read about this a while back in a book on the history of New York. I do t have time to look up the details now. Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.

[shubhamjain]

I read a book called "Economics in One Lesson" [1] which is quite in few ways similar to your arguments. The gist of the book is Government should avoid doing anything in capitalistic market, goes on to argue against Minimum wage Laws, Labour unions, Price control etc. and how a free market will solve every economic problem.

The problem with your arguments / analogies and of that book, is that they tell a simplistic chain of reasoning without considering hundreds of factors involved in the equation. You say that a 'no-blocked sites package' and 'whitelisted site package' could co-exist but fail to see that, the former one could be priced so high (once the latter gains a very large market share) that it becomes necessary for an ordinary person to limit his choices. The barrier to entry for a telecom network or a broadband service is really high and I can't see a better alternative just coming in quickly.

[1]: http://www.hacer.org/pdf/Hazlitt00.pdf

[splintercell]

> You say that a 'no-blocked sites package' and 'whitelisted site package' could co-exist but fail to see that, the former one could be priced so high (once the latter gains a very large market share) that it becomes necessary for an ordinary person to limit his choices.<

See this is where pretty much everywhere gets it wrong. Prices aren't set by one side. Prices are ALWAYS set by both sides coming to an agreement.

People believe that prices are set by seller or employers, because they are usually the buyer or the employee, and they feel that they don't have the power to set prices, when the truth is that the price they want isn't just being set (and this is a good thing).

General package(no blockage) will be priced based on the supply and demand. Same is with whitelisted site package. The fact is, for most people whitelisted package where a bunch of competition websites are blocked is not a big deal. This annoys people who want cheap 'open' package.

This is precisely the reason where most proponents of net neutrality fall. You want things a certain way, but since the market will not provide you the option you want, you want it to be enforced by the government. If nobody can block anything, then there won't be any non-general packages. So make it about freedom. But it's no different than when groups interfere in the lives of other people, like preventing gay people from having sex by criminalizing it because they themselves are disgusted by it.

At the end of the day, the argument is simple, when you allow people to do something freely, will they do something you don't like?

[mpnordland]

No. Net Neutrality protects what we already have. We already pay for access to the entire internet. Customers pay ISPs for this access. When ISPs throttle (and effectively block) websites that don't pay for "priority" or inclusion, then they are lying to their customers (consumers) about the service they provide.

[splintercell]

How is it different than saying "Defense of Marriage Act protects what we already have"?

> When ISPs throttle (and effectively block) websites that don't pay for "priority" or inclusion, then they are lying to their customers (consumers) about the service they provide. <

Every country has consumer protection clause. IF ISPs promise you full internet, but they don't offer you that, then they can be sued under most jurisdictions.

The fact is, you know that this is not what it is about. There is no fraud involved. ISPs want to offer a certain kind of service and you're afraid that most people would take it and you'd be at the losing end, so you want to use the government to force the market to move in a certain direction.

[curt15]

>See this is where pretty much everywhere gets it wrong. Prices aren't set by one side. Prices are ALWAYS set by both sides coming to an agreement.

The price will only be efficient in the face of robust competition. The price will not be optimal when there is a monopoly. If the telco/ISP market were actually competitive, a plan that imposed artificial scarcities (like limiting packets based on their content instead of the actual cost to transport them) would never see the light of day as competitors would offer an uncrippled product for essentially the same cost.

[udibai]

Your argument about mangoes has a very big assumption involved and that is the supplier wants everyone to have mangoes and isn't in the market just for the profit. This is similar to what Reagan tried to argue with the Trickle-Down economics, he said if you tax the rich less they'll create more jobs and hence it'll benefit everyone. This didn't happen, 'cuz the rich found other better ways (investment funds etc) to use that extra money than create jobs. So, NEVER assume intrinsic goodness. If discriminatory policies are allowed people will misuse them.

[splintercell]

> Your argument about mangoes has a very big assumption involved and that is the supplier wants everyone to have mangoes and isn't in the market just for the profit <

I thought someone would raise this point. If the seller is in the market for making the maximum amount of profit, then he would sell his mangoes to the highest bidder at maximum profit, then use that money to expand his business to sell more Mangoes to make every last bit of profit from Mango sales. Correct?

I assumed that everybody understood that selling goods to the highest bidder is what a person motivated by profit does. So all I did was assumed that the seller wants to benefit maximum number of people. By performing that thought experiment, I showed that even THEN he would do the same thing as the person motivated by highest amount of greed would do.

[jsudhams]

The good thing is mangoes are available already cheap. So 200 rupees for 1GB .. and with competition it will go down further