[johnnyjustice]

This is very interesting news, but I am scared that there will be a bit of a backlash against this post because of its political nature, on HN specifically.

How do people feel about Ron Paul's standpoint on Net Neutrality?

[JeremyBanks]

Discussion of specific points of Ron Paul's beliefs has always seemed a little pointless to me. If you understand the basic things he cares about, you can accurately guess what his opinion and explanation on almost everything will be. So any discussion of a specific topic is either shallow or derailed into a much broader political discussion.

It doesn't feel productive.

[spenrose]

WRT this topic, I tend to agree with you. But Ron Paul is not some Valley Libertarian. Did you know that Ron Paul doesn't believe in evolution?: http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/08/29/307010/the-cont...

More broadly: http://www.tnr.com/article/94477/ron-paul-distorted-libertar...

[xorglorb]

Okay. I'm stopping this here. We do not need HN to turn into /r/politics.

[mindcrime]

Who cares what Ron Paul thinks about evolution? He doesn't believe it's the government's job to cram creationism down kids throats, so what he personally believes is fairly irrelevant. And anybody who knows anything about Ron Paul knows that he isn't some ignorant, fundamentalist bible-thumping hick like Mike Huckabee... Ron is a freaking medical doctor who got his degree from Duke. He's clearly an intelligent man, who just happens to have this one quirky religious thing going on. And lots of very intelligent people are conflicted over the whole evolution / creationism thing, because of their religious beliefs.

Not a big deal, IMO.

[danssig]

Who cares? Nearly all US politicians are complete idiots (often insane people). What matters is where a given politician stands on issues I care about. What are you afraid he's going to do, outlaw evolution?

[ataggart]

Please redact your comments before others feel compelled to respond.

[cpeterso]

What is libertarian position on evolution?

[maqr]

That it's a matter of science and not government.

[nickik]

The pure position is not to have a position. Schools would be privat so if they want to teach evolution or something else is up to them.

[plainOldText]

His standpoint is consistent with other libertarian views he has. No regulation. The Internet has worked fine without regulation for so many years. And if your carrier/isp is throttling your connection, switch to a different one.If many people switch then they'll stop throttling. Simple as that.

[sp332]

The Internet has worked fine without regulation for so many years.

Ummmm, no. Markets are segregated and each municipality grants a franchise to a specific company. Most markets in the USA have one cable company, one phone company, plus maybe some wireless and satellite coverage.

ISPs have been given billions of dollars in federal subsidies. Also, there are strings attached to every one of those dollars.

The FCC and FTC have pretty restrictive regulations regarding spectrum usage, how much power you can push over phone lines, etc.

There is a lot of regulation on the internet in the USA, which is why we can't let the market settle the Net Neutrality issue.

[chrischen]

Only problem is many people, like me, cannot actually switch. Comcast is the only provider in my apartment. No DSL company would hook me up and no other cable company has wires in here.

[ja30278]

Consider the situation in which most subscribers of Comcast in your area wanted to switch..if there are enough of them to build a business, that strong 'latent' demand is a market waiting to happen.

[rayiner]

It doesn't work like that, not even in theory. Communications infrastructure is a market that inevitably involves natural monopolies: first because of the cost structure of the industry (marginal cost curve always decreasing) and second because of network effects.

[rayiner]

The internet is the product of a government project and has been heavily regulated since its inception.

[Gormo]

> and has been heavily regulated since its inception

Interesting; I wasn't aware of this. I know that the original network design grew out of a DARPA project, but I wasn't aware of any significant federal regulatory involvement since the internet became open to general, non-government use in the '80s. Do you have any references you could point to that might provide more detail?

[plainOldText]

I actually meant the Word Wide Web. It is probably more specific.

[nickik]

I think his view is consistent but I disagree. The principal for me is a ISP can not treat diffrent packages diffrent if the pay the same. The should be allowed to offer high speed low latency connection if the wish to.

From a libaralist perspectiv I would argue it like this. The packages you send on the net are your property, the ISP is not allowed to look into it just like I don't want my letters to be opend and treated diffrently if somebody thinks what I wrote is not to importend. The ISP is only allowed to look at the header.

This is a good model for everybody. ISP can offer for example a flatrate that is not to fast and offer some high speed threwput witch you could use for VoIP.

[Gormo]

> How do people feel about Ron Paul's standpoint on Net Neutrality?

I think he has a fairly pro-Net-Neutrality standpoint, which is to say that he opposes legislation that nominally intends to preserve net neutrality while, in practical terms, actually would create a significant threat to the same.