[jpalawaga]

Regulation is a response to bad behaviour, not the cause of it.

We started with a free market. People acted poorly. In came regulation. Specifically: regulation that was not imposed on us as society, but of our own choosing.

Not to say that regulation can't cause issues of it's own. But regulation (believe it or not) is there for a reason, even if imperfect.

Actually, it's quite telling that you confused 'free market' with 'fair game'. Who says a free market is a fair market? Free market doesn't mean fair, it means free. Free to exploit people, to act monopolistically, to abuse your market power and inflict pain. It does not mean fair.

[thfuran]

>Regulation is a response to bad behaviour, not the cause of it.

Regulation is a means to an end. Sometimes the goal is to curb some bad behavior. Sometimes the goal is to give the appearance of doing something (like looking tough on crime). Sometimes the goal is fundamentally corrupt, such as the bans of municipal fiber networks pushed through by incumbent ISPs. Sometimes the regulations even mostly achieve their goal without much in the way of unintended consequences. But it's certainly not as simple as regulations are always an effective response to bad behavior that do not themselves cause bad behavior.

[seanw444]

Leaving it up to what people are willing and capable of doing sounds as fair as can be to me. That's what competition is there for. It also is not perfect, but it is better.

I expect to get dogpiled on Hacker News though. The demographic here has a fondness of rules. We give computers rules. That fondness translates to non-technical fields, for better or for worse. In this case, worse.

[hn_acker]

> Leaving it up to what people are willing and capable of doing sounds as fair as can be to me. That's what competition is there for. It also is not perfect, but it is better.

Is it better? Congress and the FCC has never done much to punish wrongdoing by ISPs [1]. Large ISPs including AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon commit subsidy fraud with impunity. (See the links in my other comment. [2])

And on the issue of fairness, large ISPs [3][4][5] and some government officials [6][7] do their best to prevent broadband subsidixes from reaching small local ISPs. At the very least, the FCC should (and won't, but should) place heavy penalties on large ISPs for their abuses of customers [8]. By heavy penalties, I mean at least 80% of the revenue gained from anti-competitive practices.

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/22/fcc-adds-a-nutrition-lab...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37949298

[3] https://communitynets.org/content/monopoly-providers-mire-nt...

[4] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/15/report-shows-comcast-con...

[5] https://www.techdirt.com/2015/04/16/alec-threatens-to-sue-cr...

[6] https://www.techdirt.com/2021/02/19/new-bill-tries-to-ban-co...

[7] https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/11/illinois-missouri-and-ne...

[8] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/couple-bought-ho...

[thfuran]

>By heavy penalties, I mean at least 80% of the revenue gained from anti-competitive practices.

How is a fine of less than the proceeds a heavy penalty? There needs to be punitive damages or personal liability for the responsible executives, otherwise it's still a profitable business strategy.