[sjaakkkkk]

I wouldn't say the competition is very tough in the Netherlands, as there are also only a few large players (each with multiple brands/subsidiaries under them). Furthermore, a couple months ago, the dutch FTC put major telecom providers under review for making alleged cartel price agreements.

On a higher level, I am certainly for a free market, but don't dismiss government regulations purely because they can 'only hinder competition'. That is a very dogmatic statement as regulations aren't always 'bad'/hindering competition. No personal offense intended, but I always find the strength of belief in a purely free market for some people to be almost the same as how other people believe in religion, very idealistic and extreme. There are a lot of subtleties and nuances to free markets. Also, is pursuing a free market a goal in itself, or a means to an end in creating a 'good society'. In the latter case, other advantages of certain regulations should be considered as well.

Lastly, regarding the issue at hand, next to economical arguments, I think a large part of getting this regulation has comes from other motivations such as valuing equality and accessibility for all etc.

[bad_user]

I do agree with what you say and I'm sure that our current economic models are far from perfect and in fact there is no such thing as a truly free market, being more of an ideal that's as hard to pursue as true communism (probably because reality is too complex for such models).

I'm not being religions here. However, I do think that capitalism does work because of competition and in the context of capitalism, the worst that could happen in a market is the creation of a monopoly / oligopoly.

The context is important here. I'm against government regulations, because such legislation increases the chances of such monopolies and despite what many people think, few monopolies are "natural", with most of them being driven by legislation.

     > valuing equality and accessibility for all

Since you brought religion into discussion, you know how they say: "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". This is another way of saying that decisions based on good intentions often have unexpected and far-reaching consequences, that may actually have the opposite effect of what you're trying to do.

My problem with "net neutrality" proposals is that I haven't seen any unbiased and throughout analysis of its pitfalls from its proponents. Another problem I have is that the Net was never "neutral", so why is that an issue right now? And sure there are problems, but aren't we fixing the symptoms here rather than the cause?