I'm fully in support of net neutrality, but I'm somewhat surprised they're restoring it, as I have not really heard a peep about it since it was repealed in the first place. From my perspective, nothing about the internet changed since then (my experience did not upgrade or downgrade). People stopped talking about it, there weren't major protests, news about it even largely disappeared from the front page of HN (!). So, I would be beyond shocked if this was an election year issue of substance. What, then, is the impetus for restoring the net neutrality rules, given there is always some political cost to any action like this? Has the lack of net neutrality caused issues that I just have not heard about?
>From my perspective, nothing about the internet changed since then (my experience did not upgrade or downgrade). People stopped talking about it, there weren't major protests, news about it even largely disappeared from the front page of HN (!). ... What, then, is the impetus for restoring the net neutrality rules, given there is always some political cost to any action like this? Has the lack of net neutrality caused issues that I just have not heard about?
IMO it seems likely ISPs knew the rules were likely to come back so they avoided most of the practices that would generate outrage (throttling streaming and other popular services unless you pay an additional fee). I have no doubt if they could get away with it they would haha. Many providers did roll out zero rating programs.
As for why this is important just because ISPs aren't currently doing it on a large scale doesn't mean steps shouldn't be taken to prohibit it. We already know what happens in the long run when ISPs are allowed to double dip https://restofworld.org/2024/south-korea-twitch-exit-problem...
> IMO it seems likely ISPs knew the rules were likely to come back so they avoided most of the practices that would generate outrage (throttling streaming and other popular services unless you pay an additional fee).
It had nothing to do with market effects. Some states and even quite a few local governments made their own net neutrality laws once the Trump admin nixed it federally. Complying with NN laws in some places but not others would have been way too complicated, so they just let it be.
NN being saved by consumer backlash doesn't really make sense in the US, anyway, where many (most?) people only have one or two choices for internet service. ISPs don't really need to care if their customers don't like their policies.
> It had nothing to do with market effects. Some states and even quite a few local governments made their own net neutrality laws once the Trump admin nixed it federally. Complying with NN laws in some places but not others would have been way too complicated, so they just let it be.
If that's the case, which I doubt it is, it's not like it's expensive to charge some customers more money and not others, no need for FCC regulation then, right?
No, it doesn't take this much time. It's just that net neutrality wasn't a priority for the Biden administration, so they dragged their feet until the very last minute. IIRC, there's been a flurry of rule-making just now because they are running up against a Congressional Review Act deadline.
> It's just that net neutrality wasn't a priority for the Biden administration, so they dragged their feet until the very last minute.
The FCC was deadlocked until September 2023 and started this process a few days later. Maybe they could have started in 2022 if Biden had nominated someone else after Republicans blocked his 1st choice. But Democrats believed Republicans would block anyone who would restore net neutrality.
> The FCC was deadlocked until September 2023 and started this process a few days later.
I am aware of that.
> Maybe they could have started in 2022 if Biden had nominated someone else after Republicans blocked his 1st choice. But Democrats believed Republicans would block anyone who would restore net neutrality.
And they were proven wrong, and didn't even try to test their theory until half his term was over. That counts as "not a priority" in my book.
I think you expect that government works "fast" and that is usually not the case unless it's a dire emergency. The wheels of government are just slow. Net Neutrality is important to codify/enact and that's what they've done, I'm certainly not going to complain about it. There are a lot of other nits I have to pick with Biden's policies but this isn't one of them, better late than never like it was going to be under a second Trump term, and could be again.
That’s not entirely what happened. The prior candidate didn’t withdraw until March 2023. Biden nominated Gomez in May 2023. Presumable the two months intervening included negotiations and background. That doesn’t sound like a priority issue.
It really didn't have to in this case. It would have been perfectly acceptable to crib California's NN law, ctrl-r "California" "United States of America" and call it a day.
The FCC has a legally mandated process (see Administrative Procedure Act) including a public comment period that is open to judicial review. They can’t just copy California’s law and call it a day, they have to actually take public comments into consideration. If they don’t follow this process the courts will overturn the rules.
They couldn’t seat the fifth person (democrat) because the GOP was blocking it. As soon as the person was seated, they moved forward with restoring net neutrality. Hands were tied until then because they couldn’t get the 3-2 vote. They didn’t have 5 until September 2023 so it’s been just over half a year
No, literally, there is a legal requirement for certain process; debates over whether it was properly followed tied the Trump repeal up in court for a while though it was eveentually resolved in favor of the Administration.
Not even bothering to follow the clear objective formal requirements of that process (the question about Trump was more about good faith in the substance) would make it trivial to defeat in court.
— Verizon throttles so much that the Santa Clara County Fire Department’s ability to provide emergency services during the California wildfires. "The fire department experienced slowed down speeds on their devices and had to sign up for a new, expensive plan before speeds were restored." https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/verizon-throttle...
Claiming that nothing happened is false. A lot did happen. A lot of people have been fighting very hard to preserve internet access and the internet has been degraded.
> Even when net neutrality rules were in place, all major carriers imposed some form of throttling on unlimited plans when customers used more than a certain amount of data. They argued that it was allowed under the rules' exception for "reasonable network management." But while such throttling is generally applied only during times of network congestion, the Santa Clara Fire Department says it was throttled at all times once the device in question went over a 25GB monthly threshold.
> Even if Verizon's throttling didn't technically violate the no-throttling rule, Santa Clara could have complained to the FCC under the now-removed net neutrality system, which allowed Internet users to file complaints about any unjust or unreasonable prices and practices. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's decision to deregulate the broadband industry eliminated that complaint option and also limited consumers' rights to sue Internet providers over unjust or unreasonable behavior.
Soft caps for "unlimited" plans and content-neutral QoS don't seem like net neutrality violations as I understand it. If they started slowing down one internet service while allowing another on the same plan to run at full speed, that would be another story.
> Verizon throttles so much that the Santa Clara County Fire Department’s
Net Neutrality does not prevent throttling. Bandwidth + data volume limits still exist.
Rather, NN prevents throttling or preferential treatment based on content/services. (E.g. throttling the fire department's access to Netflix but not to Facebook.)
---
Likewise, the CenturyLink example has nothing to do with NN either.
Centurylink did not block internet to display an ad. They blocked internet to display a notice so they could comply with some regulation. This was a bad move. But wont be prevented by Net neutrality.
Data throttling during heavy load wont violate NN either.
And cell phone networks have long throttled video data connections even during NN. Not much of an issue nowadays because of robust networks.
This, and that it is far more profitable for ISPs to aggregate our traffic patterns and sell them to ad companies and governments than to drive people to VPNs by raising awareness of the reasons we can't trust them.
the neutrality rule would be applying to ISPs. Those would be local to California. Outside of California, we would see the effects of no net neutrality
Yes, but the big ISPs would have a much harder time explaining the difference. Imagine them going into court or Congress having to explain why they needed to shakedown Netflix in NYC but not LA or explain why it suddenly became cost-prohibitive to run a network when you cross the border into Oregon or Arizona.
Challenges to a state or local law, any kind of unfair competition or price gouging suit brought by consumers, any sort of anti-competitive behavior suit brought by one of the companies they try to double-charge or compete with?
There were lawsuits over the repeal under Trump raising uncertainty. That lawsuit wasn't resolved until 2019.
California adopted it's net neutrality law in 2018. 12 other states adopted net neutrality laws or executive actions, and over 100 local governments also did so, some before and some after the lawsuit over the federal repeal was resolved. Democrats in Congress in 2019 moved to legislatively reverse the repeal, and that passed through one house. Biden was elected in 2020, and either a legislative or executive reinstatement of net neutrality was expected.
All of this made meant that big ISPs would have to have patchwork rules in different jurisdictions if they wanted to skirt net neutrality and face a significant risk of having to unwind them. So, generally, no one did much that would go against net neutrality.
I believe a side effect of the way the legislation was written included that if they weren't neutral, then they couldn't do business with the State of California either or anything the state runs, like pension plans.
How much can you make doing business with or in CA vs. grifting the rest of the nation and bad press? It's very risky move. CA won and Verizon et all blinked.
> What, then, is the impetus for restoring the net neutrality rules, given there is always some political cost to any action like this? Has the lack of net neutrality caused issues that I just have not heard about?
The rule was always going to get reversed eventually. Several major factions within the Democratic party are strong supporters of net neutrality and they've become increasingly more powerful over the last two decades, at the expense of its detractors like the media conglomerates and ISPs.
It only took this long because of the Administrative Procedure Act [1] which regulates how agencies make rules. They can't just flip flop the second a new political party gains power because of judicial review - they have to follow a process (though they probably also timed this for an election year).
>What, then, is the impetus for restoring the net neutrality rules, given there is always some political cost to any action like this?
there's usually some principled people in the government, and every now an then when an issue is obscure enough they can manage to get something done without the other side caring too much.
> keeping the government away from internet is a good thing
See, I would have agreed more with this if most of our internet infrastructures were not controlled by three megacorps with more power than many small to medium sized economies in the world. As it stands, the only valid option is to fight fire with fire.
If anti competitive corporations are the problem, why not pursue these monopolistic companies using the existing anti-trust laws? Why does there need to be a new law with the FCC involved?
No, likely in anticipation of the rules being changed back.
Better question for you. Why did ISPs attempt to fake support for repealing Net Neutrality [0][1], as well as spend money lobbying Congress? You'll note in that article that there were also fake comments in support of Net Neutrality, apparently mostly generated by one individual, but many, many fake comments against it from ISPs that even used real people's identities [2].
These aren't the actions a company takes if they don't have incentive.
No, because California and 12 other states, as well as quite a few local governments, passed their own net neutrality laws. The larger, national ISPs were pretty hamstrung: they couldn't really follow the NN laws in the places where they existed, but then impose non-neutral terms in the places where they didn't, without running into lots of trouble.
A federal rule is good, though, to harmonize things, even if the state/local laws were more or less already doing the job.
I think the point the person you're replying to was trying to make is that the line drawn between things the government should have a hand in vs. things they should leave alone is fairly arbitrary, and is a matter of opinion. So saying the government should be kept away from the internet is just one place to draw the line, and it's perhaps interesting to know of other places where someone might draw that line, in order to get a baseline, and determine if it's even worth trying to have a productive discussion with them about government regulation.
The way you positioned the argument is helpful and conducive to a conversation. Just throwing out scenarios and expecting me to derive meaning isn't productive.
The internet was explicitly privatized and deregulated in 1995 by the Clinton Administration.
It has flourished under private sector control without net neutrality. A 30 year track record of success, yet people are still clambering to have it back under government control.
The American libertarian dream confuses me because unlike libertarians abroad (where it's a synonym with "anarchist") they stop with political authority, and seem to have no issue with corporate authority. The ISP business in the USA is very clearly an oligopoly with the top players colluding. Not sure how a rugged individual is supposed to fight back against that.
Fighting back against powerful corporations does happen, though usually over long time scales.
Plenty of the most powerful corporations a few generations ago are weak or nonexistent today. Their abuses of power, though problematic, are typically less egregious than governmental abuses of power.
Even at an individual level, I can simply withdraw my support by not buying their products or services.
Whereas fighting the government - or even trying to withdraw support - typically leads to imprisonment or death.
The difference between political authorities and corporate authorities is that the former can conscript you, tax you, send you to jail, seize your assets, etc.
The latter can affect you insofar as you enter a contract.
There is no "opt-out" of a political authority. "No thanks, I'm better off without your services."
The usual claim in right libertarian circles is that monopolies only arise because they can bribe the government into passing laws that enable them to exist.
The usual claim in right-libertarian circles is that it is only possible for monopolies to arise through government action (bribery is sometimes a means to encourage that action, but its not always intentional or that kind of specific corruption, but it is, in most libertarian explanations, always government action.)
And for this purpose, “government action” excludes protection of what the libertarian in question thinks of as proper property rights, which almost dogmatically have no adverse consequences.
There exists already anti-trust laws to deal with monopolies.
Why does there need to be another new law that, instead of punishing the monopolistic companies, gives them the right to maintain their monopolies as long as they promise not to discriminate on filtering their traffic?
Why can't the government pursue these literal monopolies using the DOJ with existing laws?
Yep, the Peter Thiel school of thought. But people like that tend to not stay libertarian in any meaningful sense for long; to quote Thiel himself, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible". That's how you get neo-reactionaries, basically.
You only get neo-reactionaries out of people that define their freedom as including their abilities to coerce others, and then get frustrated that said "freedom" is being impinged. They think they're morally right because they've defined away the coercion.
Personally, around the time the whole Unqualified Reservations / NRx thing was starting up, I considered myself a libertarian with more rightist sympathies. Reading UR and its classification of left versus right is actually what pushed me back into seeing that my philosophy is more aligned with the left. Axiomatic framing and fundamentalism simply doesn't work (cf Gödel). Systems need to be judged on their effective results regardless of their implementations' terminology.
The problem with right libertarianism, IMO, is that private property rights (as opposed to personal property / "right to that which you're using") broadly necessitate coercion. The notion of abstract ownership of, say, a piece of land that you have never even visited in your life and that you do not currently occupy - which is necessary to e.g. lease it to someone for actually to live on it or otherwise do something useful with it, and then collect rent from them for that use - requires coercive force to prevent people from just using it without paying said rent to you. This is also why any realistic model of a right libertarian society requires government large enough to provide this coercion as a service.
How exactly do you define a piece of land being occupied in your argument? Your example is obviously clear cut. But what about the 'extra' area of a residential lot not actually holding a house or otherwise used for much? Or unused rooms of a house, for that matter?
Doesn't that still require your definition of coercion to prevent my neighbor from using it for what he wants? Or to prevent a new party moving in and setting up their own shelter there?
To me, the right libertarian conception of property rights is not the problem per se. It's when that is taken as an axiomatic framework and claimed to justify all the emergent behavior that happens on top of it.
libertarians are a subgroup of classical liberalism; limited government and socially liberal, or at least the right to live as one wants within reason in a society. Anarchists, at least to Americans, have so many subgroups I don't even know where to start, it always seems completely watered down to me other than the "no central government" part.
> libertarians are a subgroup of classical liberalism
No, they aren’t. There is some overlap between “libertarians” and groups from left to right (in the modern sense) that are grounded primarily in classical liberalism, and those include the bulk of what tend to get labeled “libertarians” in America (which are mostly the center-to-right subset of the classical liberal subset of libertarians.)
But “libertarian” also encompasses anarchists, libertarian socialists, and a number of other left-libertarian ideologies that are not particularly grounded in what would usually be regarded as classical liberalism (most of them are grounded in newer philosophies which could reasonably be viewed as later developments from or reactions against – but not in a reverse direction – classical liberalism.)
It's just another system of control. Temporarily embarrassed millionaires and all that. And once the desire for freedom has been transmuted into support for corporate authoritarianism, the money flows and the political hacks get to work shoring up the platform for the sponsors.
I don't think 'libertarian' has to be synonymous with 'anarchist', but US libertarianism desperately needs an analog of anarchism-without-adjectives and to drop the axiomatic-fundamentalist approach that ends up fooling so many into supporting authoritarianism. Coercion is not some binary thing, but rather a matter of degree based on power differentials.
If you made a Venn diagram of self-proclaimed libertarian’s beliefs, the center would be empty. That is the practical definition of libertarian in today’s world.
Could you not lay this same criticism at the feet of the other political parties as well? Due to the way plurality voting works, the incentive of each party is to be as large as possible (at the expense of group consistency), and the incentive of each individual is to align themselves with only one party (at the expense of accurately expressing all of one's views).
What changed for me is that my home internet provider (Comcast) implemented an overly-burdensome impossible data cap that I can only get rid of if I agree to use their router with deep packet inspection, ad injection, and more.
Fwiw you can set their router to bridge mode and use your own. It is probably still doing some traffic analysis but certainly no ad injection. This is what I do to get unlimited data without paying their exorbitant standalone fee.
The parent post misses the main reason they sell these. It's not for the ad injection but because they broadcast a Wi-Fi hotspot that you cannot turn off, which shares your internet connection.
I live in a densely populated city. The wifi spectrum is already horrendously congested. The last thing I want is my modem polluting the airwaves, degrading my service from inside my home, all for Comcast's profit.
If configuring a router into bridge mode is too burdensome of a step, then Comcast is actually providing that person a service by forcibly managing equipment for them at that point. If only the stalking component of it could be made illegal with proper privacy laws instead of piecemeal app bans.
What a weird way to think about it. I often wonder why I have to take those brain-dead ethics courses at work, then someone like you comes along and reminds me. Comcast can only fully take advantage of people who don't have the technical skills to not get fucked, that is what is happening.
That sounds absolutely horrendous. I keep getting surprised by how shitty Comcast can be, and at this point I don't know how. I'd get a 5G hotspot before I use somebody else's router.
ISPs can monitor what you're browsing through DNS requests and SNI host headers and sell that data to advertisers who then inject personalized ads into ad supported websites.
The thing I don't get is why they need a spyware router in everyone's home. They own the infrastructure and know where all the traffic is coming from. They can do this with their own hardware outside people's homes.
I do wonder if they're sucking up LAN traffic data too, though, some of it which might be unencrypted, like smart devices talking to each other.
Not sure where you're located, but in California at least, I was able to add unlimited data for an extra $30/mo. I am still using my own modem and router.
It's incredible bullshit that they can pull this crap, but... well, at least it's possible. Here, anyway. Dunno if they offer that everywhere.
This reminds me when I got a “survey” email from ERCOT, the entity that oversees Texas’ “deregulated” energy provider racket. I was ready to lay into them hard, but starting with the second or third questions, it was clear that all they were concerned about was to _sell_ new products — ZERO interest in hearing feedback of how terrible the system for end users, they just want to sell some sort of outage insurance product (“would you pay $5 to be protected from a 30 minute or less outage one time?”).
I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t a less than noble ulterior motive behind this push, although I’m hoping for the best. Sounds like the main reason it may actually make sense to bring it back from their PoV is because ISPs have to deal with individual state laws.
The proponents of net neutrality thought without it ISPs would just arbitrarily block data and require bribes from data providers to even serve up their data. In reality, no net neutrality would mean things like Netflix not counting as data on your mobile plan through some kind of sponsorship, or free basic internet like Wikipedia and news at a lower cost.
I don't support legislation that bans something undertaken voluntarily unless it proves to be very harmful and the last few years have proven that we don't need this legislation.
> In reality, no net neutrality would mean things like Netflix not counting as data on your mobile plan through some kind of sponsorship, or free basic internet like Wikipedia and news at a lower cost.
You seem pretty pro-free-market, so here's the free-market angle: things like zero-rated Netflix on your mobile plan and free "basic" internet are market distortions. Companies are abusing the lack of net neutrality to engage in bundling, discounting, and collusion practices, which are bad for you as a consumer - these are anti-competitive practices!
Everyone likes getting something for cheap/free, but that doesn't mean that it's actually good for you, other people, the market, or society as a whole.
I agree that most of the bad things that net neutrality advocates predicted would happen wouldn't, but the things that did happen are still bad.
There's two ways to make money: bundling and unbundling. Zoom and slack unbundled video chat from places like Google workspace and similar software suites. A company like clickup tries to bundle all that stuff as a one stop shop (tagline is one app to replace them all)
If anything more offers would increase competitiom as it's a bigger vector to make a sale.
> There's two ways to make money: bundling and unbundling
This is pretty obviously wrong - you can sell things to make money, in a way that requires neither.
Now, the problem with bundling itself is that it introduces market distortions. The way that free markets work is that producers make things, and then buyers buy the best thing based on its price and other factors. Bundling impedes this process because it means that consumers no longer buy the best goods based on their individual price and merits.
Plus, bundling is usually used by monopolistic companies to anti-competitively extend their influence from one market to another, in a way that doesn't allow the market to work.
Another hypothetical: your isp zero rates the news sites with a given political leaning, but not yours. Reading the news that they want you to costs nothing, whereas reading the news that you want, or getting an alternative perspective on a story costs you something.
So why can't the solution be that the DOJ files antitrust lawsuits? Like every other antitrust issue. It really doesn't make sense to create a new set of rules when there already exists antitrust regulations.
> and the last few years have proven that we don't need this legislation.
Given that large states like California and New York passed independent net neutrality laws and there were continuing legal battles in almost half of all US states I don't think you can draw many conclusions. ISP behavior very likely never changed because they knew they were just one decision away from having to comply. Sort of proven by this very decision we're commenting on.
Here is something I found. Seems like "unfair" since they're favoring their videos but as a user its okay by me since I get something for free and preventing them from not counting their content doesn't mean they'll necessarily just drop their data cap.
If ISPs just behave because it's always just a ruling away, then I'm fine with that status quo. I don't want unintended consequences from invasive legislation that could eventually be used to control what ISPs can show us
> invasive legislation that could eventually be used to control what ISPs can show us
What specific legal principle do you think would lead to this? Network neutrality is the polar opposite of that - it’s like arguing that we shouldn’t have restaurant health codes because the government could start requiring us to eat peas.
It's a precedent that government can tell ISPs and others what they can provide you. Once they have that in place, it's not a stretch to imagine them furthering that power for political purposes.
Think about surveillance legislation after 9/11. None of it applied to domestic population originally
It’s the opposite of that - it’s saying companies cannot discriminate – but also that argument doesn’t make any sense because governments already do that and nothing in network neutrality legislation grants new powers. If they want to ban a political party’s website they’re passing new legislation (or ignoring laws) whether or not network neutrality laws exist.
> free basic internet like Wikipedia and news at a lower cost.
I can't comprehend why you think ISPs would feel compelled to be so altruistic without any government intervention.
Except, since when was free wi-fi an impossible thing to find? Ever been to a coffee shop? Even in the "free shitty half-internet for everyone" pipe dream, the costs of such a service don't just magically disappear. Either way, someone's paying for that free internet, and it isn't the ISP.
Telecoms likely didn't deploy anything because this was obviously going to get overruled by the next non-Trump FCC. Even Ajit Pai has a long record of advocating for modernizing the FCC, which would explicitly involve the regulation of internet services. Abolishing net neutrality is only universally popular among communities where the underlying philosophy is "government is bad, and I'm gonna prove it by running it badly."
> I can't comprehend why you think ISPs would feel compelled to be so altruistic without any government intervention.
Price discrimination. No altruism necessary. Kind of like my isp offering me different speeds.
Meta tried to offer free limited internet to poor rural Indians but idealistic tech workers from wealthy neighborhoods opposed it on moral grounds since it was against net neutrality so then they got no internet
So Facebook would have provided access where Facebook-owned properties were zero-rated, leading to Facebook distorting those people's view of the world.
If you want to see what happens to countries where Facebook is essentially "the internet", look no further than Myanmar.
I'd genuinely like to understand why you think corporations, whose success is measured by profit and basically nothing else, are more likely to do things that are good for people than governments, whose success is measured at least a little bit by the wellbeing of their constituents.
I really want to better understand the thinking of people who hold opinions like yours.
It’s easier for me to switch which business I give my money to than it is for me to move or change governments. Most of the services I use are provided by private industry and I have choices. Everything from food, clothing, shelter. All private corporations I choose to buy from. I guess I can go get my food from a government soup kitchen or apply for government housing but my experience is these services are not competitive with private market even at the lower price (or free)
> I guess I can go get my food from a government soup kitchen or apply for government housing but my experience is these services are not competitive with private market even at the lower price (or free)
Because you have such limited experience with the world. Did you know there are countries out there — dozens of them even! — which are not American?
Interesting. Personally I believe people should have total freedom to change governments, but I'm a utopian thinker so /shrug though I wonder in such a world whether you'd feel the same way. "Too Like the Lightning" explored this if you enjoy sci-fi.
I'm hung up on something though - in this specific subject, there's been massive market capture in the USA by one to four ISPs, depending on region. For most of rural america (something insane like 80% of the geography) there's only one provider. In these situations, the provider provides subpar service, often asking for handouts from the government before being willing to build more infrastructure (hm.. is that still "private?").
If the private market is better, why does Comcast, which routinely wins "worst company in america" awards, still exist, despite providing abysmal service to its customers? Surely a private enterprise could have eaten their lunch by now?
If the private market is better, why are local governments providing the highest rated internet services in America?
So basically, your feeling rests in the belief that you have more choice when it comes to private options - but in telecom, that doesn't seem to be the case, and of the options available, they're all widely considered to suck. Perhaps this isn't true for every industry, Stalin and Mao certainly showed us that it doesn't work for food, but does that mean the private option is better for everything we use? What does it mean to have a "private highway" system, or a "private fire department?"
I dont there's anything inherently different about Internet delivery. There's some last mile problems and some services no market exists because the cost would be higher than people are willing to pay. Internet service is expensive and maybe the high fixed cost makes it so only a few people can deliver and they can charge monopoly prices. There are also regulations that could make this expensive to provide too
But you can't just look at final price with a lower price being good. If some municipal service costs half the price but it costs taxpayers the other half, is that better? Maybe if you think they have a right to this service and you're okay with subsidizing it. But there is no free lunch, someone is paying.
I think ultimately you want it to be provided by private market if possible. So leaving it open at a high price encourages others to try and innovate. Think about starlink. If government was providing Internet to everyone for below market prices, no innovation would happen because they essentially crowded out private industry. So in the long run it would be much more expensive and opaque. You lose a market signal through artificially low prices
>But you can't just look at final price with a lower price being good. If some municipal service costs half the price but it costs taxpayers the other half, is that better?
Where, exactly, is that happening?
As I understand it, the vast majority of taxpayer monies for broadband doesn't go to municipally owned networks, but rather to private ISPs. And that's been the case for decades.
And those monies are given with a pinky-swear that this time, we'll actually spend the money on expanding broadband to under-served areas, with a similar likelihood that will happen as the last four or five times taxpayer monies were given to those folks.
Meanwhile, actual municipal broadband[0][1] pays for itself by charging multiple ISPs to access their last mile -- paying for the infrastructure and introducing (often for the first time) competition into the market.
What's more, nearly a third of states have laws[2] blocking/hindering municipal broadband. Most of which are related to model legislation promulgated by groups like ALEC[3]. Many of the artificial roadblocks put up by such laws make municipal broadband (both implicitly and explicitly[4]) more expensive than private broadband
In theory, if people don’t perceive corporations as improving their well-being, they will stop being customers. Also in theory, if people don’t perceive governments as doing so, they will vote in different politicians.
In practice, both effects exist, but are not perfectly efficient for lots of different reasons. That’s why neither Stalinist planned economies nor right-libertarian total lack of regulation work well overall, and the correct approach is somewhere in the middle and different for different sectors (and different countries).
I had an extended outage and could not contact my ISP. They kept sending me to a bot, and I had no idea if anyone actually knew about the outage or was doing anything to fix it.
If you read the article, it does have to do with the ruling. Part of regulating ISPs as a utility is that they can regulate/enforce rules on how ISPs handle outages.
I wouldn't be surprised if your experience hadn't changed: Net neutrality rules were gutted at the same time as the internet has been largely consolidated, so major players paying for "fast lanes" and the ISPs throttling other kinds of traffic is, statistically, likely to have gone mostly unnoticed by you as an end user. If you have internet use cases beyond that which is endorsed by corporate tech, you will likely have noticed a stark difference. I've found that things like SSH tunnels have been less reliable, that there is noticeable slowdown when I find myself on a smaller website (Like those maintained by a shrinking minority of local vendors and artists who don't do everything on instagram). The most obnoxious thing about shady degradations of infrastructure in the name of profit is that these changes are often made in a way that's hard to specifically pinpoint, and by entities that make it somewhere between infuriating and futile to address any kind of complaint to.
> it since it was repealed in the first place. From my perspective, nothing about the internet changed since then
I got downvoted heavily years ago on HN for predicting this when it was making the rounds
There is almost no evidence of a tiered model either working or being legitimately attempted, even globally in places without these rules. The only evidence I was ever given was some tiny Portugese mobile network entirely serving the lowest end of the market, and even that barely made a dent in the local market.
I want a free internet as much as anyone but people like to fear monger scenarios they invent in their heads, and pointing at vaguely defined wealthy people conspiring to do so behind the scenes, even when theres little evidence it was ever a plausible market nor technically coherent scenario.
But I guess people fear that sort of chaos where every detail isn't in a neat box clearly defined by the government, even if it means finite regulatory time/resources gets redirected from pre-existing tangible issues like privacy and spam.
This rule does, however, effectively regulate the prices that broadband providers charge consumers, as it disallows high-volume customers from being charged a higher periodic rate than lower-volume consumers. If that's not regulating prices, it's not at all clear what might be.
Just like Obamacare, another gift from the left that has worked out so well...
This should be a reminder that almost all dire consequences from any government action are overblown. I also think the net neutrality was an important thing 15 years ago for how the internet worked then it has little practical value now.
Your first post in this thread containing partisan flamebait getting flagged into destruction wasn't enough for you? You toned down the cultish political speech about 30% but posted effectively the same comment again. Your posts do not create useful discourse, they just create political flame wars with echo chamber 1 fighting echo chamber 2.
[Edit] Looking through your history you seem to often make similar political posts making biased, (in my opinion hate-based), partisan assertions and having people reply to you telling you this. There's Reddit/Twitter/etc for you to do this sort of thing.
There's wrong, and then there's "not appropriate for the site". I accept that I do veer into the "not appropriate for this site" category sometimes, and I understand and accept why I get flagged when I do so. But getting flagged is not evidence of being wrong. (And, as much as I wish I were wrong, I am unfortunately not.) I also disagree that it's not useful discourse -- ignoring the problem certainly isn't useful either. But I wouldn't post about it in Club Penguin and I understand if people don't want me to post about it in HN. It's a tricky line, because the article under discussion is inherently political. It's one thing to get flagged for off-topic in a tech thread, but it's harder for me to know where the line is when everyone else in the discussion is also talking politics.
As someone who was fortunate enough to see their previous comment, it sure wasn't wrong, though it sure was inconvenient for the Temporarily Embarrassed Billionaires here who are happy to sleepwalk the rest of us into fascism if it means making another buck.
As for rooting through their comment history, those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, my friend. So far yours is "cars good", "California bad", "won't someone think of the poor companies (unironically)", "public transit bad", "everyone does propaganda so it's okay when Russia does it". Is this comment hate-based, in your opinion?
I believe they are only restoring it to enact “security” aka more spying. I would like to see what the actual text of these policies are. The administration has its tentacles into too many tech companies already.
The doomsday "propaganda" didn't come to pass because several states and localities promptly passed their own net neutrality laws after it was deregulated at the federal level. The larger ISPs couldn't find a workable way to implement their non-neutral bullshit in some markets but not others, and the local ISPs in places with no net neutrality laws never really had enough clout to do crappy things in the first place.
If that didn't happen, and the ISPs started profiting off non-net-neutral tactics, it could have been permanently fucked.
Once someone depends on a legal source of income, if that source of income gets banned in the future, they generally get to keep that source of income "grandfathered in" if they take the issue to court.
> Once someone depends on a legal source of income, if that source of income gets banned in the future, they generally get to keep that source of income “grandfathered” forever if they take the issue to court.
That’s… not true.
Otherwise, all the people depending on selling drugs that were later banned would have been grandfathered in when the drugs were prohibited.
Even when there is a regulatory taking (that is, government regulations eliminate the value of existing property in a way that is considered a taking under the 5th amendment), the remedy is compensation for the lost value of the property, not a lifetime exemption from the regulation.
Hm. I would encourage a different, less intense angle here. It’s possible the doomsday didn’t come to pass because a lot of passionate people worked very hard to make sure we avoided it.
Possible, but is there any reason to believe so? I'm open to hear it.
The whole point was that companies like Comcast don't give a crap what we think and will engage in this anti competitive behavior unless the FCC stops them. Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt they would if it was in their financial interest.
But can we agree that it is also possible that market incentives aligned and the infographics depicting tv-bundle-like internet packages weren't actually around the corner? To me it seems like the easier explanation. The incentive could be as simple as Comcast not wanting a new monopoly court case or to start being classified as a utility in areas where they have no real competition.
Sure, maybe those bundles weren’t right around the corner. But the fight for NN probably incentivized the MBA grads to not explore those options with fervor.
And it’s very reasonable to assume that avoiding a monopoly case or being classified as a utility is enough of an incentive.
But I have a preference for putting up the defenses on all fronts when it comes to ISPs and their unlimited creative chicanery.
The null hypothesis is that market forces takes care of it. Like your airline ticket prices. The onus of proof is on you to market forces aren't enough.
Similarly, the FCC net neutrality rules allow telcos to charge any price for the service while disallowing blocking or throttling particular Internet sites or protocols. If such rules weren't indeed necessary, big telcos wouldn't be spending their money campaigning against them, would they?
Vote first, plan the project later. Allocate money to your donors then let them figure out how to go over budget and ask for 1.5X more in 5 years. All congressional laws are essentially money laundering operations now where the main priority is getting govt funds to your best donors. Gg.
This makes my week! Long overdue and finally the middle finger back to Comcast/Universal, Verizon, Spectrum, and AT&T etc. The regulations should never have been tampered with.
> Safeguard National Security – The Commission will have the ability to revoke the authorizations of foreign-owned entities who pose a threat to national security to operate broadband networks in the U.S. The Commission has previously exercised this authority under section 214 of the Communications Act to revoke the operating authorities of four Chinese state-owned carriers to provide voice services in the U.S. Any provider without section 214 authorization for voice services must now also cease any fixed or mobile broadband service operations in the United States.
That seems rather vague. The timing is also rather interesting, given the forced divestiture of TikTok.
> That seems rather vague. The timing is also rather interesting, given the forced divestiture of TikTok.
This is just a press release. The actual decision is more than 400 pages long and will come out in the next few days. Here's the draft of the order released three weeks ago: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401676A1.pdf (Of course, parts of this will inevitably be vague as well.)
The timing is almost certainly a coincidence. They started the process of adopting these rules as soon as they could after democrats regained a majority of seats on the FCC last year and got them done as fast as they could.
I'm not sure that's the order itself or just a very detailed "fact sheet" about the orde. It seems like it references the content of the order in great detail, allowing someone to figure it out, but I don't see the raw text of the rule there unless I just don't understand what FCC rules look like. I read a lot of FTC rules and court documents, but this the first time I'm looking for the full text of something the FCC voted on or was something close to it (like an earlier version of the exact document they voted on).
Yes that is just the "FCC FACT SHEET" as it says in the top title of the document. It is not the actual rule/action. It is also the exact same link that the poster just above me already gave.
>Yes that is just the "FCC FACT SHEET" as it says in the top title of the document. It is not the actual rule/action. It is also the exact same link that the poster just above me already gave.
No. The first page is the "fact sheet." The other 693 pages is the rule-making document.
Or are you unable to read past the first line of the first page?
Regarding the last line of your post, you may want to spend some time reading the HN commenting guidelines[0] and edit if you feel it's the right thing to do.
I did read a very thorough sample of the document. When I'm trying to find an actual "order" / "rule" / whatever, I'd be drawn to something like
> V. "REPORT AND ORDER: OPEN INTERNET RULES"
on page 264 and figure that might be the order. But all throughout that section it constantly has paragraphs that just contain language that obviously isn't an order / ruling / regulation, like on page 265:
> The Internet serves as a cornerstone for free expression, fostering a diverse and inclusive digital space where individuals can share ideas, opinions, and information without undue influence or interference. It promotes the exchange of diverse perspectives, ultimately enriching society by exposing individuals to a wide range of thoughts and experiences. As the Supreme Court noted in 1997, the Internet enables any person to “become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox.”
That's not a rule, that's just talking about stuff in general. When I read the FTC document about non-compete, it has hundred of pages like this, but then at the end of the document it has a clear section of legalese that contains the actual technical content of the rule. This document from the FCC does not have any section like that -- every section is mostly non-binding descriptive language, and I'm having trouble figuring out what, precisely, this ruling / order enacts, because this document spends most of its time justifying the action rather than actually enacting.
FWIW, virtually the whole document is "the Order" (in draft form--the final order has not been released yet). The FCC is a little unusual in that it regards the entirety of their written orders as legally binding (the normative parts, at least).
> When I read the FTC document about non-compete, it has hundred of pages like this, but then at the end of the document it has a clear section of legalese that contains the actual technical content of the rule.
You're probably looking for the "Final Rules" text. That's in Appendix A which starts on page 397. Again, though, the FCC would take the position that the whole final order is binding (once it's released and published in the federal register)--not just those formal rules. Yes, this does make it very challenging to understand the FCC's rules!
> No. The first page is the "fact sheet." The other 693 pages is the rule-making document.
You are incredibly rude for someone who is also incredibly wrong. It is strange that whenever we are one of those, we all seem far more likely to be the other as well.
Only the last two pages before the appendix is "the rule-making document", and the 4 pages of appendix A - just six pages in total. The rest is a dialogue on why the rules are needed and provide context to understand the intent of the rules. The rule starts at "X. ORDERING CLAUSES" on page 394 and is less than 2 pages long in total. It will also be necessary to fill in references made to "Appendix A" which is an additional 4 pages (397-401).
It's not surprising to me that both you and the other poster couldn't figure this out -- it's very easy to miss a section so small when it's titled similarly to sections like "IV. ORDER: FORBEARANCE FOR BROADBAND INTERNET ACCESS SERVICES" which are mostly discussion. That contains language like:
> Petitioners ask that the Commission reverse, vacate, or withdraw the RIF Remand Order, and request that the Commission initiate a new rulemaking to reclassify BIAS as a Title II service and reinstate the open Internet conduct rules. Collectively, petitioners make several procedural arguments for why the Commission should reconsider the RIF Remand Order. Common Cause et al. and Public Knowledge each assert that procedural deficiencies in the process the Commission used to adopt the RIF Remand Order are cause for reconsideration. Common Cause et al. argue that because the Commission failed to open the record to receive comment on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, it failed to adequately consider harms of reclassifying BIAS as a Title I service on public safety, pole attachments, and the Lifeline program.
Which is clearly not an order - it is a discussion with a goal towards justifying parts of the order.
There are also only 434 pages. Not anywhere close to "693". It would be very rude of me to point out that you might be "unable to read past the table of contents". To the contrary, I understand that it's easy to misinterpret the indexing of the table of contents as pages rather than sections, and I have empathy for someone making that mistake, even if it does demonstrate that someone probably hasn't tried to use the table of contents to actually read the document.
>You are incredibly rude for someone who is also incredibly wrong. It is strange that whenever we are one of those, we all seem far more likely to be the other as well.
Yep. That's me. I smell bad and like jazz too.
The order is reclassifying ISPs (or as named in the document, Broadband Internet Access Services -- BIAS) under Title II of the FCC Act of 1934 (as amended repeatedly over the past 90 years). I believe the below is the pointy end of the stick and the first sentence (set apart for specific folks -- see below) is, in fact, the order.
Since I'm already rude, obnoxious and wrong, I'll wonder aloud at folks' reading comprehension skills as well.
Part III (section 25) states:
We reinstate the telecommunications service
classification of BIAS under Title II of the
Act.
Reclassification will enhance the Commission’s
ability to ensure Internet openness, defend national
security, promote cybersecurity, safeguard public safety,
monitor network resiliency and reliability,
protect consumer privacy and data security, support
consumer access to BIAS, and improve disability
access. We find that classification of BIAS as a
telecommunications service represents the best reading
of the text of the Act in light of how the service is
offered and perceived today, as well as the factual and
technical realities of how BIAS functions. Classifying
BIAS as a telecommunications service also accords with
Commission and court precedent and is fully and
sufficiently justified under the Commission’s
longstanding authority and responsibility to classify
services subject to the Commission’s jurisdiction, as
necessary. We also ensure that consumers receive the same
protections when using fixed and mobile BIAS by
reclassifying mobile BIAS as a commercial mobile service.
Yes that section tells the audience what their new rules are doing, why they are doing it, and justification for how they’re allowed to do it. From your own quote choice:
> Classifying BIAS as a telecommunications service also accords with Commission and court precedent and is fully and sufficiently justified under the Commission’s longstanding authority and responsibility to classify services subject to the Commission’s jurisdiction, as necessary.
This is clearly discussion about the rules in the section X and Appendix A. It’s clearly not an actual rule itself.
The actual rule relevant to your quote is the new Section 8.3 that they are adding to Part 20 of Title 47.
The new part 20 is given on page 398 of the document that you linked. This new section 8.3 is the actual action they take to specifically classify BIAS as a Title II telecommunications service.
> the first sentence is, in fact, the order.
No, it's a more-easily accessible description of the order in something approaching plain English. The new Section 8.3 in Appendix A is the "pointy end of the stick" of the Title II order, to use your terminology. The rest of the document is describing these changes (section X and Appendix A) in more plain English.
The actual order for what you quoted is on page 394:
> 693. Accordingly, IT IS ORDERED, pursuant to the authority contained in sections 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 13, 201, 202, 206, 207, 208, 209, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 230, 251, 254, 256, 257, 301, 303, 304, 307, 309, 310, 312, 316, 332, 403, 501, 503, and 602 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended, and section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as amended, 47 U.S.C §§ 151, 152, 153, 154(i)-(j), 160, 163, 201, 202, 206, 207, 208, 209, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 230, 251, 254, 256, 257, 301, 303, 304, 307, 309, 310, 312, 316, 332, 403, 501, 503, 522, and 1302, that this Declaratory Ruling, Order, Report and Order, and Order on Reconsideration IS ADOPTED and that Parts 8 and 20 of the Commission’s Rules, 47 CFR Parts 8, 20, ARE AMENDED as set forth in Appendix A.
Specifically, the last little part:
> that Parts 8 and 20 of the Commission’s Rules, 47 CFR Parts 8, 20, ARE AMENDED as set forth in Appendix A.
That is the new rule. It is an actual change to Title 47. The rule is not what you quoted. What you quoted is not part of of any CFR. What you quoted is not federal code. Only Section X and Appendix A make actual changes to the "Code of Federal Regulations".
This is a reasonable supposition, but it's not true. The FCC can and has created a whole raft of specific rules that implement the m much broader Title II requirements as they apply to ISPs, including decisions not to impose certain Title II requirements (which is a power that the statute itself gives them).
If, say, you were an ISP, reading Title I and Title II would tell you very little about what you have to do to comply with the FCC's rules. You would have to read the actual FCC rules and the order to actually understand your legal obligations.
(Maybe you have in mind a quibble about what "rules" are. By "rules" I mean the U.S. government publications that tell you what you have to do in order to not be fined or punished in some other way by the U.S. government, and specifically the FCC.)
> The change being that ISPs are now regulated under Title II rather than Title I.
That is a description of the change. The changes made to Title 47 are how ISP's are actually being regulated under Title II. A translation of what they are saying in the changes to section 8.3 is:
"Because Title II gives us the authority to do so, we choose to regulate them using that authority from Title II by making these specific changes to Title 47."
Again, what you quoted is not part of any CFR. What you quoted is not federal code.
What I quoted is an actual change to federal code which is what actually regulates ISP's "under" the authority given by title II. The actual federal code being changed is: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-B... which has a note that "Title 47 was last amended 4/22/2024." but does not yet show the changes. The most recent version currently available is from changes enacted 12/06/2023. Within the next week or so it will show the changes made by Section X and Appendix A to CFR Title 47 "under" the authority granted by CFR Title II.
That is what it actually means "that ISPs are now regulated under Title II" (as you wrote). Saying "ISPs are now regulated under Title II" is just saying it. Changing Title 47 is actually doing it.
Opponents have been doing a victory lap for some time. COVID especially showed how much better the US Internet expands and contracts based on demands.
As far as I know, nobody has accused ISPs of throtteling Netflix.
The whole idea behind CDNs is we should stop treating all Internet users as equals, and connect based on geography. Not dystopian censorship, but the sort of thing neutrality enforcers would have to approve.
Many plans do throttle. On my “unlimited data” cell phone plan, YouTube, Netflix, etc all can only really load at 480p, even in areas where speeds are fast enough for hd video.
In those areas, I can use a vpn and easily get hd video.
Although, the cell network is pretty terrible where I am, and more often than not there is no hope for streaming hd video.
> This battle has been happening for a better part of a decade
Closer to 3; it started almost immediately after the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and the FCC first adopted nondiscrimination prinicples that underlie net neutrality as a basis for policy (but not as regulation) in 2004.
Fortunately this won't be the end of the world, as quite a few states and localities now have net neutrality laws of their own, which would presumably go back into effect if it were deregulated at the federal level again.
Of course, the FCC could presumably create a rule that explicitly allows ISPs to do non-neutral shenanigans, and then the DoJ could start suing states, saying the federal rule preempts them. Not sure how that would pan out, though I'm sure the current composition of SCOTUS would be fine backing the FCC in this case, if the challenges got that far.
By "they" you mean voters. This policy isn't top priority for very many voters, but the battle lines on this are clear. Trump will overturn (he already did once). Biden will protect it. A vote for Trump is a vote to overturn.
Obama set the FCC on a course to lower jail and prison phone call prices (which is understood to decrease recidivism by keeping prisoners in contact with their support systems).
Trump came in and replaced the FCC head with this guy:
As a United States immigrant, I had never heard of the fairness doctrine before. My first thought is: how would it be compatible with the freedom of the press granted by the First Amendment?
There's a ton of precedence for fraud protection law blocking perverse applications of the first amendment. The right to free speech is not a right to commit fraud or slander against another. If it were, society would fall into catastrophic disarray. I can say what I want, but if I lie to you or try to trick or swindle you there are allowed to be consequences.
It should be obvious here that even the most succinctly and universally stated rights have certain correct limits needed to protect society from individual selfishness.
So the fairness doctrine can be seen as compatible with the first amendment in exactly the same way that consumer protection laws against false advertising are compatible with the first amendment, because it is observably the case that a media institution selectively using its platform to attempt to control and direct the public mindset in a particular direction is itself a form of intentional public harm for selfish interests.
> For example, the right to free speech is not a right to commit fraud or slander against another. If it were, society would fall into catastrophic disarray.
Fraud and slander are not illegal purely on the basis of content of the speech used to conduct the activities. A sufficiently culpable and provable malicious intent must also exist. It's not fraud or slander to state an opinion one sincerely believes in, and obtain money or credibility for it.
> So the fairness doctrine can be seen as compatible with the first amendment in exactly the same way that consumer protection laws against false advertising are compatible with the first amendment in a world where it is observably the case that a media institution selectively using its platform to direct the public mindset is itself a form of intentional public harm for selfish interests.
I don't think you understand what the fairness doctrine was in practice or why it existed. It's regulation of private conduct. It didn't begin with television, but rather radio at the end of WW2 in an attempt to prevent future Father Caughlins from having access to a private audience over the airwaves. GE and RCA were not their targets. If anything, the fairness doctrine stifled competitive and independent media over the airwaves, with most such individuals and organizations functionally limited to local broadcast where they could get away with it and newsletters.
The doctrine never applied to Voice of America or "friendly" news organizations and the FCC wasn't compelled to apply it equally across the political spectrum (so much for equal liberty under the law!). If one wanted to provide supportive commentary on the Kennedy's invasion of Vietnam without a competing voice denouncing it, one was free to do so without fear of a costly suit or a revoked broadcasting license. Just like most regulations, the fairness doctrine was little more than a selectively used cudgel for political purposes. Even the Wikipedia page for the topic cites members of previous administrations making admitting to it.
> Fraud and slander are not illegal purely on the basis of content of the speech used to conduct the activities. A sufficiently culpable and provable malicious intent must also exist.
Now point me to where the first amendment says "except in cases where a sufficiently culpable and provable malicious intent also exists". It doesn't say that. It makes no concessions and imposes no bounds itself on the right to declare things freely at all. It states the complete and universal right without any caveats whatsoever. And yet here we are anyway with protection laws imposing caveats, and nobody can faithfully claim that product truthful labeling regulations should be declared unconstitutional, because there is no contradiction between the two if read with a clear mind toward building society rather than destroying it.
I think you just said: these are contradictory, and then you did a cognitive dissonance to avoid that conclusion by saying but it's fine, because I want to build society.
But the "Anti-Free/Speech Anti-1A ideas = building society" is just a fallacy that have been assumed.
Here, it's even admitted: "It states the complete and universal right without any caveats whatsoever,". then you do the dissonance dance because you don't like that very much.
Our founding fathers should have included a list of definitions (and a list of definitions to those definitions...), but they probably didn't realize how catty their future generations would be, or how much they like being oppressed because it makes them feel safe.
There's a difference between "states" and "justly means". The words do not include all of the things that are obviously just and true. It is obviously just and true, both to the official dedicated arbiters of such things, and also to anyone else who thinks even a little bit about the consequences of fraud, that the rights granted by the first amendment necessarily only work with unstated conditions.
No, there isn't. Anyone who thinks so is experiencing cognitive dissonance. It is what happens when a normally smart person encounters info that they consider unacceptable, so their brain protects them by turning off logic and engaging emotions.
They stated very clearly what it means. You do not like that, so you are playing definition games because you cannot tolerate the reality of the matter.
Have as anybody ever done any research into the consequences of removing consequences from your average person through excessive government smothering (protection for some depending on your upbringing).
This causes the lowest common denominator to live and influence the world much more vividly than ever before. And our politicians are super cool with that because it's their secret for creating long political careers.
So, they subsidize the lowest common denominators of society, the ones that would have dunning-krugered themselves ten times over, then the politicians tell them if they want to survive, they have to vote for us, or the other guy will take your livelihood. 9/10 times it's a lie, but they're super easy to manipulate and cheap to subsidize (buy votes - this cheapness is important to their super PACs low cost per vote is just simple business, better to buy one McConnell or Pelosi than 5 fresh faces) so they keep the voters miserable, in pain, and desperate for government help.
But what is this doing to the average competency of humans overall? This group of low-understanders keep demanding that we put together more bureaucracy and regulations slowing down progress so the politicians can look like they're doing something when they should be demanding the opposite and instead pushing for transparency and consumer choice laws. These nip profits pretty badly though, so our bought politicians never push the idea.
Even this Net Neutrality scuffle is just them creating solutions to problems they've already caused with overregulation creating no competition. Then we get the lowest common denominators cheering it and it's just sad.
> Have as anybody ever done any research into the consequences of removing consequences from your average person
For a lot of it, yeah, it's called history.
Generally speaking, the consequences we have now are because of what was seen to happen when we didn't have them before. Regulations nearly always happen after the fact. Laws against stealing happen because people are stealing, and that's bad. Laws against murder happen because people are murdering, and that's bad. Laws against putting asbestos in things happen because people are putting asbestos in things, and that's bad. Laws against fraud happen because people are doing fraud, and that's bad. Laws about net neutrality happen because ISPs start enacting or publicly preparing to enact abusive policies. You don't need to remove the consequences. We already know what things were like before we started applying them.
Are the consequences we have now the right consequences? That's a much harder question to answer.
So, I said one thing (The US government subsidizes low agency individuals, who drag the rest down by existing, so that they can keep a stable population from which to buy votes on the cheap), and you completely ignored it to start straw-manning something unrelated (simping for regulations).
These are unrelated, so I'm not sure how you got there.
The FTC chair and this honestly is the best reason to vote for the Biden Administration (I feel like at this point whose in office largely doesn't matter 98% of the time, they're too old and or self absorbed to be heavily involved). Really just voting for the people they put in charge of everything below them, which was always the case, just more so now.
This has generally been my opinion on the office of the President. The actual quality of the administration comes from the level underneath the chief executive and I have been very pleased with the people in this administration.
The FTC, Department of Interior and FCC all seem like they have very competent (and non-corrupt!) people running them. Can't say I have strong feelings on Biden but I think he's shown good sense in who he appoints to actually manage the Executive Branch.
Now if only Buttigieg was a more than a do nothing position and the FAA/FDA, etc stopped acting like captured agencies and do their jobs.
Boeing is like what, our one major airline manufacturer and because they're part of the military industrial complex, they get a free pass and get to murder whistle blowers after asking them to stay an extra day in town.
I think these are great reasons to vote for Biden (or Democrats in general), but... I mean... the best reasons? I'd think the best reason would be not putting the country back into the hands of a wannabe dictator who has said he will target his political opponents if he's re-elected. That seems quite a bit more high stakes than the good work that the FTC and now FCC have been doing on Biden's watch.
Interesting to see this come through effectively at the same time as the law granting powers that allows the government to ban TikTok and others in the future.
I can't help but assume there's a connection there. I also don't know why the new law allowing a ban on foreign influenced social media would be necessary if the FCC decides again that it can regulate ISPs as utilities. Weren't the powers there already strong enough to force an ISP-level ban on a service deemed a national security threat?
Your assumption is wrong. The net neutrality fight is older than TikTok. The process for this vote started in September. It would have started in 2021 if Biden's FCC nominee was approved. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act does not involve the FCC. Regulating ISPs as utilities does not empower the FCC to force ISPs to block services. Never mind regulate app stores and hosting services.
I wasn't actually proposing that the FCC would have the power to remove apps from the app store, only that they could force ISPs to block specific servers.
I was thinking the FCC regulations would have that power to implement such a ban based on national security, though I could be wrong. I'd have to look back at the Patriot Act as well, I'd expect that to offer similar powers but I don't remember for sure.
The quote "markets can stay irrational for longer than you can stay solvent" comes to mind.
Governments can stay irrational longer than you can stay vigilant.
It's frustrating that a decision can be made at great effort in support of net neutrality, only for a new bill to easily be introduced that undermines it yet again.
I guess that's a feature of democracy, not a bug. But I can imagine these battles gets harder and harder to win as time progresses.
Despite the required process for changing regulations in a log of executive branch agencies, I feel like laws Congress passes are a bit more durable. Even with a different majority, there's still horse-trading that needs to go on to get things done, and it's not always easy to push through things that are unpopular with the minority party. With executive branch agencies, whoever is in the White House pretty much has complete control, modulo rules that slow things down, anyway.
IMO this is why communities should do everything they can to build their own infrastructure independent of these massive institutions that can't possibly represent their needs - some being comcast, others being the USA federal government.
It's worth noting that these agencies and their powers did not spring up out of thin air. Various elected Congress sessions wrote the laws that created and empowered these agencies to create rules.
This is a reasonable implementation of a "democratic republic" as Congress still has oversight.
The problem with merely having regulations rather than laws is not a concern that they may not have proper legal authority, but that they are less durable and more easily overturned than laws passed by Congress and signed by the President.
I agree, and I'd rather Congress weigh in now that we've had this specific issue flip-flop twice. I do not like the implication that agency rulemaking is anti-democratic though. We have utilized this structure for well over 120 years, or practically half of the country's history.
We have always had things like executive orders. Just an insane number are issued between the Great Depression and WWII, and then we have 100 years of using them as a ham fisted tool for policy.
You may not like it being pointed out, but having rules made by appointed regulators rather than elected legislators is obviously anti-democratic. Yes, delegating powers like this is a practical necessity, but having made that reasonable tradeoff does not erase the reality that it's a less than perfectly democratic process. So is the structure of Congress itself.
First, the US is not a pure democracy. We elect representatives on our behalf to handle voting on matters. So dismissing something as "anti-democratic" is not applicable here.
Our elected officials set up a system where a series of agencies under the Executive Branch may create rules, but the elected officials have oversight authority.
If you disagree, you may petition your state government for a constitutional amendment that prohibits this practice and advocate for additional states to join in.
> So dismissing something as "anti-democratic" is not applicable here.
[...]
> If you disagree, you may petition your state government for a constitutional amendment
I think you're misinterpreting what's being said here in order to over-react. I don't think anyone in this thread is saying that executive orders and delegating powers to appointed regulators should be expunged from our system of government. But they should be acknowledged as a necessary evil, and their use minimized when possible, and not allowed to completely replace the legislative process. Whereas you seem to be defending taking those practices to the extreme simply because of historical precedent.
> I think you're misinterpreting what's being said here in order to over-react.
If you can point out how I'm misinterpreting, I'm open to discuss. From what it appears though, we have a disagreement on what we wish to delegate to different branches of government.
> But they should be acknowledged as a necessary evil, and their use minimized when possible
I disagree that executive agency rulemaking is a "necessary evil". Congress can simultaneously be derelict in their duties as a legislative body while having a executive regulatory apparatus that creates rules under their purview.
> Whereas you seem to be defending taking those practices to the extreme simply because of historical precedent.
If not for historical precedent and recognizing the practices we've been utilizing for 4-5 generations of people, what should we prioritize?
> rules made by appointed regulators rather than elected legislators is obviously anti-democratic
The people making the appointments are elected. It is obviously democratic.
The general population can't get together to vote on everything, so we elect representatives to do that job for us. Our representatives can't make rules on minutia, so they appoint regulators. Don't like the regulators? Go talk to your representative.
The opposite is worse: I live in a town that still has old-style town meeting where any resident can show up. It's tyranny of whoever has time to show up and stay up late, because someone will always create an amendment at 11PM to overrule a town-wide vote.
It’s not scope creep as much as recognizing that Congress is less functional than it used to be. Obstruction has been normalized since the backlash to Obama’s election – think about how often people claim you need 60 votes in the senate – and that means anyone who sees a problem has an incentive to figure out how to do it without needing timely action.
You'd rather have some idiotic trash that's been elected to congress have to decide what a safe dose of a drug is than an agency largely staffed by people with deep medical training?
You'd rather have such a decision be at the whims of political showboating and culture wars than what can be proven safe and effective with actual medical testing?
I'd argue that a better use of legislature time would be to find ways to reduce the clout of political beliefs in people appointed to high level positions in the agencies rather than requring the useless fools eleceted to congress getting final say in what the rules are.
Seriously do you think the jewish space laser lady should have any say in sattelites or forest fires? Do you really want the moron that thinks injecting bleach is a viable cure to decide what makes for good medicine? Do you want a fool who think's an ar-15 with a certain set of cosmetics is a scary bad gun, but an ar-15 with hunting stocks isn't the exact same weapon to decide firearm policy?
Those are the people you are suggesting should make the decisions on specifics?
I blame this squarely on the congress. Congress has been the weakest it’s ever been, passing almost nothing substantial. If we had to rely on them to ensure basic things like drug approvals we never have anything. They can barely get funding passed to fund themselves!
Perhaps because Democrats control half of Congress today, and the general trend of Congressional avoidance-of-clear-rulemaking has been the same even during those periods that Dems or Republicans control both chambers.
The filibuster makes this kind of 'control' moot. You need a filibuster proof majority in the Senate and a majority in the House to actually get anything done (and the Presidency, to not veto). 'Control of half of Congress' when that half is the house, is meaningless.
That applies equally when each party is the filibuster-sized minority in the Senate.
And: if Senate majorities really want to pass something, they can change the filibuster rules – and have, for some topics.
Otherwise, the filibuster is maintained out of tradition, courtesy, and its usefulness as a change-of-control 'debounce' mechanism – as well as providing a convenient excuse for posturing more and doing less, as Congress is wont.
Still, in other eras, Congress was able to move compromise legislation forward. Recently, Congress has been unable to – both parties, no matter the relative control. Any belief that it's only "the other guys" is partisan myside blindness.
Congress creates and funds agencies. Agencies write the regulations. This is all specified in the law that was passed. FCC commission makeup is defined by law and their authority is defined by law.
Unsurprisingly, Kavanaugh and the rest of the conservatives would prefer this approach be relegated to history. Of course, the areas of particular interest that he cites as examples (securities e.g, finance, communications, and environmental laws) just happen to be those where the two parties could not possibly be further apart in their approaches.
I don't see the relevance to the topic being discussed.
The fact remains that the ATF enjoys the ability to unilaterally revise firearm policy well beyond what many find reasonable without a change in law made by Congress.
This scenario is precisely why the outcome of Chevron is useful -- and, I'd argue, vital in addressing areas where legislation is needed, even if we still disagree about what shape it might take.
Congress' process takes too long to adapt to conditions on the ground. The ATF has a focused mandate to study and set policy in this area without waiting for Congress to consider the issue. It might not be perfect and is still subject to political influencing as the makeup of the committee changes based on appointments, but at least something gets done.
Regarding the FCC, there is some prioritization based on the type of traffic served, but it's fairly commonsense in its approach and the committee recognized that a complete lack of regulation wasn't in the public's best interest.
The idea that everything is left to Congress -- or ignored, as the case may be -- creates a situation where good ideas don't develop into meaningful legislation or the bad ones get implemented over the will of the majority.
Again, not only does this not happen in parliamentary systems, it's not possible because the people debating the issue are all on the same side. They all agree on the desired outcome, it's rather a question of how far they want to go.
It seems to me that the Chevron doctrine has essentially created a fourth branch of government with minimal democratic oversight. It feels like an end run around the constitution. In many cases the agencies exercise legislative, executive, and judicial powers all at the same time.
In case you are unaware, but congress has been DEEPLY dysfunctional for the past 30 years, and has been getting worse every session. Even this week it was shocking news that a bipartisan bill managed to even come to a vote.
This is what happens when the party that doesn't have the White House chooses obstruction and enforces the the Hastert Rule.
Yet in functioning legislative bodies (think: parliamentary systems), employing something like Hastert doesn't require any enforcement at all.
They don't typically require supermajorities to pass laws, and those in the minority don't have the means to substantively object to bills they disagree with.
I should have been more precise - the Senate's rules are garbage and should be hurled into the Sun. More generally, my comments come from watching PMQ's in the House of Commons and seeing that the party out of power really doesn't have many tools to slow down the opposite sides agenda.
If such a system was implemented in the US, it would force politicians to more carefully consider their positions -- no confidence votes and a motion to vacate serve the man functional purpose as a stick to get people in line, which might not otherwise be possible if they consistently took unpopular positions.
You’re fundamentally misunderstanding what is going on. There are a majority number of votes to support popular legislation. These bills are simply not brought to a vote BY THE MAJORITY PARTY due to internal majority party politics.
Nothing in your facile proposal would remedy this. What would fix the problem would be change to the rules so that simple majority could bring legislation to a vote. This does not exist in any functional way.
And we haven’t even touched on the fact that the majority of seats are often controlled by a minority of voters due to gerrymandering and the constitutional structure of the senate.
I'm well aware of the procedural votes that occur before something goes before the entire House or Senate...which serve no other practical purpose than to slow things down. It should not be possible under any circumstances for a single vote -- in an instance where that vote would not make or break a tie among the majority -- to doom a bill that a majority of the caucus supports.
Glares in the direction of the Freedom Caucus, many of whom should have been expelled from Congress after 1/6
In addition, the shitshow that is the amendment process demonstrates that our representatives have long forgotten how to craft comprehensive legislation that has even a chance of addressing all potential concerns.
Again, if I had a magic wand for a day to fix Congress, I'd dissolve it and reconstitute the chambers as a parliament...but how exactly to do that is an argument for another day.
If I had my way I’d create a unicameral legislature with a combination of multimember districts and at-large party list seats in the vein of Germany’s Bundestag.
On a slightly more reasonable note, I’d be happy with just eliminating all state senates nationwide, similar to Nebraska.
You really blame republicans like when the shoe is on the other foot the other party doesn’t do the exact same tactics of blatantly stalling bills they don’t like and overall slowing government to a crawl.
Congress does not want to have to learn the minutia of every aspect of things that are regulated. Delegating responsibility to the relevant agencies is exactly how Congress operates.
Our legislative branch abdicated its power when they stopped bothering to pass laws that people actually want.
If the FTC and FCC weren't doing either of these things, they simply wouldn't happen. As soon as a Net Neutrality or non-compete clause ban bill makes it to the senate floor, Republicans will just filibuster it, even though public opinion is overwhelmingly in support of both these measures.
While I support both of those things, I don't see any problem requiring the legislature to actually legislate to make them happen. If the public felt strongly about these issues they would just remove their representatives next election.
Just because I happen to agree with the actions of the agency in this case is not enough to justify handing legislative power over to bureaucratic agencies that do not have any of the checks and balances that are supposed to exist in our system.
> that do not have any of the checks and balances that are supposed to exist in our system.
But they do have the same checks and balances. All of these rules are open to judicial review and there is a whole process in place due to the Administrative Procedure Act. In fact there are more rules for these agencies like having public commenting periods after which they're required by law to consider that input when making their rules.
One of the things the legislative branch can do is delegate their powers to organizations better equipped to understand complex issues.
These organizations, which function as part of the executive branch, are still subject to checks and balances from both the legislative and judicial branches. The legislative branch has the power to change the laws that govern what these agencies can or cannot do, and the judicial branch has the power to determine if their actions go against either the laws passed by the legislature or the constitution.
Banning regulatory agencies from doing their job would hamstring our government's ability to regulate anything, which is probably why monied interests like to argue that their very existence is unconstitutional.
This is the equivalent of a CEO/C-suite delegating decision making to various teams and leaders below them. They still add laws and appoint the leaders of those organizations, but can't be involved in every decision.
Can't expect every single item in the government to get direct democracy, the world would grind to a halt due to the sheer number of decisions needed to be made.
