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Samizdata quote of the day The number of “techie” people who are in favour of government regulation of the internet is especially depressing. It reminds me of George Orwell (himself a socialist) who complained that when other socialists said “under socialism” they really meant “everyone else under socialism – and me on top if it”.
The techie types think government regulation will put them in charge – so they can do lots of good, and not have to worry about grubby businessmen obsessed with money…
They are fools – they are fools with wonderful technical skills, but they are still fools.
– Paul Marks
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Just wait until the government pivots operation choke point to do to the porn and video game industry and starts going after TOR nodes.
After all, the internet is a utility, and the government gets to regulate utilities ALL THE WAY DOWN.
William that has been on the cards for quite some time. Especially noteworthy here is how the (fairly) recent act in the UK banning violent and extreme pornography is so usefully vague. In the states of course quite some time back was the PGP fiasco. In which a freely available encryption system was deemed a “weapons system”. It is interesting to note that the Enigma system was initially aimed at the civilian market and no body batted an eyelid.
Problem is that phone and optic fibre networks are a “Natural Monopoly”; like water and electricity, it’s not economic to lay multiple supply lines to every point. In the UK, the “solution”, especially with electricity and gas, has been to separate out the physical network from the energy delivered over it; the end user pays his “supplier” for the amount passing through his meter, but it’s all the same gas / electricity; the supplier just buys x cubic metres of gas and makes sure it’s delivered tothe network. The savings to the customer, or the profit to the supplier, depends on how much the supplier can screw down the costs of the sales and billing operation, and the skill (or luck) of his buyers on the futures market.
This is clearly a highly artificial arrangement, so it’s unsurprising to me, but not to our politicians, that there is little difference in the tarriffs of different suppliers.
The other anomaly is that when there is a breakdown in the physical network – usually due to bad weather – the customer has to complain to his contracted supplier, who can actually do nothing except complain to the network maintenance contractor.
Cable TV has never really take off in the UK; there were originally independent companies in each area, but they have all merged into one. British Telecom’s network is now farmed out to a separate company (Openreach), and “independent” broadband and phone suppliers generally piggyback off this, at least for the “final mile”, although some have their own networking kit and dedicated lines installed at the local telephone exchange. So the same problems apply.
These are the “solutions” that the last Conservative government came up with, but they don’t really address the Natural Monopoly situation.
If this is about government prying on the internet in the interests of National Insecurity, I’m surprised that they haven’t insisted on microphones being installed in every cubicle in every coffee shop, so they can listen out for terrorists there.
Or maybe they have … [reaches for tin foil hat]
J.E.
For Heavens sakes, don’t give them ideas. They come up with enough on their own.
Virgin television have pestered me for years to switch to them for telephone and television.
The reason I do not is because they do not carry Fox News (which I get via my Sky sat dish) – not because they do not have fibre optic cable in my street.
Virgin do have fibre optic cable in my street.
Yeah, we’ve had Virgin cable since the early days of cable. Before Virgin it was called NTL, and before that something else which I’ve long forgotten. We average about one A4 mailshot per week; it goes straight into the round filing cabinet – and I thought Branson was supposed to care about the planet.
If I were going to watch Fox News, I really would need a tin hat – especially as I live in a Moslem no-go area … 😉
Public opinion seems to be divided on government email monitoring; I don’t imagine so many would be in favour of microphones in coffee shops – or even just a record of who you spoke to, as with phone records.
But your Islamic neighbours do not need to know what you are watching Mr Evans.
Although if you really do live in a big city you should consider selling up and moving to a village.
I was out in the villages a few miles from my home town today.
I can not live in such a place – I can not drive.
But if you are a car person why live where you are?
Perhaps Mr Marks is the fool.
Perhaps the techies actually understand the arguments behind the net neutrality debate. The service providers have made deliberate attempts to muddy the waters, and they appear to have succeeded.
I’m no fan of big government and it’s regulations but the US ISP “market” is a basket case. In the short term only government has the clout to affect real change for the benefit of consumers, if it can free itself from the clammy hands of the lobbyists.
I hate BT Openreach (yes, they are part of BT) who have spent 6+ months (sorry for the techie term) fucking around to no end not installing fibre in my area. They, like the rest of BT are arseholes with an unbelievable level of entitlement. I hate the whole BT group and the take-over of EE is the final straw. It’s as though privatisation never happened.
Paul, I see no reason why you couldn’t go to Virgin for a better deal with better tech and still get Fox on the internet.
‘The number of “techie” people who are in favour of government regulation of the internet is especially depressing.’
Have you any evidence that ‘techie’ people are any more in favour of government regulation of the internet than the rest of the population?
Except that is not what he actually wrote, so why would he have evidence of that? Like Paul, I too have seen people on tech forums (and here) who you would think know better supporting more regulation, and that is all he actually said.
And the word ‘but’ means actually yes, you are of the view that big government and regulation are the solution, which does rather make you a fan.
So answer this: do you think ISPs in the USA operate in a ‘free market’?
And even if they somehow miraculously ‘fix’ the ‘problem’ in the ‘short term’, now that the state has the power to regulate the net this way, there will be no long term adverse effects from this fundamental expansion of state power, yes?
Oh and this will happen… how exactly? And are you actually of the view that state regulators are (1) totally savvy and moreover are (2) purely committed to nothing whatsoever but the interests of the consumer if only it was not for lobbyists? Really? They have zero institutional objectives of their own?
Super, very, very SILLY flintwhinger; So the nearly hundred years of the damage made by the excessive governments around the world, the crippling, unpayable debt inflicted by the socialist and leftist regimes on the hard and smart working people is not enough to you?
Still hallucinating about your little, nasty, privileged position in some overblown local government that will enable you to live your worthless, unproductive and PARASITIC life without being exposed to the discomfort of being forced to compete with more capable than yourself?
Grow up you pathetic misfit…
Perry
In spite of your attempting to re-interpret my words I am no big gov supporter. My understanding of the US ISP market is that is not now, nor ever really has been a free market. The current big ISPs have gained an anti-competitive advantage largely through government grant, and yes I do realise the irony of suggesting more govt interference as a solution.
The problem as I see it is that the powerbase created by Comcast/Verizon/TW needs something equally powerful as a counter – every unchecked powerbase becomes abusive sooner or later. There is no market to act as that counter. If there way a realistic was to create to truly competitive market, bring it on. The only apparent threat to the current stranglehold appears to be Google and their fibre network, but even with their money it’s going to take time to rollout. In the meantime the comsumers are being bent over a barrel.
Do I really think the lobbyists and vested interests will be unable to corrupt any attempts to enforce neutrality – not really, but I don’t really see a viable alternative – depressing.
Net Neutrality means no one messing with traffic – no one, not govt, not big business. What I send you get. It’s been part of the success of the Internet. New ideas can come from anywhere and be successful with no permission, and no toll, required from anyone. Skype is the classic example. I want that to continue. I don’t want to see a situation where what I see and what I do is controlled by my ISP as it was in the AOL walled garden days.
Bogdan… seriously dude at least be rational. And FWIW, in my 30 year career I’ve never had a public sector job.
flitwhingle:
Mr Marks is no fool, but on this he is wrong, and wrong in a way that exemplifies why libertarians are often believed by others to be pro-business instead of pro-market.
Some large US ISPs, in common with some formerly State-owned monopoly ISPs in mainland Europe, want to charge content providers for ‘access’ to end users, as well as end-users for access to the Internet. The network neutrality debate is about whether this should be permitted.
Partly because this debate pits rowdy leftist activist groups against corporations (and so generates the rhetoric usually found in such disputes), a sizable segment of US libertarians assume they ought to be on the side of the ISPs. It would be better to consider the issue, rather than using the participants as a proxy.
So what is wrong with an ISP (e.g. Comcast) charging a content provider (e.g. Netflix) for access to Comcast customers? Mostly, from the point of view of the customer, the objection lies in the fact that Comcast’s customers have already paid Comcast to be able to send and receive Internet traffic from Netflix. If Comcast then impairs the quality of those transmissions in an attempt to extract further revenues from Netflix, they aren’t doing what they promised the customer, namely provide Internet access.
If that is the nature of the complaint, what would a libertarian solution be? Firstly, as a customer I would want to be able to sue Comcast for breach of contract. The US even has the notion of class action lawsuits, to make that easier. Unfortunately for the customer, the ISP writes the contract, there is no possibility of negotiation or amendment, and the terms of the contract preclude any realistic possibility for the customer to obtain any form of redress for breach by the ISP. So therein lies the first libertarian basis for government intervention in network neutrality: one of the jobs of government is to enforce contracts, and this includes preventing parties to a contract being able to wriggle out of the fundamental basis of the contract.
You might argue that the ISP wrote the right to do this into the terms of the contract. I would counter that that is immaterial. The basis of an Internet access contract is that the customer gets Internet access: it’s not open to the ISP to claim “well if you read the fine print I never really promised you’d be able to access anything at all”. A limitation of the promise of reachability, as intended to absolve the ISP from circumstances beyond its control, such as Netflix’s own network being broken, is one thing: when such a clause is abused to allow the ISP to deliberately restrict access, in order to be paid twice over, such behaviour amounts to a fraud upon the customer.
I wonder if Paul Marks would react so negatively to net neutrality if the government were to treat this as reform of contract law, designed to inhibit fraud and ensure customers were better able to enforce contracts with large corporations, instead of a case for sector specific regulation?
There is another libertarian objection to what I have said. If customers are unhappy, why do they not leave and sign up with another ISP that serves them better? In reply, I will set aside claims of natural monopoly; although it is empirically undeniable that in much of the USA there are only two – or perhaps just one – ISPs available, such claims will not convince alone. But it is worth pointing out the vast government subsidies that US ISPs have received, which crowd out any possibility of an alternative provider being established. These subsidies take the form of direct cash grants (some allegedly intended to achieve broadband roll-out in less well connected areas, though the success of this policy even it is own terms is highly dubious) and also take the form of regulatory protection (for example, by giving favoured operators privileged access to rights of way “wayleaves” not available to new entrants). Finally, in many cases existing ISPs have been granted a formal monopoly: many US municipalities have “sold” to one telco and one cable co each the right to be the sole telco/cable co within that district.
So we are not talking about free market entrepreneurs being exploited by government leeches. We are talking about entrenched crony-corporatist rent-seekers, already closely intertwined with government, against whom there is a colourable moral case for fraud, albeit not one that would stand up in court. In that context, ask yourself: is a government regulation preventing this one specific form of abuse so very wrong? Or this: if you don’t want a network neutrality law, how would you address this problem, here and now? I am sure you would want to unwind the relationship between the ISPs and government, so would I; but don’t kid yourself that this will be done any time soon, or indeed that it could be done easily or soon.
Finally, please note that I addressed these remarks to the abstract concept of a network neutrality law. I’m not talking specifically about Title II reclassification: that looks like a power-grab by the FCC, for all that Verizon brought it on themselves by successfully arguing in court that nothing short of Title II would suffice.
Thank you Mary for your eloquence and insight. You’re right of course Mr Marks is probably no fool, but his glib dismissal of techies as fools rankled (I am a techie if it weren’t already obvious).
You’re also correct to draw a distinction between Net Neutrality as a concept and what the FCC is currently trying to do. I have no idea whether or not the FCC will achieve the goal of NN or anything close. However I do view the fact that the big ISPs are complaining bitterly as a good sign.
I’ve always been amazed how a person like Orwell could be a socialist. Did he read his own book?
flintwingel:
That would be a mistake. Title II has traditionally been used to do some really unwise things that the ISPs desperately want to avoid, like impose price controls (with very fine grained regulation of prices for different situations), force some classes of customers to cross-subsidise others, and so forth. Even though the FCC protests that it intends to “forbear” from using these powers in this way, an ISP would have to be – oh what’s the word? – a complete fool to trust the FCC on this. Maybe Mr Marks had some of this in mind.
If you want to convert techies to the small government cause, you have to present information in ways that they like to receive it. Measure the actual performance and provoke government into hiding information.
In the US it’s so bad that we lack:
1. A comprehensive list of governments
2. A comprehensive map of their jurisdictions
3. A listing of what governments actually do
Without these three things you can’t actually measure what’s going on and if it, in fact, is the goat rodeo that libertarians assert it is. Techies like to measure things. They like to iterate through lists. They like to automate oversight. Over the space of decades, nobody in the small government space in the US has ever actually gone to the trouble of assembling the basic prerequisites of crafting an attractive message to techies. It really is astonishing.
Mary – I will acknowledge the danger of falling into the “something must be done, this is something….” trap but as I see it only govt has the necessary power to take on the big ISPs and they have few tools at their disposal. The ideal outcome would be something closer to a properly functioning market, but I see that as less likely than a favourable outcome from FCC intervention.
TMLutas – I’m sure you didn’t mean for your post to come across as quite as patronising as it does.
The problem as I see it is that the powerbase created by Comcast/Verizon/TW needs something equally powerful as a counter – every unchecked powerbase becomes abusive sooner or later. There is no market to act as that counter.
There is no market to act as that counter because the government completely utterly fucked it up. Giving government more power, which is what so-called “net neutrality” is, is not the answer.
If you want an eye-opener, read Virginia Postrel’s Reason magazine piece. It’s from 2000, but a good primer of how we got into this fucked-up situation in the first place. Granted, it’s about cable TV and not providing the internet, but much of the data is being provided by the same companies through the same “wires”. There’s a triumvirate of bad guys here: the cable/satellite providers; the government; and the content providers including local over-the-air broadcasters. (Reason has had several articles on “net neutrailty” this week, quite good for the most part.)
Paul Marks may be a tedious gasbag, but he’s not a fool. And yes, he’s right that “net neutrality” is going to be a disaster. Most of the calls for it seem ultimately to come down to “Comcast sucks and has a big pile of money! That’s just not fair!” Having government fuck them over out of jealousy is supposed to be a virtue?
Free Minitel for everybody!
Indeed. The solution being offered to a mess that the state caused is… more state. Well gosh, who would ever have expected that?
Why do I need an ISP gateway, with a door man, to “access” the interwebs?
Admittedly rhetorical, but..
“put it in terms that techies understand…?”
“Gub’mint” will penalize Hot Pockets, Caffeinated soda pop, and ALL Page Six girls.
“It’s for your own good!”
Gosh, I wonder if “gub’mint” actions, “For the good of the whole”, have EVER resulted in
HIGHLY lucrative “black market” venues for (previously known as) specialists?
” Perhaps the techies actually understand the arguments behind the net neutrality debate.”
Perhaps it’s not that they’re stupid, it’s just that they KNOW so many things that just aren’t so?
Bootleggers and Baptists, useful idiots,…or something.
“Oh please Brer Fox, whatever you do, please don’t throw me into the briar patch.”
You don’t need the doorman, but you need someone willing to swap packets with you. The *cheapest* way to do that is to contact with an existing ISP.
Ulimately it’s the fault of the American consumer, who are also voters. They want everything, unrestricted, and at the cheapest possible rates.
Thus we get Comcast, the airline industry, and Congress.
Philosopher Kings of Plato or the Technological Rulers of Francis Bacon’s “The New Atlantis” (1610).
The “natural monopoly” argument being used to justify statism (it justifies no such thing, even where this is a “natural monopoly”).
And people who think the wise use of government power can benefit consumers – as long as government acts in such-and-such a way.
People who want a barking cat – a wise and noble government.
No wonder the late Chris Tame largely stopped discussing things with people in general – years before his death.
I am starting to understand how he felt.
One hears the same collectivist excuses – again and again and again.
Good start. Now ponder it some more until your knee stops jerking.
I totally understand the urge to mandating net neutrality but it is the wrong answer and will only make things worse as has all the regulation before it. This is the epitome of “When you’re stuck in a hole, stop digging”.
I’ve just realised that there is a large market for tinfoil hats! If you make them comfortable, they will sell!
I think that George Orwell was a socialist (but not a communist) because he grew up in class-conscious Britain, and would not like just keeping the status quo. Try going to a snobbish country and seeing if you don’t want to tear everything down and start again!
<blockquoteTry going to a snobbish country and seeing if you don’t want to tear everything down and start again!
Building is a lot harder than destroying. This is why Civil Engineers have 4 year degrees whereas Combat Engineers make do with 14 weeks.
Orwell was smart enough to have figured this out.
The distinction between a Socialist and a Communist is like drawing the distinction between Rugby Union and Rugby League. Must be very important to someone, but damned if I give a shit about the answer.
OK, as I’m getting repeatedly slapped, let me turn this around?
Is the principal of Net Neutrality worth going for?
If you think it is, how do you think it might be achieved?
By “net neutrality”, you mean the principle that service providers should not be free to negotiate terms with content providers?
flintwingel asks a perfectly reasonable question, and Ian’s answer, whilst obviously true, only addresses the supply side of the issue. I think that flintwingel is interested in the piss poor treatment of customers that only monopolies and oligopolies that come about through state action can deliver.
The way to stop companies acting badly is to put as few regulatory barriers to market entry as possible. Changes in technology, practice and technique have been driving the cost of infrastructure down for a while, so competition really is the cure for all aspects of the question posed by ‘Net Neutrality’. Indeed notion of Net Neutrality as such is an attempt (a very successful attempt) to re-frame the debate about ISPs in a way that completely ignores the key enabling role of the state as the cause of monopoly/oligopoly.
The likes of Comcast would not exist in their current form without the state making it possible, and the fact that is not even being discussed widely is an indication of how profoundly successful the statists have been at fighting this battle on ground of their choosing. It is like a known arsonist being widely praised by the community for going door to door selling fire insurance to household, all the time pointing out how many houses have burned down recently. Cause a problem and then nobly offer yourself as the only solution.
Count me as one tech person who does not like net neutrality. But Paul is right, most are in favour of it, and it is depressing.
“Some large US ISPs, in common with some formerly State-owned monopoly ISPs in mainland Europe, want to charge content providers for ‘access’ to end users, as well as end-users for access to the Internet. The network neutrality debate is about whether this should be permitted.”
Net neutrality is just the wrong answer. I don’t want to vote for the least bad option all the time. I want to consistently apply the non-aggression principle and argue in favour of where that leads.
And I don’t buy it. I think if ISPs really did start charging content suppliers that there would be some pretty entertaining market solutions in short order.
“The way to stop companies acting badly is to put as few regulatory barriers to market entry as possible.”
There ARE exceptions, of course.
Miracle weight loss, home “enviable body appearance” machines, “nutritional” supplements, and service providers (for stuff available for free), “class action” lawsuit advertisers, Addiction recovery “experts”, and a plethora of other debunked snake oil salesfolk, that BARELY skirt “the rules”, or inexplicably find themselves ‘Guilty, but consequence free” seem to reinvent themselves since “Genuine sliver of the cross on which Jesus was crucified.”, to “unlicensed meteorologists” tout
“The science is settled”. Again, apparently without consequence.
But if anyone want’s to know “How to make money stuffing envelopes”…or “How to make THOUSANDS just with your smart phone”, let me know. For a small fee I can ….um….refer you to a woman I know.
Same applies to Gub’mint contracts, and International Financial “theory”, just move the decimal point.
CaptDMO, free trade PLUS freedom of speech and the ability to critique and ridicule are incomparably better solutions than leaving the state to decide who is telling the truth. And fraud is a perfectly reasonable thing to have as a criminal matter.
Ian – interesting phrasing 🙂 I suggest you (re)read Mary Contrary’s post, she makes the case better than I. The fact is the ISP has already sold a service to the end user – the issue now is auctioning off the control of that service to some 3rd party to the detriment of the end user.
Rob, you’re behind the curve. Netflix have already been forced into paying Comcast et al. Just google “comcast netflix”.
Ultimately ask yourself just how much control of what you use the Internet for are you prepared to surrender to your ISP – what online services you use, where you shop, who you talk to?
Very little but then it should be obvious that the solution is a choice of ISPs, not state control over what ISPs can do.
What Perry said.
Further, the net neutrality debate in USA is, at least in part, about the right of ISPs to vary their terms according to the nature of the traffic that they carry – or, more fundamentally, to vary their terms as they see fit – for example by affording more bandwidth to some content providers than to others, and charging accordingly.
Perry, I thought we’d already established that large parts of the US have no reasonable alternate ISP to take their business to, thanks in no small part to previous govt actions. You’ll get no argument from me that ultimately genuine choice for the end user is the ideal. At least then you’ll get crap service because you choose it, not because it’s forced on you.
The question then is how do you achieve that end. Comcast et al aren’t going to voluntarily surrender their dominance. You could sit and wait for Google to rollout their fibre network. That’s going to take time, and you’ve no way of knowing Google’s long term plan.
My understanding of one of the aspects of Title II is that the FCC can force the existing ISPs to open up access to their “last mile” (whether or on it’s theirs given how much public money went into them is debatable). If this is the case then it at least lowers the barrier to entry for new suppliers. This appears, at least superficially, similar to the regulation placed on BT in the UK. The UK has a reasonably competitive market though one still ends up butting heads with BT with monotonous regularity, even after 20 years.
By systematically rolling back the role of the state, not by demanding the state regulate even more deeply than before. Indeed Net Neutrality does nothing, zero, zip, nada to address the root causes. In fact it embeds the ‘root cause’ more deeply than ever before, apparently with support from people who do not like Big Government but…
What Perry said (in all of his posts here).
The issue is not Comcast “charging Netflix for ‘access’ to end users.” It is Comcast charging Netflix for sucking up enormous amounts of bandwidth streaming movies over a system which was not designed for it. Netflix should pay more for hogging bandwidth, and (Mary Contrary’s protestation to the contrary notwithstanding) the end customer is most assuredly not paying Comcast for an infinite amount of bandwidth. The rise of Netflix, etc., had fundamentally changed the rules of the game.
Mary Contrary also thinks that this amounts to breach of contract by Comcast (or whoever) for which there is no legal remedy because the ISP provider wrote the contract and “there is no possibility of negotiation or amendment.” That is the textbook definition of a “contract of adhesion” which is very much actionable (it’s an equitable doctrine). If this were truly a case of massive breach of contract by the ISPs you can be certain that our legions of predatory class action lawyers would have pounced on it. The fact is that she’s just wrong about this, too.
In my area (and, I think, in most of the US) there is only one TV cable provider, thanks to local government. This is a problem, which should be rectified (by outlawing such legal monopolies). But even if it is not there are alternatives available for internet access. The phone companies (note the plural; that is not a monopoly anywhere anymore) provide that service, as do the satellite TV companies. Competition among ISPs isn’t as robust as it should be, but it exists. And the answer is not more government (the answer to anything is never “more government”), it is less government: less regulation, and the elimination of legislated monopolies.
So the answer to flintwingel’s question is “no”. And that’s the answer to both the theoretical question about whether, in the abstract, something like “net neutrality” (assuming we could all agree on what that actually means) is desirable and to the specific regulations being proffered by the FCC (under orders from the White House). The market, if permitted, would take care of the theoretical issue just fine. As to these proposed regulations, we already know where that will lead: the FCC won’t release the 322 pages of its proposed regulations until after it has voted on them. (Kind of like Nancy Pelosi’s comment about Obamacare: we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.) One can only imagine how bad they will actually be.
No thanks. The internet is not a “public utility” and ISPs are not “common carriers” to be regulated like the phone companies (which, incidentally, should also no longer be subject to FCC regulation; AT&T was broken up in the 1980s). The worst think that could happen to the internet if for the US government to get its regulatory hands on any aspect of it.
To me, net neutrality means that the ISP is blind to the content of the packet other than the destination IP address which they look up in their routing table and duly forward to the appropriate pipe. This is definitely the ideal and in my book, if this isn’t happening, it’s not an ISP you’re dealing with. (Though there is some scope there for recognizing QOS flags and providing different levels of service and priority to a customer).
I believe that in an ideal market, not only would this be available but it would be available from many sources. Possibly along with other services like a slow, cheap web-only service or perhaps gaming optimized.
The deal is we really need to look at why this is not the case rather than try and band-aid the problem by handing over even more of our power to government. Competition, not regulation is the answer.
I disagree. But I can agree to disagree as the correct answer is for there to be more competition and let the market decide.
Laird:
As it happens, Netflix never “sucks up enormous bandwidth” from access providers. End users, who are Comcast’s customers, ask to watch Netflix movies, so it is the user who is “sucking up the bandwidth”. This distinction is important, because the user has already paid to use Comcast’s network in this way. Netflix procures its own bandwidth, which gets its data from its own facilities as far as the network that the end user has paid to use (Comcast, in this example).
(By the way, “infinite bandwidth” is a straw man. Nobody is opposing ISPs selling Internet access up with limited bandwidth or subject to
limited total data transfer limits. The argument is about whether the ISP should be allowed to restrict access to Netflix for a user who
remains within his contracted bandwidth limit, just because it’s Netflix)
The only reason this can even remotely be described as “Netflix sucking up bandwidth” is because video is so bandwidth intensive, and because it happens to be the case that Netflix has been enormously successful in winning subscribers for video-streaming, and is a well recognised brand name. It’s not the only such brand, there’s also Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Youtube (Google) and BBC iPlayer. But the number of brands is small enough, and Netflix is sufficiently large, that it’s easy enough to make them out to be the bogeyman.
Consider a counter-factual. Suppose that instead of one, or half-a-dozen identifiable brands, there were thousands of equally sized such services. The relationship between the access provider (e.g. Comcast) and these sites would be the same as between Comcast and Netflix. But it would be much harder to frame the relationship as Laird has above, and much more obvious that what the ISP is doing is failing to enable the user to reach the Internet sites they’re trying to reach, which is the service the user has bought.
Ha! Have you ever tried, as a consumer, to get Internet access service from a major ISP on terms other than their standard published terms?
I don’t want to get ad hominem on this, but if we’re going to differ simply on the raw underlying facts I’ll simply invite others here to consider which of us is better connected with reality.
Perry:
Perry, fundamentally I agree with you. I happen to believe that network neutrality as a technical concept is enormously valuable to the user, and likely to be the outcome of any tolerably competitive market. Serious deviation from network neutrality is strongly associated with the kind of monopoly power that only comes about as a result of State intervention. Network neutrality as a set of government regulations is a very poor substitute for a market in ISP services that hasn’t been grossly distorted by government intervention (and when I say, “very poor substitute”, I don’t mean even minimal endorsement).
However, “get government out of the ISP business” is only a slogan. At best it’s a goal. It’s not a description of a programme of action. Any attempt to carry it out will necessarily involve passing laws, if only to undo or override existing laws. Such laws will be described as “more regulation” by those that don’t want the government out of ISP business.
So ultimately it will come down to detailed proposals for reform. If you’ve got any practical, implementable ideas for actionable reform, I would very much like to hear them. Again, I would emphasise that such proposals are likely to be presented in ways designed to be unattractive to you by their opponents.
For example, one of the detailed, micro-level issues is pole access. Should major ISPs like Comcast, who own “telegraph poles” along which their network cables run, be forced to allow smaller or new market entrants to attach their own cables to such poles?
One analysis of this, the analysis Comcast would commend to you, is that doing so is an infringement of their property rights in their poles, to subsidise a competitor so they don’t have to incur the expenditure Comcast has invested in setting up those poles. And they’ll phrase it that way to try to win your support.
But that’s not the only way a libertarian can look at it.
The alternative analysis is that the competitors aren’t interest in the poles as logs of wood: they’re interested in the site on which the pole sits. They’d be perfectly happy to share the costs of the wood. What matters is that Comcast has been granted the right to place its poles along the roadside as a government concession. The government should either grant similar concessions to Comcast’s competitors (and on no more onerous terms), or qualify the special privilege granted to Comcast by requiring it to share that privilege. When Comcast objects to sharing pole access rights, they’re doing so because they know that competitors won’t be granted the rights to plant a whole new set of poles along the roadside, so denying pole-sharing is effectively using the governments to exclude the possibility of a new competitor entering the market.
(BTW, I keep saying “Comcast”, for which I apologise. I mean any established incumbent operator that has benefited from government concessions in getting to where it is. Comcast is just an example).
So where would you stand on a law granting pole-access rights?
Mary, you clearly don’t understand what a “contract of adhesion” is. Its existence doesn’t give you some power to force the ISP to negotiate with you; it simply means that a court won’t enforce the inequitable provision. So if you think that your ISP is in breach of its contract with you, go ahead and sue; the fine print isn’t going to be a legal impediment.
Yes, of course it is the end users streaming movies from Netflix (and I am using “Netflix” merely as an exemplar, just as we’re both using “Comcast” as an exemplar) who are actually sucking up the bandwidth. But from the ISP’s perspective the result is the same, and it is the emergence of Netflix and its ilk which have caused this problem. The Comcast model is designed to provide customer access to emails, visiting websites, online shopping, etc., all low-bandwidth applications. Netflix changed the game in a material way. Rather than monitor each individual customer’s monthly data usage and bill them accordingly, it makes far more sense to simply charge the content provider whose entire business requires the use of all that bandwidth. Netflix can simply embed the cost in its subscription fee.
As to your “pole access” argument, I agree with you. Local governments limit the placement of poles on their rights-of-way, which is every bit as much a monopoly feature as is the typical grant of a local cable TV license to a single provider. Usage of such poles should be explicitly non-exclusive. (Note that this does not apply to cell phone towers, however, which are generally built on private land and so really are private property.) The simplest solution would be to share the lines (and the costs), just as was done with telephone lines when AT&T was broken up into the Baby Bells in the 1980s. That worked very well, and all have profited from it (the customers as well as the companies). The same could (should) be done for ISPs.
Thus far we’re largely discussing the theoretical/philosophical aspects of “net neutrality” (a disingenuous name clearly designed to paint a smiley face on what I consider to be a very bad idea). But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the FCC’s actions in refusing to release the full text of its 322-page regulation before it votes on it is substantial evidence that the regulations will be extraordinarily bad. How they think they can do this I don’t know; the Administrative Procedures Act clearly specifies the process for publishing proposed regulations, taking public comment, revising accordingly, etc., none of which seems to be happening here. This will undoubtedly lead to many more years of litigation (already the federal courts have twice shot down FCC attempts to expand its statutory authority in this way), and in the end the FCC will probably lose again. But the process will cost us all money, to no benefit. Better they simply abandon this foolish idea now.
Mary Contrary has raised an important issue that affects a lot of industries. There’s an extensive history of government-imposed monopoly (and lesser market distortions) that has spread like a tumour through most of the economy and society. The “pole access” issue goes back to monopolization of telephony, and perhaps back to the telegraph before that. Property rights, and violations thereof, have become so intertwined that it’s probably impossible to undo what’s been done in an ideologically consistent way. To take a simple example, removing the monopoly access of an ISP to “poles” (i.e., infrastructure) will decrease its share value, harming shareholders. So what, you may say, they invested in the company knowing that it had an un-free-market monopoly, so we’re just taking away the benefit of a monopoly they should never have had. While true, that ignores the fact that their investment alternatives were mostly other publicly-traded corporations that benefit from other market distortions that we have arbitrarily not decided to remove. Any way you cut it, once you get this much government distortion of the market there is no way not to pick winners and losers, even if your goal is to reach a state where you no longer pick winners and losers. That is one of the best arguments against future interventions.
I guess I should pre-emptively note that my above comment is not an endorsement of the net-neutrality campaign. It’s merely an observation that there’s no way to chose that doesn’t involve getting one’s hands dirty.
Lines like this remind me how much I truly loathe politics and its slimy operators:
“If you’ve got any practical, implementable ideas for actionable reform, I would very much like to hear them.”
It’s oozing with that smug, sneering self-righteous attitude common to all of those who know better (despite their track record).
‘But I note you’ve not answered…’
It’s not designed to be answered, it’s designed to shut people up. It’s telling you that you don’t understand the issue, but that your masters do and they’re doing the best they possibly can (again, despite their track record).
It’s no different to a witch doctor telling me that if I can’t explain exactly how to do brain surgery, then the best way to help patients must be leeches and chanting.
So yes, the process of freeing the markets will be complicated and will have massive opposition. So what?
Just because doing the right thing’s difficult doesn’t mean you should give up and walk side-by-side with the devil. Giving in to the state, its cronies and its shit-eaters because its easy starts you down a very dark path…
A fair point, Tedd. But you have to start somewhere.
At the end of the day, even if you agree (obviously I don’t) on a conceptual basis with what it pleases our betters to call “net neutrality”, what is of crucial importance is that no government should ever be permitted to get its corrupt regulatory hands on any single aspect of the internet. Period. If that means that the Comcasts of the world are slightly advantaged over the Netflixes, so be it; that’s a very small price to pay for what is the only hope for the future freedom of the human race. Frankly, your access to slightly cheaper movie streaming is wholly unimportant in the larger context. Our masters despise the internet because it has permitted us peons to effectively communicate directly with each other, rather than relying on “approved” sources of information. It has become the last bulwark against absolute political control. These odious “net neutrality” rules are merely the opening salvo against the internet as we now know it. If we stand for this, ultimately the entire internet will fall under the domination of government and the last engine of personal freedom will have been lost. The promise of the internet will have been smothered in its crib.
The issue is far bigger than what is being presented; we must focus on the forest, not the one small and relatively inconsequential sapling in front of us. L. Neil Smith said it well in this essay.
Laird – I’m fascinated as to how seem to denigrate net neutrality whilst at the same time hailing the Internet as “the only hope for the future freedom of the human race”.
NN has been the default state of the Internet since its inception. The notion of NN was not needed at the outset because it’s neutrality was not threatened and nobody could really conceive of it being threatened. It’s the idea of NN that delivers your ability to interact with any other denizen of the ‘net.
For example, let’s assume my name is Perry and I wish to setup a website to discuss politics. As things stand, once I’ve paid for my webserver I need ask no one’s permission nor pay additional tolls to arbitrary intermediaries nor face the risk of being cutoff by another political website with more cash to carry on conversations with anobody who has paid for their connection.
Surrender NN and you surrender to ability to choose who you talk to to a 3rd party with a cheque book.
You may view the Comcast/Netflix clash as trivial but it marks a point at which Comcast’s paying customers are no longer in control of their connection.
Please note, this says nothing about how NN is to be maintained in practice.
You are confusing neutrality with freedom, flintwingel. Net freedom is what made it what it is so far, not its ‘neutrality’, whatever that is.
Andrew: very well put, sir.
Alisa, you can’t say that it was not its neutrality and then say “whatever that is”. What it is is simply that packets are not given preferential treatment based on their source or destination (nor ideally, port or protocol). I don’t agree with their calls to regulation but Mary_Contrary and Flintwingel are correct in their summaries of the details and why it is so important as a concept. I care less that Comcast doesn’t want to provide it however than that I do not have a realistic alternative to turn to if I do not want to agree to their terms. I already switch ISPs once due to poor streaming performance and would do so again in a split second were the option available.
Laird man, I’m not sure how you’ve managed to go off the rails on this one. You’re usually level headed. I pay Comcast to provide me a connection to the internet, Netflix pays their ISP and the ISPs work it out between themselves how to get the data on and off the internet. The bandwidth I use is between me and Comcast. Whether that is streaming from Netflix or Amazon or downloading a torrent of 20 years of usenet posts is neither here nor there. The basic services that you mention? Comcast has a plan for that. Most of us though are paying more for what they advertise as 12Mbps, 25mbps and on up. Why? To use it. If I need more bandwidth, sure, charge me more. Don’t gank my connection to someone I’m doing business with and then go to them extorting money. This is where the lack of competition comes in. Try that and if I have another option, I’ll switch by EOD tomorrow. I don’t and Netflix knows if I continue to have problems streaming the content from them, I’ll switch to another content provider and that will damage their business so they’re under duress to pay. It’s abuse of a government granted monopoly and needs to end.
Oh, and by the way, Netflix offers to put local cache boxes in ISPs to help reduce bandwidth uses. Netflix pays, Netflix’s ISP has to use less bandwidth, customer’s ISP has to use less bandwidth, congestion is less of an issue, everybody wins. Comcast turned them down.
Tedd, I’m not really that concerned about the business model of people like Comcast as it is so god-awfully broken. The simple fact is that the poles were, are and will continue to be on private property. Inasmuch as the government (and it is local governments so closer to the people) has any authority to tell people what to do with their private property, they are supposed to be acting in the trust of the people, not supporting Comcast’s business model. It’s time to play hardball. Something like they need to share any pole that has been in place for more than 10 years and if they can’t agree to that, it’s time to break the chainsaws out and forge some new agreements.
Alisa – I’m not the one confused.
Freedom is rather a broad concept that can be re-interpreted in a variety of ways. Part if this debate is down to that very re-interpretation – the freedom of the ISPs to run their networks as they wish vs. the freedom of the customers to use what they pay for as they see fit.
Net Neutrality is a specific concept – broadly, that the network should carry all packets equally, it is “neutral” with respect to the data being transmitted over it.
There are a number of traffic management techniques (variations on QoS – Quality of Service) that can be used to preserve the performance of real time services (think Skype) when the network is congested. These are necessary and useful techniques, though overuse indicates an inadequate network. These techniques are confused, often deliberately, with NN because they are necessary and uncontroversial. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to who is deliberately muddying the waters.
One key difference is that traffic management discriminates on the class of traffic for short periods whereas anti-NN measures discriminate by end point and cheque book.
Comcast et al are only just beginning to flex their muscles as the gatekeepers to “the only hope for the future freedom of the human race” and the question is how to stop them going further.
Freedom is not a “broad concept” – it is actually rather simple.
Freedom is “hands off”.
Freedom is not violating the bodies and goods of others.
Actually I am not a fan of Comcast and so on. After all they backed Mr Obama in both 2008 and 2012. I despise people who backed Obama – regardless of their motives.
But it is their cable and they can do what they like with it.
If you do not like that then GO AWAY.
Just GO AWAY.
There is no reason to be polite to you as you are a thug.
You want to use force and fear (the government) to make other people (such as Comcast) do what you want them to do with their property.
Go away.
All you “net neutrality” people just go away.
Stop threatening violence (the FCC) against other people and private organisations.
These cables and satellites (and so on) do not belong to you.
And if it O.K. for you to use violence against the property of others – then it is O.K. for others to use violence against your property.
For example I am sure I could find some things I might like in your home.
So just GO AWAY.
You are not wanted here.
“Broad concept” may not have been the best description, but freedom is really only an objective ideal in the abstract. On a case by case basis things aren’t so simple.
You would have a valid point if Comcast et al had achieved their market position purely through their own risk, capital & effort but that is clearly not the case. Given how much public resource went into these companies, allowing them to achieve their dominance, US taxpayers should have a pretty substantial say in how they operate.
Of course, the ultimate irony for all those who believe nothing good comes from government is that the Internet has it roots in government research, specifically from DARPA when they were designing a network that could survive attack.
To those people who that Comcast (and so on) would not exist without government aid.
Digging up the roads to lay cable might cost more – or it might not (after all the roads would be owned by private companies also) and the companies would not have to pay taxes.
And statists such as “flintwingle” could not care less about the digging up the roads anyway.
Even if the internet was beamed from satellites they would still want government to control it.
They would still want egalitarianism under the code name “net neutrality” – they would still want everyone to get the same service (the same speed and so on), regardless of how much they pay.
The “well the creation of the internet depended on government research” thing above by flingwingle proves it.
These people are utter and complete scum – one can not reason with them, because they believe in force (violence) not reason.
And it is pointless to tell them to “go away” – notice I tried that, and the creature did NOT go away.
Therefore it is legitimate to use force to defend oneself and others against them.
They will not go away – and they will not stop using violence (the state) to achieve their desires.
Also note the deliberate confusion of “the taxpayers” (victims of the government) with the government itself.
“Net Neutrality” (government control of the internet) has got nothing whatever to do with giving power to “taxpayers”.
The next trick will be to claim that “corporations are the creation of the state”.
As if bodies corporate (including commercial ones) were not a feature of both private Law Merchant, and Canon (Church) law (often used in commercial matters) for many centuries.
It is all a vicious lie – this nonsense about American companies (actually some of the most highly taxed and regulated companies in the Western world) “controlling the government” and cheating ordinary people.
“The taxpayers” are actually cheated by THE GOVENRMENT itself.
If Comcast (or whatever) was owned by a single rich individual (not lots of shareholders) the attitude of the left would be exactly the same.
And the internet is not a special case – they want to control everything.
Their ideal is a sort of “Star Trek: New Generation” world where nobody needs money and the needs of everyone are met by technomagic – so no need for private property in the means of production, distribution and exchange.
They are insane, stark staring crazy.
However, they are also violent and, therefore, highly dangerous.
I beg to differ, freedom is easily understood, and to ‘re-interpret’ it is to seek to deny it. As Khrushchev said when asked, as a Red Army Political Commissar, how to interpret the Nazi-Soviet Pact ‘We shall go on interpreting it, until not one stone of Nazi Germany stands upon another.’, a fairly accurate description of events as it turned out (per V Suvorov).
The wording of the contract would give you the answer to that, on an objective interpretation. If the wording is silent, what is necessary to give efficacy to the intentions of the parties in the view of the officious bystander?
Fine, I’ll take the hint and leave you to your echo chamber. Heaven forfend anything challenging your precious ideas.
flintwingel, you contentions have been replied to (in the main at least) quite reasonably.
Of course I can. The reason I can say that, is that I truly don’t care what it is*, as long as I’m certain that it does not mean ‘freedom’ (if it does, please enlighten me as to how exactly it does). I don’t want a neutral market, a fair market, a nice market or a green-with-purple-dots market. I want a free market. All these other attributes may or may not arise as a consequence of the market being free – lets free the market and find out.
*I do have an educated guess as to what it actually means: in this context, ‘neutrality’ seems to be a rather clever euphemism for ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’. I do know where those things lead, and am not buying.
flintwingle – you do not want to “challenge ideas” you want to use VIOLENCE (the state).
That is what is unacceptable.
I have no interest (none) in “discussion” or “debate” with such people.
So good riddance to you.
I agree with you completely regarding the merits (lack thereof) of Net Neutrality, but I also think discussing it with people who do not see that is a good idea. So telling those people to piss off is not at all helpful. I think convincing people with a good argument, as many of done in this thread, is much better. And if that is not what you want to do, how about *you* piss off as you are not helping the cause one bit with that attitude.
I did not tell the person to “piss” off – although I was strongly tempted to tell him to “fuck” off.
What is the point of me making an almost superhuman effort not to swear, if I going to be accused of swearing anyway?
As for my “attitude” – it is the same as that of the person in question. Although I express it more openly (I am not fond of Jon Stewart style hints and sneers).
Accept that I am the other side in the war.
A war in which “net neutrality” is only a very small part.
The person in question would like me to be dead (hopefully after a painful and humiliating death), and my attitude towards him is exactly the same as his attitude towards me.
Our “attitude” is actually the one thing we are in agreement about.
I see no point at all in engaging in mock-friendly “discussions”.
Enemies should be open about their mutual hatred.
Not pretend – not play games.
There is, fundamentally, nothing to discuss.
It is a war, and it is actually cruel to give an enemy a false expectation of mercy.
And, I repeat, this particular “issue” is a very small part of a general war.
If you really think no one can be convinced by an argument, then you’re not just wrong, you have a serious psychological issue you need to confront. And given how ready you are to impute other people’s desire to see you dead, yes, you really need to snap out of it. People who are wrong about Net Neutrality probably don’t want you to die. These are typically not the same guys who join ISIS or the communist party, they’re just people who do not grasp the true wider implications about what they’re asking for. As you yourself aptly put it, they’re cleaver people who are also fools.
I’m a full on libertarian/classical liberal because it was convincingly pointed out to me that all the justice, morality and economy I supported were in reality being inverted by the socialism I thought was working towards them. And so within a couple years of being a card carrying Red, I ended up as someone ready to move to Galt’s Gulch if only I could find it on a map, all because I was not told to get lost when I got into an argument here on Samizdata and on a several other sites.
Paul, I think you’re being unfair to flintwingle. I don’t see him as a “statist”, but rather as a minarchist (which is also how I see myself) attempting to articulate a basis for government involvement in a specific area. Yes, of course any government action relies, fundamentally and by definition, on the use of force (or “violence”, as you put it), but unless you’re taking a completely anarchist position there’s no escaping that. The only question becomes when (and to what extent) such “violence” is appropriate.
As to the specific issue under discussion here, I think we are tending to conflate two quite different things: the philosophical concept of “net neutrality” (whatever that means, as Alisa has said, and I agree with her take on it) and the specific rules which the US FCC is now considering. With respect to the former, I think most of us here seem to agree that in an ideal world all users of the internet (customers and content providers) would be treated equally, but that (largely as a consequence of prior government actions) certain ISPs have acquired something approaching monopoly powers which they are (or may be) abusing. Positing that starting point, the question becomes how best to rectify the situation. Most (all?) of us would like to see it corrected by market forces, but some view that process as unlikely to succeed and so see a need for government intervention. I don’t reject that as an illegitimate position for a minarchist to take, I merely disagree with it (or, rather, I feel that the cure will inevitably be far worse than the disease). We’ll just have to disagree; so be it.
And as to the specific regulations now under consideration, we don’t yet know precisely what they are. But my default position is that any government regulation of the markets is presumptively bad, and the burden is on the government to prove otherwise. Given that the FCC has so far concealed the details of this proposed regulation, and knowing the political mindset of its proponents, I consider it almost a certainty that the regulations will be bad, perhaps (probably) horribly so. My belief is that although the concept is being sold under the guise of “consumer protection”, that is mere window dressing; in reality it is simply one more excuse for the expansion of government power. However mild the current version may be, and however circumspect the current FCC may be in implementing it, the path will have been established for future additional governmental intrusions (including massive new taxes such as we see in our phone bills), probably ending in the outright censoring of certain content and/or the licensing of content providers. This power grab simply must not be permitted to occur.
Alyssa, that the internet has been basically net neutral (in fact, but not by law) is imminently responsible for its rise. It is the reason you don’t have to pay your ISP any time you want to visit a new website and is the reason anybody can buy a PC, obtain a network connection, plug up and have their own website going in minutes.
It’s not like their haven’t been gateways to network systems. Prestel, Prodigy, AOL, all of these and more tried to have their own walled gardens, to control access to data, to charge if you wanted a little more access. All either had to fail or buck up their ideas and allow direct access to the internet (and in some cases fail anyway). The UK’s Daemon internet services expanded hugely on the principle of “Here’s your IP address, do with it what you will”. Competition delivers net neutrality because it gives the customer what they desire, uncontrolled access to a global network. Comcasts efforts are a response to what they (legitimately) see as a threat to their content provider model (has little to do with anything related to their ISP activities) and is only possibly because people have nobody else to turn to.
It’re really a pretty big thing. Paul Marks says he finds it depressing that so many techies support legislating it. I agree that that is a wrongheaded move but there are genuine concerns and reasons underlying it.
Indeed but wrongheaded does not even begin to describe it. Allow me to recycle my often quoted remark “turning to communism for fear of fascism is like suicide for fear of death”…
Turning the government for fear of government enabled monopolies is also like suicide for fear of death.
Definitely. In fact, with a vanishingly small amount of tinfoil, one could easily view this as a government manufactured “crisis” for the sake of gaining that control.
New technologies may come along which would break down the control enjoyed by Comcast but no new technology will be able to get the governments claws out once they have them firmly in place.
Laird:
Why do you think so, and why do you think it would be a good thing? Are you expecting equality in any other, “traditional” market? I know I don’t. In a free market I reserve the right not to sell to X/Y/Z, or to charge them a different price, for whatever reason.
Richard:
No, it isn’t. This neutrality is just a happy consequence of it being relatively free. If it were even more free – i.e. had the government not established the local IP monopolies, we might have seen additional happy consequences unknown to us. That is why I am adamant about putting the horse before the cart, even though the cart is where the good stuff is.
Cynwulf.
I have been involved in local politics (and an observer of national and international politics) since 1979.
I have never at any time seen the vote of anyone (anyone at all) being influenced by debate and discussion.
I am sorry if reality does not fit your picture of the world – but if insanity is denying objective reality, then I am not the one with the mental problem.
Debates (discussions) fall into two types.
Tactical discussions among friends – not over what side to be on, but over what tactics to deploy to defeat the other side. Here debate can indeed “change opinions” – but that is not what you meant, you were not talking about tactical discussions.
And the other sort of debate……
The ritual exercise that I have seen so often in Council chambers and so on.
In this ritual various people (including me) make speeches in which we pretend to be trying to convince other people over fundamental matters of policy.
In reality no such thing is possible.
Yes people do change sides in the war (this does indeed sometimes happen) – but not as the result of some silly ritual “discussion”.
What actually happens is that their life experiences lead them to fundamentally question their basic beliefs – other people can indeed influence this. But not via the sort of process you describe.
As for the present point.
If someone can not buy a better internet service, why should they be able to buy a better anything?
Someone who is in favour of “net neutrality” (i.e. egalitarianism) is logically also in favour of forbidding people buying better healthcare (illegal in Canada – or so I am told), and against people buying better education for their children.
Notice I am engaging in the ritual exercise of debate.
Someone who really is in favour of “net neutrality” will simply say (at least to themselves)…..
“Quite right to – people should NOT be able to buy themselves better health (and more years of life) than other people, and they should NOT be able to buy their children a better life than other peoples children”.
No clever debating trick is going to change their opinion on such matters.
Their opinions may change – but not because of some debating or discussion tactic.
Important things, such as the basic belief systems of human beings (what side they are on) are not determined by exercises in political rhetoric.
“But Paul you engage in political rhetoric yourself – and have done for many years”.
Yes – when I am paid to do so.
I do not actually expect to change the position of any politician voting – any more than they expect to change mine.
Actually one of my faults is that I actually listen to what opposing politicians say – this tends to anger me.
More experienced people have long told me that the way to avoid anger is to avoid listening to what one’s opponents are saying (as they avoid listening to it) – to concentrate on a mental image of a walk in the hills in summer (or whatever) and then, when it comes to one’s own turn to speak, make the pre prepared debating points and rhetorical exercises.
After all politics is war by other means.
We “in the trade” just pretend that it is not.
One of the basic mistakes of Aristotle is to claim that debating political matters (i.e. debating the use of FORCE and FEAR to make people do things – or to take their money and spend it on stuff they do not want to spend it on)it is one of the highest forms of life.
It is actually one of the lowest forms of life.
I do not agree with the politics of Bismark (although he was not as collectivist as Aristotle – he did not pretend the state could make people “just and good” and he did believe the “legislator” should map every basic feature of human life), but Bismark did have a more realistic view of political practice than someone, Aristotle, who was not even an Athenian citizen and had never sat in an assembly in his entire life.
As Bismark (whom I repeat I do not like) said….
People who like laws, as with people who like sausages, should not watch them being made.
It is not a noble process – it does not help people become just and good (quite the opposite).
And it is nothing whatever to do with reason and convincing people by evidence and rational argument.
It is people who insist that it is, in contradiction to basic objective reality, who are deluded.
These things are decided long before the vote – indeed before the “debate”.
Handing over basic matters of every day life (such as the internet) to the legislature, or to the executive, or to the judicial branch, is an act of folly.
Some people – most people, in fact – do not even realize there is a war going on. Most people are a-political, as they do not realize that most, if not all, aspects of their lives are subject to the political process, i.e. the use of violence and coercion. They notionally subscribe to this or that idea they picked up from someone or other (their parents, their school, the media – all of the above, in most cases), but rarely bother to think these things through. Then something does happen, as Paul correctly points out, not necessarily to them personally, but something that gets their attention (in my case it was 9/11, which was how I found SI), and gets them actually thinking. So I am very much with Cynwulf as far as that goes: such people should be welcomed to a civilized discussion, where they can get an opportunity to reexamine their world view.
That said, I agree with Paul on people such as flintwingel: this is not someone who has never bothered to actually think about ideas to which he subscribes – on the contrary, he very much comes across as a thinking person, not someone who’s just repeating stuff he heard or read from others. Paul may have gone too far in assuming that flintwingel has thought things through far enough to fully realize the real-life consequences of his positions, but he is correct in assuming that only extraordinary circumstances with serious personal consequences are likely to cause thinking people such as flintwingel to reexamine their positions, let alone to change them.
I’m proof you are quite wrong. I also recall Dale Amon, one of Samizdata’s founders, also once saying he was a leftie originally. I was convinced, not SHAZZAM in some Road to Damascus way, but by being repeatedly and reasonably deconstructed by blokes like Thaddeus Tremayne (who made me laugh at the absurdities of my Guardian sensibilities), Perry de Havilland (like being in a knife fight with someone who smiles a lot) and Jonathan Pierce (who sure does know what the numbers really mean).
Looking at what you wrote, it’s clear you’re talking about professional politicians and people deeply invested in tribal politics, because you come in contact with such people. This is like working in a ballet company and deriving your opinions about the typical British person’s attitudes and understanding of dance and performing arts, based on the people you see around you day to day. Probably not in reality a representative sample!
So not only are you wrong, you’re wrong and rude about it to people who might be eventually convinced by better arguments. I know not everyone is, yes, I realise that. The Guardian comments are full of people who are a waste of time to debate with. But this isn’t the Guardian, its Samizdata, part of a wider internet that has very different characteristics. You even make that better argument, and then you piss it away by telling someone who can’t grasp the idea yet, that therefore they want you dead and should get lost. You’re like some magnificent but tragic Shakespearian character in my opinion.
I recognise professional debating tricks – and flintwingle used them.
Of course I recognise them for a very bad reason.
Alisa may not know the saying “it takes one to know one” – but I think you will have heard the saying before.
Talking with such a person is a complete and total waste of time. One either kills them or stops the “conversation” (i.e. the exchange of talking points, and debating tricks) – and killing someone is a criminal offence. Although it is not a criminal offence when their side do it – then it is “Social Justice”.
As for “rude” – I think you would notice if I ever actually did became rude.
As the character “David Banner” points out to the journalist in the “Incredible Hulk” show…..
However, I did miss out the Judicial branch. Just a bare mention.
People who think that either the Legislative branch or the Executive branch are impressed by reason or evidence has no experience of these matters (they are like people who really thing that dancers are flying – when they are actually attached by a wire).
For an example a “minimum wage” law is the claim that the laws of supply and demand are optional – that reality is optional. That does not stop Nobel Prize winning “economists” defending this stuff.
Are you suggesting that one has a “discussion” with someone such as Stiglitz or Krugman?
The judicial branch is not fundamentally different.
With all due respect to Laird the decision of a judges or judges in an important political case is not determined by the arguments of the lawyers in front of them.
The judgement is determined by the political philosophy of the judge or judges – they one they had before the case even started.
The arguments of the lawyers are best understood as a form of complex ritual dancing.
An expected part of the performance – but with no influence upon the outcome.
Can’t resist 😛
A few observations…
Net neutrality is a technical, not political concept – a inherent feature not a belief. A network is either neutral to the traffic flowing over it, or it is not. Like it or not the Internet has been neutral, de facto, since it’s inception, in the same way it’s been based on the TCP/IP protocol. Arguing against it because “neutrality” sounds a bit lefty makes about as much sense as arguing against water because it’s wet.
The fight over NN has started. It started some time ago with a number of minor skirmishes that were won mainly by the pro-NN side, largely through customer pressure. The Comcast et al/Netflix clash is the biggest, most high profile so far. Ignore the fight because it doesn’t fit your terms of reference if you wish, it will go on without you. If you happen to believe as Laird appears to that the Internet is “the only hope for the future freedom of the human race” if Comcast win, you lose. If Comcast et al ultimately win the principal has been established and the technology will be in place. Just how hard do you think it’ll be for them the next time round.
First the came for the move streamers, and I did not speak out because I did not stream movies… sorry Pastor.
Paul, Paul… so may ad homs & straw men, so little time. Perhaps you should just label me a witch and call for me to be burned at the stake.
Two statements sum this matter up completely.
flintwingel:
Laird:
It does not take 322 pages to say “packets shall be delivered without regard to origin or destination.” There is clearly something else going on here.
All regulations and laws should be posted for public review for 6 months after the last alteration prior to voting. That will not only put an end to “you have to pass the bill to see what’s in the bill”, it will put an end to “dissimulation by obfuscation”.
Net neutrality may indeed be “a technical, not political concept”, but its implementation is anything but. Therein lies the core of our difference. Comcast may be abusing its monopoly powers, but if the government gets its hands on the internet you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. There is hope for “defeating” Comcast (via competition); there is none for “defeating” the government. Anyone who thinks that giving the government regulatory powers over the internet is a good thing is delusional.
Here’s where we’re heading.
Oh good, then no need to get the state involved then, right?
Laird – “this video was brought to you by our sponsor, the astroturf department of Comcast…”
Perry – don’t be obtuse
It’s instructive that the US is trying to impose European-style regulations on our (wildly successful) internet just when Europe is pulling back from them.
Sorry flintwingel but what you said is so manifestly preposterous, what were you expecting? You want the state to impose something by law but that is purely a technical matter and has nothing to do with politics?
If you were arguing for laws to undo the things distorting markets and thereby impinging upon an assumed default state of “Net Neutrality” (due to the rise of oligopolies and local monopolies), well then we could talk about “Net Neutrality” as a technical thing separate from the politics of market distorting state regulation. But that is not what folks such as yourself have been asking for. I am all for sticking it to Comcast (et al) by stopping them rent seeking via the state, but using that rent seeking to justify a deeper and wider role for the state really is like demanding suicide for fear of death. Comcast is a problem because the US government made it a problem.
That video (here’s another) is from a group called “Protect Internet Freedom“. I don’t really know who is behind it (it might indeed be Comcast, but there’s no overt evidence of that).
Laird, that video — the first one, I haven’t yet recovered enough to watch the next one — could only be found amusing by those who also enjoy watching people eat little babies.
It is a masterpiece of “fictional-but-accurate” dramatized propaganda.
It does show exactly what WILL HAPPEN if The Gov is allowed to get any deeper into the Internet than it already is.
It made me regret that I had recently eaten. :>( It is excellent.
And remember, the demand for “Net Neutrality” is not all that’s going on. There is also a vocal bunch pushing for outright government OWNERSHIP of the ‘Net.