Voice In The Wilderness

There is a contrarian streak in me. Shades of oppositional defiant. I was going to say disorder, but that is a song by Joy Division. I don't think of myself as having a disorder, just as having an eccentric order. Something about moving independently from the herd appeals to me.

This instinct is part of what fuels my antagonism toward Net Neutrality. The Federal Communications Commission is going to hold a vote on new regulations on February 26. They have prepared a 322 page report detailing the new regulations, and they are TOP SECRET.

Every major technical publication and mainstream news operation have been enthusiastic about the regulations.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai has been a voice in the wilderness on this issue. He has read the proposed rule changes, but says the details are being kept secret. Only Chairman Wheeler can release the contents of the Net Neutrality rules.

Pai did say that "the details of the plan itself are very intrusive. It’s a massive shift in favor of government control of the Internet." Obama himself said he wanted the "strongest possible" regulations imposed on the internet. He sent Jeff Zients, his Economic Advisor, over to the FCC. Valerie Jarrett also has her fingerprints on this. Tom Power, former deputy chief technology officer for telecommunications, and Senior Advisor R. David Edelman are other partisan hacks running this operation.

Everything this administration touches turns to shit. It is alarming to hear Pai say that "White House aides have been running a parallel FCC, and they’ve persuaded the president to pick this issue as one where he would make a pronouncement." Net Neutrality is Obama's initiative. One reason they want to regulate internet service providers as common carriers is that would enable them to add FCC fees to end users' monthly bills. These fees will be used to subsidize low-income phone and internet users.

Another consequence of Net Neutrality rules is the stifling of innovation. Anyone who used a telephone before 1982 will remember the glacial pace of innovation that AT&T operated under. The government allowed AT&T to operate as a monopoly and the government set the prices. If the government decides what price an ISP can charge, they will not risk capital on new capacity.

Peter Thiel is another voice in the wilderness. "The state is not being run by scientists and engineers, it’s run by lawyers. I always wonder whether there’s some point at which there’s a regulatory arbitrage," he said. Perhaps he's referring to companies like Netflix, which stands to gain the most from Net Neutrality. Netflix consumes a third of internet bandwidth during peak hours. They would love it if no ISP can charge them more.

Forbes ran an article declaring "Net Neutrality is common sense that doesn’t really deserve or require debate." This is the same appeal to popularity that characterizes the climate change debate. Contributor Tony Bradley uses the word "greedy" to describe internet service providers three times in his article; apparently he believes an appeal to emotion will be more effective than a decent argument.

If the internet service providers like Comcast show signs of monopolistic pricing power, that is a matter for the Federal Trade Commission. Google Fiber is entering new markets and is going to disrupt a few ISP's.