Dems are purging their ranks too, so don’t pretend they are not. The remaining Dems are completely crazy, off the rails and not in touch with regular Americans, and that’s a big reason why they’ve lost big time in the last 8 years. That will continue if they don’t start to moderate their extreme views.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/16/dan-lipinski-conservative-democrat-election-299572
I find it really ironic that you claim the democrats are being "extremists" while not recognizing that your own views on NN are likewise extremist. I also find it amazing to see how well the ISP propaganda about innovation and govt. over reach has worked on a large segment of the population. I knew the ISPs were evil but even I'm shocked to see this level deception.
In a nutshell NN is about the ISPs wanting to increase profits. That's it. If you believe you are underpaying for the internet then you should be against NN. If you believe you are overpaying or paying a fair amount for internet then you should be for NN. Alternatively if you believe in competition or freedom then you should be in favor of NN.
Profit = Revenue (Quantity x Price) - Costs. This is the fundamental business formula. NN is about increasing profit from price rather than quantity.
Maybe the most misleading statements is "removing NN will just restore the internet to where it was 2 years ago."
WRONG. To understand NN, it's important to understand the market. 20 years ago, internet was in the growth phase. Costs were high because of emerging technology + infrastructure costs. Websites were basic, many of the current platforms were yet to be created or popularized (e.g. YouTube) so consumer demand was fairly low and people were price-elastic. This means that during the growth phase, the ISPs focused on increasing revenue by driving down costs and increasing subscriptions (quantity).
Today the internet is very different. It's a mature platform so growth is limited by population growth. Consumer preferences have changed as well. People view the internet as a necessity and life revolves around getting information online (e.g. doing homework), entertainment like Netflix or shopping like Amazon. Hence people are less price elastic then they were in the past. Society has warped around the internet. This gives ISPs the incentivize to raise prices. The question is how? Market Segmentation.
If you look at current prices, the ISPs segment the market based on people's preference for speed. People that are willing to pay extra for fast speed get charged more. This is standard price discrimination. In order to increase prices, ISPs need to be able to analyze people's preferences and target those preferences. Currently they do that based on speed. Without NN, ISPs can go 1 step forward and instead of targeting a person's "overall" speed preference, they can target individual website preference. Netflix uses 1/3rd of all the bandwidth online. The majority of people first start shopping online by typing into Amazon rather than a search engine. Now that the internet has matured, People's tastes have become homogenous and this makes it easy to target those preferences. So what is the plan? Make Internet like Cable. Have different packages for shopping, sports or movies and charge people extra. Simple. Or alternatively charge the major tech companies (Netflix) more to get their data to consumers (with the price increase being then based onto consumers through higher fees).
NN is all about who will control the value from the internet. ISPs, Tech firms, and/or consumers. Right now Tech companies and consumers are capturing the value. ISPs want to change the system so they capture value. The idea that this is about innovation and without price increases, ISPs won't be able to compete is total BS. AT&T makes 3B a quarter. For context American Airlines makes 3B a year. ISPs are a very profitable industry and they aren't struggling to stay in business. This is about money plain and simple.
Lastly, freedom. One of the side effects of the ISPs ability to control the internet is that they can reduce traffic to website or services that they don't like (.e.g bittorent) and this also applies to new technology like blockchain. Imagine if the ISPs go after the exchanges, they could severely damage the coin market. So by deregulating ISPs, it gives them the freedom to infringe on our freedom of choice. This is essentially the fundamental theory of regulation, balancing different freedoms of different competing groups.
