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Feds move to block California’s net neutrality law (theverge.com)
242 points by MrWiffles on Aug 6, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 159 comments



Sigh, these federal-state-local legal fights over single issues are so exhausting to see, because they really point to no single coherent strategy across our country. For so many issues.

Topic A -- certain state governors don't want to be mandated to do something they don't like that's gaining popular support, and so declare / pass laws that prevent localities from passing their own mandates (any current topic you can think of?)

Topic B -- same or other state governors don't want to have federally mandated rules on another topic, so go against the principle they just used for their own localities, and say that they cannot be mandated to follow something they disagree with.

Topic C -- yet another topic comes up where governors want everyone to follow a certain guideline and not deviate, and insist that every locality does follow top-down legislation, and get upset at other states that don't follow the rule.

Topic D -- "states should have the right to try their own solutions" and not be imposed upon by peanut-butter inappropriate federal solutions on things they disagree with.

Topic E -- "states should follow rules given from the federal government" on things they do agree with.

I'm sometimes exhausted by this patchwork. And principles that flap in the wind.


That's the whole point of federalism/separation of powers. Our government is not supposed to be efficient. This fact might not always make sense to those obsessed with efficiency, such as as programmers, but in this case it's a feature, not a bug.

Disputes between states and the federal government take years/decades to be resolved, but I'd rather have our inefficient system over a more efficient one that is far more prone to being taken over by demagogues and those who seek ultimate power.


I understand that aspect of it, and am all in favor. Sometimes the greatest benefit of our system is that it helps us avoid great folly and disaster, rather than enabling great sudden advances.

What I can't stand is the principled, yet then flip-flop-on-principles, stands people take per issue, only to have it switch with the next issue. It's paralyzing us on important, urgent things that aren't decade-long debates that should be had.


You have to understand that "states rights vs federal jurisdiction" is mostly a useful excuse to try to sell constituents on policy that might be unpopular/harmful to them or to try to sell judges that something might be legal (or not).

It's simply not a legitimate concern to most politicians. Look into the voting records of these flip-floppers. I'm sure you'll find that they more often than not side with lobbyists rather than the will of their electorate.


I think that's the GP's point. Contradicting previously expressed principles shows how little the politician truly cares about those principles. Politicians lying or exaggerating is not surprising, but it's unfortunate that they don't get called on it by the media and/or public more often.


The logic behind federalism is that getting it right is more important than getting it done quickly. Because once it's settled nationally there's no escaping it. In theory states are laboratories of democracy and if an issue is important enough it can be a factor the next time you move. Also government has to operate closer to the people. The factors driving public policy in different areas can lead to different solutions.


Elaborate


This is highly accurate. Our inefficiency and the fact that we're not a democracy, or a republic, but really a bureaucracy might just get us through November.


Not being American, things like that always confused me. But now I kind of look like america like a Russian doll, it's a bunch of tiny countries, inside slightly bigger countries, inside even bigger countries all contained within one country populated by individuals who look at themselves as a country.

And from the bottom up, each country believes they're the ruler of their country and don't like to be told by the countries higher up the totem what to do.

To be honest though, i've always felt like the world would work a lot better if power were structured from the bottom up. Local areas have the highest priority in decisions regarding their area then each level up has less and less power and is focused more on the overall organizing of everything between these smaller areas and the rest of the world.

The way it works in many places right now is backwards, especially in large countries. It ends up that decisions are made about areas hundreds or thousands of km away from the people affected by those decisions.


In the US, there is a thing called The California Effect. California has a history of passing laws for California which end up getting adopted at the federal level.

This is the origin story for environmental protection in this country.

So probably that's a factor here. If you are in the federal government and you know California has the power to de facto dictate federal policy by passing a law at the state level, the only good defense is a proactive offense.


That's a good example.

Even with that case, you will find people who, even if supporting California on its right to promulgate its own air regulations, then turn around and object to other states doing something they don't like, using that same principle.

It seems principles are principles to the extent we agree with them.


I think that's a fair counterbalance to the amount of power smaller states have at a federal level.

Small rural states with similar ideals can form voting blocks and have the benefit of 2 Gauranteed Senators. That plus the electoral college method of presidential elections puts a ton of power in their hands.

I'd call this a feature of the system. Ironically it's "states rights" and the pressure of adopting an existing system ("free market") that's serving the left instead of the right in this case.


I've witnessed the California effect outside of California and America. I've seen the warnings on more than one thing 'this product contains substances known to be harmful in the state of California'. On things as innocuous as a crescent wrench...


This is no different from Europe’s ROHS rules which have helped people worldwide.


"Helped" is a bit of a stretch. One could (and many have) argue that the universal presence of the warnings mean that they are universally ignored.

Wood and stone dust cause cancer. Coffee and alcohol may cause cancer. None of those things are on the same level as tobacco, tanning beds etc. There is a massive spectrum, and the labels themselves don't offer that information.

As such, people depending on the labels may incorrectly assume that using a crescent wrench is as dangerous as smoking tobacco, or vice versa.


To an extent this bottom up approach is somewhat how American federalism has historically worked. Chances are if you are to be stopped by a cop for breaking a law in the US, you're probably breaking a city/county/state law and not a federal law. The rules which touch people most often are largely the ones which happen on the local level. Things like theft, assault, speeding, blasting your music at 3:00 AM and keeping the neighbors up and what not are not illegal federally (unless you're stealing from a federal building) but are usually illegal at a more local level.

For example, when Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy in Dallas Texas, Oswald did not violate a federal crime. There was no law on the books at the federal level which made it a crime to shoot the President. However, murder in the State of Texas was illegal, which is what Oswald was being charged with by Texas courts and by Texas law enforcement.

This has become more and more muddied over time with the expansion of federal powers. More things have become illegal at the federal level, and federal courts have expanded the influence of the Bill of Rights over State laws (see Incorporation[0]). There is a good bit of debate in the US about this growth of federal powers and the role of federal laws in day to day life. Sometimes it is obviously a good thing, sometimes it a bit more complicated. Note in this comment I am not attempting to argue either way, just trying to share knowledge with someone not from the US.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_R...


USA state governments are semi-sovereign. Education standards, driving regulations, murder prosecutions, etc. are all done by the state government. Interstate commerce or foreign relations has to be involved for the federal government to handle it. Municipal corporations derive their authority from the state government and in theory can be dissolved at any time. So when they ban cities from raising the minimum wage but complain about a federal mandate they are legally correct.


Whoever is in control of a "layer" will always want to consolidate control - that means they will try to impose their own favored policies on all other "layers" below them, through whatever means they have at their disposal.

There are theoretical and ideological debates to be had about "states rights," but politicians are interested primarily in exercising power, not in having philosophical debates about the precise balance of powers required for good governance. If an elected official speaks of "states rights," it's usually just a bad faith argument to throw people off the scent of their actual agenda.


> flapping in the wind

I'm fascinated by the push on laws around what people must wear, say on Florida beaches, contrasted with pushback on laws around what people must wear, say in Florida beach shops.

Does the government have the right to make you wear fabric for both face coverage and butt coverage, or neither?


One is a public safety issue, the other one is about morality policing - and for mores that many see as increasingly antiquated.


I actually think this is great. Each issue isn't equal in it's implementation and importance.

Some things I'm fine being decided federally, others I prefer states. These various scenarios allow for that so I think it's a great flexibility of the system.


Are you a natural born citizen? You should know exactly why things work out this way if you are and there's no excuse for your confusion. If you're a green card holder or other non-citizen you can be forgiven for being ignorant, I suppose other nations don't teach people how America works. But if you're on a path to citizenship in any capacity please learn how America works and why. Otherwise you'll be frustrated and unsure of why things work the way they do forever.


Hopefully this won't go far. Federal law is supposed to be a minimum and States can go more restrictive (i.e. regulation through NN).


Wheeler passed net neutrality: No Blocking, No Throttling, No Paid Prioritization (after FCC decided that ISPs are common carriers and thus FCC then had statutory authority).

Pai's (former Verizon lobbyist) FCC then decided that ISPs are not common carriers and repeatedly argued that FCC thus now has no authority to regulate ISPs in regards to Net Neutrality.

To now claim that the federal government has statutory authority which supersedes state Net Neutrality laws (without classing ISPs as common carriers) is incredibly inconsistent with the previously argued position.

Here's to hoping that the winds change and we're able to resolve the patchwork of state Net Neutrality provisions (that we have due to declassifying ISPs as common carriers) next year.


To drastically oversimplify, the FCC's position is: 1. we refuse to regulate ISPs, 2. nobody else can either

A look at other regulatory law, such as California's CARB and more stringent emissions standards than federal would seem to make Pai's position an uphill battle for the FCC.

By refusing to do his job and by revoking the Title II regs (in an arbitrary and capricious fashion, no less), Pai has opened the door to a much more complicated scenario where ISPs are at the mercy of state regulators and their compliance costs just got 50x more complicated. Obviously the lobbyists don't like that, but everyone involved has been behaving in an extremely short-sighted fashion.


I'll probably be downvoted for this but I actually read most of the 900+ combined pages of the Obama-era net neutrality order plus the Communications Act of 1960.

Pai isn't actually making a bad decision here. The problem is that "net neutrality" isn't a bad idea but that's not what the ruling promotes at all. The ruling seeks to interpret ISPs as common carriers: That much is true. But the knock-on effects of that are not at all as advertised. Among other problems, in order to lay new fiber ISPs must seek approval from the DOD and Secretary of State. This is a tremendously high hurdle to meet making it difficult for small players to enter the market and making the market ripe for exploitation. Arguably, it lead directly to the situation much of the US faces with vast swathes of area being controlled by only one or two entrants. Since the ruling was repealed several years ago, we've actually seen an explosion in new fiber and average internet speeds rise rapidly across the US. This is a good thing. All the language about "internet fast lanes" was mere propaganda: It didn't happen before the ruling and it didn't happen after the repeal.

I haven't read the California legislation and I don't plan to. But given the surprisingly positive results of Pai's work so far, I have faith his position is couched in reason and understanding. Another hundred articles saying we'll get "internet fast lanes" if the common carrier rule isn't applied to ISPs doesn't change the fact that applying that particular rule has powerful drawbacks completely unrelated to people's position.

The strange thing is if we drafted a new law which completely omitted any consequences relative to the Communications Act of 1960 and explicitly forbade internet fast lanes I would support it and I suppose Pai might as well.

Edit: Changed typo "is" to "isn't" in 2nd to last sentence.


I think you're confused. The old law that we had that already forbade prioritization was the Title II, and that's what Wheeler classified Internet as. Pai basically reversed that decision, so it was a step backward.

Wheeler when he classified Internet as Title II, made exclusion that ISPs that currently have infrastructure are not required (under Title II they are) to lease it to competitors. We don't need 10 different fiber wires coming to our house, since most likely we will only use one, all we need is to be able to chose between ISPs and that ISP can reuse existing infrastructure, kind of like it was with selecting long distance call provider on land lines, or ISP on DSL (which was automatically under Title II already, do you remember how much competition was back then? if you had phone line from PacBell, you didn't have to have internet from them, we had sites like dslreports where people could compare and chose the best one).

What residential Internet needs, is separation of the last mile with the ISP (kind of like it is in data centers, you have separate company that maintains all wiring and separate company that provides service).

Since neither FCC chairman wanted this simple solution to enable competition once again. We need consumer protection, and this comes down to net neutrality. NN forbids ISPs from interfering with the service, that's it, the California law basically reinstated those protections. We desperately need them because the "propaganda" is not far from the truth. Just look at the latest acquisitions. Comcast now owns all content from NBC Universal, AT&T owns all content from TimeWarner. Why would ISPs enter this market if they wouldn't see some benefits of their current position. Now they are already bundling those services together, and with lack of net neutrality they can prioritize their content over others. Why did we even allowed to get to this point?


> NN forbids ISPs from interfering with the service, that's it

Again - that would have been great if it were what the ruling actually did. It's not.


The ruling was because around 2002-2003[1] Internet was reclassified as Title I (Information Services). Since then ISPs started doing shenanigans, like throttling and in some cases outright blocking (first major attack was VoIP). Each time, it happened FCC stepped in, fined them, the company paid the fines and stopped doing what they were doing.

Around 2014 (IIRC) Verizon, sued FCC saying that they have no right of controlling ISPs and court ruled that Verizon was right. That ruling basically removed FCC right to control the Internet, but it hinted that they can reclassify it.

Immediately petitions and protests started asking FCC to reclassify Internet back to Title II (communication service[2]).

Obama sided with population, and Wheeler reclassified internet to Title II in 2015 (with some exemptions, like the requirement to lease infrastructure). After Trump wins he immediately started dismantling everything Obama did, which included the reclassification back to Title I (which according to the ruling FCC has no control anymore).

So as you see the ruling wasn't about NN but about whether FCC has control over service classified under Title I (information services). It has nothing about Title II (communication services).

[1] You might also notice that ISPs (which was a lot of them in late 1990 and early 2000), started disappearing around that time

[2] Despite the misinformation, Internet started as Title II, since it was initially provided by telcos, which were under Title II. Unlike today, back then we had large choice of ISPs o chose from since Title II required leasing lines to competitors.


You seemed to have missed the parts where requiring approval from the DOD and SoS to lay new fiber were forborne, along with hundreds of other Title II laws. Its kind if incredible you missed that as the term "forbearance" appears 300 times in the Open Internet Order of 2015.

Also strange you bothered to mention the Communications Act of 1960. It would be far more relevant for you to have read the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as that made some significant changes to the law since 1960.

I guess you need to go back and re-read those documents.


> I'll probably be downvoted for this but I actually read most of the 900+ combined pages of the Obama-era net neutrality order plus the Communications Act of 1960

Do you mean the Telecommunication Act of 1996 or the Communications Act of 1934? Or the Communications Amendments Act of 1960?

Because the first and second are relevant here, but while the last did make changes to the 1934 Act, those aren't really germane to the 2018 Open Internet order.

> Among other problems, in order to lay new fiber ISPs must seek approval from the DOD and Secretary of State.

No, it did not require that.

> Arguably, it lead directly to the situation much of the US faces with vast swathes of area being controlled by only one or two entrants.

No, unless you suggest retrocausality, that's not at all arguable; that situation was in place well before the 2015 order at issue, which was in effect for less than 3 years and not enforced for much of that time because the Pai opposed it even though it was on the books and nominally in force.

> Since the ruling was repealed several years ago

It was only two years ago (the repeal became effective in June 2018.)


Like you said, the FCC position was "1. we refuse to regulate ISPs, 2. nobody else can either". That does not open the door to "ISPs are at the mercy of state regulators". However, the FCC was sued, and the courts overturned #2 (nobody else can either). Now the door is open, but that's not the intent of the FCC, which is why the Federal Govt is continuing to litigate.


It does, actually. FCC reigns supreme in telecom regulations when they regulate something. However, they claimed that federal net neutrality was out of scope of the FCC's regulatory power. Because of that, by their own words they lack standing to prevent the states from doing their own thing.

For instance, the FCC can't sue California over smog controls because clean air isn't under the FCC's jurisdiction. Well, the FCC has claimed, in court, that net neutrality is also not under their jurisdiction. Their claims under oath are contradictory: either they have the power to enforce net neutrality (in which case it should still be federal law) or they don't (in which case they don't have grounds to tell California that CA can't enforce it).


> A look at other regulatory law, such as California's CARB and more stringent emissions standards than federal would seem to make Pai's position an uphill battle for the FCC.

I think the FCC position is wrong, but the Clean Air Act has an express allowance for California Waivers (for which there are limited reasons the feds can deny) to issue stricter standards (and for other states to adopt exactly standards for which California has received a waiver) notwithstanding general preemption of state regulation under the Act.

So that's not really a good analogy, since there's nothing parallel to that with regard to telecom law.


Where is the power to regulate intrastate ISP commerce granted to the federal government?

Certainly not in the US Constitution.

What a slippery slope.


SCOTUS first held in 1824 that the Commerce Clause gives the federal government the right to regulate intrastate commerce in a 6-0 decision.

You're about 200 years too late to be arguing that there's no basis in the US Constitution.


Gibbons v. Ogden was about Congress's right to regulate interstate commerce, not intrastate commerce.

The massive expansion and erosion of the meaning of interstate commerce didn't begin until Wickard v Filburn in 1942.


Gibbons v Ogden was about New York's granting of a monopoly on all steamboat services within New York, and the ruling held that "Commerce among the States, cannot stop at the external boundary line of each State, but may be introduced into the interior"--in other words, that the right to regulate interstate commerce necessarily intrudes on the right to regulate intrastrate commerce to some degree.

Wickard v Filburn held that the Commerce Clause extends to regulating the growing of wheat for personal consumption, that involved no commercial transactions whatsoever.


Ah, good thing the internet stops at each state's borders.


If the framers of the constitution had intended for the federal government to have unlimited regulatory authority, they wouldn't have referred to Interstate Commerce. They would've just said: the federal government can do whatever it wants.

Redefining "interstate" is a mistake that one would hope that at least libertarian conservatives (who deliberately avoid expansionary scope creep without limit) would oppose.


"It took about 150 years, starting with a Bill of Rights that reserved to the states and the people all powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government, to produce a Supreme Court willing to rule that growing corn to feed to your own hogs is interstate commerce and can therefore be regulated by Congress."

    --- David Friedman


> to produce a Supreme Court willing to rule that growing corn to feed to your own hogs is interstate commerce

That gloss on Wickard v. Filburn was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Filburn both sold his wheat crop and used it to feed his livestock which he also sold on the market.

I never understood why legal scholars, especially conservative legal scholars, so adamantly adhered to the notion that Wickard would clearly apply to purely private use. I tend to think it's out of spite--so upset about a decision that they promoted an unreasonable interpretation as a way to vindicate their ire.

It wasn't until Gonzales v. Raich (2005) that the court clearly stated Commerce Clause powers could extend to purely personal harvest and use, where neither the product (wheat, marijuana) nor derivatives (hogs, THC brownies) would be sold[1]. And ironically (or not so ironically), it was Scalia that cast the deciding vote.[2] And why did he do it? Basically because of reliance interests--Scalia worried the legal basis for the War on Drugs would come crashing down, and that would be too disruptive. But that's tautological--it only makes sense if you ignore the facts in Wickard and the commercial nature of the drug trade. Self... fulfilling... prophecy.... :(

[1] The counter-argument is that the Wickard opinion talks about the excess wheat consumed on the farm displacing demand for purchasing wheat. But he was already a commercial farmer--it was a matter of regulating commercial demand and commercial supply. And wheat is perfectly fungible, afterall, so of what matter is it that some small portion of the wheat might have gone directly to his table? The quotas were well in excess of what would be needed for purely personal consumption, direct and indirect. The notion of displaced demand can be easily cabined to the context of a commercial enterprise, and it strains credulity to believe the Wickard justices thought otherwise. Filburn wasn't a subsistence farmer, and wheat was a direct input to his commercial livestock. So analogizing that situation to homegrown marijuana displacing demand for, e.g, commercial medications is ridiculous (or, at the very least, an analogy one could just as easily reject as accept, again circling back to this notion that the parade of horribles from Wickard was wholly self-inflicted).

[2] And because of his Gonzales decision, for the Obamacare personal mandate Scalia was forced to retreat to a tenuous distinction between mandates and prohibitions, a distinction that would have been entirely unnecessary if he wasn't committed to the Wickard mythos[3]. If he had sided with the other conservatives in Gonzales, it would have been clear that the Commerce Clause couldn't support an individual mandate any more than a private use prohibition. (That would still leave open taxing powers as a basis, however, just as Roberts concluded.)

[3] Apropos HN, s/mythos/cargo cult/


Wickard was still ultimately about a restriction on personal consumption. "But he participated in commerce otherwise" is a distraction - who of us doesn't, when you get down to it? When it comes to weed grown for private consumption, it could be argued to affect one's participation in the labor market; i.e. one's ability to sell one's labor - or, perhaps, the quality and/or quantity of that labor.

Besides, why even focus on selling in the first place? The Commerce Clause doesn't make a distinction between selling and buying, so if participating in the market as a seller is enough to put any activity that affects your supply within scope, then why wouldn't participating in the market as a buyer do so just the same for any activity that affects your demand?

You're claiming that it didn't readily follow - but, well, if it wasn't until Raichs that anybody even tried seriously challenging that notion in court, then it sounds like it did readily follow in practice.


Thanks for the hyper informed rebuttal I probably don't agree with.

Quality work!


Well, I believe the interpreted scope of the interstate commerce clause is a heavily debated (and shifting) topic that is perenially to at least someone's dissatisfaction, so at least know that you're not alone.


Let me know when you can guarantee none of your ISP's packets don't go over state borders.

Arguments over the interstate commerce clause of the constitution aside, I find it really hard to believe an _Internet_ service provider doesn't move anything over state lines, which is clearly within the federal government's jurisdiction.


But this is about what your ISP does to your packets between when they receive them an d when they pass them to you - it would only be interstate if your ISP processed your packets in a different state (maybe your fiber crosses into another state)


My ISP is Comcast. Their network is nationwide. They actually run major IP backbones. There's an excellent chance that packets destined for me are entering their network in a different state than the one I reside in.

It's huge, national providers like Comcast and Time Warner that are sparking the majority of concerns around net neutrality. On a practical level, nobody is super worried about predatory behavior from, say, Cruzio, an independent ISP serving Santa Cruz County.


Well, there is this hilarious statement by SCOTUS (an opinion penned by Scalia):

> Where necessary to make a regulation of interstate commerce effective, Congress may regulate even those intrastate activities that do not themselves substantially affect interstate commerce.

From 2005's Gonzales v. Raich


I haven't read the case but he was likely paraphrasing Wickard v. Filburn when he wrote that since that's where federal judicial approval of that sentiment comes from. The idea that feds can regulate noncommercial intrastate activity in order to affect interstate commerce is way older than 2005.


Yeah, you're not really wrong, and I'm only an amateur SCOTUS watcher anyways. I just find the contortions of that sentence, and especially the fact that Scalia, the arch-originalist, wrote it, wryly amusing.


One might've thought that a conservative court would halt inappropriate expansion of federal power in order to preserve small, limited government and liberty.

Liberty of the governed to set laws at a local level (where they do not conflict with Constitutionally-protected rights and powers enumerated to the federal government).


Well there's the interstate commerce clause, not sure why them being an ISP changes anything.


op said 'intrastate', not sure if that relates to your point.

an argument can be made that intrastate impacts interstate, but not sure where the threshold lies - AFAIK you don't have alcohol companies suing in court to oppose local alcolhol regulations on this basis, etc, as an example (though I'm sure they lobby heavily).


That threshold is defined by Gonzales v. Raichs at the moment, and it's low enough that it's possible for the feds to ban growing cannabis purely for personal consumption.

For state and local laws, it would be a matter of the corresponding state constitution - but it's less of an issue on that level, because state constitutions are generally not written in such a way as to restrict the power of the government to a few explicitly enumerated things.


> A look at other regulatory law, such as California's CARB

Let’s hope this is not followed. CARB is terribly implemented. The agency is corrupt and considered rogue.

One of many resources online: https://www.ocregister.com/2015/05/29/california-air-resourc...


Oh no they implemented cap and trade, the horror.


In order to block state regulation, federal law either has to establish regulations, or pretty explicitly state that it intends to have deregulation nullify state law.

The FCC deregulation was effected by arguing that broadband services aren't in its remit for regulation, which makes it hard for the FCC to win an argument that it can overrule state regulations on the basis of its own inability to regulate them. This seems pretty much a slam-dunk for "it's not going to work" as far as the courts go, not that it stops people from trying.


> not that it stops people from trying

Honestly this is the part I find most galling. My (and your) ISP is using the money I pay to them to fight a stupid, probably-losing lawsuit whose sole purpose is to injure me as a consumer. I'm paying to hurt myself, and I have no choice, because every ISP is fighting this battle.


It's not the ISP who's fighting the lawsuit, it's the FCC. So your glorious tax money is funding this.

I don't know if that should make you feel better or worse.


I admit I'm not great at legal stuff, but the article I read stated the broadband industry is involved:

"The Trump administration and broadband industry are resuming their fight against California's net neutrality law, with the US Department of Justice and ISP lobby groups filing new complaints against the state yesterday."

"Now that the Trump administration and broadband industry have filed amended complaints..."

"The broadband industry's amended complaint was filed by the major lobby groups representing cable, fiber, DSL, and mobile Internet providers."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/trump-admin-and-...

Here is the complaint itself, with plaintiffs "AMERICAN CABLE ASSOCIATION, CTIA – THE WIRELESS ASSOCIATION, NCTA – THE INTERNET & TELEVISION ASSOCIATION, and USTELECOM – THE BROADBAND ASSOCIATION, on behalf of their members":

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.caed.344150...

If I'm reading this right, the FCC filed a separate complaint. So you're right: I (and you) am paying to hurt myself, twice! Awesome.


Yes, they are involved, they are sending their people to bribe officials to fight this fight for them.


Lobbying is a thing so in a way the money they're paying their ISP is also going towards the fight.


It's not ISPs that are paying it (except for brib... I mean lobbying).

This is actually worse, if you're a Californian you're paying for both sides of the argument.


That’s not true. That is folk constitutional law. It might be descriptive of some areas of law as they currently operate, but that is not the constitutional federalism framework in the US. When the federal government acts in the areas where it has authority, its enumerated powers[1], then it can and often does preempt state law. Sometimes the preemption is explicitly in the law, but other times it is implicit and up to a court to determine whether a particular state action or kind of state action would undermine the federal regulatory scheme.

If it is the policy of the US government that there is no guarantee of transit on the Internet, then there is a good argument that state regulations to the contrary undermine the federal scheme, which is to have a free market for transit.

[1] the expansive reading of those enumerated powers is another question altogether


Perhaps in theory, however, this administration has constantly given itself more and more power while the president's party mates in congress stood by and did nothing to check it. Yes, very recently, SCOTUS has checked the president's power a bit, but tying this stuff up in Federal Courts is, at best, a waste of tax payer money.

Luckily, elections are coming up in November.


No matter who wins, I expect presidential powers to continue to expand. Trump does it with more flair, but Obama also did it.


Obama was stuck with a Congress that wouldn't do its job because it was obsessed with sabotaging everything.


Congress's job is to sabotage everything. It's called checks and balances. Both parties since time forever have been expanding presidential powers because convincing congress to do things is hard, but convincing congress to undo things is hard.

If you're going to chastize Presidents for using executive actions for things that should probably be done by Congress, you should really chastize all of them. Otherwise, you're really just chastizing Presidents for taking actions that you don't like, but blaming the process instead of the actions.


Their job is not to sabotage everything. They, and the judiciary, are present to prevent the executive branch from becoming supreme. The same applies to any one of the branches with respect to the other two.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers#Checks_...

One downside to this is that a branch can also significantly obstruct things if they decide to.


Congress's job is actually to represent the people of their individual states. That the net effect of doing so is often to "sabotage everything" is a second order effect.


Here's Moscow Mitch in 2010: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-A09a_gHJc

Serving the American people isn't on the list.


And so with Biden, should he win. Even a wave election won't produce a filibuster-proof majority. And as with Obama, they will filibuster every attempt at legislation, so that they can cite it as proof that the Congress doesn't work so elect them.


It's becoming pretty clear they're going to get rid of the filibuster if the Democrats take the Senate - probably rightly so.


At one time I might have defended the practice, since some things are important enough that they should require supermajorities. But there's already a high bar to clear, in that legislation has to pass the House and the Senate and the President. That alone guarantees gridlock more often than not.

So I won't be sad to see it go. It's already gone in the one case I felt it was appropriate, for lifetime nominations to the Supreme Court, an enormous amount of power that doesn't require the input of the House.


It’s a total difference of kind with Trump. I agree with you this keeps increasing over time, but Trump’s abuse of power is categorically unlike any president in almost a hundred years. The most recent comparable thing to me is probably FDR’s executive order for Japanese internment camps.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9066


Obama did it with more flair. Trump does it with more bluster. GW Bush did it with more stumbling. Clinton did it with interns [0]. Fact is it's a monotonic increasing function you can trace back as far as Roosevelt, maybe even Lincoln.

[0] This may have veered off-topic.


Not sure why this is dead? I found it rather true.


"Presidents generally support expanding executive powers" is true, but that doesn't mean that all presidents pushed to expand powers in the same way and to the same degree. "Obama did it with more flair, Bush did it with more stumbling" reduces these differences to mere aesthetics.

More generally, "both sides are bad" is essentially the cynic's version of "both sides are valid," and should be treated with a similarly skeptical eye. False equivalence that gets you to nod your head in agreement is still false equivalence.


It's interstate commerce, feds have a lot of power when it comes to anything that crosses state lines. Even if it's indirect. By employing net neutrality law in Cali, they affect the transmission of data in and out of Cali, therefore being interstate.

Perhaps it's somehow special here, but that's my understanding of anything and everything that crosses state lines.


But feds argument was that they are not empowered to regulate ISPs. So effectively there is no regulation either way on Fed level and so the state isn’t going against anything.


has there every been any major rulings on the 10th amendment? I think this should be the issue here.


Yeah there was a recent one which nullified the federal ban on sportsbetting because the federal government didn't directly ban sportsbetting, instead it banned the states from enacting any new laws which legalized sportsbetting. The reasoning was that the federal government may be able to enact and enforce laws on sportsbetting, but it cannot force the state governments to continue to enforce their laws on sportsbetting if their legislatures want to stop.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-476_dbfi.pdf


The Tenth Amendment doesn't mean what most of these arguments would have it mean. The disputes center on the limits of federal power, and here the Tenth Amendment merely tautologically says that the federal government doesn't have any power it doesn't have. Because of the Supremacy Clause, the states don't have any power to overrule the federal government, so the rest of it doesn't really apply.

It should be noted that the original version of the text said "The powers not expressly delegated", but this version of text failed to pass Congress. It was only after deleting that word that the amendment passed. That one word change is key, since including that word would mean what people in these arguments want it to mean, so its intentional omission destroys those arguments.


maybe we need to put that word back in.


First they moved to strip FCC of its ability to preempt state regulations, and now they want to sit on two chairs and regulate states? Too bad, they should have thought about it when their corrupt monopolistic overlords paid them to repeal federal net neutrality.

States should fight back against this foolery.


Dang, guess we don't really have a non-big-government states-rights party any more.

BTW I'm still mad about Newsom screwing about with his no-IRV-in-California decree. Not okay, Gavin. Not okay. Leave the decision making to the people unless something gets ugly.


The GOP was repeating “states rights” to seed the airwaves with propaganda.

They’ve targeted blue states with federal policy over and over, manipulate all state markets giving free money to their cronies to prop up dynastic wealth, and have a history of creeping SCOTUS rulings thanks to partisan hack justices.

The only difference between GW and Trump is GW kept his mouth shut. Politically their Machiavellian ways predate Trump.

The people have decided they’re not interested in paying attention to politics and tolerate the political chicanery their ennui enables.

Free market of emotional minds to troll into consent, cause really what else you gonna do? Bailing on ones culture is not trivial.


IRV == "instant runoff voting"?


Yes, sir. Only the grandfathered dudes (SF, Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro, Palm Desert) get to keep theirs.

https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/SB-212-Vet...

Sorry to take this off-topic. I'll stop here. The connection was that I don't generally like the bigger admin divisions stopping the smaller admin divisions from doing things like this.


It seems absurd that the DOJ is using the FCC's argument that it didn't have the authority to regulate ISPs to prevent states from regulating ISPs. If they don't have the authority to regulate, how do they have the authority to stop regulation?

I think the answer is pretty obviously not some kind of reasonable legal argument, but simply that the corporations which really run the Trump FCC and DOJ do not want Net Neutrality regulations. Comcast's bottom line doesn't care about rational legal arguments.


The moneybags needs to stop meddling in policy. The only reason why they ever meddle is to increase their own heft.


Does net neutrality make it illegal to throttle ssh/bittorrent traffic?


Who wants to bankroll me if I go create a rural ISP somewhere (probably Nevada/Utah/Arizona, where regulation is lax), become a local hero for providing broadband communication where the incumbents won't, then throttle/censor Fox/Breitbart (maybe requiring a "premium subscription" for access) and tell everyone who complains, "Hey, it's legal!"

Think maybe we could actually get the Republicans on board with net neutrality?


The problem is that the laws in some places will make it hard for you to become the ISP in some of those spots due to the incumbents.

There are folks on the left who aren't on board with net neutrality. I'd say the common ground between left and right is about having viable competition, which we don't have. But we kinda tried that with the 1996 telecom act and that failed.

I'd rather municipalities get in the broadband access game as a utility and be transparent about costs and utilization and provide interconnection to an ISP upstream at standard tariffed rates.


You might enjoy listening to this podcast episode, on a town that tried to do exactly that: https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/865908114/small-america-vs-bi...


A similar play in Tennessee: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/tennessee-kills-...

Attempts to expand broadband service run by municipalities forcefully opposed by AT&T and Comcast.


tl;dr: The North Carolina legislature passed a law in 2011 prohibiting municipal telecommunication services, but the city of Wilson was able to carve out an exemption, because Greenlight (owned by Wilson) was already providing such services. Then the FCC tried to intervene, but Federal courts, on appeal it found that the 1996 Telecommunications Act is not giving this specific power to the FCC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenlight_(Internet_service)


No, you'd get hypocrites and idiots (of which there are plenty in congress). Suggesting that a private company have control and authority over the electronic signals it sends isn't to do with media companies being censored - it's to do with constitutional law. Enforcing what protocols are delivered and how is step 1 of 2 - the second being actively worked on by most of the pro-net-neutrality legislators: controlling or outlawing encryption.

I am anti-net-neutrality for the same reasons I'm for de-funding the police: there are smarter ways than direct remote control for solving certain issues. Starlink (for example) does tenfold more for a neutral internet than any FCC ever has. A neutral internet does not require the California Internet Consumer Protection and Net Neutrality Act.


> Tere are smarter ways

Smarter ways that don't work don't help. There might be smarter ways to prevent monopoly abuse than anti-trust laws (and net neutrality is idea of the same category like other competition laws), but monopolists have a lot of power to counteract those ways once they are already entrenched. They never play fair.

Google tried with Fiber. It went so well because of fair entrenched incumbents, didn't it?


> if I go create a rural ISP somewhere (probably Nevada/Utah/Arizona

As someone who has done this in these states I think you should do it, or at least try! If you can get enough customers to matter then we should definitely talk. It's harder than it sounds.


Polls consistently show 70-80% support for net neutrality among Republicans (about 10% higher among Democrats), so the users of your proposed ISP would probably already be on board regardless of party.

The big hold up is that Trump is against it, and very few Republican office holders are willing to go against him regardless of how far his position is from what their constituents want.

Ideally, picking the President over your own constituents on too many issues would lead to your constituents electing someone else at the next opportunity, but the Republican Senate leadership is able to block any bills from the House on those issues so that they don't even come up for a Senate vote thus saving Republican Senators from having to cast votes that would either annoy Trump or their constituents.

Maybe if you build your ISP in Kentucky, and explicitly tell anyone who complains that "thanks to Mitch McConnell keeping net neutrality from a Senate vote, it is legal" it might help.


Current Republican ideology is not about a set of principles, it's about power and partisanship. For example, when in power, change budgets to cause massive deficit spending, when out of power, complain about the deficit being bad.

No Republicans there will even understand the point your trying to make, or at best they will think you are foolish. After 40 years of demonization of political opponents, it's all about "with us or against us."


> After 40 years of demonization of political opponents, it's all about "with us or against us."

This isn't a uniquely Republican point of view, nor is it as prevalent among the Republican voter base as you imply.

Have you lived up north recently? Specifically the so-called "tech hubs" are filled with vile and judgemental people who will stop at nothing in the pursuit of groupthink and monoculture.


When it comes to the political issue that I hold most dear, housing, I will say that most liberals and lefties lose their supposed values when it's close to home. NIMBY opposition to apartments and multi family housing is a shared value, and it's only the Republicans in these areas who speak about their honest opinions, where as liberals will invent all sorts of reasons to justify their aesthetic preference, and ignore the chance for greater economic, environmental, and racial justice in their own neighborhoods.

However, when it comes to rural areas, areas that don't even have leftists but may have a few liberals, my experience is that the anti-lib stance is the overriding view, along with being pro-gun, pro-God (at least in theory), and pro-fossil fuel. It's a cultural war more than a political war, in-tribe versus out-of-tribe. For Democrats, the culture war does not extend to swapping values on the national stage depending on who is in power, it only seems to be loca control of housing.


Where is "up north"?

> vile and judgemental people who will stop at nothing in the pursuit of groupthink and monoculture

Just start quoting Jordan Peterson and save us the implications and dancing around your point.


Those who repealed net neutrality are consistently pro-monopoly and corporate corruption. It might be not ideological, but does it make it any better if they do it for money? The result is still awful.


This sounds an awful lot like projection and not at all how Republicans think...


But it's how the Republican Party operates every day in Congress. If a registered Republican voter doesn't agree with it, they can either shut up and deal or register as something else.


Sure, not all Republicans, many Republicans have principles beyond the lust for more power or the desire to own the libs. But it's definitely the case for the power structure, and for a majority the rank and file random-Joe-Republican in small towns.

There's also a significant number of leftists who feel the same way about liberals, though this is a tiny chunk of them that speaks far louder than their numbers are, and who do not hold power in proportion to their loudness.


And the rest vote for this to happen. The Republicans platforms on their evil, and they get the votes upon that platform.


You can change 'republican' to 'democratic' in your comment, and it would still apply. You can also change 'budgets' and 'deficit' to 'war' and 'interventions' (with either party), and it also works.


No.

Let's stop with this false equivalency.

One party has done everything in its power to gerrymander, discredit the electoral process, and put lobbyists in power. One party has consistently appealed to racism. One party has appealed to discrediting the value of effective government.


Exactly, let's stop with there's bad people on both sides, that the "truth resides in the middle". While the democrats are very far from perfect and have tons of faults, the modern republican party is a disgrace.


"You're not hurting the right people," resonated because it rang true to most people.

The Road Rage Party ... has seemed an appropriate way to describe the GOP in recent years.


What I've seen over the past couple years:

> in its power to gerrymander

Republicans (I doubt anyone will complain about this one)

> discredit the electoral process

Primarily Democrats (National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, concern over mail-in voting prior to 2015, renewed concern over the past month or so), with some Republican (concern over mail-in ballots over the past half-year or so)

> put lobbyists in power

Honestly not paying much attention here

> One party has consistently appealed to racism

Democrats (probably the most prominent recent thing being Biden's "you ain't black", but there's plenty more)

> One party has appealed to discrediting the value of effective government

Not sure about the "appealed to", but between impeachment with no evidence and The Squad, I have to give this one to Democrats as well.


I didn't say it applied equally, just that it did apply. If I am guilty of something, it's whataboutism, not false equivalency, though I'm on neither of those sides, so I think I am innocent of all charges.


No, you can't exchange those with war and have it work for the Democrats, that's simply ridiculous. Democratic leadership favor many military intervention, it's just Republicans that falsely say that Democratic leadership does not favor militarism.

Listen to leftists, and they will be pointing out these cases, because the Democratic leadership and power structure is consistent in support of militarism, whether or not the Democrats are in power, and leftists give them hell for it.

Can you find diversity of opinion within political parties? Of course. But pointing to diversity of opinion is a hugely different thing than the leadership of parties swapping positions I'm supposed ideals like "fiscally conservative" depending on whether or not they are doing the spending.


The Democratic party recently favored more military interventions into Syria than the Republicans, and has taken positions against withdrawals in Germany and South Korea. There have also been a few studies showing that the Democratic party is more 'peace-focused' when there is a Republican in the White House.


Net neutrality needs to go.

Why should I, as a private ISP company, be forced to pass through racist content, russian disinformation or anti vaxxer propaganda? If YouTube is allowed to block content, why aren't ISP's also allowed? We need to call out companies who tollerate hate speech.

You can always start your own ISP if you fancy those kinds of content.


Why should I, as a power company, be forced to pass through power that is used to support people who I think don't vote according to my political party?

You can always start your own power company if you fancy the other political party.


I think the specific policies regulating service providers ought to be implemented on a case by case basis depending primarily on the amount of power that the service provider has in practice. There's typically only one power company in a region, and that's why we generally require them to offer their service with no discrimination. But if someone owns a small hardware store and doesn't want to rent generators to the local KKK group for their annual outdoor convention, and that means the KKK group has to go to the next town over to get their generators, I'm not particularly bothered.


I think this was the point OP was making. It's sarcasm.

He's mocking those that believe service providers like Facebook and Youtube should be able to discriminate against content they dislike. If YouTube are allowed to regulate content because they're a private company and "go build your own", then by the same logic, why can't the ISPs?


Uh I do not think it was sarcasm.


Even so, it's interesting that the opinion was downvoted.

I've seen people here make that exact same argument with much praise when the topic is whether or not Facebook should be allowed to regulate user submitted content.

I suppose whether or not its sarcastic isn't that important. What's more interesting why there appears to be a kind of hypocritical support for net neutrality, but an opposition to neutrality on global communications platforms like Facebook?


Not just downvoted, but flag killed. I don't agree with the comment you're referencing, but I vouched for it to get it unflagged. The presentation may be a little hyperbolic, but it's not an insane position prima facie.


[flagged]


What is right today may not be tomorrow. It's not the case of "nobody actually thinking" for them to take in new information and make new decisions. It's just the opposite.


Is this not itself a meme?


Youtube is like a business that uses the services of a power utility, like I do for home.

I can go to another business, but likely neither me nor the business can choose another power company.

Also it is not the power company's fault if the business denies me access to merchandise in that business.


What if I own a business that reports on the news in video format?

I'm forced to use the services of YouTube as they're the only video hosting service with a global reach thanks to network effects. What if after 5 years of running a successful business on YouTube they decide they don't like my reporting on COVID-19 and ban my business from their service?

Why should I care about net neutrality potentially limiting access to my website which only receives a few visits a day? The reality is it's far more damaging to an online business today to not have a high search ranking on Google and a good following on YouTube and Facebook -- without this you're invisible on the web, you may as well not exist.


Network effects are a form of compounding asset.

It's possible to have a billion dollars, and use the interest on that money in the bank to do other things. If we don't consider this situation wrong, we can't consider network effects wrong.

Also Youtube is not required to access anything needed for survival or civic functioning. No one is forcing those people to sign up for YouTube.

There is nothing stopping anything from thinking long term, planting seeds, and creating their own network effects and getting people off of YouTube.

> Why should I care about net neutrality potentially limiting access to my website which only receives a few visits a day?

Above is why.


There are lots of ways to host video content that have global reach. What you don’t get is youtube’s discoverability. So you would have to be more creative about finding your audience.


Because Facebook is not the internet?


> We need to call out companies who tollerate hate speech.

You're absolutely right. I condemn all the phone companies and mail carriers who do nothing to stop people from using their services for hate speech. They should listen in on every call, and open every envelope, to ensure content is acceptable.

Sarcasm, in case that wasn't clear.


I don’t think anybody cares that much about one to one communications. You don’t know or care what your neighbor is communicating to their friends. When things are public and ad supported, then people (and advertisers) care.


You can't just go out and start an ISP.

That's like saying I can go out and start my own bank or make my own payment processor.


I agree with your sentiment (that you shouldn't have to), but you actually can do these things. People have started banks and payment processors, and competed successfully with the bigger ones; Stripe is a great example, as is Simple.

https://startyourownisp.com


AFAIK Simple is not a bank, it's a (better) UI/UX wrapper around "bank", and they've changed the underlying provider at least once since I've been using them.



"You can't just go out and start an ISP."

Actually it is not that difficult in a densely populated area using modern wireless networking technologies. NYC Mesh is the example that immediately comes to my mind -- they have installed repeaters on dozens of rooftops and have plenty of peering relationships (though AFAIK they do not provide transit because they are only connected to a single IXP). I also know someone who worked for a wireless ISP in a rural area, though they ultimately went bankrupt probably because of the higher cost per customer in sparsely populated regions (probably the reason rural areas are invariably stuck with a local monopoly that provides terrible service at a high price).

Of course, providing competitive service is a different story, and is far more capital intensive...


> NYC Mesh is the example that immediately comes to my mind -- they have installed repeaters on dozens of rooftops and have plenty of peering relationships (though AFAIK they do not provide transit because they are only connected to a single IXP).

... which is why people say it's impossible to start an ISP. Building the local part is relatively easy, but, one, how many backhaul networks serve your region, and, two, how many of them are willing to provide service to an entity robbing them of their rightful monopoly on selling overpriced triple-play contracts to everyone in the state?


Well, sure, and like I said that rural WISP wound up failing because building and maintaining their wireless backhaul was too expensive for the number of customers they served (and they definitely did not have the budget to build a wired backhaul). In a dense area like NYC, where you can get line of sight to a building that houses an IXP, it is definitely easier to do.

As for ISPs selling service, it is not all that hard to get a contract. ISPs like Hurricane Electric will sell service to anyone who can be colocated with one of their POPs, and they are pretty widely distributed (they do not provide residential service and would have no reason to refuse to sell service to a residential ISP). Verizon and AT&T also have wholesale contracts that in theory a smaller ISP could use, and I doubt they would begrudge an ISP that is competing with them in some local market (especially since a small ISP will almost certainly not be able to provide a triple-play package or any form bundling at all, so the big players will always have the upper hand). "Enterprise" transit services can also be used, if you can afford the prices ISPs demand for those contracts (or more precisely, if you can effectively pass the cost on to your residential users). You may have to build out a backhaul to some large building where you can get a fiber connection, but that is not an insurmountable barrier to entry.


It is difficult to start your own ISP or payment processor, but it is possible.


ISP's dont host content.

Imagine if Airlines block you from flying everywhere, but the place you want to travel to hasn't blocked you from entering it. They should not have that power, expect in extremely rare cases


ISPs do host content. Major ISPs like Comcast and Verizon are TV companies as well as network providers. Comcast owns Time Warner; Verizon owns HBO. They are both massive conglomerates, and they hold monopolies or near-monopolies on networking in many areas.


Verizon the television channel curator should be enabled and encouraged to stop carrying harmful content.

Verizon the broadband provider should make no determinations based on the content of any message they carry.


> In a statement Tuesday, PAL Airlines said the two men would be banned indefinitely from the airline's flights.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/racist-...


That is different. ISP's have those kinds of power too.

Try running a DDOS attack without the ISP blocking you. Or try accessing banned content, without workarounds.

A good read on who should be held responsible, written by Cloudflare's CEO. https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/


Because they insulted people on the same plane.

In this metaphor that'd be like an ISP blocking a customer because they were hacking other customers, which is fine.


You are making my point. If someone puts racist content on the net and a black customer complains, it's fine for the ISP to block them.


Your example only works if the offensive content was sent unsolicited.

If the person offended sought out the content I do not think the content should be banned (assuming the content was legal speech).


> If YouTube is allowed to block content, why aren't ISP's also allowed?

Because, to use a transportation analogy, your ISP is like a taxi service and YouTube is like a store in the mall. We let stores in the mall decide who is allowed in (subject to certain broad antidiscrimination laws), but we don't let taxis refuse customers that want to go to any particular store in the mall.


total freedom is indistinguishable from anarchy. civilization developed laws for a reason.

why can't you just punch anyone in the face?

why can't you set the forest on fire?

why can't you buy living people?

don't get me wrong, all these things you list are IMHO very bad and shouldn't be on the internet, but let's create institutions that have the right tools to filter them (these tools include new laws). ISPs have the right tools to forward packets.


Automatic content filtering does not work. For example, after the buyout, Tumblr implemented content filtering. The image they presented as being safe to share was immediately filtered by their software. Let me repeat that: Tumblr's content filter produced a false positive with their own safe reference!


> Automatic content filtering does not work.

So how is an ISP supposed to do it, then, if there is no NN? Doesn't the same argument work there, too?


The ISP will allow their traffic or traffic from their business partners through cheaper and unimpeded. They will ensure that traffic from competitors is less reliable and more expensive. NN is about treating all packets equally.


Yes. This is a money thing and has nothing to do with the discussion here, which is ” Why should I, as a private ISP company, be forced to pass through racist content, russian disinformation or anti vaxxer propaganda?”


Technically anarchy doesn’t mean the absence of rules or organization, just the absence of hierarchies that place one person/group in a strictly superior position to others.


Lots of coherent arguments on the Internet but here's the short form: It's good for society for the following things to be done:

- permit people to offer infrastructure

- indemnify them from the acts users commit while using the infrastructure (push law enforcement up to the gov)

- in exchange, force them to not be able to select who uses the infrastructure (push discrimination up to the gov)

Essentially, it's useful to have private parties provide unified public services. This allows you to privatize certain things (power generation, trains, the DMV if you desired, etc.) while retaining the privileges and duties the operator has to comply with if they were the government.

There's obviously nuance to it, but if you wanted to know, that's the gist of it.




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