
Why ‘Net Neutrality’ Drives the Left Crazy - petethomas
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-net-neutrality-stirs-such-passion-1495230726
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al2o3cr
Us hippies have weird ideas like "I paid the ISP to ship me the bits so
fucking ship them to me without shaking down the source for some extra cash".

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ajmurmann
Or wanting to start a new company without having yet another disadvantage
against incumbents.

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ajmurmann
To me the comments to the article are the most shocking thing. It's obvious
that Pai is a shill for the ISPs. Yet 90% of the commenters are so mindlessly
pro-market that they cannot see that deregulating the ISP market that's
currently a awful market that in many areas sees only a single provider will
lead to stifling innovation in the much more important market of services
provided via the Internet. And the people spout shit like "The internet is a
privilege and not a right" as an argument against it being a utility. What
reality to people live in? The internet is arguably the most important
invention in human history and probably the most important utility we have.
I'd rather give up roads or running water than Internet access.

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dozzie
> The internet is arguably the most important invention in human history and
> probably the most important utility we have.

Are you ready to forego your water and sewer installation? I'm not. I think
you should revisit the importance of internet access down a few notches.

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ajmurmann
Yes that's what I said and I stand by it. It would be incredibly inconvenient
to lose water or sewer. I would have to walk down to the creek multiple times
a day, purify the water, etc. Showers would be a thing of the past. I'd have
to have a septic which comes with it's own issues. However, without Internet
access I cannot work, I would have a much harder time acquiring new knowledge.
If the entire Internet were gone for everybody that would be a huge killer for
much of our economy, but since we would have to deal with it collectively
infrastructure to get stuff done without it would likely come back. However,
if it was just me who had no Internet that would be a massive disaster for
myself. Without Internet I would immediately be left behind.

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dozzie
Oh, I see. You just don't underestand how absolutely vital water is to keep
our civilization running.

No water or sewer installations wouldn't just mean you have to endure some
inconveniences. It would mean hygienic catastrophe, with all the diseases
eradicated just by making everybody wash their hands come back. And no easy
access to water would literally kill almost all industry. Industry nowadays
consumes twice as much water as households, mind you. Take that away and you
don't have no production of anything at all. (Agriculture takes twice as
industry and households combined, but I'm not sure if I can pull it under the
same argument here.)

On the other hand, if we make internet disappear, we would go to where we were
just twenty years ago, thirty at best. Most of the information produced and
processed through internet is only useful for working with internet, so it's
not as big deal as you want to paint it.

> However, without Internet access I cannot work, I would have a much harder
> time acquiring new knowledge.

You'd just land in some other industry. And new knowledge you would just get
from somebody else. People didn't magically become more knowledgable once
internet became common. It's not like an average person today knows more than
average person three decades ago (and it seems it's actually the opposite).

> If the entire Internet were gone for everybody that would be a huge killer
> for much of our economy,

For our _industry_ , IT+web, not _economy_. For _economy_ it would be a big
inconvenience, because IT is so big nowadays, but nothing more. Lack of water,
on the other hand, would make impossible most of the production processes,
including agricultural chemistry.

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nafizh
Absolutely no in depth analysis of the problem. More of a biopic of Ajit Pai
making him look like some kind of hero of resistance.

The central theme is net neutrality is making investment in internet
infrastructure difficult. Yet there is no mention of the oligarchy in the ISP
business.

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grzm
To work around paywall, click through Real Clear Politics stub:
[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2017/05/20/why_039net_neutr...](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2017/05/20/why_039net_neutrality039_drives_the_left_crazy_410788.html)

