"Net Neutrality" Is Collectivism

The NYT editorializes about "net neutrality," in a typically squishy and woolly-minded fashion. To begin with they don't even describe what "net neutrality" is, they just launch into bald assertions and the emotional language of modern liberalism. In sentence #1, you learn all you need to know, "it keeps the Internet democratic." Next thing you need to know is that the opposition to this undeniably pure notion are those ghastly profit-seekers, telephone and cable companies. The rest of the editorial is thin on facts or analysis but has plenty of emotionally charged language. In arguing for net neutrality, we hear it's "democratic", it protects the "little guy" who is "treated equally", it appeals to "grass-roots political groups". Gee, with all this unalloyed goodness, how can one be opposed? On the negative side, we must avoid it because it is "two-tiered", where those that "pay large fees would get priority"; it would be a "financial windfall" achieved through "discrimination" where "speech" is "curtailed." Sounds pretty evil to me.

But wait. How do these evil companies "provide Internet service"? Do they actually invest in (meaning "buy") things like miles upon miles of fiber optic cable, servers, routers, switches, and all the labor and technical expertise it takes to make it all work? Yes they do, and when you buy something, you own it and can generally use it the way you want, like charging others for its use. This generally also means being able to charge more to those who value said property's use more than than others. That's why Mr. Marriott can charge people more to stay at his hotel on the beach than for his hotel at the airport or why an airline can charge you more to fly on their planes on a moment's notice versus with a month's advance notice. Telecom companies own the digital pipes and all that goes with it to make it work, so prohibiting them from optimizing the value of these assets is usurping that value, which is also known as 'stealing'; and, giving it to parties that merely don't want to pay for in the future what they now use freely is called 'redistribution'.

The NYT isn't favoring anything that is one iota "democratic", it is merely picking Google's and Microsoft's vision of things, which entails free-riding on others' property rights. There was such an uproar over Kelo vs. New London, where the government used its power to take individuals' property and hand it over to another private entity. Net Neutrality achieves exactly what was so disgusting in Kelo, the government taking property rights away from one private citizen to serve the needs of another private citizen. In that case it was sympathetic Suzette Kelo who had property usurped, in this case it is highly unsympathetic AT&T and Verizon. But we don't grant and revoke rights based on the degree of sympathy we have for particular actors, at least we don't if we live up to our principles of protecting property rights. Any sort of wealth transfer or redistribution of resources, as net neutrality is, is to some degree a collectivtist endeavor.

UPDATE: A reader, who is highly tapped in to the telecom world, writes to add his perspective:

"NN does not exist now, i.e. there is no rule on the books today preventing the Bells from prioritizing traffic on their networks and they do it all the time, continuously. So the NYT can't say NN does anything (like keep the Inet democratic) because it doesn’t exist. The Internet seems to work fine to me.

All web sites are not treated equally by the Internet today. Proponents of strict NN say it will squeeze out the little guy and create a "two-tier Internet." But web sites with real money already get priority access to cable and DSL customers today through purchases of better servers, larger pipes, content distribution service (from companies like Akamai). They mirror their sites, use expensive load balancing (some on a global basis), and do all kinds of optimization to make things work better and faster. There is a whole ecosystem of hundreds of companies that do this stuff. Left to private enterprise it will all get sorted out but, yes, you have to pay.
Its unreal how fast the Internet community can go from "gov't hands off the Internet" to "we need the gov't to intevene here". It's clearly a function of economics and the MSM can't seem to recognize it but merely goes along with it because of the buzz words you mentioned.

Having been a close witness of gov't regulation of telecom since the 1996 Telecom Act was put in place, I have no reservations saying that gov't involvement will be detrimental to the Internet. To enforce the Wyden, Dorgan/Snowe or yesterday's Markey bill will require the gov't to get involved in how the carrier's design their networks, how they pass traffic betw them, how customer premises equipment is configured. The list is long. You don't want the gov't involved in this stuff.

Lastly, the vitriol of the NN crowd is pretty unreal. I've been to a couple of conferences on the topic and it gets heated real fast with a lot of cursing and name calling. Its pretty wild to see after 10 years of the boring telecom crowd. There is also this fringe element (like what you see at anti-war demonstrations or these immigration marches) that want the Bells nationalized or forced to provide 100Mbps to every home for free and stuff. Its really a lot of fun. Completely divorced from economic reality but fun. "