No, Net Neutrality Doesn't Violate the 5th Amendment

An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday we discussed the theory that net neutrality might violate the 5th Amendment's 'takings clause.' Over at TechDirt they've explained why the paper making that claim is mistaken. Part of it is due to a misunderstanding of the technology, such as when the author suggests that someone who puts up a server connected to the Internet is 'invading' a broadband provider's private network. And part of it is due to glossing over the fact that broadband networks all have involved massive government subsidies, in the form of rights of way access, local franchise/monopolies, and/or direct subsidies from governments. The paper pretends, instead, that broadband networks are 100% private."

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Re:Best way to fix it

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

And people in general have nominated the government as their representative by voting in parties that defend such policies.

That statement is misleading. When you have 700,000 people per district, you cannot have representation. This was discussed by many of the state constitutional conventions leading up to the ratification of the Constitution. In fact, there was only one last-minute change that resulted in the only smudge in the original ratified document, and that was to change the minimum district size from 40,000 people to 30,000 people (the number '4' to '3'), because they felt 40,000 was simply too many people for a district. Nowhere in the U.S. can you find any homogeneous geographic group of 700,000 people, which is what gives us our plutocratic de facto state.

If you care, you can read more about this topic at Thirty-Thousand.org.