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Where the Candidates Stand On Net Neutrality
nmpost writes "Net neutrality is one of the biggest issues with regard to the internet today. At the heart of the issues is how much control ISPs will be allowed to have over their networks. Each candidate has come out with a strong position on the matter, and whoever wins will have a drastic effect on the future of the internet. Barack Obama has been a proponent of net neutrality. Under his watch, the FCC has implemented net neutrality rules. These restrictions did not apply to wireless networks, though; a gaping loophole that will be problematic in the future, as mobile internet is exploding in popularity. Until it is addressed, Obama can only be given a barely passing grade with regard to net neutrality. Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has come down on the other side of the issue. The former Massachusetts governor strongly opposes net neutrality. According to Politico, Romney believes net neutrality will restrict ISPs, and that they alone should govern their networks. The governor has stated that he wants as little regulation of the internet as possible."
I have seen no evidence that any of them do. Republican or demonrat, it makes no difference.
Where does he rank? Or he even worth mentioning?
Yeh, but if you wait a week, Romney will endorse Net Neutrality as essential to a free and open internet marketplace. Then if you point out his flip-flop he'll scream 'you're trying to divide us with your hate speech!'.
Seriously Republicans, I know the pickings were slim, but couldn't you have done better than Romney?
And Obama doesn't?
What a fucking sheep
From being greedy anti-competitive asshats. That's the whole idea.
And those that do lie about what it means to push their agenda (eg, painting NN as a government takeover or new fairness doctrine)
Government should regulate the internet as little as possible? Great! Let's make a deal! You repeal copyright, completely, and invalidate all communications-related patents and we'll tolerate ISPs that want to favor their own IP TV over that of competitors.
No? Yeah. Thought so.
Or to put it as succinctly as possible: Romney wants as little regulation of the internet as possible? Bullshit.
Obama talks out his ass too. The police state has increased dramatically under his watch. Whistleblowers, leakers, spying, assassinations, erosion of civil liberties, illegal wars, you won't get anything positive out of either of them.
Republican or demonrat, it makes no difference.
Are you saying that they are both equally ignorant? Or that the choice between Romney and Obama would have no impact on this issue?
I'm not sure about the first point, neither one of them has demonstrated Ted Stevens-style ignorance, but the second point is definitely wrong: even if they don't know the full impact of the promises that they make, those promises still influence policy. Legislation will result from this, on one side or the other, if only to keep up appearances of making good with campaign promises.
As little regulation as possible AKA no regulation for the companies, but real name policies, regulations on how we can use those connections, and everything monitored.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Gary Johnson: http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/issues/internet-and-technology Jill Stein : Doesn't seem to talk about the issue.
Anti-neutrality (a.k.a. anti-regulation)
My friends / owners / suzerains already control that industry.
Pro-neutrality (a.k.a. pro-regulation)
My enemies control that industry, or my decision is still for sale (applies to government officials only).
Then, Romney should be in favor of net neutrality since he's in favor of smaller government? I don't understand why anyone will vote for this man when he clearly wants to increase regulation?
None of that made any sense.
Net neutrality is about putting controls on ISP's, controls that you WILL come to regret later as they add on more controls to limit what ISP's can do. Every regulation has begat more limiting regulations, often far beyond the original scope where regulations started.
That is why it is totally consistent to want smaller government and oppose net neutrality. That is why if you do not like things like SOPA you should also vote against anyone who supports regulations over the internet such as net neutrality.
I will not be voting for Romney; he talks out his ass.
Obama being re-elected would be the key for the REAL push for SOPA like controls. Remember the party Hollywood loves best.
If you want a truly free internet, don't vote for the person who wants to take away your freedom. It seems like such a simple statement, yet somehow YOU managed to get it totally backwards. How can you support a man that wishes to take away the right of an ISP to properly manage a network?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How about a compromise that would:
A) Preserve property rights
B) Protect the internet
C) Keep the internet free
What I propose is that net neutrality be built into the requirements for ISPs to obtain federal/state/local funding. Don't want to implement net neutrality? Don't take taxpayer dollars. Want to take taxpayer dollars for your ISP? Implement net neutrality.
Its the best of both worlds.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
You just have to flip a coin and wait to see what they actually do. Then, when they fuck it up, you can reelect them..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The usual 'the other guy is as bad or worse' claim. What's interesting about your comment is you didn't try and defend Romney's views.
Also assassinations? So Romney is *AGAINST* killing Bin Laden? Or was he in favor of it?
Illegal wars? You mean that French thing against Libya?? Where does Romney stand on that?
And that bill the Republican introduced to detain Americans without trial, are you still trying to pin that on Obama, is Romney *for* or *against* that bill?.
Is the Republican war against women on ceasefire this week or not? Is he pro abortion or anti-abortion?
That's the thing about Romney, I can tell you where his party stands, but I can't tell you where he stands on any issue. ANY issue, he's all over the place.
Many people here are discussing if regulation is a good idea. That's easy to answer - good regulation is good and bad regulation is bad. There's plenty of bad regulation and plenty of good regulation. If some crazy person says that all regulation is bad I don't know what to say, but I think most people here won't think that. The real issue is what regulation is good and clearly some sort of net neutrality regulation is good - the question there then is, what kind of net neutrality do we want? For example it seems to me to be perfectly fine to set a flag that you want to voluntarily reduce your current bandwidth in return for getting better latency for the duration of your gaming session, but then your ISP isn't dealing with your packets in a neutral way anymore. Good regulation should allow that. On the other hand obviously it's horrible if the ISP gets to blackmail popular sites by giving customers a worse experience on those sites unless those sites pay up. Good regulation should not allow that.
Regulations on ISP's take away rights.
And granting them monopolies takes away our rights
So, the solution is obvious. Net neutrality would be a given in a truly competitive business environment.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I have seen no evidence that any of them do. Republican or demonrat, it makes no difference.
Heck, plenty of slashdotters can't agree on what Net Neutrality means.
...Legislation will result from this...
Regardless of who wins, the legislation will be written by the service providers in the same manner that copyright law is now composed by the entertainment industry and Wall Street regulation comes from the financial industry. The choice between Romney and Obama is a false one.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The only thing that differs between Presidents is the name you put on the check when you need to pay them off. It's been this way for a long time. The President is not a maker of policy, but a mouthpiece of policy. Making policy is the job of the wealthy people who own the money supply.
You've seen the image where a non-neutral internet service is selling cable-like tiers, as if the costs of uploading content to cable TV were in any way comparable to the costs of uploading content to other PCs. Even the busiest web sites operate on hardware budgets of four or five figures, while a TV studio will end up with five or six figures of equipment.
This means that internet content will be inherently more diverse than TV content. If the concern raised by a non-neutral internet was one of centralized content providers, then I would say that net neutrality has done more harm than good.
Where do we see the most monopolies? The internet. Why should this be?
I think it is because half of Google's bandwidth costs are paid for by internet service customers - all of them, all of us. Since every bit has to be priced roughly the same, with only monthly volume taken into account, business models that depend on high bandwidth tend to flourish.
In a way this is good, since popular opinion tends to win out. But in a way this is bad, since that opinion is not allowed to change very fluidly. Amazon's and Ebay's costs are scaled such that theirs are very low compared to those entering the market. Therefore they can charge much lower royalties on items advertised on their pages.
The reason that internet monopolies are particularly bad is because of privacy concerns, and the unilateral data collected from people. When one company is providing a given service, it's not just creepy, it's a system that tracks current preferences and depends on them. New services will be very slow to emerge when all of the data suggest that people like old services.
I think if you want a more dynamic internet with more options, vote against net neutrality.
Yeah, about that, could you please name any private toll road that restricts (or is allowed to restrict) passage to its competitors trucks (other civil construction/transportation contractors)?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Paul is "pro-freedom" only when it's consistent with his prejudices. For example, he supports "antisodomy" laws. Consider that next time you're doing something kinky.
One more reason why I'm not voting. At this point I'm not choosing, I'm enabling.
Obama says he supports Net Neutrality, then gives cart blanche to the well funded carriers. Landline Internet? Ha! One of my techs found out his Comcast service is capped at 200GB per month.
At least Romney is honest about his corporate ties, which is the biggest reason not to vote for him or any Republican. The other being they are on a similar Moral Crusade just like the Democrats. Unless you buy that "only sensible/intelligent/reasonable people would think the way I do bent of the current D-P leadership.
Are the libertarians bothering to put up an also-ran candidate this year?
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
You seem to confuse the right of the ISP to properly manage a network with the right of the ISP to manage the network content.
YOUR confusion is that they are unrelated.
An ISP does not care to manage network content today because that involves more work, which eats into profit.
So then Network Neutrality is passed, which adds whatever regulation the government feels is most appropriate for an ISP. Blocks on government disliked IP addresses. No torrent traffic allowed. So on and so forth.
All this is wrapped in the blanket of "we'll make sure you can access any legal website from your ISP", but you can already do that TODAY. So why give the government a toehold to dictate what is appropriate for you to access and force your ISP to comply?
If you care at all about even handed access to content, Network Neutrality is the last thing you want to support. It is the biggest twisting of words attempted in history, it assumes that technological people can be easily swayed by a catchy name. Do not let that be true.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
With any company, you are free not to use their services. Well that us UNLESS regulations say that company has no competition, which is why usually you have but one choice for cable internet...
You are still free to not use their services... until the government requires you to have internet access.
Net neutrality would be a given in a truly competitive business environment.
Although I don't think you meant to say that you are exactly correct. So instead of fighting FOR limitations on the few ISP's you can choose, how about fighting for the right to have more ISPs as competition?
That should be the preferred option, but that's a local govt solution, and it's hard to get enough geeks locally to convince city councils to stop providing monopolies.
Can you name ANY ISP that blocks traffic from any competitors domains as you claim?
No? They why the need for a new law? Why the need to provide controls that allows the government to control whatever traffic can come into a road?
What you seek will have the exact opposite effect you desire.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Where and when did Ron Paul support anti-sodomy laws?
Saying you are against something, does not mean you support laws against it. Just that you are against the thing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Right at the bottom.
Contrary to the Libertarian Propaganda machine, Ron Paul is on the extreme right, more so any any other candidate.
His stance on the Iraq war is reflective on his isolationist view point.
His stance on net deregulation is reflective of his Pro-Corporate viewpoint.
Any survey that shows Ron Paul to be anything other than an extreme conservative is completely misleading, and deliberately so. And if you think he's anything other than an extremest, you need to re-read his platform and viewpoints.
You are still free to not use their services... until the government requires you to have internet access.
A requirement, regulation or law which I would also oppose.
That should be the preferred option, but that's a local govt solution
Now you are catching on to why it's so important to move things away from the federal level.
Yes fighting local government is hard, damn hard. But at least it's possible. With federal matters you have too many layers of indirection to hope to effect real change.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You seriously cannot see how Net Neutrality is the enforcement arm for SOPA?
I sure as hell can't.
Net Neutrality means that your ISP cannot discriminate based on content, services, hardware, applications, etc etc etc.
Further, they cannot interfere with your connection because of any of the aforementioned reasons.
SOPA has nothing to do with that.
If you'd care to explain how a law/regulation that prevents discrimination = the copyright police, I'm all ears.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Granting them monopolies takes away our right to choose the best service. It should not be allowed. And the process of granting those monopolies is riddled with corruption. What the feds should do is to overrule all local legislation that prohibits the municipalities and states or other coops from providing their own services. What we have now is the communication industry making the rules. Most likely it will stay that way until you vote the party (there is only one) out.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So the problem is that there's still the question of what exactly 'net neutrality' means by the time someone works it into legislation. Odds are, there will be some glaring loopholes put in my some staffer who the week after it passes gets hired by a corporation or lobbyist organization.
For instance ... if we must pass all 'legal' traffic, what about e-mail that complies with the CAN-SPAM act? Would we be allowed to filter that out, or does it have to go through to the customer's mailboxes?
What I'm pissed off about isn't that ISPs filter -- it's that they lie and claim they're not, until it's shown that they are.
So, my proposal:
If you do *no* filtering what-so-ever, you're considered a 'common carrier', and would not be held liable for the actions of the people whom you are granting service to. If you filter or otherwise prioritize packets based on content or destination, you could be held liable for not blocking fraudulent or other illegal activity.
And we'd also have to redefine 'broadband coverage' to specifically require a common carrier to qualify an area as having coverage.
ps. 'implementing' net neutrality == not
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I think that if we start censoring the web, it could cause a major problem. Like this will be overlooked by many because of the title. Most of the time websites are overlooked because of their title or content, whether it be because it's misinformed or something you simply don't want to see. There is a problem though. The problem is laws, other than copyright laws, are often video taped and placed on the web. I personally don't go looking for anything crazy on the web, but I feel as though it'd be my right to censor my home network of certain things, especially if a child were present. Let's face it, somethings are big boy talk. Other things aren't. I agree that for education's sake, human right's sake, , many websites shouldn't be censored by a parent. It's important to discuss the views contained from an educated stand point with your children, but there are some sites... I'd prefer that I'd never seen them. I'm sure almost anyone could agree they've run across a few that should definitely not be on the web, and there are probably a few that should definitely not be in open view for anyone with unrestricted internet or access to a tunnel to view. The question is where should this line be drawn. Over all, I'm for net neutrality, unless that physically hurts another human being is literally being committed in plain view. Like should a child be able to easily get their hands on pornographic materials, definitely not. Whether or not it should be legal in the first place is a different story altogether, and what should be legal in that domain and what should not be legal, and then you run into the whole big can of worms because this may infringe on someone's religious freedom or something of that sort. Of course, all human beings can fall into temptation, Lord knows I have in several ways throughout the years. To paraphrase the Bible, I'd say out of sinners I am chief. Or something to that affect. The beauty of Christianity is the idea of redemption, reform, and hope. Even to people who have done horrible things. So is it a corporation or media provider's right to censor the web? I think it is, as long as they are not the sole provider of services to an area, and it is well documented in their user agreements. I live in an area where there are very few provider of internet services, and I don't think it's right, especially since there are other services provided to people within walking distances of the area in both directions. So, if it is their right to do so, a person, like me, given they are abiding by typical American law, should definitely be protected under some kind of clause in federal law in that circumstance especially. I'll personally be voting against Obama for a few reasons, but his stances on net neutrality are fairly agreeable to anyone with any sense.
I think Network Neutrality is more of a fight over how the Internet will be in the future, not today.
While right now perhaps it's far easier to allow you to access whatever...I do NOT think that will be true in the near future. With or without government regulations.
These systems/technologies will come anyway because they help ISPs make money. The more IPS can control/shape/tier traffic, the more options they will have to maximizes their profits. And maximizing profits is literally all that corporations care about.
I guess on the bottom line, I just don't trust corporations to keep the Internet as open, free, and accessible as it is today. I think in the past and maybe today they really didn't have any technologies that let them put it under their thumb, but I think in the near future they WILL have these technologies, and I think they'll use them as much as they possibly can to make money.
Public land is heavily used by all ISPs. The ones that connect to your house they use public land to get to your house (the road system) while you could say that is not something that belongs in the discussion because it is not giving them money. I would say that public land which connects everybody together is an EXTREMELY valuable asset and the fact the public owns it is the reason we easily added infrastructure we take for granted. To allow private use of OUR land is a massive huge handout.
Same thing goes to our AIR SPACE over which the radio travels; although, we tend to think of that solely as a regulatory situation.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
That actually was an issue with the railroads in the early days. It was quite the scandal.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What the feds should do is to overrule all local legislation that prohibits the municipalities and states or other coops from providing their own services.
I disagree with that as being what should happen - primarily because as you say, it will not happen.
The only way to fight these local municipalities is, well, locally. We need to get more technologically sophisticated people involved in government. Even if only attending and commenting in local council meetings, just a few technologically knowledgeable people regularly overseeing government could make a huge difference. And I think it's the only way to overthrow corrupt rules and politicians, by shedding light on them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You seriously cannot see that one man's rights infringe upon another's?
In order to protect the rights of any group at all, the rights of another group must be limited. That is how freedom works. We call such limitations "regulation," and without them we get anarchy instead of freedom.
Choosing the right target and level of regulation is not easy, but it is the primary task of anyone who claims to be "pro freedom."
Were you asleep the day they discussed 'natural monopoly' in EC101?
what a load of bullshit.
The same argument could be made at the federal level - if you think that the govt formally has a power to pass patriot act or any other law of the fucking bullshit kind then by your logic you are a supporter of these laws.
He supports the people's right to create laws at the state level, be it right or wrong. Are you against the states rights when they are on the right side of history too (you know, progressive states introducing gay marriages and marijuana legalization and shit) or maybe you are just a fucking hypocrite who just judges legitimacy of the law by what he feels is good or bad?
Now we can argue if his interpretation of the legal framework is proper or not or what scope should the laws be, but your claim that he is pro-antisodomy is a fat lie.
Nonsense. Even if you take a maximally cynical position that each candidate is completely purchased and by each company and each industry to an equal extent (false), legislation written by those companies must acknowledge campaign promises to at least some degree. So net neutrality legislation written by the ISPs for Obama would be more neutral than net neutrality legislation written by the ISPs for Romney.
I will certainly acknowledge that special interests have far more influence than they should, and even more in the wake of Citizens United, but I don't understand this nihilistic approach to politics. If you really believe that election results are completely inconsequential, why are you here commenting on them?
I've seen Republicant before, but never Demonrat. Nice.
Do the candidates know what Net Neutrality means?
I have seen no evidence that any of them do.
I just turned in a term paper on Network Neutrality issues and regulatory approaches to them.
One thing I discovered was that Obama (or at least his relevant policy wonk and/or speechwriter) was quite aware of the issues and was coming down strongly on the side of regulating to prevent entertainment/ISP conglomerate oligopolists from using their control of the pipes to strangle their content and services competition and shaft their customers.
Which may not be the right approach. But they did seem to be QUITE up on things.
Relevant Obama quote, from a June 8 2006 podcast:
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Did you vote for anyone in the primaries that DID know what net neutrality meant?
"If you really believe that election results are completely inconsequential, why are you here commenting on them?"
What else is he supposed to do? Vote?
I used to think that Net Neutrality was obviously the proper way to go. Reading the debates over the past year, I've realized that I don't know which side is correct. That indecision leads me to believe that before we let the camel's nose into the tent, we better be damned sure that we want the hump in there too; because, it's going to happen.
So, I guess I'd rather wait until it's shown that ISP abuses aren't being addressed by the marketplace, before I called for Net Neutrality regulations. It's not like the politicians will be any less willing to act, at that point.
It's funny to hear lame complaints about how we live in a "police state", If we did, you wouldn't be able to complain about it!
South Africa is really nice.
...now the gloves are off!
The question is whether net neutrality is an unnecessary step to further Internet regulations (like requiring ISPs to police for copyrighted materials), or whether it even matters since they are all so willing to participate with that kind of thing anyway.
They don't all have to be bought, just enough of them to get the job done. The ISPs put money into both campaigns. Win-win no matter who's in. You seem to believe they're in a divided camp. Now I bring this up because it's really the voters who reward all this corruption when they continue to reelect these people. It has nothing to do with Citizens United or any of that. A low or even no budget campaign can win if (s)he gets enough votes.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I have seen no evidence that any of them do. Republican or demonrat, it makes no difference.
I've seen little evidence that even most slashdotters know what "net neutrality" means either. Most people seem to think there's a single large network that everything gets put into, and that's not the case at all. Carrier networks are actually a mish-mash of point to point links and interconnected networks which serve different purposes and cross a multitude of physical media. The last thing we really want is those fucking idiots in Congress sticking their fingers into the engineering- all they'll do is put crazy and ineffective requirements in place which make life a PITA for everybody and benefit only a few... if any.
We already have laws which govern fair business practices and competition. Those laws need to be enforced, we don't need new ones just for the internet. The only thing which we really need is a correction to how an "internet" service is marketed- it would help if we had a set of requirements which must be met in order to bill a service as "unlimited" or "unrestricted" internet. But I see no reason why a hotel or ISP should not be allowed to offer a cut-rate basic access, for example web and email only. I also see no reason why my ISP should not be allowed to purchase a large point-to-point link to a major company like Google or netflix so they have a dedicated, private peering network.
The problem I have with the all of the pushes for net neutrality I've seen is that they do it by the wrong means. They claim that net neutrality is a right of internet users and must be enforced by the government, usually through the FCC. I think that is wrong. Internet service is a contracted service between a provider and a user. The government should not be sticking its nose in and mandating what the provisions of that contract should be. If people want net neutrality then they can pick an ISP that offers such a guarantee. If someone else doesn't care, maybe he can find a cheaper service and satisfy his needs better that way. And that's all as it should be.
But wait, you might say, there's no such ISP available to me. I pretty much only have one or two real options. I agree with you. Net neutrality regulations are needed right now. But they should be based on the idea that the providers have near monopolies, and monopolies need regulating, and the regulating should be done through the FTC rather than the FCC. That must be the basis for enforcing net neutrality since it offers users what they need now, for the reasons they actually need it. And since the justification is monopoly regulation, it preserves the rights of parties not to be interfered with unjustly.
Article fails to mention Gary Johnson, the other candidate on the ballot in all 50 states.
Please chose one of the following:
[ ] The one who says he will protect us from the wolves; but will fail.
[ ] The one who says the wolves won't bother you; but has lunch with the wolves, and won't talk about what he did when the Moon was full.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Anarchy IS freedom, you dumbass! It's based on the concept of self discipline. Ah, but you assume that all anarchists are bombing throwing terrorists. That would explain your comment.
They are both for freedom on the internet, and the right of communications interests to profit from a lack of it.
"Why can't we make a compromise here, and have both?" - Average politician.
I am John Hurt.
Babe, they've both been bought and paid for. The average politician knows as much about the internet as their "friends" are willing to tell them.
Can any of you see a politician locking down a Cisco firewall? How about IP Subnetting? No? Well, they think things like that don't matter.
I am John Hurt.
I don't think you understand what net neutrality is. It is the inability to control what kinds of traffic are allowed AT ALL. It's not the enforcement arm of anything, and it doesn't set up opportunities for abuse. On the contrary, it prevents them.
Voting just encourages them.
It's simple, really. There's nothing wrong with providing non-carrier network services. I'm doing it now. I have neither the restrictions nor the benefits of being a carrier.
I hate that frigging thing. I assume it was passed by democrats since they're always trying to control what I can do. I'll send as many bits on a really noisy channel as I want... until I reach my monthly quota that is.
If you really believe that election results are completely inconsequential, why are you here commenting on them?
Because he wants to give his opinion on the subject? Because he thinks someone is wrong and wishes to correct them? This false dilemma of "either you comment and care or say nothing and don't care" is nonsensical.
Have you ever bothered calling to find out the costing to get a high speed, high(ish) bandwidth (well, high enough to serve at least 100 DSL connections--100 mbits would be sufficient) link is to get in an area with almost no houses?
$100,000 wouldn't be an unusual up front cost. $1,000,000 if you are really, really in nowhereseville. The monthly cost will not change based on how remote you are, although I suppose for a rather distant link you might have to pay some form of additional maintenance fees.
Seems like a lot, but consider that's how much just one sysadmin will cost your company (or, if you really are in nowhereland, 10). I know this because I inquired many years ago when I happened to live in desolate area, interested in becoming a local ISP.
The unsurmountable portion is if that small city you want to provide internet to happens to have signed its soul over to an incumbent. Once I saw the level of regulation involved, I ran from that idea as fast as I could.
So they haven't noticed you downloading an infringing image, video or audio yet - lucky you.
Have you heard of a fellow named Kim Dotcom? He has pretty much had a gun at his head (assualt rifles, because he is such a physical threat and so prone to violence it took dozens of New Zealand and US agents working together to subdue him).
And there are many others that have been put in the witness cage in court, defending themselves against grossly unreasonable financial demands because they didn't buy their MP3s. Any many of those cultural artifacts had copyright extended, long after the authors received all they will ever get in compensaton for their creativity - in other words, merely to allow greedy corporations to force you to keep buying what should now be in the public domain.
It's silly season again and the proponents of each side must make fools of themselves once more. We must hear again why this one is a saint, and the other a demon - and the equivalent counter arguments while the vast majority in the middle by trying to find the least worst course split the difference in a way that seems semirandom. For once let me just lay out our folly in a nonpartisan way.
1. We don't want one party in power because they do things. When they do things, it's always bad. That's why lately the executive and legislative branches are typically governed by different parties. When we give the executive to one party, we give the legislative to the other, and we trade them back and forth to ensure the Justice branch has balance because it's appointed by the executive, or we at least split the House and Senate. God help us should one party gain control of all three long enough to be free to press their agenda through all three branches of government. That would be the end of liberty no matter who held the reins. The "do nothing" accusation is laughable, as that is exactly what we want - and yet it's a major factor in the campaigns.
2. In a regime change the exiting regime raids the treasury. The toll for this has grown to trillions of dollars per time. This is an executive branch thing, and the legislature is powerless to stop it. You may expect another financial crisis around election time that requires emergency action of the Federal Reserve. Some bankers and funds will make hay, but for some odd reason those responsible for managing your retirement funds will not be among them. And so that money you paid in will be worth less even than if you had stuffed it into your mattress, even with matching funds from your employer. They are stealing even the benefit of your own forethought, and forcing you into it by limiting your available choices of funds to invest in for your retirement.
3. Federal funds are used to influence elections. Whether it's bridges to nowhere, jobs stimulating federal programs, or disaster relief that seems to be where the money goes. That seems to be the only place the money goes. Being the hand that guides this funnel seems to be the only reason to seek office any more, and it's a circular chain that's self-reinforcing. The entire federal budget is nothing but campaign money now, defense spending included. The lobbyists are past or future Representatives or Senators, or representatives of same, and it's a revolving door. It's The Worm Ouroboros, eating itself to our doom.
4. Whoever wins is going to sell us out to those Hollywood cokeheads for campaign money again. Neither side is in favor of true network neutrality, open Internet, breaking the backs of the mobile provider and cable TV and Internet provider monopolies. What they're in favor of is campaign money to get the power that they cede to the people who gave them the money to get the power. Both sides take the Hollywood money, and after the election the bill comes due. They'll get their Justice Department appointments, or copyright re-extension, or software patents, or secret international trade agreements or whatever it is they're looking for this time because if you buy a ticket you get to ride the ride and they're smart enough to buy both tickets. The only thing legislators or executives of either party care about the rule of law is that they're exempt, and they can use it for fundraising.
5. Neither main party has a plausible plan for balancing the budget, delivering the promises of social programs like Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Nor could they. The problem has become insoluble without radical new thinking that would be political death to propose. This will be the cause of the devaluation of the dollar, because we must print money to keep these promises, which then void the promises as the money paid becomes worth less. That's actually not as dire as you might think, but it's bad. It is, however inescapable as the public debt cannot cont
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'm sorry but I completely fail to see how ensuring that the network being made available to everyone equally is a threat to anybodies freedom. In fact I would equate this to water, or gas, or any other basic utility. The vital need for high quality, high speed network access grows by the minute, and allowing the service providers to turn it into a limited resource for the wealthy and powerful only, would eventually ensure a society where the have nots (you and me) would be at the mercy of the haves (as though we aren't already.)
As for being the means by which a SOPA like take over of the network to abridge the rights/privacy of "Users" vs "Providers", seems more than far fetched. These are completely unrelated issues. Time and time again, business has demonstrated, that being composed of precisely the same kind of human beings as you might find anywhere else, they are prone to all those human foibles; greed, dishonesty, hunger for power, duplicity, hypocrisy and narcissism. Given the powers of the corporation, their ability to do real harm being virtually unlimited, and we've seen time and time again, they in fact do precisely that, it is vital that we restrict the amount of harm they can do.
There is a systematic, systemic breakdown in standards of quality and business accountability. 40 years ago, there were government health inspectors, making certain that food was produced and distributed in a safe, healthy and fastidious manner. Today, cows stand in their own feces for weeks eating corn instead of grass to fatten them up quickly (more profit for the agro-business.) They have to stuff the cows with antibiotics, because the unsanitary conditions would be lethal otherwise, only now through the indiscriminate use of antibiotics you've created super-bugs. The meat is then sent to grocers who are self regulated and its an honest to gawd wonder we aren't all dropping like flies from e coli. There've been a number of incidents (some even shown on television documentaries) of markets that sold chicken, when the chicken begins to go bad, they wash it in a bleach solutions to extend its shelf life, sometime two or more times, and then when the chicken is definitely well past its sale date, they cook it and sell it for fried chicken of use it in soups and salad. These are practices that would have been considered unsanctionable in the 70s, but little by little, these industries have pushed to allow almost anything they want to be considered acceptable practice today. That's just the meat section, if you knew most of the things going on in grocery stores today, you'd have to give up eating altogether.
The only way one could possibly deregulate completely and expect a society that wasn't a draconian disaster, would be to follow deregulation with;
1. A complete separation of corporation and state.
2. The abolition of the modern corporation, replaced instead with a corporation with strict limits on size, life span and ability to garner wealth and power.
3. A surgical removal of all special rights and powers, ensuring that people were treated preferentially to all corporation by law.
4. A return to simple basic laws of accountability, a company augers in, it dies, a CEO steals from society, he goes to jail.
5. A complete overhaul of the IP laws, particularly the unlimited extension of copyright, trademark and patent.
6. Fair mediation, not controlled and operated by the corporations.
The purpose of the last item is to protect corporations from frivolous lawsuits, but remove their ability to ignore their responsibility to society. Most current mediation, is simply a rubber stamp for corporations to get away with murder.
Bodies of laws exist to ensure that human beings, being the primates we are, refrain from resorting to smashing one another's skulls like baboons when we disagree as we attempt to garner wealth and power. Regulations exist to protect one party from another. These protections are perfectly valid if the second party is capable of inflicting undue and unfair damage to the first party. A fair society, provides for the greatest level of freedom, while preventing the unfair or inappropriate use of force on others. This is precisely the situation here, and the regulation is profoundly warranted.
I'm sorry but the facts simply don't bare you out. There are "natural monopolies" that is why we have utility companies. Given an open market, the largest players will eventually coalesce into a single all powerful service provider, and because they own the entire net, they will be in a position to call any cost to their service they like. That's why we originally broke up Ma Bell? Remember? Have you noticed the little Bells all getting back together again? Have you noticed the number of mergers between service providers?
The system you speak of no longer exists. It may have at one time, but it hasn't been around any time in the last 50 years. Corporations have the power. They join to concentrate power. They continue to change the environment to discourage small to medium sized business, and funnel all the society's wealth into their coffers. You want to flatten the playing field, then by all means, deregulate. But not until.
Neutral in this case, means not searching the data stream for the BitTorrent, TOR or 'Ephebophilia rocks' (TM) ;) protocol. So for the ISP to truly comply, they can't know the difference between public domain and copyrighted material. This 'checking for compliance' clause was a big part of SOPA and why Google conducted a media blackout. Politicians can put this clause inside nearly any law but choosing a law designed entirely to prevent the ISP examining the traffic content would be suicide even by RIAA standards.
A simple compromise would solve this. If a building is served by 1 or more monopolies, all of them should be required to have net neutrality. OTOH, if there is no monopoly with twisted pair (2 or more providers), then allow them to compete openly. i.e. drop the net neutrality requirements.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Net neutrality? That's a joke. It's blatant censorship.
Yes: every ISP/TV provider out there counts Netflix against your bandwidth cap, but not the pay-per-view choices you get through their service.
That is not ANYTHING like your metaphor.
You can access ANYTHING. They block NOTHING.
You are taking the fact that they give you access to some local content for free, and twisting that into claiming the network is somehow taking something away from you! Incredible!!
And yet, Network Neutrality supporters constantly use distorted logic just like this in order to make claims that we need Network Neutrality.
These are the beginnings of non-neutral networks.
No, they are add-ons to a data plan. They do nothing whatsoever to remove freedom you have to access any resource on the network with full equality. If the content they have is not compelling or not easily found, you can and will simply go elsewhere - possibly even for the same content!
Here's a puzzle for you; just how would ANY proposed network neutrality stop the "evil" practice of giving you more bandwidth than you paid for?
Are you thinking it would make the networks charge you for that content too even though it's local? Hell, why stop there, the cable company should charge you for accessing content on your home server because YOU are violating "neutrality" by having local content that requires fewer hops across the network! I guess that would leave you ecstatic.
That's the really sad part about every example I've ever seen come out of a network neutrality supporter, is that the actual regulations would prevent none of what offends them.
like what happened when we let the banks "govern themselves."
When was that? Because banks have been heavily regulated almost from existence, and any malfeasance from banks is generally a direct result of government trying to dictate what banks should be able to do.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It is interesting to watch the responses to this article. Really good arguments on both sides... but one thing that is continually striking me lately is why people are so quick to trust the Government over Corporations.
I think that people have some misguided understanding of what really goes on here. They think that since they get to cast a vote that somehow the politicians are all working in our best interest and that we have "control" over them. While "Corporations" aren't beholden to the people at all. That couldn't be further from the truth.
The only thing that we have control over is our money. It takes money to get people elected and fund the projects the government runs and it takes money to keep companies running. The only way to "vote" is with dollars.
With that in mind... I actually prefer the Corporation over Government. The Corporation can't just _demand_ you give them money while Governments can just create laws to take as much as they like.
Even in the case of "monopolies" like local ISPs... you do still have the choice of not using the internet at all. Yes, that's not much of a choice... but at least it's not _law_ that you have to give them money and you won't be going to jail if you don't sign up for internet access.
If the US government _were_ actually a Corporation... it would have failed a long time ago and would have had to file for bankruptcy and a new government would have had to be brought up to take its place... hopefully with better fiscal responsibility so that it could stay alive longer.
Listen up people: Quit thinking that the Government is the answer! I currently work for the government and have been for the last 8 years or so... and let me tell you that giving this inefficient beast _more_ power is a TERRIBLE idea...
Given an open market, the largest players will eventually coalesce into a single all powerful service provider
Only with the backing of regulations preventing smaller competitors from actually competing.
That's why we originally broke up Ma Bell? Remember?
Which totally re-enforces my point.
Have you noticed the little Bells all getting back together again?
Yes, proving that you cannot battle the horrible results of over-regulating a market with further regulation.
Corporations have the power. They join to concentrate power. They continue to change the environment to discourage small to medium sized business
WRONG.
Corporations have money. But the only reason money really equates to power in the modern world, is that they can use that money to dictate what regulations make competitors have to do to compete.
When all corporations have is money, they are at the mercy of anyone that can figure out how to do something better/faster/stronger. All the billions of dollars Microsoft had did not keep Google or Apple at bay, because (a) there were no internet regulation levers to pull to prevent competition, and (b) Microsoft at the time did not have enough political clout to introduce any.
The simple fact is that if the power corporations has bothers you, the ONLY solution is to reduce and remove a lot of regulations preventing competitors from actually competing against them.
Until you and many others learn that lesson, get used to the giant corporations exerting control over you because they help write the regulations that make it so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"I believe the puppet on the left shares MY beliefs, well I believe the puppet on the right has MY interests at heart...hey wait a minute there is one guy controlling both puppets!"....Bill Hicks.
Frankly the two figureheads can say any damned thing they want, the actual laws are written by the lobbyists of the one that has paid the most bribes...errr..I mean campaign contributions and that will be the ISPs. The figurehead will then either praise the lawmakers for their fine work or talk about what a shame it is the other side is doing this...while the puppet signs it into law. In either case if you think your puny little vote is gonna compete with the power of the big bag o' cash? I have some magic beans you might be interested in.
Even if NN were a real possibility (which it isn't) what we need isn't some rules the ISPs will ignore, but actual opening up of the last miles to competition as we had in the days of dialup so any ISP acting like douchebags would have to worry about losing their customers. As it is now even if they passed NN the ISPs would simply fuck you by making the bandwidth caps so small for anything they didn't get a cut of they'd still be able to lead you by the nose.
Hell considering how little the DSL providers have been keeping up with the times I wouldn't be surprised if they end up just leaving the market to the cable companies while they enjoy the much more lucrative (and as TFA pointed out with no NN rules) wireless, so we'll probably all end up with exactly one company if we want broadband at home and since they won't want competition with their TV they'll cap the living hell out of us.
Final verdict? While the EU and Asia enjoy ever bigger pipes we in the USA thanks to our "corporation yay!" political structure will be riding on the short bus to the information superhighway.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Fixed it for you: The police state has continued to expand under his (Obama's) watch.
The ISPs won't necessarily win the bidding war, content providers are generally in favor of net neutrality. (except those that are also ISPs)
really? Torrent traffic is throttled/blocked on some ISPs, and will be soon as one of the major US ISPs, Comcast, is now a "content provider", and does have an interest in promoting its content at the expense of others' content.
When someone says "crazy extremist", I think "warmonger", because the cost of wars have contributed a large amount to America's current sad state, from the stable equilibrium Clinton and Gingrich gave us. John McCain is one of the biggest warmongers in the Senate.
In 2008, McCain called for a willingness to keep troops in Iraq for 100 years. He supported military action against Russia in favor of Georgia in 2008. In 2011, he supported Intervention in Libya, and went so far as to say, “Congress should sort of shut up and not empower Qadhafi.” McCain has supported intervention in Syria for months now.
Donald Trump supported leaving Iraq as early as 2006, and had ideas for reducing military costs. Some of them are quite ruthless... but war is ruthless business. Hopefully, Trump will have more influence over Romney, than Bush and McCain's people.
I'm not sure exactly how a telecom would achieve a natural monopoly if the state didn't enforce the creation of easements. In fact, I'm not sure how we'd get electricity, sewer, or water connections either... But that's beside the point! The free market fixes all!!!
"Only with the backing of regulations preventing smaller competitors from actually competing."
No. That's the 'natural' part of a natural monopoly. It happens without any regulation. Natural monopoly occurs under conditions in which those smaller competitors are unable to compete for various reasons, princibly related to industries for which the capital cost is prohibatively high. This is espicially the case with utilities: It costs a huge amount of money to dig up roads and lay pipes or cables. Whoever owns the cables (Unless regulations say otherwise) gets 100% of the market share in that area. It isn't economical for any new competitor to enter, because they'd have to pay the huge initial cost for cable-laying but would then have to compete with an established competitor who already has every customer signed up.
The heart of the matter is the bullshit the oath breaking pieces of shit who slice and dice the Constitution can get away with. For the people suggesting writing the congress I have a question. Why would I write someone I already have contempt for, and then consent to grovel some bullshit issue while getting put on a mother fucking fema camp list?
The current candidates are AIPAC, PNAC, Monsanto, CFR, TV, Bilderberg, Rothchild, fucking bullshit. No rule of law they follow, which is why we now have lawlessness.
You'll need someone to check up on ISPs to make sure they're staying neutral, and a bunch of new regulations that define exactly what neutral is.
Not true. The entire point of net neutrality is that ISPs should be a content-agnostic dumb carrier line. The legal framework is identical to that of traditional phone networks, no new definitions required. A neutral carrier has no idea if transmitted data is copyrighted or not, they just keep the network online and collect the monthly bill like a utility company. As a counter-example, imagine that your electric company wasn't a neutral carrier (and could somehow tell what devices were being powered in your home). In this scenario, the electric company would be free to arbitrarily charge you a higher per-KWh rate to power air conditioners even though you're already paying more for the high KWh usage of the AC in the first place.
Note the distinction between WHAT you use the network for vs. usage LEVEL. A neutral carrier can do what they have to about high usage levels to maintain the stability of the network. The big content companies want it to work like cable TV so they can nickel and dime you to death over what you use the network for (think "additional fee to access Facebook" that's awkwardly packaged with other things you don't care about like cable TV channels). However, this opens up a can of worms by making the carrier liable for the content transmitted on their network, which I suspect is part of what is preventing ISPs from going hog wild. It's more prudent for them to toe the line.
Can any of you see a politician locking down a Cisco firewall?
I can, and the picture is almost as funny as a BOFH negotiating an international treaty.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Sure you can. You can complain about it all you want. Talk is cheap. Just dont try to organize against it.
We've all seen what "unregulated" means... In case of the financial markets, it has caused the biggest financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression.
If politicians make the mistake of not conveniently regulate ISPs (not the Internet), in a few years we'll have an Internet for the big companies and another the the small companies and individuals.
Yep. You've got to love the Mumbo Jumbo add. I assume this will degrade into pointless partisan bickering, but what's at stake is your ability to reach places slashdot.org. The anti-net-neutrality crowed would literally give ISPs like AT&T and Comcast the right to censor the web for you, to support their own agenda. It's incredible that so many of our representatives are anti-net-neutrality. On the other side, there's beneficial traffic shaping and various tricks ISPs play to improve the typical user experience. All reasonable definitions as well as recent net-neutrality bills and FCC actions allow for this, which is one reason wireless providers currently have more freedom to muck with traffic in ways we generally despise, such as charging for tethering or hot-spot functionality, and charging us for Skype calls. The anti-net-neutrality zombies will be all over this thread, but I challenge them to answer this: name one benefit ever received by consumers which went away with the introduction of FCC net neutrality rules?
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Even if NN were a real possibility (which it isn't)
Would you mind explaining why NN isn't a real possibility? What is wrong with the idea of getting billed based on the amount of data you consume?
ISPs (AT&T, Time Warner, Comcast, Verison, and friends) are 100% behind Romney. There are no significant ISPs putting money behind Obama. On the other side we have Microsoft, Google, eBay, Vonage, Netflix, and Amazon, who are all companies that provide content and services over the Internet, and they are 100% behind Obama. In short, the ISPs want to charge the big content providers extra money to be quickly accessible, or even accessible at all, over their network. It's a shakedown by stupid tube maintainers of the corporations whilch provide real value, and a major thread to innovation and smaller content providers. Dorks like TCP inventor Bob Kahn refuse to comprehend that net neutrality is not about regulating how packets are routed, and instead continue to espouse the AT&T view that Google wants to destroy the internet by shackling "network engineers". It's about routing Vonage packets and Netflix packets without purposely destroying their QoS. It's about not being evil.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
The right answer is to dismiss the concept of net-neutrality, but also dismiss all of the regional monopolies propped up by government. As show, time and time again, competition breeds better pricing and better service and better attention to customer wants and needs. When you don't have competition (regional monopolies subsidized by government), you get the same sort of service you can expect from any other local utility or bureaucratic office (DMV, for example).
Conversations about net-neutrality suffer the same sort of inherent fundamental flaws that conversations about health care do. We make ourselves blind to the real problem and try to apply little bandages to otherwise massive gaping wounds. Instead of fixing the problem that arises from having no choice in service carrier, we demand *further* regulation to solve the problems of regulation. Instead of fixing the problem of ridiculously expensive health care that could bankrupt even a fairly wealthy human being with even a one night hospital stay by addressing the incredible cost (often a result of the system of "someone else is going to pay this, so what does it matter how incredibly expensive this is?!", we try to fix the problem that we've caused by not addressing the price gouging, but by deciding "instead of the individual making the medical industries rich, we'll pass the buck on to the 'government' and have everyone collectively make the medical industries rich".
We are so myopic in this country. Such short attention spans and memories. So easily swayed and lead by sound-bites. All we can do is fix the upper-most layer of a problem, because we're too stupid to dig any deeper and fix what caused the problem in the first place.
Even if NN were a real possibility (which it isn't)
Then why does it work in Europe?
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
That was an insightful post. My ISP, AT&T, capped my data exactly where they felt it would do the most harm to Netflix. In the meantime, there's no data cap for AT&T U-verse, or their pay-per-view. I had crappy reliability with Vonage, so now I pay AT&T for their more expensive VoIP service instead. The only difference has to be AT&T bias against Vonage packets.
However, there's some hope. I agree with the other poster that content providers like Google will put their dollars behind net neutrality. One place I've seen this recently is the FCC just spanked Verizon for illegally charging for portable wifi hotspots and tethering. I pay Verizon a stupidly high cost of $30/month for tethering that was free on T-Mobile. This violates a deal the FCC made with Verizon and other carriers when they did the 4G spectrum auction. Of course, the $1.25M fine is nothing, and I called Verizon this week to get that $30 taken off my bill, and they wouldn't do it, and said they'd never heard of the FCC ruling. Man, these mobile phone a-holes are the worst! Remember not being able to use the camera in your own phone, because you couldn't on principle pay $0.25/photo that you took on your own hardware and just wanted to transfer to your own computer using your own cable? Well, I'm sure you guys all hacked your phones and got those freaking photos for free anyway.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
When an ISP wants to offer certain filters like Christian fundamentalist, they can, it's just that they'll have to make an open pipe available for the basic price and not put any barriers in the way of the consumer wanting such.
And that's the beauty of NN, there's a basic not artificially restricted internet where it's left to the consumer to decide what extra services he wants to buy.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Slashdotters include a major portion of people with mental issues, who will find reasons to disagree with anything. They couldn't agree that the sky is blue on a clear sunny day. If you're parsing that sentence and trying to figure out why you disagree with it, consider yourself at least somewhat mental.
However, the non-mental slashdot crowd has a strong consensus on the basics of Net Neutrality. This strongly correlates to the subset of net neutrality that has been implemented as policy by the FCC. Net neutrality should not prevent ISPs from treating TCP packets like TCP packets, and UDP packets like UDP packets. It should prevent ISPs from charging content providers a fee for being fast or even accessible on their network. It should prevent them from filtering or censoring legal content. It also should prevent ISPs from purposely harming the QoS of competing services such as Vonage and Netflix. These are the sorts of policies that we generally agree on, and it's what the FCC is enforcing (poorly it seems).
Where reasonable slashdotters often don't agree is Bittorrent. Should ISPs be allowed to purposely slow down any P2P traffic? We don't have a solid consensus. Just because we don't agree on 100% of the details doesn't mean the FCC should not move forward on issues where there is consensus. It's currently doing the right thing, and that will probably be reversed if Romney/Ryan get elected.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Competition can only flourish to the benefit of the consumers when these companies have to abide by comparable and preferably national rules.
Having them decided at local level is simply highly inefficient for *all* parties involved.
Let companies, as service providers, compete on services rendered for the price the market supports, not by allowing them to do back room deals with strong interests and thus taking away any choice for the consumer.
At all points the interests of the consumer should top those of the companies, they don't have to provide a service when they feel it's not economically feasible.
Net neutrality is all about opening up, not about limiting.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Don't be ridiculous; no libertarian has ever actually studied economics.
Why would you think net neutrality would restrict any of those things? The FCC has implemented net neutrality rules, and none of that was effected. Are you one of those poorly informed people who thinks the FCC wants to keep you from optimizing TCP traffic differently than UDP traffic? Or do you believe AT&T should be allowed to block Vonage?
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
No, go read up. Obama understands and promotes net neutrality, which has happened under his administration through very reasonable FCC rulings. Romney has stated his anti-net-neutrality position, though like most topics, we don't really know what he knows or thinks about this issue. Ryan, on the other hand, has co-sponsored every piece of anti-net-neutrality legislation written for the GOP by AT&T and friends. He clearly understands the issues, and sides with the internet toll trolls.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
I really wonder why in a so-called democracy, only two candidates matter. In a real democracy, this would be absurd.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
I can't believe you are modded up as informative for this dis-information. Go read about what the FCC has done. They've implemented the most rational parts of net neutrality, and every enforcement action has been over pretty outrageous violations. So, net neutrality is here today. Are you experiencing any of those broken links you talked about, those links that would only be broken if net neutrality were revoked?
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Those who do lie about it are going further. Verizon is suing the FCC, specifically for the right to choose what content to block, and what to allow. From this article:
Talk about twisted... requiring that users have uncensored access to the internet is a violation of corporate freedom of speech? I think I have to go shower now to get the slime I feel all over after reading that.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
In china many chinese complain about being in a police state. In old soviet russia, many people complained about it too.
They got arrested as enemies of the state.
About the only difference with the USA at the moment is you'll be arrested as a terrorist.
(White South African expat) is going back. We live in one of the best parts of the UK - near zero crime, countryside, employers moving into the area because land costs are low and infrastructure is good - and yet he wants to go back. He is planning to continue running his UK IT-based business remotely. So somebody who actually has local knowledge disagrees with you.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Sorry, are you saying that the BOFH would do worse than either Hilary Clinton or our own beloved William Hague? That's improbable; they both appear to be BPFH.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
People who argue for right-libertarian viewpoints almost never correlate with "people who studied economics" and only rarely with "people who studied at a university".
Indeed, they love to spout off about how economics courses at universities are utterly useless because they are so Keynesian biassed. Which is just a nice way of saying "when every economist in the world points out how batshit insane our ideas are we can accuse them of bias instead of having to argue that inconvenient empirical evidence of theirs".
The worst thing is that they claim to stand for personal freedom. Biggest load of bullshit ever concocted. One-dollar-one-vote is NOT freedom and that is what an unregulated market INEVITABLY becomes. Unregulated capitalism ALWAYS and INEVITABLY can ONLY devolve into outright fascism [syn: corporatism] (which is exactly what is happening in the USA right now).
Capitalist libertarians call the government a necessary evil - socialist libertarians believe it's not necessary at all, and the reason WHY the Randian's think they can't do away with it is exactly because it destroys rather than maximises individual liberty.
Their freedom only exists for those who are already privileged. People who work in sweatshops are NOT doing so by choice - no matter WHAT Ron Paul believes. They are NOT. "Work in hell, or starve outside" is NOT a choice, it's NOT freedom. That's just slavery with a sugarcoating.
Hell even their great intellectual founders would be appalled by what they are doing today. Adam Smith was the first American economist to PROPOSE a state pension fund. He also stated that the ONLY kind of market which is REMOTELY sustainable is one where labour is by far the most expensive product you can buy. Because "high wages are good for society as a whole, while high profit margins for business is bad for society as a whole."
Not to mention - if you read the actual John Locke books on his labour theory of value (which is the basis of both Rand-style capitalism AND communism I shit you not) - and especially his definition of property (which Murray Rothbard quotes at least 10 times in every paper he ever wrote) then you can see just how patently stupid their ideas on property rights are.
Hint: there is NOTHING except the word "man" in there that prevents a beaver from legally owning a beaver-dam.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
In my country we have net neutrality by law and anyone can start an ISP just like any other company.
Would an ISP break the NN rules he can be fined and/or shut down like any other company that breaks the law, no special registration needed.
NN makes deep packet inspection rather pointless so there is a lot less chance the ISP would install such an expensive system, it would serve no purpose.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
The government is there for and of the population, the (human) population consists for 100% of consumers and that's where a government should firstly pay it's allegiance, only secondary with the corporations.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
>Now we can argue if his interpretation of the legal framework is proper or not or what scope should the laws be, but your claim that he is pro-antisodomy is a fat lie.
If states rights are allowed to interfere with basic human rights then they have been allowed to go too far.
No government should have the right to discriminate against citizens on ANY grounds except one: "have committed and been CONVICTED in a fair trial of a fellony". Everybody else should be given exactly equal treatment by government in ALL laws. No government should be allowed to make a law that does not PREVENT active and REAL harm to other people.
Not a state, not the federal government. That is the SOLE AND ONLY excusable legal action of government: to prevent one person (or corporation) from harming another.
As a left libertarian - I think we can do even THAT without NEEDING a government but while governments exist - it's the ONLY laws I would support. So yes, I support market regulations as a subset of the principle of "laws that prevent the causing of harm".
Ron Paul seems to think you should have the right to vote on where your NEIGHBOUR is allowed to stick his dick when ONLY other consenting adults are involved. Sorry. No. States do not, and should not, have that right.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
>2. The abolition of the modern corporation, replaced instead with a corporation with strict limits on size, life span and ability to garner wealth and power.
Socialist libertarians would say - that won't work. What it must be replaced with is worker-owned cooperations which are run by democratic one-employee-one-vote rather than the corporotacratic one-share-one-vote system.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
It's funny to hear lame complaints about how we live in a "police state", If we did, you wouldn't be able to complain about it!
Sure you would, but since you said the wrong things, you're now on a Domestic Terrorism watch list. Every comment of yours is now being censored.
Oh, you don't like Figurehead A or B? Domestic Terrorist, you go to prison, lose all rights, dissappear in the system.
NN = Regulation, Regulation = Regulators, and Regulators require paychecks, and that money will come from taxing Internet users(you).
Wait.. politicians remember campaign promises after being elected? Since when?
No, actually, it's pretty easy to understand. People can be for personal freedom and against the "freedom" for powerful corporations to compromise individual freedom. As any here ought to understand well, there isn't simply one kind of freedom... the old "free as in beer" vs. "free as in speech" argument certainly applies. An ISP's freedom to "do as thou wilt" with their network will impede my freedom to use that network as I choose.... the ISPs have already guaranteed this to us.
And given that, in most areas, the ISP is already a monopoly (you're very lucky if you have more than one actual choice), I can't even exercise the freedom to choose. That's intentional... some of the big ISPs have unofficial non-complete agreements: we'll limit or stop build-outs in your area as long as you're doing the same for us.
-Dave Haynie
...is less important than where the Congressmen/women stand. They're the one writing, or letting lobbyists write, the laws. The president is obviously important but the presidential election has become a lot of theater that takes away attention from what really matters.
It's funny how the 'keep internet open, free and without restrictions' doctrine is regarded as 'regulation', whereas the 'let companies regulate internet in any way they wish' is regarded as 'no regulation'. It's the 'market will find its balance' joke.
Obama will sit by idly and look the other way while SOPA/PIPA,ACTA and all kinds of other hurtful legislation is being thrown around the house. Romney will actively encourage the hurtful legislation. So you (the mindless drone consumers) are going to get the raw end of the deal no matter what.
'Voting with dollars' just means those with more dollars, have more votes. And when corporations *also* determine employment, and so the amount of dollars you have, you have an inevitable spiral into feudalism. There's an undeniable influence of money in elections, but this is something to be fought, not encouraged. You should ask yourself - 'why *can't* a corporation force you at gunpoint (or more practically, through deceitful advertising, unfair contracts, local monopolies and anti-competitive actions, and price fixing) to give them money? Because the government is there to stop them.
And the mere fact that a company might go bust does not mean that the replacement will not itself go bad, and then go bust itself. The proponents of creative destruction often forget that such collapses do not always lead to new flawless institutions, but often a new set of problems, and that the threat of such collapse does very little to deter mistakes brought on by short term thinking. It's better to preserve the lessons learnt, and try to improve existing institutions, than suffer through a series of collapses and rebuild from scratch each time.
I have seen no evidence that any of them do. Republican or demonrat, it makes no difference.
This sentiment really irritates me. Don't you realise that is 'there's no difference' idea is a strategy that is specifically formulated and sold to you? That vast efforts are expended to tell you that it doesn't matter, that you shouldn't vote? If it actually didn't matter, they wouldn't be spending such an effort.
Your cynicism is a comfort blanket as the republicans fuck you in the arse.
You are still free to not use their services... until the government requires you to have internet access.
A requirement, regulation or law which I would also oppose.
So you'd be willing to pay additional taxes to provide alternative provisions to people not online?
Do the candidates know what Net Neutrality means? I have seen no evidence that any of them do. Republican or demonrat, it makes no difference.
I'm not sure what evidence you would accept, but Obama has given multiple speeches on technological issues he seems to understand the basic idea of carrier based law. For that matter Romney's comments on this issue seem intelligent though I disagree. I'd say they both more or less do.
However what's unquestionable is that Julius Genachowski, Obama's FCC chair does. And appointing high quality people to regulate the tech sector is the difference between Obama and his predecessors. And is really what we care about. Because whether Obama doesn't or doesn't understand the internet, internet regulation is not going to be his focus. While for the FCC they can focus on that. And there is a big difference between regulations that are in the public interest like Obama's and regulations designed to support corporate America like what Romney proposes.
What is wrong with the idea of getting billed based on the amount of data you consume?
You mean, other than having absolutely fuckall to do with Network Neutrality, and being completely irrelevant to the conversation at hand?
Wall Street regulation comes from the financial industry
I think things like the debate on the Consumer Protection Agency show there are meaningful differences in policy between the parties on financial regulation. Neither party is perfectly pure is far from saying that the choice is a false one.
Why is this modded flamebait? It's dead-on correct. /. hivemind can't handle the truth?
Laying the physical cable is incredibly expensive doing it several times over is a waste of resources. Hence we are going to have a monopoly. Given that it is going to be a monopoly better it be a regulated utility than an unregulated monopoly.
Governments have thousands of years of history of handling problems with overly greedy rich people when they want to. They have proven themselves perfectly capable of doing it effectively time and time again. Getting them to want to is hard. Few other agencies in society have that track record.
Your cynicism is a comfort blanket as the republicans fuck you in the arse.
Considering you included this little nugget, it's clear which side you align with. So answer me this:
If it's a "Republican strategy" as you suggest, wouldn't it make sense for the democrats, who, by your logic, DON'T employ this strategy, to make it clear that there is a difference. For example by -- and this is only one suggestion -- NOT "fucking us in the arse?" Then why haven't they done so?
What else is he supposed to do? Vote?
With a presidential election turnout of 57.37% (2008), these arguments are fairly lame. 42.63% leaves ample room for swaying the result in any direction, if people just cared enough. Yes, lots of politicians are corrupt, lazy, self-centered and often just plain stupid, but from time to time, people actually get the representatives they deserve.
People who work in sweatshops are NOT doing so by choice - no matter WHAT Ron Paul believes. They are NOT. "Work in hell, or starve outside" is NOT a choice, it's NOT freedom. That's just slavery with a sugarcoating.
What "sweatshops" are you referring to - the ones in China? Because, yea, people DO want to work there, their other choice is the rice fields or family farms, (not "starving"), but the "sweatshops" are better. Same thing happened in the US during the industrial revolution, but of course the laborers got a clue and started demanding better conditions, just like they're starting to do in China. All this is enabled by FREEDOM - not the kind of government slavery that you prefer, like North Korea.
He also stated that the ONLY kind of market which is REMOTELY sustainable is one where labour is by far the most expensive product you can buy.
What makes you think that has changed? Why do you think there are so many factories and services being moved off-shore? It ain't cause they can get cheaper equipment.
Hint: there is NOTHING except the word "man" in there that prevents a beaver from legally owning a beaver-dam.
Ah, a true Marxist, no property for anyone but the elites in the government. If you think Capitalism is bad, wait until you see the kind of suffering that Agenda 21 will bring you.
Why would you think net neutrality would restrict any of those things?
An ISP may not restrict access based on content. That means, quite specifically, that an ISP may not offer an email-only or http-only service. These kinds of services are now illegal because of Net Neutrality.
An ISP also may not pass along the savings associated with its deals with various entities to customers that take advantage of the efficiencies associated. For instance, your ISP may want Netflix to set up servers on their backbone in order to reduce their primary peering costs. However they may not charge users of Netflix less than users of Hulu, because the FCC fucked you right in the ass but you are too ignorant to know it.
"His name was James Damore."
Unfortunately I didn't but that is because no one in the primary really knew anything about technology. Most of them knew how to use facebook, twitter, and e-mail but don't really understand how things work behind the scenes. My solution was to vote for the candidate I know (he is currently my representative to the State House) and have talked with multiple times as he is running for the US senate seat. With elected representatives you can't just sent the the RFC and expect them to be able to understand it but instead you must actually explain it to them in simple terms as most of them have the same technological knowledge as your grandmother.
Time to offend someone
ISPs (AT&T, Time Warner, Comcast, Verison, and friends) are 100% behind Romney. There are no significant ISPs putting money behind Obama. On the other side we have Microsoft, Google, eBay, Vonage, Netflix, and Amazon, who are all companies that provide content and services over the Internet, and they are 100% behind Obama.
I guess elections are nothing more than proxy wars between corporate interests.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Debates rarely, if ever, give us actual results. What I hear in debates is a lot of fluff with no follow through, and outright lies. You have to see how the Consumer Protection Agency actually works under any particular regime. If you can point to anything that shows consumers ever having been in more danger due to which faction is in power, I'll be happy to check it out. The debates are nothing but populist grandstanding. The politician is a used car salesman. And the only difference amongst them is style.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
That's just slavery with a sugarcoating.
It's actually a better deal for the employer than slavery, because you pay people hardly anything (they've produced goods which will produce profit in excess of their daily salary in the first hour or less in most cases) and you don't have to pay them any benefits and they go away when you're not using them and you can often have them deported if they cause you problems and then they just go away.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's a way to get their foot in the door. They will either make a new agency, or expand the FCC to essentially police the internet. You'll need someone to check up on ISPs to make sure they're staying neutral, and a bunch of new regulations that define exactly what neutral is. ISPs will probably need a license to operate which can be revoked in the event an ISP is found not to be neutral. From there, they can probably add new regulations to prevent sharing copyrighted materials without even passing new legislation. Since its already illegal, all they'd need to do is expand the meaning of net neutrality as necessary.
And net-neutrality advocates really need to get real about this. The Internet is moving away from preferred content, not toward it, and users would perceive blocked content as "broken links." Customers would have a shit fit, and probably sue their ISP for false advertising if that happened (not to mention the Feds could bring antitrust charges). Net neutrality legislation is an unnecessary opportunity for the government to break the Internet. Don't fall for it.
You are assuming that competition exists among ISPs. This is not the case in many parts of the US. Where I live there is one choice, excluding satellite which is a lousy solution. Without local competition, a monopoly can do whatever they want in the absence of regulation. By the time customers get together and sue an ISP for throttling or blocking sites, the damage is done. A net startup would be out of business before folks realized it was gone. Monopolies have to be regulated. Net neutrality is minimal regulation. It says keep your hands off content. If there were any real competition, it wouldn't be necessary.
Net neutrality would be a construct of the entertainment and communications industry, the rules of which would be centrally administered by the federal government, who will ensure that the pissants (you), get some crumbs, while the entertainment/communications industry get broad enforcement powers in the name of saving the children from piracy, terrorism, hate speech, and predators.
Once in place, changing something that affects the entire country, and every single ISP
will
be
impossible.
all you sheep, welcome to the slaughter bolt.
Very true. You also haven't been forced to make any large upfront investments you need to recoup from their labour - so there is absolutely ZERO financial incentive to keep them healthy and alive so they can work for long enough to make you a return.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Good, if they want to sell that kind of service do not call it internet service.
Good, if they want hulu to put servers closer to the ISP then talk to hulu about it. The ISPs job is to be a dumb pipe that is it.
No proposals, nothing. No gov regulation, just gov regulating corps for our benefit, and whenever WE, the people in what's supposed to be a DEMOCRACY want. The government is OUR TOOL, they serve us. They worship us, not the other way around.. too bad people are fucking dumb. I don't want to live in a fucking 'corporatocracy'. If they want regulation, they must have an online discussion and rigorous selection/vetting process(to stop it from being self serving, and has to please nearly everyone for there to be a new regulation, and even then, people are still allowed to start their own private networks/internet of their own if they don't like what they currently are offered..) election/referendum or something equivalent. That's the only real fair way. Not worlds 1000 richest people/oligarchs deciding for the world, various corporations/businesses/people(FB/GG, Gates, Jobs etc) or self serving politicians who don't even use the net to decide the fate of the internet, but give us all what we 'netizens' most want(ok now you can shoot me for using that word).
They couldn't agree that the sky is blue on a clear sunny day. If you're parsing that sentence and trying to figure out why you disagree with it, consider yourself at least somewhat mental.
Or at least somewhat color-blind.
But I completely agree with you. I'm not thrilled with some of the loopholes in the pro-NN legislation, but painting it as "pro-regulation" or "pro-government-takeover" is both exceedingly common and blatantly wrong.
What's really stopping people from forming a "Mesh Network" out in the wild? Seriously, the best thing about the Internet is that it's just content - the infrastructure is something we can replace if we really need to - and while you'll need to wait for Big Names to come over if you want them, a lot of the general community and information we share can be migrated to any network.
I have a router, neighbor has a router, etc. We build out some infrastructure in the form of DNS servers, web hosting, etc; throw in a couple Wikipedia copies, and expand the network out into surrounding areas.
The problem does come when expanding beyond city limits or other areas where you get miles and miles between yourself and your closest neighbor, but there are solutions to these issues (or some I'm led to believe...I do have a phone that talks to a satellite...)
So, what would be the real hurdle here? What could we do as a community? What happens if the ISPs become so oppressive that we have no choice?
Stop breathing. Now. You're contaminating my air.
A republican is anti net neutrality and backs corporate America? SAY IT ISN'T SO!!!!
If the republicans had their way, the entire U.S would go private, including the government. So its no surprise that Romney is pro ISP and anti net neutrality. After all, to him and most republicans, CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE TOO!!!!
Why would you need to run cable several times over?
That's not how it's done in other parts of the world with massive bandwidth capacities. There's no reason the government can't build-out the infrastructure and then lease access to whoever wants to provide services over them. The problem is, ISPs are given monopolies to areas, because we're treating the *ISP* as the utility, instead of treating the actual pipe as the utility. Therefore, we'd have an independent "utility" that does nothing but maintain the physical pipe and has no interest in what travels over it, which is then leased at whatever going wholesale rate by the actual ISPs.
Then, the ISPs compete with each other on service and price.
An illiterate man commissioned the development of the alphabet/script you are using RIGHT NOW.
The man in the big chair doesn't have to understand all of the nuances. He just has to have the right strategic direction and the ability to find people that can implement it.
This hasn't changed in 1300 years. Likely won't change in another 1300.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Vast efforts are expended to tell you that there is no difference in the parties, and you shouldn't vote? What country are you talking about?
I'd say you have that completely backwards. The two parties are spending considerable effort to convince you that there is a difference, when the reality is a lot less than they want you to think.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
With the early cattle towns you didn't sell your cattle to some guy in Chicago and just pay for the shipping. You sold your cattle to the relevant Rail Barron for a pittance
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The choice is abundantly clear. The Republi'cons have categorically stated, no net neutrality. They want to be able to filter content of their own choosing, establish First Class lanes if you have the money you get the first class treatment, and any other sort of charging or control scheme that they favor. I would imagine that they would love to suppress decent as well like they are trying to suppress the Constitutionally given voting rights of millions. For them it is not about the constitution, its about power, the constitution like the Bible is just a document you can point to and interpret to your advantage so you can gain and maintain power (and profits). On the other side Obama has come down on the side of net neutrality. That being said, you might argue that he is not doing everything you want but he is on the right side of the issue. On the Republi'con side you have a choice, but then its only their choice and you have to not only live with it but pay for it to them as well. Viva la Corporate Profits.
I think we won't suddenly get better government just by getting the 40% who probably know/care the least to show up.
Just look at the results:
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/aug-18-obama-leads-big-among-those-least-likely-to-vote/
It's pretty clear which side this sentiment is targetted at. The Republicans are playing a two sided game - to their base, they promise the world. To the others, they work actively on discouraging them to vote, by proliferating the attitude that the Democrats are failures, when it's they who have been responsible with endless obstructionist tactics.
[citation needed]
If you can point to anything that shows consumers ever having been in more danger due to which faction is in power
Sure.
1830s-1860s Democrats take control of the system and support the silver banks (the ones the population uses).
1870s-1920 Republicans heavily deregulated financial system with increasing risks. Little concern for public welfare focus is on industrialization.
1930s - 1970s Democrats mainly in control. Financial system is heavily regulated, safe but returns are low.
1980s-2000s System becomes much higher return in exchange for tremendous risks and constant problems of fraud.
Today:
Republicans -- blocking consumer protections
Democrats -- putting regulations into law
I'd say the checks 1 1/2m people got last year for insurance overcharge are clear cut evidence of a change in policy
Government owning and maintaing is not less regulation. That is government having outright ownership, and direct control rather than regulation. Generally when people are objecting to regulation they aren't suggesting even more controls.
There are advantages and disadvantages to the American utility financing system vs. direct government ownership. On balance I think the American system is better, but that has little do with regulation and far more to do with arguments about efficiency.
Exactly. Agreed.
Why not just have the government then be the ISP?
I live in Nebraska where all utility scale electric power generation is done by public power districts, political subdivisions of the State. These districts either sell the power they produce retail to the people who live in the district, in which case the district also owns and maintains the transmission lines, or they wholesale it to other districts or municipalities, who then retail it to the people they service. Each district is controlled by an elected board.
If the government owns the infrastructure, why even bother with private ISPs then? Why not just set up municipal or regional public ISPs to then provide retail services?
And I say this as a mostly-libertarian guy. The networks are not solely the property of the telecom companies - they have a lot of quasi-monopoly deals with local governments which are limiting competition.
In a perfect world, non-neutral ISPs would be hurt in a competitive marketplace. In our current US world, not so much.
Granted, the big telecom companies and their regulatory agencies are a classic case of regulatory capture - that just means we the people have to be twice as vigilant.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
You obviously don't know what fascism is.
Fascists have a view of world history in which ethnic or national groups are primary, and a Hobbesian theory of society and the State where the nation must be reified as an individual, where disagreement and competition must be forcibly suppressed. Economic ideology is corporatist - having nothing to do with business corporations. Rather, it is a form of guild socialism - central planning, where market competition is suppressed by the State, and sectors of society and the economy, such as agriculture, business, labor, etc. are regimented into organizations under a single governing body and forced to negotiate with each other to establish policies in the interest of each organization and the body as a whole.
Capitalism is diametrically opposed to fascism.
"name one benefit ever received by consumers which went away with the introduction of FCC net neutrality rules" Ok, with net neutrality companies can't offer free/cheap browsing with limitations. Based on what I've read of the law, I would think the following would be verboten - although I'm not a lawyer, so some of these might be allowed.
1. A church can't offer free wifi at church, but block porn sites which you shouldn't be viewing while in church
2. Companies can't offer tiered access plans. 1 Mb for $20/month, 10 Mb for $30/month, etc, etc
3. A company can't offer network access that only allows you access to their sites, such as Apple allowing access to the genius scheduling area of their website. Instead, people in all the local stores could piggy-back on Apple's wifi for their internet access rather than paying for it themselves.
There are ways of preventing AT&T/Comcast, etc from censoring the internet- they're called competitors. I understand where the net-neutrality rules come from- I really hate the idea that a service provider would this to me. Instead, I offer a competing proposal- information. If you required ISPs to declare what filtering they are doing so that people would know what's going on, then they can put pressure back on those companies or find alternative companies.
It is a regulation limiting what private companies can do with the equipment they own. They got to the position they are in with government support, but any strong believer in property rights is going to have issues with Net Neutrality law. The strong believers also didn't care for the sweetheart deals that helped them get their current level of control in the first place. The unfortunate truth is that given 2 firm believer groups and one opportunist group, the opportunist group will come out on top by temporarily aligning with whichever side supports what they want right now. I'm suddenly depressed after writing that. Clearly, I haven't been sufficiently cynical.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
"Fascism should more correctly be known as corporatism as it's the alignment of corporate and state power." - Mussolini
All that other stuff, racism etc. - those are optional extras, government and corporations in cahoots rather than government actively POLICING corporations that is the DEFINITION of Fascism and it's stated end-goal.
What Fascism is diametrically opposed to is individual liberty. The REASON for aligning state and corporate power is to create a power structure that is capable of MORE control and less likely to be overthrown. Opposition to personal liberty doesn't HAVE to include racist or ethnic bases, but it's certainly prone to doing so.
Nonetheless that is a side-effect, it's by no means required for the concept of fascism.
I consider capitalism (at least in MOST forms) to be diametrically opposed to individual personal liberty as well. Because to my belief the very CONCEPT of liberty cannot EXIST without the assumption of personal RESPONSIBILITY to TAKE CARE OF OTHER PEOPLE.
Capitalist love to talk of personal responsibility - but they only mean "to take care of yourself" - they deny that we have a responsibility to ONE ANOTHER as well. They are wrong. That responsibility is very real - indeed it's both the foundation of a good society and the very PURPOSE for which humans formed societies in the FIRST place (we survive better in a group - logically that's only POSSIBLE we assume SHARED responsibility for each other's well-being).
So what they are really saying is "I want to shirk my responsibility to other people by pretending it doesn't exist". Hell the Randian's go so far as to call any and all forms of welfare "slavery".
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
You're not looking very hard. It's easy to find evidence they understand it, though it's indirect and not solid proof. Read what Johnson (my current favorite) says about it:
He comes out against NN, but in the very same breath, he also advocates against the things which are causing lack of NN to be such a threat. You don't say things like that, without understanding what NN is and why people want NN in the first place.
Given a premise where the existing ISPs and the creators of the stuff that uses so much video bandwidth, pretty much owe their existence to government programs to put them in business, it makes sense to further dictate what those lucky recipients are allowed to do with their government-granted exclusive rights. Net Neutrality is a logical extension of public policy makers, rather than markets, deciding what the net is for.
If you pull the rug out from under all that, and instead were to have competition, then a lot of the problems that NN is meant to address, go away. NN becomes no-longer logical.
Both extremes are consistent. You only get to the weird inconsistent stuff when you talk to Republicrats, especially the Republican branch, who advocate against NN but still want to subsidize the private parties that NN would provide a check against. "Privatize" it, but use government force to make sure people are only allowed to do business with a tiny handful of unaccountable providers. (Republicans' idea of what "free market" means would be very amusing, if only so many people didn't take them seriously. Democrats are nasty too, but in a more honest way.)
I think what happened to mislead you about the candidates' position, is that TFA left most of the candidates out. They handpicked a couple of the worst, is all. I can lie to you about anything, while appearing to tell the truth, by only telling you about a small fraction of the truth and presenting it as though it were somehow representative of the whole.
Voting is good; just don't vote for them.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Republican or demonrat, it makes no difference.
Are you saying that they are both equally ignorant?
Are you saying there are only two candidates?
Certainly, local/municipal governments have generally done a fine job of worsening a bad situation; but the last mile is where things get hairy with or without their help...
There are really a couple of problems:
Dealing with large numbers of small property holders who can each veto or delay/reroute your project is a very ugly business indeed, which is why utility operators usually get in bed with relevant government power in the first place, obtaining access to all the easements in one chunk, and letting the government make it so, is very much easier. This opens an obvious weak point for the incumbent to establish regulatory capture(along with the local's legitimate desire to not be being trenched out at all times).
Second, even with the easements and all in place, building out a complex last-mile network of relatively narrow links is expensive. I don't have the invoice in front of me; but when we get fiber run for our network(distributed between a dozen-ish buildings across a town), running anything between point A and poing B is wildly expensive, having them throw 20 fiber runs instead of 1 into the same tube costs peanuts by comparison.
Third, unless the incumbent is at the ragged end of how far they can milk their existing cables, the low marginal cost of providing faster service(and/or add-ons like VoIP) in an area where you alread provide service makes it comparatively easy for an incumbent to defend their position on price long enough to drive weaker competitors away. If the incumbent has operating income from other regions, and/or a war chest, to fall back on, the process is even easier.
It's funny to hear lame complaints about how we live in a "police state", If we did, you wouldn't be able to complain about it!
I dare you to go out in public and complain about it. If the cops don't harass you on the street, try complaining about the TSA in an airport, you'll be given an all expenses paid trip to the lock room — happened plenty of times already.
Complaining on the Internet is not an example, it's when you actually try to talking to someone who isn't in the choir that the problems start. The authorities don't have the manpower to fuck with everybody but they will fuck with you if you are within arm's reach.
Lets put aside Libertarianism for a second and review this post.
It starts off with an ad hominen attack, followed by some strawmen and ends with a couple appeals to authority. It's as if silentcoder purposely tried to make as many logical fallacies as he could.
The only semi argument made is the beaver thing, but why not actually make that argument instead of hinting at it?
This is not insightful, it's an emotional and illogical rant. It's a rant against people the mods don't agree with though so they'll mod it insightful.
Wrong. A church is not an ISP, nor is a business who is allowing you to use their Internet connection for free, nor a library, nor any other person or entity that isn't charging you for use of the service. These rules do not apply to them.
Wrong again. The actual rules are fairly straightforward and easy to understand. The first rule is that the company must be transparent about its network management policies. The second is that it may not block anything, and the third is that it may not give anyone preferential treatment. None of these things prevent a company from cutting off your service when your contracted coverage runs out.
See also #1.
Ah, now we get to the point—the magic libertarian theory that competition will somehow fix censorship. Here's the reality:
What an amazing coincidence. That's the first of the three FCC net neutrality rules. Unfortunately, information doesn't help when you're outside DSL range. In most places, your only remaining options are cable (from a single cable company) or a dedicated trunk line. You cannot usefully have a free market when the cost of infrastructure is so high that the market naturally degrades to a monopoly. So you have two choices: liberate all the telephone, cable, and fiber lines and lease them back to any ISP for a line rental fee plus the cost of running a trunk line and dropping a router into the government-owned central office, or regulate the commercial entities so that they cannot screw the customers. Those really are the only two options that can actually work.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Fascism is a psychological issue, not political or economic. It comes from the bottom up, not top down. Hitler didn't take power. It was given to him, by a weak minded, easily manipulated population. The American government is not "grabbing" power. It is being handed to them on a silver platter. The psychologists of the time had a much more accurate take on the situation than any economist or political "scientist" (that there is an oxymoron).
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
SOPA means: "Law enforcement polices the internet for content. Laws are enforced ruthlessly for infringement of Copyright Law and other Proprietary Intellectual Property concerns like Software Patents, and cases are prosecuted as criminal violations."
Net Neutrality means: "ISPs do not police network traffic under any circumstances. No deep packet inspection, to determine what kind of traffic traverses a wired connection, or wireless transmission. All ones and zeros treated indiscriminately. For example, no throttling movies and torrents as different transfer rates, when compared to VOIP data. ISPs are agnostic to what you do with the connection you pay for."
Did I miss something here?
Tell me, SuperKendall, who are you REALLY?
Oh please, not the "States' Rights" argument. It was lame when states wanted to treat blacks like second-class citizens, and it's lame when states want to regulate your bedroom activities.
The fact that Ron Paul falls back on it only reinforces my contempt for his stupidity and hypocrisy..
Are the Locke texts you're referring to available on Project Gutenberg or is there another place to find them?
Repubs will change their minds 15 seconds after MSNBC becomes an ISP and it's their content that's being limited. After that, of course, the Dems will have to be kept in line by Fox News becoming an ISP as well.
How is this modded up?
It is these ideas that baffle me. Our recent history (100 yrs) comes down to the fundamental question/option. Is big government chasing corporatism or is corporatism chasing big government?
You believe that we have big government order to counter the growing corporatism. In order to keep it in check. The other side believes that we have corporatism because big government enables crony capitalism with moves monetary and regulatory subsidies to special interests.
So what is wrong today? Corporations are out of control and government is trying to reign them in? Or government is too powerful and is favoring their special interests?
If you think politicians are corrupt or are listening to the corporations, then government is too big. If you think politicians are honest and listen to the people, then your comment is right. That is what is baffling. They are honest and listen to the people? Ha!
Why would you think this? Obama has had NO problem breaking campaign promises yet. For a tech example, see his change of votes even before being elected...by supporting the Telecom Immunity laws with his votes in the senate even though he said he was against them....there are many others too.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Well, since he's convinced that nothing he does or says make any difference, the polite thing to do would be to stop whining and let those of us who haven't given in to apathy get on with business.
Yeah..whew. That big, whopping $26 I'm getting back (before taxing it as income) is really holding those insurance companies' feet to the fire.
Hell, I piss away more that $26 any given night at a bar....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I'm not sure exactly how a telecom would achieve a natural monopoly if the state didn't enforce the creation of easements. In fact, I'm not sure how we'd get electricity, sewer, or water connections either... But that's beside the point! The free market fixes all!!!
There is actually some interesting literature on the subject... We all know about the 'tragedy of the commons', where non-ownership creates a strong incentive for everybody to unsustainably over-consume whatever resource is in question, eventually destroying its value for everyone. There is also, it is theorized, a 'tragedy of the anti-commons' effect:
If you are trying to build something like a utility network, or a complex product, there are potentially hundreds or thousands of property-holders who can either veto or significantly delay/alter the project. In the case of a utility network, any one landowner refusal can force a re-route and even a few might make the project unviable. In the case of a complex product, there may be dozens or hundreds of patents at issue. Trouble is, (in addition to transaction costs), each person who could nuke the project has an incentive to make me pay a bit extra, lest they nuke the project. If too many people do that, the cost of buying them off becomes greater than the expected value of the project, and everybody gets nothing. However, even if they decide to rationally team up and extract the highest price I am willing to pay, thus making the most possible money, the sellers are essentially in a cartel arrangement(which is unstable; because any one member of the cartel could earn more by backstabbing the others; but if much defection occurs the whole cartel is worse off, including the traitors).
I suspect that this is why some variant of eminent domain is usually tolerated in most legally functional jurisidictions, and why the other-than-legal techniques for "encouraging" people to sell can get so very, very, ugly in the less legalistic areas of the world.
>You believe that we have big government order to counter the growing corporatism. In order to keep it in check
I most certainly do not ! I believe that if we MUST have a government, that should be a subset of it's primary (and indeed sole) function: to protect citizens from harm.
I am a socialist libertarian - I believe in NO government at all, I believe that people should vote on the laws they want to live under as small communities. No countries, no states, no governments, NOBODY with more power than his neighbour - everybody truly equal not just BEFORE the law but in the CRAFTING of the law.
So considering I don't believe in politics or government at all - nothing you say applies to me at all. I did say that since we DO have a government, that the standard I would hold them to is to promote liberty - largely by limiting laws to protection from harm. Whether the source of that harm is an individual or a corporation is immaterial. Market regulation is one means to protect against harm.
In my ideal world the concept and structure of market regulation is very different, and there are no corporations - only cooperations, which are an entirely different beast. But I know I don't live in that world (yet), so I can try to make the best of the one I do live in, in part by promoting PARTIAL cures in lieu of the full cure.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
wrong, wrong, wrong... You are either woefully misinformed or intentionally muddying the issue.
From the FCC report; Finally, we decline to apply our rules directly to coffee shops, bookstores, airlines, and other entities when they acquire Internet service from a broadband provider to enable their patrons to access the Internet from their establishments (we refer to these entities as “premise operators”).162 These services are typically offered by the premise operator as an ancillary benefit to patrons. However, to protect end users, we include within our rules broadband Internet access services provided to premise operators for purposes of making service available to their patrons.163open Internet rules, we note that addressing traffic unwanted by a premise operator is a legitimate network management purpose.164
Cheap storage VM.
You likely are young and have lower insurance than most hence a lower percentage of overcharge and a lower base. You asked for specific evidence of enforcement. Now a multi million dollar fine isn't good enough?
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7370
There you go. Locke's theory of value goes: "Only through human labour can value be created". That's why I say it's the basis of both communism and capitalism. Indeed Adam Smith and Murray Rothbard share with Karl Marx a fondness for quoting that.
They just disagreed on what to do about it. From this Locke derived his theory of property which goes: "All natural resources are initially in an unowned state. When a man mixes his labour with a resource, he creates value, and this then becomes property".
This is the basis of property laws all over the world now. Trouble is, it was great in the 17th century - but it's ridiculous now (simply because we have 400 years of knowledge he didn't have access to).
For starters: it's decidedly speciecist. I stated that but for the word "man" there is nothing in there that stops a beaver claiming property rights on his dam - after all, with labour he added value to a natural resource (a river).
Nobody is proposing humans should recognize the property rights of other species though - indeed we claim the right to EXERT property rights OVER other species. That's problematic - what we create a truly sentient AI ? Would it never have property rights ? On what basis do we actually claim that the antelope do NOT own the savannah ? They probably think of it as "home" after all ? And do we really think we'll be the only sentient lifeform for EVER ?
Locke lived 400 years ago, before the age of reason (which it must be said -he helped start) - he had no concept that humanity may NOT be special, religion after all teaches that we are the chosen ones.
What's worse is - it fails to recognize the EXISTING value that something may have. A piece of arable land, which you dig gold from - has him accurately turning the gold into property, but what about the land which is decidedly not arable anymore ?
You've reduced it's value, not added to it, so how is that still property ? And if it isn't - what now, since you've basically destroyed it ?
So Locke's philosophy of property is great for it's time, but it's 400 years overdue for an update.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Campaign promises? No.
Campaign funding? Oh my yes.
Just another ignorant American.
any and all election results. no citation needed. also it was a guess.
You do know which site you're on, right?
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
You want to control other people to make them do what you want. I possess no such desire. How does that make you a defender of individual liberty? A coerced responsibility is still coerced even it's something you personally support. Nothing you have said so far does anything to dispel that.
A free maket is the only sort of market that's fully compatible with freedom. You may have been excluding pure free markets with your "MOST forms" comment, but I strongly doubt it. If you are, you and GP are talking past each other by definining capitalism differently.
I'm not Randian. I think helping other people is intrinsically a good thing. But, the only legitimate method of punishing me for not helping when you think I should, is to not help me in return. You are not justified in robbing me for failure to help. Voluntary cooperation is a wonderful thing. Life on your own tends to be nasty, brutish, and short. But "failing to help" and "causing harm" are different in kind, and the first does not justify the second no matter how much some people want to pretend otherwise.
On an unrelated note, tone down the caps. You come across as a crank when you RANDOMLY capitalize WORDS AND PHRASES.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Randian capitalism is not based on the labour theory of value. It explicitly disagrees with it. Marginal utility is the general theory of value accept by free marketers. The labour theory of value runs into the simple flaw that the same amount of labor from different people and/or using different materials produces items of different value. As a general note, just because Locke/Rand/Marx/Smith was right on some things does not me he/she was was right on everything.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
It's possible that's Obama has gone back on some campaign promises, probable really, but that doesn't mean that they don't have impact. Every time Obama or any other politician breaks a promise it weakens their position and so they avoid it when they can.
Telecom immunity isn't a great example, he voted against it originally and attempted to remove the amendment that added it to the FISA reform bill but failed to do so. I'm in the camp that believes they should have killed or delayed the bill altogether as a consequence, but Obama wound up voting in favor of the bill despite the bad amendment. Just like the NDAA this seems like manufactured criticism - republicans and conservative democrats managed to push a bad amendment onto a large bill, and Obama decided that a stalemate and resulting inaction would be worse than going ahead with the bill, amendment intact. Certainly I wish the telecom immunity had never gone through, but calling it a betrayal is really blowing it out of proportion.
Regulations on ISP's take away rights.
Sorry, but I want the regulations to take away an ISP's right to fuck me over.
You seriously cannot see how Net Neutrality is the enforcement arm for SOPA?
Not without some strong mind-altering drugs.
Free Martian Whores!
Not being able to chose which ISP to use is one of the biggest problems I have with not having the net neutrality laws in place. If I could chose where to go, then in theory they would fight for my business which would result in a more open internet (probably not, but I'm just being optimistic here). As it is though, I do not have a choice for my internet connection. Or rather, I have a choice of either dialup or cable modem. Obviously dialup wouldn't even be a consideration since most websites would take 20 minutes to load all of their content, so ultimately I have no choice. And when that ISP degrades my VOIP service in an effort to sell me their own overpriced version, I have no recourse other than to sue the cable company for anti-competitive behavior. But if they aren't regulated at all, they can just make up some story about how it is degrading their service and they have to block or slow down that port traffic... but in an effort to provide me better service, they have their own VOIP service I can use instead. What nice companies to offer replacement products for perfectly valid ones I might already use... And the problems will only get worse without net neutrality keeping them in check.
http://slashdot.org/story/06/03/02/139241/comcast-accused-of-blocking-voip
> But "failing to help" and "causing harm" are different in kind
"When good men do nothing, that is evil enough." - Mahatma Ghandi.
Sorry, failing to help IS causing harm.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
"A witty saying proves nothing" -- Oscar Wilde
If I fail to intervene, nothing changes from what would occur if i didn't even exist. I can't be said to have caused anything by the definition of cause and effect. Only actions have effects. Inaction alters nothing, and thus can't be said to cause anything. The only reason to conflate inaction and causing harm is to rationalize the use of coercion against others for being insufficiently good for your taste.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Because it lets them lead you by the nose? I USED to try many different Linux distros, now I'll only use Windows, why? Windows Updates don't count against the cap, Linux and Mac updates DO count against the cap. If I use the cable PPV? Don't count. Netflix or Hulu? DO count...get the picture?
What you are gonna end up with is 35Gb to 75Gb caps which make damned sure you will NOT use what they don't want you to because at $1.50 a Gb overage charge it won't take but a couple of $200+ bills to get your ass back in line. Hell I should know as the local cableco recently went to a 40-80Gb for home and 150Gb for $200 for business, lucky I'm grandfathered in for now but if they yank my grandfathered account out from under me its assraping caps or AT&T with speeds so damned low they don't have to worry about caps because with a top speed of 3Mbps and lines that go out if you fart you won't be getting shit anyway.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
No. That's the problem with so called "positive rights". They absolutely depend on on infringing someone else's negative rights in order to produce them. Positive rights are incompatible with equal rights. Possession of a negative right doesn't interfere in any way with someone else's possession of the same right. The right to live is self negating in some circumstances. The right to not be killed can work for every person simultaneously. Unfortunately, rights are at best mutually agreed upon illusions, so reality might cause us both to die.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
I think we've all grown up enough to dismiss questions like this. It is not important where .. and I can tell you right away their first and
any future teleprompter reader to be stands on any issue really, it is what the lobbyist and the
people who pay their campaigns want
foremost concern is to limit your freedom and empty your pockets.
This is not a conspiracy theory, a lobbyist will charge around $775 and up an hour in Washington.
The only concern a person like Obama or Romney have is to remain their lavish lifestyles
for themselves and their families at the end of the day and to this end they are willing to
read anything off of a teleprompter. It would not be surprising if Obama or Romney didn't
even know what Net Neutrality is about.
So ask the question, what is the Council for Foreign Relations and the Tri-lateral Comission's take
on Net Neutrality? There's your answer.
With only two choices, you won't suddenly get better government by getting the 60% who know/care the most to show up either.
I think the Obama administration has accomplished a lot more than you give it credit for. But even if you find them unsatisfactory, you might consider how they've hamstrung by Senate filibusters blocking appointment of key officials. Reform of the Senate so that supermajorities aren't required for every little issue would make a big difference. Agitating for reform would make a big difference — unless you're absolutely committed to your militant apathy.
Hmmm, so refusing to reward corruption and encouraging others to do the same makes one apathetic. That's interesting. What's the thought process that comes up with that conclusion?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
These days...I'm guessing I'm starting to top out on the Slashdot age scale....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
So the country in Africa that you considered worthy of mention as being a "really nice" place is the one that's white-governed, majority-white-population? You're not exactly disproving his point here...
I disagree that advocating political reform "rewards corruption". But even if it did, simply refusing to participate at all (except for whining about how bad things are) is the very definition of apathy.
I disagree that advocating political reform "rewards corruption".
Sat whaaaa?? That made no sense at all. What I'm telling people is to dump the party and find real people to vote for, and to vote them out if they fuck up. But since most people want to keep things the way they are (according to the last election), what's the point of arguing? Vote republican or democrat, and you're gonna get fucked either way. Man, you got it all wrong, and I suggest you reread what I originally posted.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
From Obama Podcast http://obamaspeeches.com/076-Network-Neutrality-Obama-Podcast.htm (Transcript below) :
TOPIC: Technology
June 8, 2006
Network Neutrality
Snowe and Dorgan's legislation to protect network neutrality
Complete Transcript
Hello, this is Senator Barack Obama and today is Thursday, June 8th, 2006.
The topic today is net neutrality. The internet today is an open platform where the demand for websites and services dictates success. You've got barriers to entry that are low and equal for all comers. And it's because the internet is a neutral platform that I can put on this podcast and transmit it over the internet without having to go through some corporate media middleman. I can say what I want without censorship. I don't have to pay a special charge. But the big telephone and cable companies want to change the internet as we know it. They say they want to create high-speed lanes on the internet and strike exclusive contractual arrangements with internet content-providers for access to those high-speed lanes. Those of us who can't pony up the cash for these high-speed connections will be relegated to the slow lanes.
Allowing the Bells and cable companies to act as gatekeepers with control over internet access would make the internet like cable. A producer-driven market with barriers to entry for website creators and preferential treatment for specific sites based not on merit, the number of hits, but on relationships with the corporate gatekeeper. If there were four or more competitive providers of broadband service to every home, then cable and telephone companies would not be able to create a bidding war for access to the high-speed lanes. But here's the problem. More than 99 percent of households get their broadband services from either cable or a telephone company.
So here's my view. We can't have a situation in which the corporate duopoly dictates the future of the internet and that's why I'm supporting what is called net neutrality. In the House, the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Judiciary Committee reached different conclusions on network neutrality. Judiciary Committee members voted to protect net neutrality and commerce voted with the Bells and cable. That debate is going to hit the House floor this Friday. In the Senate, Senators Snowe and Dorgan are leading the fight for net neutrality and I've joined in that effort. Senator Inouye, the ranking Democrat of the Commerce Committee, has joined us in this effort as well and he's working with Senator Stevens to put strong network neutrality into any Senate bill that comes before us. There is widespread support among consumer groups, leading academics and the most innovative internet companies, including Google and Yahoo, in favor of net neutrality. And part of the reason for that is companies like Google and Yahoo might never have gotten started had they not been in a position to easily access the internet and do so on the same terms as the big corporate companies that were interested in making money on the internet.
I know if you are listening to this podcast that you are going to take an intense interest in this issue as well. Congress is going to need to hear your voice because the Bell and cable companies are going to be dedicating millions of dollars to defeating network neutrality. So I'll keep you updated on this important issue and I look forward to talking to you guys again next week. Bye-bye.
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.
This is a big problem IMO. These guys are supposed to be "representative" of my needs and desires. If they don't know what the fuck they're talking about, then how on earth are they going to do a decent job of representing their own needs, never mind the diverse needs of all of their millions of constituents.
Maybe what's really needed is to stop electing people geographically, and start electing people topically (though of course some subjects are geographically restricted so these aren't completely mutually exclusive.)
Of course that would mean each election would cover dozens or hundreds of positions rather than just a handful, so its probably untenable in practice.
But it just screams "wrong" to me when you come out and tell me I can't expect the people representing me in major nation-changing decisions know about the things they're deciding.
And to top it off, we've got a system which actually encourages politicians to make decisions with little or no information -- sliding things in at the last minute or dropping copies of the bill off at 7am when the decision is expect at 8am.. that kind of thing. Intentionally not giving the politicians a chance to research what they're doing before doing it. Just. Ugh.
I suppose it makes it easier to buy politicians though. If they don't have the expertise to tell a good bill from a bad one, and aren't given a chance to consult with experts, they may as well just take the money and run cause what else can they do?
I don't envy a politician their job. At least not the ones who have any sense of morality left in them, as its doomed to be stifled at every turn possible it seems.
Wikipedia says South Africa is about 9% white.
The African National Congress has been the ruling national party since 1994. They're pretty famously black.
Good, if they want to sell that kind of service do not call it internet service.
This. If you're selling something other than unfiltered internet service, then you shouldn't be calling it internet service.
There's a huge caveat though: Locations with few or even one possible provider. They could call it "ram it up your tailpipe service" and people would still have to buy it due to lack of (viable) alternatives. So there's some necessity to force said providers to provide an unrestricted internet service level at a reasonable price point -- because if they weren't forced to, they wouldn't do it (competition is great and all, but its a relatively useless argument in areas where competition doesn't exist and isn't likely to be generated any time soon.)
Well OK, I was wrong to call you apathetic. But good luck with bootstraping a "pure" political system. Even if you succeed in creating a new political party, what are the odds that it will escape the fate of every other major political movement: being capture by the very professional political operatives you despise?
If you want real change, you're more likely to get results demanding reform of existing power structures instead of trying to invent new ones from scratch.
If you want real change, you're more likely to get results demanding reform of existing power structures instead of trying to invent new ones from scratch.
My favorite quote these days: "A system based on corrupt practice cannot be saved merely by tinkering with it". Sorry.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Isn't tinkering exactly what you're doing? For a new political party to get anywhere, it has to participate in the very corrupt process you condemn.
There's a flaw in this argument. Somebody will always arrive carrying a club. And all of the arguments for equality in the world won't help you if they decide to use their club instead of their brains.
As for "protection from harm" -- is it not harmful for the only ISP in my area to partner with Apple and prevent me from using Microsoft products? Say what you will about Microsoft, its still an option that would be taken away from me against my will, which in my mind is a form of harm.
So you've got a choice to make:
- No regulation: Let the ISPs harm their customers (many of whom have no useful alternatives, and just cutting the cable isn't really an option anymore for most people in the digital age.)
- Regulation: Let the government "harm" the ISPs.
Personally, I'm going for option 2. For all of the "legal person" rhetoric, I still tend to hold real people in higher esteem than a corporation.
Technically I suppose it would also place a (comparatively small) financial burden on the CEO's bonuses and the dividends of the large shareholders -- namely, exactly the people who are most capable of withstanding such a burden. But I'm still going to take the rights of the little guy who's struggling to make ends meet over the ability of some CEO to buy another personal helicopter.
And clearly, you're an objective, non-partisan source for such judgements.
The fact is at least some Deomocrats are for NN. None of the Republicans are. Ultimately, as always, you should look at the record and positions of each person you're voting for and make an informed choice. Something I'm not sure you're capable of.
Wow, tone it down. You don't actually have to be an arsehole just because I asked you a question. Here in Australia we don't need network neutrality because of the way that content is priced. Check out http://tja.org.au/index.php/tja/article/view/108
I'm not being an asshole. The problem is from the first line of the abstract.
This paper defines net neutrality as a restriction on price differentiation or price discrimination by firms involved in the distribution and transport of online content and applications
It's using a bogus definition of net neutrality from the get go. Anything built off of that is irrelevant other than as an example of how people, intentionally or not, are constantly misrepresenting what it is.
Good, if they want to sell that kind of service do not call it internet service.
Thanks to the FCC, it doesnt matter what they call it. They can't sell it at all.
Do you understand this? The FCC has outlawed that kind of service, even if its called "extremely limited email-only service." That service is now illegal.
Thanks for being an ignorant dipshit that doesnt know what the fuck Net Neutrality means.
"His name was James Damore."
As much as I hate overregulation and tend toward Libertarian views, I think you're right. I dislike censorship more.
I like food labling laws. I like knowing that I can pick up any packaged item in the grocery store and have a good idea what it contains and doesn't contain. The laws force businesses to offer information they might prefer not to offer, but I think it is good for society to be able to expect to know what they're buying. I think I feel the same way about net neutrality, I think it should be clear exactly what services a provider is actually providing. Just like food labels, a lot of people will not care and most people won't ever look, but the option to look changes the dynamic of the transaction.
What I don't like is how NN usually means businesses can't offer some potentially profitible services. Comcast might offer Com-lite, a port 80 only service with preferential treatment to their advertisers for $5/month. Such a service could be profitable to Comcast and offer some some access to a whole class of users who wouldn't be able to afford any service otherwise. NN says it is better that fewer people have access than for those who can afford more expensive access to be limited.
I think there is a reasonable compromise, though I'm not sure how it should be best balanced. Still, I can imagine such a balance with reasonable requirements.
I'm sure the details aren't ideal and there may be far better ways to approaching the problem, but I would like to see the benefits of an option to offer either neutral or limited service play out in a market where consumers were clearly offered information about what is available.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Why do we believe that people have a right to buy something that the seller doesn't want to offer?
Everywhere I can think of a rule that someone must sell service they don't want to offer, I see a constant frustration by people who don't feel their right to buy is being met sufficiently mirrored by frustration that a seller cannot provide the service they really want to provide.
I believe you have a right to free speech, but I don't believe you have a right to come into my home and spray paint slogans on my walls. Nobody thinks that such a limitation to your speech is censorship because nobody believes that I should be forced to allow you to infringe on my rights in such a silly way.
Yet we believe that your right to buy the type of service you desire from Verizon is sufficient to force them to give you the kind of access you want to something they own.
There is a difference between saying a government should not prohibit the people from stating their opinions and saying a government should force people to run their companies in ways that mandate what they must offer. There is a place for regulation, and in fact I'm generally supportive of NN, but the debate isn't simply "evil corporation vs uncensored speech" as it gets portrayed so often here. The debate is really "must internet providers be forced to offer specific access if freedom of speech is to be preserved?"
In my mind, the Internet is so crucial to freedom of speech that the answer is "yes" but the unresolved question for me is "how much?"
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Laws and regulations can protect your freedom or take it away. The Bill of Rights, for instance, is very pro-freedom.
Sometimes there is a zero-sum situation. Limiting an ISP's freedom can ensure their customers' freedom.
Slippery slope arguments don't work unless you provide evidence that there is a slope and that it's slippery.
Arguing that pro-freedom regulation will lead to anti-freedom regulation, so it's better to leave it alone is nonsense. You can't tie the hands of a future Congress by leaving it alone. But if you give the people what they want, it'll be tougher to take away later. On the other hand, if we'd always been locked in to services like Compuserve, AOL and GEnie, we might not be fighting for network neutrality right now.
You mean like when Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act) with BOTH parties voting in favor of the deregulation? Sorry, but you're seeing what you want to see.
Ever think that might have something to do with demographics? Like the large number of elderly Republicans vs large number of young Democrats? Old people never miss a chance to vote.
lol, if you see this as a one-sided tactic, you truly have blinders on. "Promising the world?" Remember the "Change we can believe in" rhetoric? Remember the extensive laundry list of promises Democrats ate up that year? And proliferating the other side as failures? One word: "Bush" -- helllooooo? It's been 3 years and the Dems are STILL trying to use Bush to sum up the entire other side as failures.
No that's not what I meant. I had the timeline through Bush. That being said the Democrats did about 1 bad thing for every 5 the Republicans did on crony capitalism. As Joe Biden likes to say (who BTW authored the Bankruptcy reform act one of those really horrible laws under Bush) "compare me to the alternative not to The Almighty".
>There's a flaw in this argument. Somebody will always arrive carrying a club. And all of the arguments for equality in the world won't help you if they decide to use their club instead of their brains.
And that's why the full philosophy of socialist libertarianism contains measures to protect against that -including military. But that's beyond the scope of this discussion. My point was just that the flaws of government are not present in my philosophy so citing them at me is a strawman.
>As for "protection from harm" -- is it not harmful for the only ISP in my area to partner with Apple and prevent me from using Microsoft products? Say what you will about Microsoft, its still an option that would be taken away from me against my will, which in my mind is a form of harm.
Agreed - which is why I said I support market regulations.
>- Regulation: Let the government "harm" the ISPs.
I don't consider it harm. It's policing to prevent harm - that's what the government is FOR.
>Personally, I'm going for option 2. For all of the "legal person" rhetoric, I still tend to hold real people in higher esteem than a corporation.
I hold corporations in no esteem at all - I believe they are effectively a form of organized labour theft. I support the idea of worker owned cooperations - where nobody is "the boss" - instead decisions are made democratically by the workers, who also OWN the business, and work for a share of the profit rather than wages. I've heard all the arguments against that, they've all been thoroughly debunked, they are not relevant to this discussion so please don't even bother saying them - if you want to challenge the idea of cooperations, first read up on them, how they really work and how WELL they work where-ever they exist, and when you wrapped your head around the fact THAT they work, then the only debate becomes why we ALLOW businesses that are effectively private dictatorships to exist when clearly they aren't required for success.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
My point is that if you don't vote, and don't involve yourself in politics, your complaints don't really resonate very much. You live in a democracy, which definitely has flaws, as do all systems, but at least you have an opportunity to try to do something about it. Vote, demonstrate, start a political organization, sponsor an independent candidate, make a documentary, but don't just sit there and do nothing and complain that nothing ever changes. Then it never will. To quote (or paraphrase) Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing".
"little regulation of the internet as possible."" Unless it is religious or government regulation.
Giving people the right to buy something even if the seller doesn't want to offer it is one of the basic tenets of utility regulation. For example, historically we required the phone company to offer phone service to every customer in a community they serve, and we still impose similar requirements on electric utilities. The FCC has no such requirements for cable companies but local governments often do.
Telecommunications is a business where the cost of infrastructure (both the dollar cost of putting it in and the disruption caused by installing it) is sufficiently high so that it is a natural monopoly (or at least a natural trust) business. The cost of entry is high, and therefore the number of providers available in a community will always be small; in rural and poor neighborhoods that number will be even smaller.
All telecommunication companies have certain economic interests in common that are inherent to the nature of the business, so in an unregulated market we can EXPECT them to censor content that advocates causes that are contrary to their economic interests, and services that compete with their own services. For example, if Comcast's network gets congested I fully expect that NBC.com will stream well, and ABC.com, CBS.com, FOX.com, etc. will not, because Comcast and NBC are owned by the same company - that is, unless we have regulation that forbids them from giving preferential treatment to their own web properties.
Libertarian theory is based on markets where the cost of entry is low; the key assumption is that if consumer needs are unfilled, new companies will emerge to serve them. A few economists have acknowledged that the theory breaks down in markets with a high cost of entry, and that regulation may be the lesser evil for such markets. To me it is clear that telecommunications is such a market.
A further argument in favor of regulating telecommunications companies is that they are granted special access to scarce public resources. Wired companies have the right to string cables on public easements (telephone poles that are placed on property that they do not own) and under public streets (again property they do not own). Wireless companies are using radio spectrum, which is a scarce resource that all societies regulate. In some cases they paid large sums of money in spectrum auctions, but even then the auctions had stipulations that were meant to assure that the spectrum would be used for the public good; the companies do not have unencumbered ownership of that spectrum. (Wireless companies also make significant use of wired infrastructure, which they either install themselves under these same privileges or lease from companies that have those privileges.) Requiring that they give something back in exchange for their privilege is reasonable government policy.
I'm not so sure it's irrelevant. Usage-based billing removes a lot of the incentive to have a non-neutral net. (Of course, that is why the very parties we need to adopt it, won't adopt it.)
Say you watch a gigabyte of video from Netflex. You pay for a gigabyte. Or you watch a gigabyte of video from Comcast, who also happens to be your ISP. You pay for a gigabyte, i.e. it's no longer "free" or included in your fixed monthly payment. And if Comcast decides to charge you more per gigabyte for Netflix, they're charging more for Comcast TV too, so the playing field stays leveller.
That doesn't address all NN concerns but it addresses one of the big ones, the conflict of interest that makes ISPs want you to pay "extra" when you use services that compete with their own bundled services.
Usage based billing would kick ass, pretty much for everyone, except those who profit by abusing the way fixed-rate billing "clips" out certain aspects of reality.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I'm not so sure it's irrelevant. Usage-based billing removes a lot of the incentive to have a non-neutral net. (Of course, that is why the very parties we need to adopt it, won't adopt it.)
I disagree. The biggest incentive we have for a non-neutral net is that the biggest ISPs are also content providers. Which means that you WILL get double-dipping on their part, even your own Comcast example.
That probably heavily depends on your brand of crony capitalism. The degree matters a bit too -- the bailout of the banks for instance was a massive crony expense that happened on the Democrat's watch. Hell, even TARP only made it through the Congress because the Democratic majority pushed it through. It never would have passed a Republican majority.
I think if it had been Democrats the form of TARP would have been direct mortgage assistance to home owners. In any case the government made a slight profit on TARP so it wasn't a massive expense though it was a massive intervention.
That quote is a fake.
OK skip all the middle stuff I basically agree with you about. Get to the last part where you over dramatize the issue of who owns the equipment and the bandwidth.
This is a silly and just plain out farcical story. Not the part about not wanting to dig up my yard for every competitor. That's true. But it would ONLY ever have to be dug up ONCE if what you put down was fiber optics. Spectrum bandwidth will be a problem. But not in the REAL foreseeable future. The largest problem is copper to the switch. Or the "last mile".
The WORLDS internet traffic could pass through a double handful of fiber optics cables with no problem. Routing continues to improve on pace with demand.
So... Who owns the fiber in the ground...? My suggestion is on the state level. A cooperative of States all with equal say. A non Federal corporation. Each state appoints one member from an applicable field of work.
But this will never happen because politics it too much fun. And the truth should never get in the way.
Wrong. A church is not an ISP, nor is a business who is allowing you to use their Internet connection for free, nor a library, nor any other person or entity that isn't charging you for use of the service. These rules do not apply to them.
Wrong again. The actual rules are fairly straightforward and easy to understand. The first rule is that the company must be transparent about its network management policies. The second is that it may not block anything, and the third is that it may not give anyone preferential treatment. None of these things prevent a company from cutting off your service when your contracted coverage runs out.
See also #1.
Ah, now we get to the point—the magic libertarian theory that competition will somehow fix censorship. Here's the reality:
What an amazing coincidence. That's the first of the three FCC net neutrality rules.
Yeah, Verizon IS offering a tiered access plan
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.
I agree. I'm saying that the flamee's suggestion ("What is wrong with the idea of getting billed based on the amount of data you consume?") would go a long way toward neutralizing that incentive.
I have to admit, I'm not saying it's practical to rely on it, as the idea that Comcast would ever decide to start charging by the gigabyte (and of course applying that charge to their own video) is absurd. Not doing that, is how their video remains "competitive."
But once we give up, throw up our arms and decide to use government force to deal with the situation (which is what enforced network neutrality is all about), or at least decide to use force against parties who rely on existing policies of government force being used against others (e.g. Comcast's franchises and easements, Verizon's spectrum license, etc) (I'm all about tit-for-tat, and only applying NN legislation to those who exist as a function of legislation) then I think "billed based on the amount of data you consume" suddenly becomes one of the very best things to force upon those parties. Being an ISP+content provider is no longer a magic combination.
My government-sanction electricity and natural gas and water providers already work that way. Maybe that's why those companies aren't offering bundles that run on top of those services. My electric company hasn't tried to sell me an unmetered electric car. Usage-based billing works.
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Except that they had that opportunity, and it wasn't. Tim Geithner, the Obama nominee, had full control of the program as of February 2009 and actually directed where all the remaining funds would go. On top of that, the massive stimulus expenses could have done the same thing if the money was repurposed smartly instead of just handing out useless tax rebates. But that didn't happen either. Frankly, I'm glad the "mortgage assistance" didn't happen regardless, because we'd be far worse off now if it did. You can't prop up a bubble -- attempting to do so would have only made it worse in the end -- prices had to correct.
Except that they had that opportunity, and it wasn't. Tim Geithner, the Obama nominee, had full control of the program as of February 2009 and actually directed where all the remaining funds would go.
No there was congressional oversight and Obama wanted to keep it bipartisan.
On top of that, the massive stimulus expenses could have done the same thing if the money was repurposed smartly instead of just handing out useless tax rebates.
That's not a great use of stimulus funds. With stimulus you want lots of money going as far down the socio economic ladder as Republicans will let you. The poorer the better. Homeowners, by definition are not your best choice. The tax rebates were wage taxes and thus a better use of the funds.
. Frankly, I'm glad the "mortgage assistance" didn't happen regardless, because we'd be far worse off now if it did. You can't prop up a bubble -- attempting to do so would have only made it worse in the end -- prices had to correct. .
They wouldn't have had to correct if the interest rate were low. A person borrowing $200k at 6% pays the same as another guy buying $400k at 3%. By the same token if a person can only make 50% of the payments on their 8% mortgage on $400k of property can pay 6% on $330k. An equity injection of $70k + refinance would solve the problem. And BTW at that point that mortgage is semi safe even if the house were $350k. So even if the original house had fallen from $500k (i.e. the $400k loan were 80% of real price) to $350k (1/3 decline) while borderline it is still acceptable risk.
Everyone does fine. As long as the government is OK with giving Mr. and Ms "undeserving" a $70k equity injection.
No, they were idiotic for the same reason all arbitrary cash handouts are idiotic: because the person can no whatever the hell they want to do with the money. And all those people did was stash the money away or use it to pay down debt, in essence doing nothing for the economy and bleeding away the cash into the inflationary void. "Smart" would have been using the money to directly generate jobs or help people find jobs. Hell, Cash for Clunkers was way more useful to the economy (and consequently to the people) than any other stimulus attempt.
Except that interest rates were already low when this whole mess started. The Fed rate was barely above 0%. And regardless the prices still had to correct because wages are stagnant. You can't have house prices double and wages go up by 5% and just expect everything to work out from the difference of a few points of interest rate. People currently in houses are only a part, a very small part in fact, of the equation. The housing market relies on new buyers, who would never enter the market at the inflated prices post-bubble. You might help out a few underwater homeowners through those efforts, but you would royally screw the economy and the "next generation" of homebuyers. And that entirely ignores the whole "rewarding failure" aspect of the equation.
because the person can no whatever the hell they want to do with the money
I think you dropped some words. In any case. No small amounts of money with each paycheck turn into spending. We got about 130% spending from that infusion. Cash for clunkers wasn't bad either.
Except that interest rates were already low when this whole mess started. The Fed rate was barely above 0%.
The discount rate when this started, i.e. when the economy started to slow, was in the process of decreasing from 6.25% towards its eventual level of 0%. No it was not barely above 0%.
You can't have house prices double and wages go up by 5% and just expect everything to work out from the difference of a few points of interest rate.
Of course you can. Think about it. With home interest rates (risk adjusted) low enough you could have almost any level of housing prices.
The housing market relies on new buyers, who would never enter the market at the inflated prices post-bubble.
That's exactly what was happening. New buyers were entering the market. You had all sorts of flippers taking on multiple homes and people with lousy risk profiles taking on homes. Heck I was one of those new buyers who entered the market. And I did so because I could get a 90% mortgage and not an 80% mortgage.
You might help out a few underwater homeowners through those efforts, but you would royally screw the economy and the "next generation" of homebuyers.
I gave several scenerios so I'm not sure which one this was in relation too.
And that entirely ignores the whole "rewarding failure" aspect of the equation.
We do it all the time for the rich. I can live with that.
Cite a source on this?
The rate was 6.25% back in June 2006. GDP didn't slow until 2008 at the earliest (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth) when the discount rate was 4% in the beginning of the year and .5% at the end. So they did exactly what you said and lowered interest rates, yet a correction was still necessary. The drop in interest rates in 2008 did not account for the massive run-up in prices in the 5 years preceeding.
No, in fact you can't. Because there's a bottom (at 0%). And even if interest rates were AT 0%, housing would still have been overvalued. And no bank would ever loan at that rate, because there's no profit to be made. This is especially true when taking into account downpayments (which don't go down with interest rates). 20% of a huge number is still a relatively huge number. And you aren't getting a loan of any kind without a downpayment these days.
I said post-bubble . As in 2008-2009 when house values were over the tipping point. People were not flocking to buy at that time, because the market had finally recognize that houses were overvalued, and no one is going to pay for more than something is worth. (same reason Facebook stock has been dropping like a rock)
I can't. Rich or poor, people should be responsible for their mistakes. In fact, to some extent, they must be, else society will simply devolve into no one being responsible, because you'd be a sucker to do so.
As far as the stimulus working Ezra Klein has lots of links. Pick things like:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/did-the-stimulus-work-a-review-of-the-nine-best-studies-on-the-subject/2011/08/16/gIQAThbibJ_blog.html
No, in fact you can't. Because there's a bottom (at 0%). And even if interest rates were AT 0%, housing would still have been overvalued.
What does "overvalued" even me? Assuming interest rates were permanently at 1% and that inflation were equal to maintenance costs. Assume that a house has a rent equivalent of $1000 / mo (i.e. a $100-200k house under normal market conditions). Under the conditions of a 1% that house could easily cost over $1m and be "worth" over a million. The same way a 8% bond would trade for much more than face in a 1% interest rate economy.
20% of a huge number is still a relatively huge number.
Absolutely. That's where a subsidy in equity would be needed even in a low interest rate economy.
I can't. Rich or poor, people should be responsible for their mistakes. In fact, to some extent, they must be, else society will simply devolve into no one being responsible, because you'd be a sucker to do so.
I agree. But I'm tried of saying yes to the rich and no to the poor. Until we start saying no to the rich, and things equalize a bit I'm saying yes to the poor.
Well, I do appreciate a cited source, but macroeconomic models are far from "scientific proof". Hell, some of them (like the CBO study) are flat out "made-up multipliers". In reality, it's almost impossible to determine whether or not a recovery was caused because of stimulus spending or in lieu of it. In addition, unknown externalities (such as the impending "fiscal cliff" debt hole, made worse by stimulus spending) which exert negative impact on the economy are not accounted for.
Seems pretty straightforward. It means something is priced above its market worth (what people are willing to pay for it)..
I have no idea where you're getting your numbers from. A 200k house in a 30 year amortization at 1% is a monthly payment of ~$650. Tack on mortgage insurance (~$50), PMI ($50), and property taxes ($150) and your monthly payment is around $900. There's no way in hell you could support a million dollar valuation. Hell, even a 250k house would put you over the $1000/month price point. And this once again assumes a _ludicrously_ low rate -- what bank is going to lend at 1%? Hell, the fed rate is practically 0 right now and the lowest you can get is around 3.5% on a 30 year, assuming a 20% downpayment.
We tried that with the housing credit (which effectively became a house downpayment) -- it didn't exactly stimulate much, at least not in the long term.
Meh, two wrongs don't make a right. You never go forward by taking two steps back. Pick your idiom.
Well, I do appreciate a cited source, but macroeconomic models are far from "scientific proof".
True, but the claim you were questioning was about my figure for a "multiplier". That's a macroeconomic term. I think we can discuss macroeconomics but if you just are skeptical of macroeconomics entirely than such claims become vacuously true.
In addition, unknown externalities (such as the impending "fiscal cliff" debt hole, made worse by stimulus spending)
Macro-economics doesn't believe a debt in a currency we are sovereign in constitutes a cliff. Anymore than if owed someone $1m to be payable in 3x5 cards with an amount and my signature on them would be a personal debt cliff. There cannot be a debt cliff in dollars. Further interests rates are like 3% even the markets don't believe in a debt cliff.
I have no idea where you're getting your numbers from. A 200k house in a 30 year amortization at 1% is a monthly payment of ~$650
I didn't say amortized. This was an interest only loan. 30 year repayment is going to over 3% in principle every year, of course the payment is higher.
We tried that with the housing credit (which effectively became a house downpayment) -- it didn't exactly stimulate much, at least not in the long term.
We didn't try it. The US housing stock is in the trillions an injection would have been much larger and hit far more homes. The fact that a glass of water doesn't put out a house fire doesn't mean water isn't the right solution.
But interest only loans are a terrible fiscal idea. For one, they're always variable rate, not fixed. That's especially important since the kinda of people getting interest only loan probably can't afford a rate increase (which is all but certain in the next 5 years). Heck, even from the homeowner's perspective, they'd be better off going bankrupt and saving up for 7 years to buy a new home rather than having that cash drained away by "interest-only" payments that provide no real equity.
Now that I agree with. But my point is that we didn't have money to dent the housing market in the first place. Home debt was around 10 trillion during the bubble. The government didn't exactly have trillions and trillions of dollars to throw around. We still don't. And it also doesn't change the fact that it would fix nothing -- it would have just kicked the can down the road. The new infusion of money would give more people the ability to afford downpayments and land themselves homes, and then when the cash infusion ran out (since we don't have multiple trillions to burn every year), we'd be stuck in the same boat we were before (artificially inflated home values with no one able to afford it).