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Net Neutrality Is 'Marxist,' According To a Koch-Backed Astroturf Group
Jason Koebler (3528235) writes American Commitment, a conservative group with strong ties to the Koch brothers has been bombarding inboxes with emails filled with disinformation and fearmongering in an attempt to start a "grassroots" campaign to kill net neutrality — at one point suggesting that "Marxists" think that preserving net neutrality is a good idea. American Commitment president Phil Kerpen suggests that reclassifying the internet as a public utility is the "first step in the fight to destroy American capitalism altogether" and says that the FCC is plotting a "federal Internet takeover," a move that "sounds more like a story coming out of China or Russia."
About paying for open, unfettered access, and having some bean counter with an agenda decide what you can ACTUALLY see?
And Marxism fails because it view labor as something nobody really wants to do, and ignores transportation, distribution and associated concerns as necessary evils.
Here, the last-mile providers are acting like Marxists. They see only this big customer base of theirs as having any intrinsic worth.
Never mind that if they don't provide unfettered access, and don't manage to stifle all competition, they won't continue to HAVE that kind of customer base.
Net neutrality is about being able to use the internet connection you pay for, for any purpose that suits you (with nods towards the concept of "legal activity" of course) without having your traffic interfered with.
Net neutrality is about preventing illegal censorship.
Net neutrality is about protecting you from unscrupulous business practices by major (and minor) providers of both the transport and last-mile variety.
So screw the Koch Brothers and their idiot shilling.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I can find plenty of astroturfing groups that are soros backed and do the same thing, but that doesn't make it "front page news."
Om, nomnomnom...
Have you Americans *still* not gotten over this whole Marxist/Communist/Socialist = EVIL thing yet? Your government really did a good job with the propaganda during the Cold War it seems.
Net Neutrality Is 'Marxist,' According To a Koch-Backed Astroturf Group
No, net neutrality is not Marxist. Net neutrality is very much a capitalist policy, as distinct from being a corporatist policy.
Wow, it sounds like someone woke up a little butthurt this morning. "Koch-backed astroturf group." So?
Let's examine this:
(1) Marxists do think Net Neutrality is a good idea. (This, of course, doesn't mean Net Neutrality is right or wrong by itself, it is a statement of fact. Marxists tend to agree with civil libertarians on quite a lot, if the intention is to portray the policy badly by negative association.)
(3) Net Neutrality means: Dropping packets (thereby manipulating congestion control and bandwidth negotiation) based on the source or destination of the packet. If you dropped a Wikipedia packet instead of a Facebook packet due to a policy configuration and nothing else (randomly due to too much load), that's a violation of Net Neutrality.
(2) The issue is not over Net Neutrality, but over classifying the Internet as a "public utility". I'm not sure what that's supposed to accomplish - by any standard, it's a common service that gets hooked up to houses, residences, similarly to electricity. But if the intention is to legislate how people are supposed to connect their computers to each other - I have a problem with that.
I'm all for fair routing and engineering solutions to problems, but do we really want the FCC being the packet police? This is the same entity that gave us the Broadcast Flag. Their only job is supposed to be to regulate and assign airwave space, not meddle in the affairs of private, voluntary connections between nodes in a computer network, Internet or otherwise.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Unless they're tollways. And apparently the Koch brothers would prefer if all roads were tollways.
What would be so bad about changing American capitalism? As if moderating part of it would automatically send the American society deep into communism.
But staying on topic, net neutrality IS a good idea, and I do hope that so-called Marxist as well as anyone else believes so. Saying it would be bad because group X or Y think so, is the stupidest thing ever. These sort of argumentation can get so fast out of control...
Implying marxism is a bad thing.
In the USA the Koch brothers sure do get criticized a lot. What, the 39 groups above them support Democrats and expanding government? Well we can't have anybody using their money to attack Democrats and expanding government. These demons must be made an example of in case others decide to speak out.
Marxists think net neutrality is good, therefore net neutrality is bad.
You know what... Marxists think breathing is good, therefore breathing is bad also?
Such arguments are never valid.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
... he should have invented "the Goldstein brothers", not just Emmanuel Goldstein.
There's just something more sinister sounding about brothers, isn't there?
(This comment has nothing to do with the merits or lack thereof of "net neutrality", BTW.)
Kochs aren't worried about capitalism which is a system of exchange. They are worried about not being able to their own profits in the short term. As extractive industries they want to buy protection from other advocates with environmental views by starving them out of the discussion! Here's the problem. Capitalism (market economies) only works if there is a fair balance of power among the buyers and the sellers. That other thing that the Kochs are protecting is oligarchy--rule by the wealthy.
It is a bad thing i think
Kochs aren't worried about capitalism which is a system of exchange.
No it isn't. As so many do, you are confusing Capitalism with Free Market Economies. They occasionally run side by side but are quite independent. What you describe is a free market economy where goods and services can be traded without unnecessary interference. Capitalism is all about ownership of the rewards, and that is what the Kochs worry about. You can and often do find Capitalism allied with very restricted markets, because it is easier to assert ownership and make sure you take all the profit, not the workers, not the customers nor any competitors.
So what's their point?
Karl or Groucho? If they mean the latter, I might even believe them.
Will
Call it what you want, but if net neutrality and ultimately uninterfered Internet access is Marxism then I like it!
Do you think that Netflix, Google, Yahoo and the rest are paying for "net neutrality" lobbyists out of the goodness of their heart? Nope. They don't want to share squat with the folks who build the wires.
With about 2 decades worth of decreasing living standards in America and a ongoing recession, and a sense that the political system is broken, does the American Capitalism argument even work outside the mind of a narrow minority anymore.
All of the neo-mercantilist economist promoting what Koch labels "american capitalism" have been disproven empirically, sure they can push the logic utopians always do but nobody who have tried to practice it have ended up with anything but disaster. And America ceased being a small goverment country around the same time slavery were outlawed, since the it remained a regulated society. The real question is not if regulation should be introduced as regulation is already a big part of the decision process by market actors but what path the regulations should push market actors into.
Net neutrality is pushing the infrastructure owners away from creating walled gardens and cartels with the content providers and onto to a more pure competitive model where they focus mostly on running the infrastructure as cheap an effective as they can. Where as the content discrimination models pushes the infrastrucure owners to seek synergy(the politically correct term for the cartel effect) with content producers, and neglecting the actual infrastructure.
What they dont tell you in political inductrination 101 is that Smith and Marx aren't opposite poles on a spectrum, as Marx were borrowing most of his economics from Smith(they are seperated in time by about a century) but applied it in a different context.
Acting as if they invented the Internet; they've been trying to take it over since the 70's.
The Koch brothers get criticized a lot because they're secretive billionaires with a political agenda, who pump their fortune into the US political system through sneaky means on a massive scale, funneling their money through hundreds of "anonymous" groups so that it's difficult to trace, writing legislation to promote their agenda and businesses, and trying to get it passed when nobody is looking, and generally doing their best to subvert the democratic process. Oddly enough, the vast majority of Americans don't approve of their methods, and don't agree with their agenda, so their behavior generates criticism when it's discovered.
And don't think for a minute that Republicans don't expand government - when they're in charge, they expand the government, and run up spending and debt, faster than Democrats. They just like spending money on different things than Democrats - wars and tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, for example, rather than education and infrastructure. That and they like to regulate people's private lives a lot more than Democrats, while Democrats prefer personal liberties and regulating businesses.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Based on his examples it may be that he doesn't get it?
"I used to come to Slashdot under the assumption that it was a place for fairly intelligent, if not eccentric, technology-aware people to flame the shit out of each other."
That was a long long time ago, before CmdrTaco decided to vacate the forum.
This isn't about acess to services. This is about access to speech. Fast lanes are like saying speech is free, but you have to pony up to turn up the volume on your sound system at a protest rally.
Calling something "Marxist" seems like an attempt to make further discussion unnecessary, comparable when in more civilised countries something is called "fascist". And calling someone who pleads for unbrideled capitalism as |leading to American situations" is also supposed to cut off further discussion, as no sane person wants that to happen.
It is amazing that Marx became an insult. Marx just told us that the wealthier want to get even more rich, which in the end makes labor unable to purchase the goods produced, and hence capitalism destroys itself.
I guess they confuse Marx and Stalin.
You know what ./ers are like when it comes to politics, yet you still willingly click on an article with "Marxist" in the title? You have to be among the worlds dullest masochists.
Try some hot wax, much more satisfying and you'll retain more of your sanity.
Who am I kidding, it's not as if you really believe any of that crap. You're just another lazy troll without an original thought or the commitment to put any effort in, and I'm just someone with too much time on their hands.
Server Guy: I only want to give my information to the people who lead to ad revenue or sales, everyone else is a waste of my server.
User: I want access to all of Internet, not just some of it.
We're going to have a problem here....
The Koch brothers, what a couple of douche bags.
Did Communism become too worn and Marxism is now trying to take its place as the adjective of evil? Old people never seem to be able to get over the Cold War.
Most ISPs exist because they negotiated monopolies with local governments. Get rid of these monopolies and let the market work. It's illogical to complain about publicly financed ISPs when the current ones exist because of another form of public subsidy.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
This is the equivalent of UPS charging an online retailer additional fees for delivering too many packages thereby placing an undue burden on UPS's existing their distribution network, even though all of their buyers already paid for shipping. Common sense should already deem this silly.
The reason there is a Net Neutrality discussion, is because there are only a few gatekeepers. If each city had at least 5 DSL, and 5 Cable, provider choices, no-one would be talking about this, because the first person that throttled would lose business. If you want Net Neutrality, you have to break the backs of the local monopoly/duopoly.
Here is how you translate it into capitalist terms. Because this is a communication problem.
1. End all state backed communication monopolies because they make a free ISP market impossible. Anyone arguing this on capitalist terms will agree with this point. This would include AT&T, Verizon, TWC, Comcast, etc. They all enjoy regional monopolies that are backed by local governments and it is ILLEGAL to compete with them in many cases. This is the situation that allows abusive ISP policy in most cases.
2. Ask for clarity and brevity in contracts so that the consumer knows the terms of the contract they're signing. Capitalists shouldn't have a problem with this since informed consent is a central tenet of capitalism. And once those contracts are in place the ISPs will have a hard time claiming they have a right to throttle connections when that right wasn't stipulated in the contract.
3. Make it a stipulated portion of the ISP contract that it includes OR DOES NOT include access to all other networks on the internet.
4. Ask for a simplification of the regulations required for an ISP start up. Capitalists should like small business and understand that a healthy market requires them. As such, they should make it easier for small ISPs to get going and transition to medium sized ISPs should they prove successful.
Etc.
Look, a major problem of the net neutrality argument is that it IS couched in communist lingo. I'm not saying it is right or wrong or even criticizing communism. But we have to be honest about that point and keep in mind that many will reflexively oppose it simply for smelling of communism.
So if you care about net neutrality... consider what I said above because it could work as easily as anything.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Citizens from post-USSR countries beg to differ. We probably love capitalism and hate communism more than people from western countries. True communism cant be created anywhere on this Earth. Idea is great but it always degenerates into dictatorship and enslavement. USA propaganda about red menace was just propaganda, but it was also true, we suffered under communism. Idea of communism in USSR was rotten at the beginning. It was Lenin and Trotsky (Stalin was nobody then) who created Tseka (precursor of KGB) and ordered first mass killings. They also started special privilege system, that later on created nomenclature with Stalins help.
Ironic fact: first people to rebel against communism were revolutionary sailors. The same ones who helped bolsheviks to power, who were the first to support bolsheviks. They were the first ones to actually understand the mistake they made.
Idea of communism and marxism is great and humane, but once you see the results...
I'm interested in learning more about net neutrality but government can fuck up a cup of coffee. If it's only regulated in the US, are we hamstringing American ISP's (businesses)? What makes China Telecom get on board?
This would be a more persuasive argument if free markets had spontaneously created the internet - but they didn't. Markets gave us AOL and "The Microsoft Network" - incompatible, proprietary hulls of content - not an open global network.
In capitalist America, network owns YOU!
he also happened to run an ISP a while ago
I'm tired of the lies these Kotch assholes are funding. Lets start a movement to spill the blood at the source.
What is asserted without evidence can be discarded without evidence.
How stupid do you have to be to read this sort of thing and say "oh yeah, good point". I mean, if you see "public utility" and "Marxist" being joined together, do you think "hmm... yes, I see what you mean", or do you think "hang on, but aren't the electrical grid, water, gas, roads and other things public utilities? We're not in a marxist state, so what's one more utility to worry about?".
because I believe in:
- high-speed Internet for all for a subsidized amount
- universal, socialised medicine for all based on taxes
- universal secondart education for all based on taxes
- compulsory two-year military or social service for all able-bodied 18-year olds
- salary caps for all public employees
- I'm anti-deregulation of telcos and power companies
- all electricity, water, power companies should be non-profit
I could go on and on...
The Koch brothers are entirely fascist. Full stop. Let's just be honest, shall we. If the US, for example, did a straight popular vote, it would be difficult, if not, impossible, for a Republican to be elected.
They certainly are — thanks to the monopoly-power once given to them by the government.
The solution to this, however, is not creating more rules for them to follow (with more boards and commissions to — ineffectively — ensure compliance) — these only make it harder for a would-be newcomers to appear — but to make this market properly competitive.
While the public anger is (somewhat clumsily, but still effectively) once again redirected against the Koch Brothers, "Big Cable" donates to the ruling party en masse, CEOs play golf with the President and otherwise do the ruling party's bidding. Is it likely, that further monopolization will be blocked?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Kochs have a long history of seeing communists around every corner. I believe this comes from their father's business dealings with the Soviets. Too bad they can't let that paranoid shit go. It's making them look like dopes.
If it were Marxist, which it isn't, that would be even more reason for me to support it.
Let's be honest; they're actually right... in the sense that TCP/IP is also Marxist!! ;)
This is another example of left-wing activists taking over a comment-driven website to use as a propaganda platform. They did it to Digg, and are now targeting slashdot.
This is complete fabrication and misrepresentation of facts. For those open-minded non-sheep who care to actually look deeper into this, you will find that the key players put in place by Obama are, in fact, self-described far-left wing progressives (i.e. modern marxists). They are hijacking net neutrality to use it to further other progressive (marxist) agendas that they have attached onto it.
Without net neutrality, the internet as it was built dies. PERIOD.
Net Neutrality means - packets come in, packets move on - nobody fucks with them in any way shape or form.
No packet inspection. No tracing. No sniffing. No shaping. No re-routing (except as determined by the TCP/IP routing standards to re-route around damaged network nodes / segments).
Now, that of course is all well and good, aside from the fact that it also allows things like DDoS attacks to wend their way through, as well as port probing, etc..
So to that, having last mile providers deploy firewalls that defend against DDoS attacks and port sniffers would be allowed, but only as defense against those attacks.
I know liberals are full of shit so I hate casting blame on conservatives, but I've always wondered:
Why do conservatives have to lie to the public to promote their viewpoints? Shouldn't their views be correct enough, and valid enough, to stand on their own?
It irks me that conservatives are so heavily dependent on misleading the public. When you look at Murdoch's News Corp, the Koch Bros. creation of the Tea Party, the anti-gay propaganda from Mormons, everything the Bush administration did, Mitt Romney's campaign, etc. they all based on lies.
I just don't know how anyone can trust a group that starts an argument with deliberately twisting the facts to serve their purpose. Now that doesn't make liberals correct at all, and we need conservatives to balance out liberals for sure. But I don't know how conservatives believe that misinforming the public on a grand scale is a good idea.
And it never used to be like this either. But at some point, lying to further a cause became normal for conservatives, and here we are being inundated with lies.
As extractive industries they want to buy protection from other advocates with environmental views by starving them out of the discussion!
Even if we supposed that all it took to "starve" someone out of a public debate was to spend enough money, the Koch brothers aren't even remotely close to spending the kind of money that would take. They're just relatively wealthy billionaires, not god-emperors with an iron-bound oil monopoly to fund their every whim.
I think a silly aspect of this discussion is the attribution of so much mythical power to money. It misses an obvious problem. If you spend money to steer the discussion and your wealth decreases as a result, then you've lost money and hence, lost that power. There are other forms of power that don't diminish in their use, such as military power or political power.
"Screw the Koch Brothers" shouldn't be your conclusion, it should be your premise.
The ISPs have a defacto monopoly. Net neutrality is them trying to exercise their monopoly. We shouldn't be going after net neutrality, instead we need to break up the monopoly that is behind it.
Anti-neutrality laws are marxist in the same way that anti-monopoly laws are marxist. But thinking people recognise that you have to restrain rampant capitalism sometimes in order to maintain correct competition and market relationships.
You're so funny. Literally 5 seconds of Google proves you wrong, but I'm just not interested in formatting it to run your mouse wheel.
https://www.google.com/#q=groups+financed+by+democratic+billionaires
Just saying 'Camelot' around older Democrats is a riot after they spout stuff like above.
No bias here. Move along citizen.
The only surprise I saw was that they didn't find some way to insinuate that "net neutrality will KILL YOUR GRANDMOTHER!"
That's the only square missing to complete Libertarian-bingo on this issue.
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Why doesn't the Koch group advocate for anti-trust action against the telcos? That's a thing they could also be doing.
Any time you have business trying to control regulation it's a bad thing. Because, let's face it, business doesn't give a shit about your rights, civil or otherwise. Or your health, or your children's health, or your well being in any way. All business cares about is profit. And if you get in the way of profit, business will stomp you like a cockroach.
Fuck the Kochs and their ilk.
That's the reason why it's good!
I understand the user community's desire to have all content be treated the same. But let's assume for a moment that tomorrow, net neutrality is passed and ISPs are no longer able to charge some customers (provider or consumer) more for priority routing/transmission. What incentive do they have to continue to invest in the infrastructure when they have a near-monopoly over the end-users? Consider television distribution. Pretty much everyone has a choice between one cable provider and two satellite providers whose feature set is virtually identical these days. Those companies have little incentive to do things that end-users want e.g. a la carte channel lineups. Maybe eventually it will happen but it might take years and the possible threat from internet content distribution to get them to do anything. So back to the ISPs. End users have a choice between their local cable company and their local phone company. Net neutrality takes away a potential revenue stream. Why then would they continue to either invest in upgrading their technology or continue to keep everyone's rates low or both? Why wouldn't they jack up the prices of the service level necessary to serve up Netflix or whatever for everyone regardless of whether or not the customer uses those types of services?
Don't fall the the GOP nonsense. They care about their fat-cat financiers
Tax cuts? Reagan raised Social Security taxes (he raised taxes seven times.)
http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/2154/reagans-forgotten-tax-record
This info used to be here but the open minded GOP media took it down.
http://old.nationalreview.com/nrof_bartlett/bartlett200310290853.asp
The GOP happily went along with allowing the post financial crisis tax cuts for the middle class to go away while fighting tooth and nail to keep the ones for the rich.
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/rick-newman/2013/01/02/middle-class-taxes-just-went-up
If you aren't in the 0.1% and you support the GOP you a re a sucker.
It would be OK if all roads were tollways. But an Internet without net neutrality is more like this: You pay to access a toll road, but the speed limit that you have to follow depends on what store you are going. You can drive at 100 km/h to get to one grocery store, but to get to another, you can only drive at 40 km/h. And forget peer-to-peer eating: When driving to a friend's house for dinner you can only travel at 30 km/h, but when driving to a restaurant you can travel at 100.
Marxists also believe laughing is fun and laugh at jokes. We had better stop doing such things lest we accidentally find ourselves behaving like Marxists. It's a slippery slope from laughing at jokes to Stalin's purges.
I think my ISP is blocking email from American Commitment's domain.
Of course, that should be OK with Koch. After all, its capitalism, and ISPs can decide who gets to use their facilities unilaterally.
Have gnu, will travel.
Reading TFA, even if I take TFA at its word, TFA's headline claims the group is Koch-backed, but TFA itself only says that the head of the organization previously worked at a Koch-backed organization. The idea that there's any Koch connection, financial or otherwise, to his current organization is complete speculation.
TFA further obscures this by containing a link for the phrase "strong ties to the Koch brothers", presented in a way which looks like it should be about the current organization, but which when you follow it, turns out to be about the previous one.
"Koch" has become such a left-wing bugaboo that any reference to it should make the reader automatically skeptical.
Furthermore, TFA quotes the email, although using an image (why, I don't know--to make it harder to search?) The claim that "he thinks net neutrality is Marxist" is a distortion of that email. It claims that
1) It is like things done by China and Russia (astute readers may remember that Russia gave up being Marxist decades ago; summarizing this as "he thinks it's Marxist" is another left-wing scare tactic meant to bring to mind McCarthyism) and
2) a reference saying that one *specific* group led by one specific Marxist individual supports it.
Rather than say Net Neutrality, which is ambiguous and a bit high high minded, call it what it really is. It is protecting from ISP double dipping. As an industry (in the USA and Canada), it is already a bloated spider feasting parasitically on society, as seen by the overwhelming consumer hatred of those companies, which somehow manage to stay in business... (I am saying rhetorically, I know how).
What they want to do, is have the ability to not only charge the consumer of media, but also the producer. It is like a perfect fucking storm of profit! As the middle man just skimming money off everyone involved. The problem is, I as the consumer have already paid for my damn service. If I plan on using it to only access simple webpages or if I plan on streaming Netflix all day everyday, that is my right, and I pay for the privilege of doing so. We have all moved to the damn CAP system already, so if I consume more than Granny Twinkles, I PAY for it. However now they want to take my service, which I already pay for, and say well since so much is going to Netflix, we want to change them more money, and if they refuse, slow the connection.... to the consumer, who has already damn well paid for the service in the first place. Or conversely if the company pays the extortion, they will simply pass the cost onto the consumer, so either way, the consumer is going to pay or get less service no matter what happens.
Anyway it is rapacious greed pure and simple, it is double dipping, it is wrong. These companies already have too many advantages, and constantly abuse both the system and their customers every chance they get for more profits. The reason the folks like Koch and the rest like it is they have money to gain, and the vast population has money to lose. This is not ideological (all this crap about Marxism etc...), but some idiots will think it is, and support idea, even though it is by far not in their best interests to do so. The republicans/conservatives have been playing the same shell game for years, where a large chunk of their support comes from these uninformed ideological idiots who are voting against themselves over and over again based on some fictional ideal, that doesn't even apply or even make sense given a situation. However using whatever media (and if your name is Koch, and in the USA) you have plenty of media to abuse, to convince the people to accept whatever snake oil you are selling...
All of you progressives who are clamoring for this euphemistically newspeak named "net neutrality", hopefully you realize that the more you beg the government to control, the more freedom you are unwittingly giving away. Yes, the government should be able to micromanage every aspect of the use of private property in the name of promoting the "greater good" and "fairness". As if that won't end poorly. And let's dispense with the Koch-is-the-root-of-all-evil whining. There are just as many billionaires on the left injecting their money into politics... Tom Steyer, Warrent Buffett, etc with their own shadow groups.
I always thought Marxism was bad but if net neutrality is Marxist then maybe it's time to rethink my political philosophy. Thanks for the tip, Koch Brothers!
PS Fuck you, Koch Brothers
They care nothing about America or capitalism, except as a tool to increase their wealth.
RTFA - there's no association with the Koch boogeymen other than that the president of the "astroturf group" used to work for a group which did have Koch ties.
The author of the article expressly states that he doesn't know who funds the group. Its title is inaccurate and irresponsible.
Have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water?
Litmus tests are very important, and infallible, because far right conservatives use them all the time, and they are inherently right, right? So let me drag out one og my own......
So being that under net neutrality, all data is to be treated equally, it means that anyone supporting any sort of equality is a Marxist.
As noted in the Constitution, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal", means that if you support anything that doesn't treat my internet traffic as equal to everyone else's, you are not a Marxist.
Therefore, in an astounding and true litmus test, it appears that the founding fathers were Marxists, because they supported the idea that all men are created equal, and that is contrary to the truth as outlined by the Koch brothers.
Who knew?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Under Capitalism, Man exploits Man.
Under Communism, it's the other way around.
-kgj
I'll be throwing a party when these two die.
It misses an obvious problem. If you spend money to steer the discussion and your wealth decreases as a result, then you've lost money and hence, lost that power.
Dude, when you steer the discussion, you're steering and influencing people's minds. That's political power
It's a kind of investment. You exchange having less wealth now in hopes of getting something more and better later. Of course there's a risk of failure, but the potential benefits far outweigh the risks and costs. That's why the Kochs (and every other special interest group, from Soros to climate scientists) do it.
Well then public roads and rural electrification are Marxist.
and government bail outs of corporations and municipal sanction of ISP monopoly are damn sure Marxist.
The government doesn't exist to medal in peoples personal lives, it doesn't exist to spy on its citizens, It doesn't exist to manipulate the market.
It does exist to protect the rites of its people and to prevent fraud.
Net neutrality prevents fraud. It protects consumers and free speech. It prevents extortion and supports innovation.
It is exactly what the government is for.
Unfortunately you have to have an agreed upon definition of what net neutrality IS before you can have a reasonable discussion about what needs fixing. Unfortunately the issue has devolved into knee jerking reactions where each side's idea of what it means and when the government should or should not regulate mixed in with their own biases.
Take settlement free peering for example? When is it unfair when one side or the other has to accommodate a lopsided ratio of data transfer? When is it fair to say that that the disadvantaged peer should buy a dedicated line and move off of settlement free?
"I wantz my packets to go through no matter what"
does not address issues like above.
It is classic crony capitalism and never had anything to do with public health. Just look into the history of it, the industry didn't want to pay to trash the toxic waste so they found a way to get payed to chuck it without any real studies to back up the move (just stuff about teeth which didn't include diluted ingestion. Which later studies proved didn't help teeth but the system here is so broken it continues anyway.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Without it you get toll roads everywhere, and you constantly have to pay by the mile, or bit the MB
We've been paying for roads by the mile for decades, via gas taxes -- an effective way of making people who drive more, pay more.
Do you feel that all electricity users should pay the same cost, regardless of whether they wastefully use many kilowatt-hours, or frugally use few kilowatt-hours? I'm guessing no. So why impose a completely different price structure for bandwidth (which is a finite resource, just like electricity)? Why penalize grandma for her thrifty usage pattern (she receives a few emails per week and never surfs the web), by charging her as much as someone who downloads movies several times per week?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
After reading this, please let me know what would be so awful about 100% toll roads.
All roads are already toll roads, in that their maintenance is paid for by gas taxes. What would be so awful about that money going to an efficient enterprise, as opposed to an inefficient bureaucracy?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Do you think those that pay for the supersonic speed should be shuttled to the Grayhound station for certain destinations
How about allowing consumers to choose, instead of imposing regulations that may not benefit me in any way?
Simplified hypothetical example:
Mega-ISP offers three tiers of service:
1. 7 Mbps to all destinations - $30 per month
2. 40 Mbps to all destinations web services, with some exceptions: you get 7 Mpbs when visiting foo.com, foo2.com, and foo4.com - $50 per month
3. 40 Mbps to all destinations, period -- $60 per month
If a fast connection to foo2.com is important to me, I'd probably choose Tier 3. If not, I'd choose Tier 2 and save $120 per year. Let ME have that choice.
I can see how this will go down... "No matter how we reform the 'net, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your internet plan, you will be able to keep your internet plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
It helps that they gutted the education system following the social unrest of the 1960s, recognizing that people who may not know how to read but really like football tend not to be the ones rousing any rabble. Couple that with unchecked poverty ("being saved from the evils of welfare/social security"), far ranging drug epidemics (helped in part by foreign policy that removes the barriers to the importation of things like heroin, as well as the need to work more hours than is reasonable to scrape by turning people to stimulants such as methamphetamine), and then religious groups with tailored political views ("Jesus spake unto his disciples, 'smite the poor, for they are leeches on society'")... Yea, the propaganda campaign has been phenomenally successful. It really doesn't help when we then turn around and see some of the more vocal socialist groups being either corrupt labor unions, or actually endorsing Stalinist/Leninist/Maoist ideolology, while parading around with the face of a mass murderer on their T-Shirts.
Don't worry though, they don't demonize libertarian-socialism...they merely deny its very existence as an oxymoron (as if "capitalism" and "mutual liberty" really work together so well...).
Technically oligarchy is just rule by few:
oligarchy
noun
a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution.
Those few are the wealthy, in this case, but not every case.
Should netflix pay premium for every mb because they're a "high bandwidth user"
In every other industry, heavy users get a bulk discount for commodities: The Sara Lee bakery pays a lot less per pound for flour than I do. The bauxite-smelting plant pays a lot less per kilowatt-hour for electricity than I do.
Why are you so worried that bandwidth providers will go against their own self-interest and set up a pricing structure that's completely different from every other industry? Why aren't you also fighting for "flour neutrality" and "electricity neutrality"?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Part of the issue here is that the Koch's aren't the "capitalists" that the libertarians espouse, engaging in the free market without the aid or hindrance of government in such a way that there is no initiation of force. They're Capitalists in the 19th century predominant use of the term, such that they leverage their capital to coerce and control others. It's a lot more like feudalism than anything worth being labeling "liberty", but that doesn't stop them from convincing millions of people otherwise.
The Bill of Rights is "Marxist" -- says a vested interest in profiteering from social engineering.
This just in, money is a fucking liar.
Is anything not "Marxist?" Show us this amazing "free market" computer network with no neutrality. Compuserve?
When economists don't even read Marx, we have fallen into a idiotic debate where even the experts don't know shit. Nobody knows what Marx did or what his work was about, but that doesn't stop people (especially Americans) from bringing it up.
Godwin's harmful excuse to ignore history for the sake of sane discussion should be applied to discussions with Marx because unlike the Nazi, people don't know anything about Marx or Marxism but they do grow up learning enough about the Nazi to realize overstatements (well, most the time they can.)
We are in a place now where you can't point out real Fascism (which isn't Nazi but that is another issue) but can slander anything opposed to Fascism as Marxism.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
M-marxism? Cue in slashdotters falling over themselves to denounce net neutrality, clutch their pearls and hold their copies of Atlas Shrugged high.
We had numerous, non-neutral, "free market" attempts to create pay-as-you-go private computer networks and they all tanked. The only ones that (barely) survived were the ones that provided access to the communist, government built "internet" thingy that (gasp!) had no inherent paywall and was (gasp!) not owned by anyone and (gasp gasp!) was accessible by foreign countries.
Surely, this totalitarian monster's days were numbered now that AOL and Compuserve were here to show everyone the power of corporate-controlled access to corporate-approved content. Because freedom.
If we let the free market sort it out, no doubt Consumer Reports will print an article revealing which ISPs deliver Netflix content at good speeds, and which ISPs deliver Netflix content at lousy speeds. It's no different than when Consumer Reports prints an article revealing which detergents do a good job of getting grass stains out of your clothes, and which detergents do a lousy job.
Are you arguing for a "Detergent Neutrality Act" that would force all makers of laundry detergent to offer equally-effective products?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
1. libertarianism isn't about roadwork. That whole argument is the usual leftist red herring. Roads, police, fire...those are the few things we can agree on collectively. If all the govt did was build roads, we'd have the best roads in the world, the budget would be .001% of what it is now, and we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
2. Just because the govt can do some things, doesn't mean it should do all things, or even that it does things well. Socialism is like alcohol - a little can be fun, even beneficial. But in excess...it will kill you.
3. Not all data packets are equal. Video packets have to arrive in time and in order. The surgeon teleoperating on you needs to make sure there's no latency. Only an idiot thinks all the lanes on the highway should move the same speed
4. Koch is #59 on the list of political donors...behind unions, leftwing groups, and Soros cash. Just look at opensecrets.org. people who think dropping Koch's name somehow constitutes evidence of anything other than their own koolaid consumption are simply ignorant.
There are two kinds of net neutrality.
1. The original definition which means leave it alone because it has been working just fine fore years. No throtling, No censorship, no control.
2. Obama's and FCC's plan to control the internet by having regulatory power over it. They called it "Net nautrality" and even though you may just want it left alone, they will intrepret it in the way that fits their own agenda.
because there are too many marxists on them who will run you down and kill you (and also it's just the principle of the thing. Have you ever noticed that stop signs and stop lights are RED?
They use private helicopters almost exclusively, and as an extra defense of their property rights, they never let their pilot inform the marxist totalitarian air traffic controllers about where they will be flying next.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
...then I guess I'm a Marxist. I'm okay with this.
No. Oligarchy means rule by the few or by the elite. Plutocracy means rule by the wealthy. All modern oligarchies turn into plutocracies, by default. The original representative democracy in Greece was also a form of oligarchy: By ensuring the chosen few were continually sacked and replaced, the will of the people was heard. Some people think this can be implemented again but it has 2 flaws in the modern era: 1) Faulty ideology and wide-spread propaganda are used to endorse monopolistic/elitist policies. 2) Modern government is complex and requires people trained to recognize the problems and tools present. (Which in turn creates a private-sector revolving door for bureaucrats.)
"Capitalism (market economies) only works if there is a fair balance of power among the buyers and the sellers."
Except that is something that has never existed in the history of capitalism and is utopian nonsense.
"destroy American capitalism altogether'"
I find it amusing that when people want to say a totally over-the-top lie but they don't put any effort into it, they end up saying something true about themselves.
Somewhere around the time google and facebook threw in with the democrat party, and ever since, all digital rights have been enemies of the republicans.
Its kinda funny, because most of the old school internet libertarians stood shoulder to shoulder with everyone else on the internet being pro-net neutrality.
Kotch is a fucking pig, and anyone who follows him proves however they label themselves is just a label, with no real meaning behind it.
I think it's more status signalling via a really expensive hobby. I doubt "OMG the Koch brothers are corrupting our emails!" is an investment.
for American Commitment president Phil Kerpen. Americans, and indeed citizens worldwide generally, love the Internet. Calling the existing system Marxist is like calling chocolate Marxist. Even if it's true people wouldn't care. And people will understand that it isn't true.
The minor quibble that actually, they called "net neutrality" Marxist, rather than the Internet, won't change that one whit. The existing system is basically neutral and so the equivalency between net neutrality and the Internet is close enough in this case.
Congratulations Mr. Kerpen, you are officially irrelevant and will be known, from this date forward, as a biased troll. Next up I expect you to proclaim that children are Marxist, as are cats, cat videos, dogs, dog videos, America's Most Wanted, America's Got Talent, America's Funniest Videos, and free Internet pr0n for the adults. All Marxist!
I think it's more status signalling via a really expensive hobby.
Status signalling is one way of gaining status, and status is just another form of political power. Whether they treat it as a hobby or not doesn't change the effects of their activities.
It's also worth noting that for most people, a "hobby" would imply the person actively engages in the activity themselves. What Kochs and these monied interests often do however is pay somebody else to write up papers or do research or run ads. If that passes for a hobby, then my hobby is selling fried chicken, because I have stocks in KFC.
I doubt "OMG the Koch brothers are corrupting our emails!" is an investment.
You have a funny way of labeling things. Corrupting "our" emails is from the perspective of the critics, not the ones who are doing the investing.
And it is investing, your doubt doesn't change that. They're paying for something on the open market, and it has a potential to give them a return. That's an investment. Again, maybe it's a hobby for them, but being a hobby and being an investment are not mutually exclusive.
Investment implies positive return - getting more out than you put in. All I see here is vague talk about how the Koch brothers are gaining "political power". That's not going to pay the bills especially when you have a better funded opposition playing the same game.
Investment implies positive return
No, investment implies a CHANCE to positive return. You might get more. You might not.
All I see here is vague talk about how the Koch brothers are gaining "political power".
Hey, you're the one who started talking about political power and military power. You thought it's silly to attribute so much to the mystical power of money.
That's not going to pay the bills especially when you have a better funded opposition playing the same game.
...and here you are, attributing so much to the mystical power of money. Amusing.
what problem are these laws supposed to fix?
No, investment implies a CHANCE to positive return.
Not different enough to matter for this discussion.
What incentive? I find that, in my region, the power company is interested in building out capacity as needed. After all, if they can sell more electricity, they make more money. What's the difference here? Similarly, I'm currently paying for a net connection that's a little slow for my taste. If my connectivity provider offered higher bandwidth for more money, I'd sign up. Besides, monopolies need to be regulated.
Net access is conceptually simple. It isn't like supplying hundreds of video feeds, like cable and satellite TV companies.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
IMHO, this isn't the same as residential electricity because you either have it or you don't. Okay, sure there are the few residential exceptions that might need three-phase or something like that. The watts used for one device will work just fine for another device. Most houses have a 200 amp service and that's all most people are ever going to need. That 200-amp service has been the same 200-amp service for 50 years. And if I use 10,000 watts all day, that doesn't mean my neighbors won't be able to run their fridge.
My point is that eventually, a few people will want to get full-blown 4k video through their connection to multiple TVs in their house and that's going to take major infrastructure upgrades. Most people aren't going to need all that so do you think they'd be willing to subsidize a few high-bandwidth users? Do you expect the ISPs to just eat the cost of keeping up with bandwidth demand? One thing is for sure, government regulation rarely precisely targets the entity in private sector it's intended to. Take a look at your utility bills and see how many regulatory fees are being passed on to you even when you don't use the service.
Anything less than Marx is Rand.
Personal liberties are all about the freedom to do with one's body (sex) and put chemicals in one's body (drugs) and not having to work and the government pays one's way.
Is that what it taught in college?
Personal responsibility is evil and laziness is good?
Is paying taxes 'Marxist'?
Casteism
There's nothing saying that ISPs can't charge more for different levels of bandwidth, so presumably if you want losslessly compressed 4K video separately for you, your wife, two kids, and the cat (seriously, cats either ignore the TV or are fine with regular resolution), and the ISP offers it, you're going to pay a lot for it. If not enough people want that bandwidth, it won't be offered. If enough people do to make that profitable, then the ISP will presumably offer it.
I assume you think that any transformer should be able to handle all the houses on it running a continuous 20 kilowatts? I'm not so sure about that. The things can burn out.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I would love to see a community funded project (nationwide) that simply bypassed all the wireless carriers and ISPs, and created a break even priced service for all. We could use it for phone, internet, etc. They tried to do it in Portland Oregon, and it was only going to cost 10 dollars a year per household, but the big corps shut it down.
Perhaps you should have done more research than 5 seconds in Google.
Democrat donors are at the top of the list of reported donations because they are more likely to report their donations. The whole point of how the Koch brothers route their money, and money funneled through their network of PACs, "think tanks", etc., is to hide the fact that they are funding it, so that their organizations all sound like "independent" supports of the Koch agenda. So they route it through "non-profits" or by providing non-cash benefits (e.g. providing a free vacation / educational conference), and of course pumping a fortune into "independent" issue campaigns, which are unregulated and whose funding sources are largely unreported. And, of course, the un-reported money flow is much larger than the reported money flow.
And you really can't equate the two.
In terms of assets, the Koch Brothers have 20x as much as Soros. So that's not even close.
And in terms of tactics, the Soros' political donations are well documented and transparent - be is open about what he supports, and he lobbies and promotes it in an open fashion. The Koch Brothers' money flow is generally hidden, and goes to subversive organizations like ALEC that literally write legislation, give it to legislators, who they give free vacations and political donations to, and has them pass it, sometimes literally in the middle of the night behind locked doors so nobody can see what they're doing. So you can't equate their tactics.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
You do realize that most of the ethics rules for contributions were written in response to Armand Hammer's blatant purchase of Al Gore Sr? But you just keep believing which PACs are evil.
The Forbes 2014 Billionaires List disagrees with your assessment. Looking at the list:
#6 Charles Koch $41.9 B $0 78 diversified United States
#6 David Koch $41.9 B $0 74 diversified United States
#27 George Soros $23 B $0 84 hedge funds United States
Clearly nowhere near the '20x' mark you cite.
In terms of tactics, clearly the Kochs are amateurs compared to Soros. If I were the Kochs, I'd hire a team to emulate the buying patterns Soros has accomplished for influence. He's almost singularly purchased more media outlets than any other billionaire on Forbe's list, financed 527 organizations with the sole purpose of ousting Bush 43, financed revolutions, created his own personal brown shirts around the world, and had more access to the current President than any other figures of either party. The Kochs could learn a lot from him.
Do you actually pay for anything yourself Chas or do you think others should provide it for you ? Incentivize people to be slackers , and they will be slackers. The slashdot "I want everything for free" mentality doesn't get this simple truth.