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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!!!
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.
Unless they're tollways. And apparently the Koch brothers would prefer if all roads were tollways.
Wow, in your entire post, literally the ONLY thing that isn't a complete falsehood is "This is the same entity that gave us the Broadcast Flag".
You have no idea what net neutrality is about, you have no idea what it means, and you clearly haven't got the foggiest IDEA what Marxism means.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
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.
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Oh -and the idea that you are obligated to sell a customer that which he actually paid for and keep the promises you made is the very foundation of Capitalism, attempts to do otherwise is known as fraud.
Even the most libertarian systems of thought still hold that one of the government's LEGITIMATE jobs is the prevention of fraudulent trade.
The entire concept has literally nothing to do with Marxism, which is NOT by the way the opposite of Capitalism, both are just two theories out of a gigantic spectrum of economic philosophies that exist, some of which have been tried over the years with varying degrees of success.
Ultimately the current success of capitalism is much more a political victory than a statement about it's success - it's no more successful than many of the abandoned ones and in some ways, much worse. It certainly is NOT any better than Marxism was - it fails equally spectacularly and in almost identical ways.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Examples are irrelevant. You're dealing with a right wing shill or crackpot and thinking is foreign to either.
Every single time anybody calls out some of the multiple billionaires who spew right-wing garbage and fund propaganda machines to push it on an overworked public somebody has to trot out Soros because it's the only barely relevant pathetic example they have to try to support their "see, both sides do it" excuses for their piss poor behavior.
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.
Red meat for liberals, red meat that matters... It would be an OK Slashdot story without the "Koch brothers" demon invocation attempting to gin up discussion.
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?".
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...