I believe he actually went to McConnell and McConnell recommended Ajit. Obama couldn't just put all Democrats on the panel any more than Trump could put all Republicans. So Obama used McConnell's recommendation knowing that his Democrat majority would overrule Ajit. Unfortunately, then Trump elevated Ajit to chairman and Ajit immediately put Net Neutrality in front of the firing squad.
Comcast is not buying enough of that access to satisfy the contracts it has with its customers, who paid for internet access, not Comcast access.
Just wanted to add that there's evidence Comcast did this on purpose in order to put Netflix in a bind. (Customers have alternative choices with Netflix, but not as many with Comcast.) They wanted to force Netflix to either agree to their demands to have their service unusable. Basically, mafia-style "this is a nice store you've got here, it'd be a shame if something happened to it" tactics from an ISP that holds a monopoly in many areas.
Has that ever held back people, especially when there was money to be made? Travelling to the "New World" was dangerous. You could drown as you boat sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, but people still went there. If you went, though, you could get in on the ground floor of some great new trading opportunities. Going west during the gold rush took months and wasn't a guaranteed journey. It was hard and dangerous, going through some unfriendly territory. But people did it because they might find gold and become rich.
In the asteroid belt alone, there's a ton of potentially valuable materials to mine. It wouldn't take much advancement from our current technology to send ships there to identify good targets, mine the asteroids, and then bring the materials back to Earth. Yes, it will be very dangerous, but the possibility of untold riches will drive people to risk their lives. (Yes, much of this could be done with robots, but a human on board would be valuable for making on the spot judgement calls.)
The van might be paid off (either because it's just that old or from better times when money was more plentiful) whereas getting a new (or even used) car would come with car payments that they couldn't afford.
I agree that fixing the ISP competition issue would remove the need for Net Neutrality legislation. The problem is that getting competition in the ISP space is near impossible. When local municipalities tried to make their own broadband ISPs because they were under-served or not being served at all, the ISPs got the states to introduce legislation banning local municipalities from introducing competition in the marketplace. When the federal government tried to step in to prevent this, they were told "state's rights, stay out of it." When competing ISPs, like Google Fiber, tried to come in, the incumbents tied them up in lawsuits and tried to get politicians to tie them up in onerous regulations.
Until the lobbying might of the big ISPs can be countered and real competition can be introduced, the Net Neutrality rules can help keep the big ISPs in line.
True, but solving the ISP monopoly issue is a long term problem. You're not going to get 10 ISPs for everyone overnight. This isn't to say that we shouldn't work towards that, but until we're there we need the Network Neutrality rules in place to keep the monopolies from abusing their status.
I would definitely prefer if we didn't need Net Neutrality. If I could choose from 10 or more ISPs, market pressure might keep them in check. Instead, I have 1 ISP: Charter. If Charter abuses their monopoly position, I can either complain while paying them anyway or go without Internet. Neither puts any kind of check on Charter's actions.
The reason it was enacted, though, was because the large ISPs saw dollar signs in requiring Internet companies to pay them or have their services slowed down.
Exhibit A: Ed Whitacre, then CEO of AT&T, saying Google gets a free ride on AT&T's systems. (When Google actually pays for their own bandwidth even if they aren't paying AT&T directly.)
Exhibit B: Comcast allowing their peering connections to saturate so Netflix would slow down. This was to either a) keep Comcast users from using Netflix or b) force Netflix to directly pay Comcast to restore what should have been basic network operations.
When the ISPs abused their positions and wanted to charge both ends for the same service, Network Neutrality was enacted. Now, when it's removed, they'll be free to move forward with the plans they had not that many years ago.
My joke wasn't any sort of "rational discourse." It was making fun of all people who belonged to the Jehovah Witness religion for the sheer fact that they belonged to that religion. It stereotyped them and criticized them based on that stereotype. Honestly, I did evaluate whether or not what he was saying was true and I decided I didn't care. I'm Jewish and wouldn't like if someone made fun of my religion in a mean manner (which is what my "joke" was at the time) or stereotyped me based on my religion. Good natured joking I can take, but there's a line between a good natured joke and making fun of someone for having different beliefs/skin color/sexuality/etc. If I wouldn't want someone making fun of me for my religion, why was I making fun of people in that religion?
As far as "leftism" being "shame over rationality", I don't see it that way. At the very least, that's not the philosophy I subscribe to. My views are more in line with "accept others for how they are so long as they aren't hurting other people." Or, put another way, "your freedom to swing your fist ends at my face." So I'm not going to judge someone based solely on the fact that they belong to a certain religion, because their skin is a certain color, or because they like a certain gender. I'll judge them based on the type of person they are.
Not to mention the dehumanizing effect of interacting with screen names. If I was talking to you in person, even if I disagreed with you, societal pressure would keep us civil for the most part. Interacting with screen names, though, I might feel freer to insult "DarkOx" simply because my brain sees you as just a flicker of characters on my screen and not a "real person." (Personally, I try never to talk to people online in a manner that I wouldn't talk to them in person, but I might be in the minority with that.)
Honestly, I think this is one of the strengths and weaknesses of the Internet, not just social media. The Internet makes it so that you can find individuals with similar interests world-wide. If you want to discuss the latest Star Wars movie but nobody around you cares about Star Wars, you can pop into a Star Wars forum and be surrounded by Star Wars fans from all over the world. The flip side, though, is that you can go to a forum where everyone agrees with you politically and never be exposed to differing opinions.
I'll speak from my experience. My father is pretty bigoted. As might be expected, I started down that path. One day in class I was making fun of Jehovah's Witnesses when a kid behind me said that he was a Jehovah's Witness. All of a sudden, they weren't some faceless group that I could make fun of for laughs, but an actual person. I realized what I was doing was wrong and that I had to stop.
Now imagine a similar situation but, instead of a mixed group of kids in a classroom, I was posting in a forum filled with like-minded people. My rant against a different group of people is met with laughter and virtual high-fives instead of "hey, that's out of line" comments. Instead of changing my behavior and reducing my bigotry, I'd just reinforce my bigotry. If I got too bigoted for that group to tolerate, I'd move on to a different group where they were even more bigoted. The reinforcement loop wouldn't function to reduce bigotry and expose me to different viewpoints, but to increase bigotry and isolate me from those different than myself.
When I first found the Internet (way back in the early 90's), I was amazed by its power to bring together people with similar interests no matter what the distance. If I wanted to discuss Star Wars with someone, I didn't need to worry whether someone in my area that I happened to meet liked Star Wars. I could discuss it with a person next door just as easily as halfway around the world.
The flip side of this is that political discussions can form echo chambers. I tend to be more liberal than some other people so I might frequent forums where other liberal people dwell. We discuss our idea and viewpoints and, while we disagree on the fine points, we agree overall. The same thing happens on the conservative side. Before you know it, each views the other as a kind of "enemy." Everyone THEY know agrees with them, so those other people must be wrong. Add in the tendency for some people to lose social filters when conversing with people online (versus face to face) and you've got a recipe for disaster. It's not that the Internet is bad, per se. It's that it's a tool and can be used to bring people together or divide them apart.
I've heard of many instances where people's names and cities match. These aren't just randomly generated, but some database of people that someone obtained and used to submit anti-Net Neutrality comments in those people's names.
It goes along nicely with their claim that cutting taxed on rich people and big corporations will result in more income and jobs for middle-class/poor even though many CEOs have come out and said they won't be using the tax cuts to open new jobs. The GOP has taken a flying leap away from reality.
(This isn't to say that the Democrats are perfect. Right now, they are the saner party - which isn't saying much. I'd love for the GOP to be a good alternative to the Democrats, but they seem determined to take the party into more pro-big-business and anti-science areas.)
The problem is that most ISPs are monopolies or, at best, duopolies. If your ISP is the only one in town and they're finding it "too onerous" to be transparent about how much you'll pay or what your cap is, then you can't vote with your wallet and go elsewhere. Ideally, I'd like to see more competition in the ISP arena, but I'm not holding my breath on that happening anytime soon.
What the fuck is this? It's too onerous on ISPs to tell people the price of the product they're buying? HOW THE FUCK ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO CHARGE PEOPLE IF THEY DON'T KNOW THE FUCKING PRICE? And it's too onerous for ISPs to tell people about data limits? REALLY? REALLY?
Much of Pai's reasoning seems to be "the market will take care of it", but the problem is that there is no real market pressure on ISPs. Most people have one, maybe two high speed, wired ISPs in their area. (A lot of people don't have any, but that's a slightly different problem.) Where I live, I have Charter. Verizon never expanded FIOS to my house so that's not an option and no other high speed, wired options exist. So if Charter decided to cap me at 5GB (a plan pre-merger Time Warner Cable floated not that many years ago), I wouldn't be able to do anything but continue to pay them or go without Internet. (The latter isn't really an option for a web developer.)
Maybe if everyone had 10 different, competing ISPs to choose from, I could see removing many of the government regulations and ideally that's what I'd like to move towards. Until we get there, though, there's no reason why ISPs should be allowed to hide how much we'll really pay or when we'll be charged extra because we hit some invisible cap that they don't disclose.
There was a Web Comic I saw once, which sadly I lost the link for, where a lobbyist comes into a Congressman's office and asks to donate some money in order to pass a bill. Horrified, the Congressman says that's not how he operates and for the lobbyist to come back in and try again. This time, the lobbyist says he's really concerned about some issue and wants a bill passed. Also, in a completely unrelated matter, he wants to make a big donation to the Congressman. This time the Congressman is satisfied because it's not bribery this time. (I really wish I could find that web comic.)
Where do you live that you have 13 different ISPs? For most people, they have one or two ISPs to choose from. A quick Google search located this report that, at 25Mbps (the current definition of broadband), 30% have no providers, 48% have only one provider, and 19% had 2 providers. Only 3% had 3 or more providers. That means that nearly a third of people in the US don't have broadband and two thirds have only 1 or 2 providers. If you have 13 different ISPs, you're very lucky, but you're also a huge exception to the general rule.
If we burned the Internet to the ground, I highly doubt the big content companies would let anything like it rise again. Why let people seek out their own news when they could make "Internet 2.0" essentially be "Cable TV with some newfangled, shiny features."
In an ideal world, competition between ISPs would ensure you wouldn't need Net Neutrality regulations. Is your ISP slowing down Netflix? Just switch to any of the eight other equivalent ISPs available to you.
Unfortunately, that's not the reality for most Americans. Most people have one high speed ISP. Some are lucky enough to have two. (Some don't even have any, but that's a slightly different discussion.) When you have only one or two options, you can't simply vote with your wallet. You're stuck and the ISPs know it. This means your ISP can do whatever they want - slow Netflix to a crawl, inject ads into your browsing, sell your browsing history - and your options are go without Internet or continue to pay them. Net Neutrality was an effort to fix some ISP abuses that were occurring. (e.g. Comcast slowing Netflix down unless they paid Comcast "protection money.") Is it a perfect solution? Definitely not. However, until someone can figure out a way to bring a healthy level of competition to the ISP market, it's the best option we have.
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I thought this world was acting a little Bizarro recently.
I believe he actually went to McConnell and McConnell recommended Ajit. Obama couldn't just put all Democrats on the panel any more than Trump could put all Republicans. So Obama used McConnell's recommendation knowing that his Democrat majority would overrule Ajit. Unfortunately, then Trump elevated Ajit to chairman and Ajit immediately put Net Neutrality in front of the firing squad.
Just wanted to add that there's evidence Comcast did this on purpose in order to put Netflix in a bind. (Customers have alternative choices with Netflix, but not as many with Comcast.) They wanted to force Netflix to either agree to their demands to have their service unusable. Basically, mafia-style "this is a nice store you've got here, it'd be a shame if something happened to it" tactics from an ISP that holds a monopoly in many areas.
And now these tactics are legal again.
Has that ever held back people, especially when there was money to be made? Travelling to the "New World" was dangerous. You could drown as you boat sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, but people still went there. If you went, though, you could get in on the ground floor of some great new trading opportunities. Going west during the gold rush took months and wasn't a guaranteed journey. It was hard and dangerous, going through some unfriendly territory. But people did it because they might find gold and become rich.
In the asteroid belt alone, there's a ton of potentially valuable materials to mine. It wouldn't take much advancement from our current technology to send ships there to identify good targets, mine the asteroids, and then bring the materials back to Earth. Yes, it will be very dangerous, but the possibility of untold riches will drive people to risk their lives. (Yes, much of this could be done with robots, but a human on board would be valuable for making on the spot judgement calls.)
The van might be paid off (either because it's just that old or from better times when money was more plentiful) whereas getting a new (or even used) car would come with car payments that they couldn't afford.
Nah, I'm going to go with IP over Avian Carriers. Of course, there might be some more packet loss during hunting season.
And I thought those techs that had to climb to the top of cell phone towers had it bad.
"Jim, there's a cable fraying about 100 miles up. Get in this spacesuit and begin climbing. Whatever you do, don't look down!"
I agree that fixing the ISP competition issue would remove the need for Net Neutrality legislation. The problem is that getting competition in the ISP space is near impossible. When local municipalities tried to make their own broadband ISPs because they were under-served or not being served at all, the ISPs got the states to introduce legislation banning local municipalities from introducing competition in the marketplace. When the federal government tried to step in to prevent this, they were told "state's rights, stay out of it." When competing ISPs, like Google Fiber, tried to come in, the incumbents tied them up in lawsuits and tried to get politicians to tie them up in onerous regulations.
Until the lobbying might of the big ISPs can be countered and real competition can be introduced, the Net Neutrality rules can help keep the big ISPs in line.
True, but solving the ISP monopoly issue is a long term problem. You're not going to get 10 ISPs for everyone overnight. This isn't to say that we shouldn't work towards that, but until we're there we need the Network Neutrality rules in place to keep the monopolies from abusing their status.
I would definitely prefer if we didn't need Net Neutrality. If I could choose from 10 or more ISPs, market pressure might keep them in check. Instead, I have 1 ISP: Charter. If Charter abuses their monopoly position, I can either complain while paying them anyway or go without Internet. Neither puts any kind of check on Charter's actions.
The reason it was enacted, though, was because the large ISPs saw dollar signs in requiring Internet companies to pay them or have their services slowed down.
Exhibit A: Ed Whitacre, then CEO of AT&T, saying Google gets a free ride on AT&T's systems. (When Google actually pays for their own bandwidth even if they aren't paying AT&T directly.)
Exhibit B: Comcast allowing their peering connections to saturate so Netflix would slow down. This was to either a) keep Comcast users from using Netflix or b) force Netflix to directly pay Comcast to restore what should have been basic network operations.
When the ISPs abused their positions and wanted to charge both ends for the same service, Network Neutrality was enacted. Now, when it's removed, they'll be free to move forward with the plans they had not that many years ago.
My joke wasn't any sort of "rational discourse." It was making fun of all people who belonged to the Jehovah Witness religion for the sheer fact that they belonged to that religion. It stereotyped them and criticized them based on that stereotype. Honestly, I did evaluate whether or not what he was saying was true and I decided I didn't care. I'm Jewish and wouldn't like if someone made fun of my religion in a mean manner (which is what my "joke" was at the time) or stereotyped me based on my religion. Good natured joking I can take, but there's a line between a good natured joke and making fun of someone for having different beliefs/skin color/sexuality/etc. If I wouldn't want someone making fun of me for my religion, why was I making fun of people in that religion?
As far as "leftism" being "shame over rationality", I don't see it that way. At the very least, that's not the philosophy I subscribe to. My views are more in line with "accept others for how they are so long as they aren't hurting other people." Or, put another way, "your freedom to swing your fist ends at my face." So I'm not going to judge someone based solely on the fact that they belong to a certain religion, because their skin is a certain color, or because they like a certain gender. I'll judge them based on the type of person they are.
Not to mention the dehumanizing effect of interacting with screen names. If I was talking to you in person, even if I disagreed with you, societal pressure would keep us civil for the most part. Interacting with screen names, though, I might feel freer to insult "DarkOx" simply because my brain sees you as just a flicker of characters on my screen and not a "real person." (Personally, I try never to talk to people online in a manner that I wouldn't talk to them in person, but I might be in the minority with that.)
Honestly, I think this is one of the strengths and weaknesses of the Internet, not just social media. The Internet makes it so that you can find individuals with similar interests world-wide. If you want to discuss the latest Star Wars movie but nobody around you cares about Star Wars, you can pop into a Star Wars forum and be surrounded by Star Wars fans from all over the world. The flip side, though, is that you can go to a forum where everyone agrees with you politically and never be exposed to differing opinions.
I'll speak from my experience. My father is pretty bigoted. As might be expected, I started down that path. One day in class I was making fun of Jehovah's Witnesses when a kid behind me said that he was a Jehovah's Witness. All of a sudden, they weren't some faceless group that I could make fun of for laughs, but an actual person. I realized what I was doing was wrong and that I had to stop.
Now imagine a similar situation but, instead of a mixed group of kids in a classroom, I was posting in a forum filled with like-minded people. My rant against a different group of people is met with laughter and virtual high-fives instead of "hey, that's out of line" comments. Instead of changing my behavior and reducing my bigotry, I'd just reinforce my bigotry. If I got too bigoted for that group to tolerate, I'd move on to a different group where they were even more bigoted. The reinforcement loop wouldn't function to reduce bigotry and expose me to different viewpoints, but to increase bigotry and isolate me from those different than myself.
When I first found the Internet (way back in the early 90's), I was amazed by its power to bring together people with similar interests no matter what the distance. If I wanted to discuss Star Wars with someone, I didn't need to worry whether someone in my area that I happened to meet liked Star Wars. I could discuss it with a person next door just as easily as halfway around the world.
The flip side of this is that political discussions can form echo chambers. I tend to be more liberal than some other people so I might frequent forums where other liberal people dwell. We discuss our idea and viewpoints and, while we disagree on the fine points, we agree overall. The same thing happens on the conservative side. Before you know it, each views the other as a kind of "enemy." Everyone THEY know agrees with them, so those other people must be wrong. Add in the tendency for some people to lose social filters when conversing with people online (versus face to face) and you've got a recipe for disaster. It's not that the Internet is bad, per se. It's that it's a tool and can be used to bring people together or divide them apart.
I've heard of many instances where people's names and cities match. These aren't just randomly generated, but some database of people that someone obtained and used to submit anti-Net Neutrality comments in those people's names.
It goes along nicely with their claim that cutting taxed on rich people and big corporations will result in more income and jobs for middle-class/poor even though many CEOs have come out and said they won't be using the tax cuts to open new jobs. The GOP has taken a flying leap away from reality.
(This isn't to say that the Democrats are perfect. Right now, they are the saner party - which isn't saying much. I'd love for the GOP to be a good alternative to the Democrats, but they seem determined to take the party into more pro-big-business and anti-science areas.)
The problem is that most ISPs are monopolies or, at best, duopolies. If your ISP is the only one in town and they're finding it "too onerous" to be transparent about how much you'll pay or what your cap is, then you can't vote with your wallet and go elsewhere. Ideally, I'd like to see more competition in the ISP arena, but I'm not holding my breath on that happening anytime soon.
Much of Pai's reasoning seems to be "the market will take care of it", but the problem is that there is no real market pressure on ISPs. Most people have one, maybe two high speed, wired ISPs in their area. (A lot of people don't have any, but that's a slightly different problem.) Where I live, I have Charter. Verizon never expanded FIOS to my house so that's not an option and no other high speed, wired options exist. So if Charter decided to cap me at 5GB (a plan pre-merger Time Warner Cable floated not that many years ago), I wouldn't be able to do anything but continue to pay them or go without Internet. (The latter isn't really an option for a web developer.)
Maybe if everyone had 10 different, competing ISPs to choose from, I could see removing many of the government regulations and ideally that's what I'd like to move towards. Until we get there, though, there's no reason why ISPs should be allowed to hide how much we'll really pay or when we'll be charged extra because we hit some invisible cap that they don't disclose.
There was a Web Comic I saw once, which sadly I lost the link for, where a lobbyist comes into a Congressman's office and asks to donate some money in order to pass a bill. Horrified, the Congressman says that's not how he operates and for the lobbyist to come back in and try again. This time, the lobbyist says he's really concerned about some issue and wants a bill passed. Also, in a completely unrelated matter, he wants to make a big donation to the Congressman. This time the Congressman is satisfied because it's not bribery this time. (I really wish I could find that web comic.)
Where do you live that you have 13 different ISPs? For most people, they have one or two ISPs to choose from. A quick Google search located this report that, at 25Mbps (the current definition of broadband), 30% have no providers, 48% have only one provider, and 19% had 2 providers. Only 3% had 3 or more providers. That means that nearly a third of people in the US don't have broadband and two thirds have only 1 or 2 providers. If you have 13 different ISPs, you're very lucky, but you're also a huge exception to the general rule.
If we burned the Internet to the ground, I highly doubt the big content companies would let anything like it rise again. Why let people seek out their own news when they could make "Internet 2.0" essentially be "Cable TV with some newfangled, shiny features."
In an ideal world, competition between ISPs would ensure you wouldn't need Net Neutrality regulations. Is your ISP slowing down Netflix? Just switch to any of the eight other equivalent ISPs available to you.
Unfortunately, that's not the reality for most Americans. Most people have one high speed ISP. Some are lucky enough to have two. (Some don't even have any, but that's a slightly different discussion.) When you have only one or two options, you can't simply vote with your wallet. You're stuck and the ISPs know it. This means your ISP can do whatever they want - slow Netflix to a crawl, inject ads into your browsing, sell your browsing history - and your options are go without Internet or continue to pay them. Net Neutrality was an effort to fix some ISP abuses that were occurring. (e.g. Comcast slowing Netflix down unless they paid Comcast "protection money.") Is it a perfect solution? Definitely not. However, until someone can figure out a way to bring a healthy level of competition to the ISP market, it's the best option we have.
Basically "Make the Internet AOL Again."