12-15-2017, 05:25 PM
(12-15-2017, 05:06 PM)Dill Wrote: We aren't talking about government taking over private businesses. We are talking about government relinquishing public control of access to a public good--as in relinquishing that control to private business. You are framing the issue as if the internet were already privately owned and some folks wanted big bad big government to weasel its way in.
The internet is not a true public good in the economic sense. The service being provided by an ISP is access. If you can be excluded, then it is at best a club good. Since bandwidth is limited, it is debatable whether or not it is even a club good. From a policy standpoint, where the usage of the term public good is a bit different, internet access is not considered a public good at this time. This is why I often say we should start treating it as such instead of it is a public good.
Bfine's analogy isn't far off. But what we need to consider in all of this is that the analogy is somewhat accurate because of the number of vertical mergers that have occurred over the years making ISPs and the companies that generate and provide the content all under the same umbrella. This is the problematic situation that could be considered a market failure in itself. Would net neutrality be needed to solve this problem if we had done a better job regulating against these behemoth corporations in the first place? Shouldn't the ISP just be a bakeshop rather than a bakery itself, so that someone could go and have equal access to all of the baked goods without the bakeshop being undercut?
