Net neutrality repealed!

[Dill]

(12-15-2017, 05:25 PM)Belsnickel Wrote:
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?

So far as I can tell, Bfine is framing the issue as if government is, or can in principle, be wholly external to his beloved free market, as if the latter could function just fine without government "interference."

If I have correctly understood the critique and defense of net neutrality, the question is whether these ISP providers constitute a club as opposed to a public good. So a claim they are a club good is not a given which can frame the debate for both sides.

Right now I don't see any difference between this debate and previous ones which have occurred over common carrier access--like those debates which arose over airlines, railroads, gas pipelines, power plants, radio, television and telephones.  Eventually when technological innovations become necessary elements of economic infrastructure, and the private sector seeks to gouge profit from access, the resulting "market failure" pushes that infrastructure into the realm of public good.

And the profiteers complain about government interference in their "freedom" to gouge.

Would you say that I am reading this current debate too much through the lens of past? Access is still a "club good" which has not yet flipped to public? You seem to agree with me in post #64, when you say "The reason I am in favor of the public utility option is because of how reliant we are on the internet today for everything. In the end, this isn't just about entertainment and convenience."