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Um, right. Gravity is a weak force of nature. Maybe soon the government will declare gravity a utility and regulate it. We can only hope.
Well, I accept electrical service as a public utility. It's something that, with few exceptions, all homes need. Obviously, internet access is no where near the necessity as electricity or water. Clearly they are on different levels. And it was a true free form of communication among the people. Government does not like that sort of thing, you must know.
They see it as a source of money, power and control. Exactly why we have a Constitution to protect us from government.
And, tell me again (if it's even been said), what was the problem that was so bad that the government needed to swoop in, declare that it has the power to do so, and start throwing down regulations?
And note the word "start", which is what this is. Government will never stop, there will be more and more of this. That's like predicting the sun will rise in the East.
While water and electricity are certainly more vital than internet access, in 2016 is just as basic and integral to our society as a phone line. If you want to participate in our economy, it's essential. Applying for a job? Many companies take electronic resumes and communicate electronically with existing and prospective employees. Lack of Internet access makes a lot of opportunities more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.
Last-mile Internet lines also suffer from many of the same physical infrastructure issues that plague water and electrical delivery. You cany really have competing water or electrical lines, nor cable lines. Extremely high barriers to entry, duplicated and redundant infrastructure, the issue of tearing up streets to install and maintain them, etc.
Wireless access bypasses some of those problems, but not all of them. Furthermore, it has its own issues with bandwidth. Two signals cannot compete on the same frequency, and the available frequencies are finite.
The brewing problem was selective throttling. An ISP slowing down access to certain pages for no reason other than I haven't paid whatever extra subscription price they demand. (under net neutrality, throttling for legitimate network health or user experience reasons is still allowed) if I've paid for 10mbs, and their network allows them to deliver 10mbs from either YouTube or Netflix today, why should YouTube be slowed down just because I hadn't paid the "fast YouTube" fee they want?
Now, most libertarians respond with "because free market." Here's the thing. It's not really a free market. There's virtually no competition, for the reasons above and many more. And there's a bigger picture to think of: innovation and entrepreneurship, the backbone of a solid free market economy. NetFlix and YouTube have the cash to work something out if it really comes down to it. But what about DeuceFlix, a novel startup with the chance to be the next big thing? I can't handle the kind of fees they can.
You sure you want Comcast to have the power to stifle that?
"BUT GOVERNMENT BAD" is the laziest argument on the planet. You're perfectly fine with utility regulation for water and electric services. Are they horrible? Power grabs? No. I don't criticize government actin just for the sake of it. Show me a specific proposed action the government is taking and I might oppose or approve of it on its own merits.
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