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Comment by spoiledtechie | Hacker News Reader

Can I be the antagonist here?

I simply want a free market for the internet. Stop with government intervention on both sides. Simply protect the consumer and let the free market take over.

Who cares if companies like netflix get charged more? It will allow another competitor to bubble up since Netflix will start adjusting their prices. This works. Its called capitalism.

In theory, simply look at Lasik. Lasik 5 years ago, used to be 5k an eye. Now I can get it from a Pandora commercial for just $200.00. Thats capitalism. It drove prices down. I expect the same thing to happen with this. Competition will drive prices down quickly. It also allows the providers like Cox or Verizon to invest in their infrastructure. EVERYONE knows we are way behind Japan and other countries with our infrastructure.

Let people decide with their dollars, rather than the government deciding.

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I think that in a competitive market you and Pai are right, there would be competition that drives prices down(see cities where Google Fiber entered). Unfortunately wired ISPs is a natural monopolistic market, the cost of entry is extraordinarily high, and with incumbents making it even harder for competition to enter[1] only really wealthy companies can enter (like Google).

I think with the advancement of Wireless last mile reducing deployment costs we will see more competition in the space (if incumbent ISPs do not keep them out with lawsuits). But at the current time most Wireless ISPs can't match the speeds of wired ISPs and the average consumer does not care enough to check every so often if a new competitor enters the ISP market, and probably won't change unless they have a serious problem with their current provider.

So in summary I think that soon we may not need government oversight with enough competition, but in our current market saturated by incumbents we do.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/att-and-comcast-...

>Let people decide with their dollars, rather than the government deciding.

Government is people deciding with their votes, because letting people decide with their dollars means whoever has the most dollars gets to make all the decisions.

> In theory, simply look at Lasik. Lasik 5 years ago, used to be 5k an eye. Now I can get it from a Pandora commercial for just $200.00. Thats capitalism. It drove prices down. I expect the same thing to happen with this. Competition will drive prices down quickly. It also allows the providers like Cox or Verizon to invest in their infrastructure. EVERYONE knows we are way behind Japan and other countries with our infrastructure.

Neither of your comparisons is on point. (a) A market like surgical services doesn't have significant barriers to entry. But the need to lay last-mile fiber or cable is a significant barrier to market entry. (b) Japan did not get its digital infrastructure through laissez-faire policies.

That would be fine if there were any competition to begin with.

Allowing incumbents to abuse their customers does devalue them, making their competitors relatively more valuable. The problem is that there are no competitors!

What we are left with are incumbents who can devalue themselves via customer abuse without consequence, which simply boils down to customer abuse.

Ajit Pai has redefined "competitors" to include wireless. Poof! There's now more competitors.

By your logic, no competitive market can ever arise because somebody is always the first, and incumbents can't possibly be competed with. Why isn't everything a monopoly?

If lack of regulation allows for an incumbent to engage in anti-consumer behavior, it opens a huge door for a more consumer-friendly competitor to sweep the market.

No, my logic is that no one can compete with an already present oligopoly.

Opening that door is fruitless, because it is still impossible for a small business to compete with the oligopoly.

ISPs are already very difficult ventures. There is a huge upfront cost, including infrastructure and land rights, that incumbents have already either paid or had paid for by government aid. There has also been huge support from government for incumbents. New ventures are risky, so incumbents are almost always chosen for tax spending.

And let's not blow this out of proportion: That door is not huge. It is barely significant in ideal circumstances. Infrastructure quality and price matter more than net neutrality to most consumers.

How do you "protect the consumer" without laws and regulation? The new competitor will already be at a higher price since Comcast can limit that new entrant to 56K speeds unless they pay an extortion fee.

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