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I don't understand how having free market competition solves the issue net neutrality is addressing here: what if each ISP has different deals with different internet content providers? Net neutrality prevents this kind of vertical balkanization in a way that the free market can't intrinsically address.

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How so? If there's a market for net neutrality, and if there's sufficient competition, someone will provide a neutral option. It just needs to be cheap enough for a competitor to enter the market for that to happen.

The capital required to build a competing network is immense. It will never happen, and there’s way more money in getting into the existing grift.

Did you not read the part about the government owning the physical infrastructure?

I did lose track of who was arguing what, yes.

I wouldn’t be so sure... look at the cable tv market in the US. Surely there is consumer demand for clear and simple pricing and per-channel choice. And yet the free market has not provided this.

In the US, the cable tv market is subject to the exact same local monopolies as the isp market; in fact, they are often the same company.

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