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Comment by fuzzmeister | Hacker News Reader

Since net neutrality does not seem to be in the economic best interest of the ISPs and wireless carriers, government is likely the only way to enforce it.

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Better the devil I know (corporate greed) than the devil I don't (lobbyist driven re-election hungry politicians)

In the same way, the government has exactly zero economic interest in a correctly regulated network. Over time, laws have a way of favoring those who are connected over those who are not... Goldman Sachs springs to mind as an example of just such behavior.

Government always has an interest in regulating bad behavior... Some parts of the internet show bad behavior, but they are punishing the whole lot just to enforce a few.

People are wholey very good creatures. But there are times when a person can become evil and that is what the government is for...

How does it have an interest in regulating bad behavior? How do people in government benefit from such regulation?

In practice, it seems government has an interest in threatening regulation in order to extract concessions (campaign contributions) from regulated groups. There is little connection between the well-being of society and the incentives facing politicians.

I consider government "the devil I know" at least compared to corporations like Verizon and Comcast. I may have little say in the functioning of American government, but I have precisely zero say in the operations of large corporations. It seems self-defeating to abandon the only measure of societal control all citizens have equal access to, because of some cynicism of politics.

Your purchasing decision probably means more to Verizon or Comcast than your vote does to an average bureaucrat. "Large" corporations are dwarfed in size by the US government, which is the largest corporation in the world.

What evidence do you have that the US Government would be capable of regulating the internet?

In the presence of real competition, network discrimination wouldn't be in the best interests of many ISPs, because they'd shed customers over it. Customer turnover is a huge issue for ISPs.

Which is why the telecoms would fight anything that might actually force them to compete even harder than they're fighting net neutrality regulations.

Large, entrenched corporations only support "free markets" insofar as it makes convenient political cover for "let us do what we want".

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