Defining Net Neutrality

This past week net neutrality made its way into headlines—and panicked Facebook posts. It is because the FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, appointed by President Trump, has decided to undo the net neutrality rules Obama instigated in 2015.

internet cyber cabling, image from here

From the panic, you would think the return to what the internet always was before the recent interference was going to deprive all Americans of the freedom to google.

So I thought maybe we should review what’s going on, to lower the panic level.

As I’ve written before (even about this very topic), there’s a Spherical Model axiom:

If the government wants to implement something beyond the proper role of government, not only will government fail to achieve the stated goal; it will likely do exactly opposite of the stated goal.

So, if the government is trying to make the internet neutral, you can be pretty sure it will not make the internet neutral, if that ever was the problem. It will interfere, and the interference is likely to favor some and disadvantage others.

The panic seems to be saying that we can’t possibly live without government regulation of the internet—even though the internet flourished unhindered, with innovation after innovation, for it’s first several decades, up until Obama's year or so in office.

I don’t really understand the reason for the panic (other than media fear mongering). But I can be pretty certain that turning over something to five government officials is not a good way to decide what any free person or company can be permitted to do on the internet. Remember, the administration that imposed net neutrality is the same administration that weaponized the IRS against non-profits that promoted ideas it didn’t approve of. 

To repeat something I’ve said before (again, about this very topic), regulation is one of those words that government has stretched beyond recognition:

In dictionary world, like the one our founders live in, the word “regulation” means to make regular—to make sure something can happen regularly, without blocks or interference. That’s what the founders meant by regulation interstate commerce.

But in today’s government, regulation means something else: governmental power to decide when, how, and whether something can happen. It’s arguable that all government regulation prevents, rather than provides, regularity of something happening.

About net neutrality, Senator Cruz has long spoken up. I believe it was during the presidential campaign that he said this:

"Net Neutrality" is Obamacare for the internet; the internet should not operate at the speed of government.

Just as the so-called Affordable Care Act leads to less care at greater costs, you can be sure so-called net neutrality leads to less internet freedom, not more of the freedom we expect of our free-market internet.

The supposed problem has to do with various internet service providers providing streaming services. The net neutrality requires them to be neutral about providing services at the same rates and speeds, no matter how much bandwidth is required. They are not allowed to provide greater speeds for a higher price to those willing to pay for the better service.

Instead, those five regulators sitting in faraway Washington decide that the greater service must be provided at the same cost, regardless of how illogical or impossible it is to do so.

The end result is that the market is not allowed to work out the issues, and that means there is no profit incentive to improve service or options in areas where little choice is currently available.

This Being Libertarian piece gives some explanation:

So why be skeptical of something we’re told is meant to keep the internet free?

Well, for starters, most plans aimed at freeing a market don’t include the FCC placing 400 pages of new regulations on that market. Likewise, it’s always a safe bet that whatever a bill is sold to the public as, it will undoubtedly do the opposite. Much like we’ve seen with our very ‘Affordable’ Care Act, or the invasive Freedom Act that culminated from the Patriot Act, net neutrality is anything but ‘neutral.’ Instead, it vilified ISPs, claiming that in its absence they would be able to restrict internet access to their customers at a whim. Although they couldn’t recall a single instance of this happening, or provide any reason that ISPs would have for doing that, the FCC shifted the control from the providers over to the government in order to save us from this preposterous threat.

Just like that, net neutrality became another political tool, used to reward select groups at the expense of others.

Senator Ted Cruz
Image from Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo, found here

As Senator Cruz and Michael O'Rielly explained this week:

The internet has changed how we communicate, engage in commerce and live our lives. It not only provides a platform that can be used to promote free speech, but serves as a great equalizer when it comes to jobs and opportunity by dramatically reducing the barriers of entry for anyone with a new idea and broadband connection.

Unfortunately, because the nature of government power is to control, tax and regulate, there will always be government officials who will seek to implement policies to increase these inherent powers. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the Obama administration made the decision to set aside decades of bipartisan agreement and enact a radical proposal that reclassified the internet as a regulated public utility. The Obama-era regulations give federal bureaucrats new authority to regulate pricing and terms of service and eventually even collect billions in new taxes.

This policy not only threatens investment across the United States but seeks to force companies of all sizes to ask the government for prior approval of business decisions. The end result is less broadband, less innovation and less freedom for the American consumer.

Thankfully, relief will soon be on the way, as the Federal Communications Commission under Chairman Ajit Pai seeks to repeal the so-called Open Internet Order and return the internet to its original classification as an information service, which allowed the internet to flourish.

The repeal of the order is simple enough to accomplish. But the panic may lead to additional interference. Senator Cruz further explains the next challenge:

But, the restoration of internet freedom may be short-lived, as there are already scores of politicians and state and local regulators who have indicated an interest in replicating the Obama administration’s fatally flawed rules at the state and local level. As harmful as the FCC’s rules have been for broadband investment and innovation, replacing such rules with a patchwork of state and local requirements would have an even more detrimental effect on the internet.

Allowing the Obama administration’s dangerous policy to infest the internet through state and local government mandates serves no purpose other than to stifle America’s entrepreneurial spirit, frustrate innovation, and block economic opportunity.

The internet has been a great example of how freedom and free market lead to thriving. Government regulation didn’t lead to all the innovation and online information and marketing; staying out of the way except to protect life, liberty, and property allowed that.

Let’s quickly get back to this digital experiment in freedom and prosperity.

The Libertarian Internet

There’s a principle we keep getting reminded of lately: if the government wants to implement something beyond the proper role of government, not only will government fail to achieve the stated goals; it will likely do exactly opposite of the stated goal.

Today’s example is “Net Neutrality,” with the purpose of assuring a free and fair internet.

by A. F. Branco, November 17, 2014

The background for this relates to a rural Midwest area where only one internet provider, Comcast, was available. And they were slowing the speed at which downloads could occur for video streaming site Netflix.

If free enterprise were allowed to solve the problems, this would be solved in some combination of alternatives entering the marketplace, or costs going up for a service that takes up so much bandwidth, probably passed along to consumers. Then, if consumers weren’t satisfied, competition would lead to more alternatives, greater innovation, and lower prices. Especially in internet technology that has been the rule. In fact, that’s how the market handled this singular case.

But government sees an area where it has very little control, and therefore by definition would like more power, and offers “help” as a way to get it. Government will step in and make things more “fair”—so that the Comcast/Netflix difficulty never happens again. It will solve this tiny, localized, already-dealt-with problem by imposing restrictions, rules, and controls—maybe even a government kill switch for the entire internet—so we can feel assured, with government bureaucrats at the helm of the world’s communications network. Who thinks that sounds like a good solution? Raise your hands.

A few large companies, mainly related to cable communications, are in favor. So that they can block out competition and control the market. It’s not about better service for you.

While looking for the best way to explain why you should call your representative and express your extreme disapproval for the creation of a new “department of the internet,” I came across Stu Burguire’s entertaining and thorough version. Stu is an associate of Glenn Beck, and has his own TV show on TheBlaze.com on Saturdays. Blaze blogger Wilson summarized Stu’s points:

• Net neutrality will not help your internet experience.
• The government will not make the internet better.
• Companies won’t be ruining your internet experience anyway.
• The arguments in favor of net neutrality ignore the advancements in technology that would solve the supposed problems being addressed by net neutrality.
• There is no compelling reason for the government to get involved.
• The internet is absolutely not a human right.
• The truth about the Comcast/Netflix battle that is used as the evidence to support net neutrality, proves the exact opposite of what net neutrality supporters argue.
• But, other than that, net neutrality is awesome!

Except, don’t take that last one seriously; there very well could be even more non-awesome things about it.

Rather than my explaining further, I’ll send you to watch Stu’s 7 ½-minute video (unable to embed, but you can watch it here), and afterward I’ll add a few comments from the Spherical Model perspective.

OK, assuming you enjoyed that...

My favorite point is that this government, which couldn’t get one single website up and running is asking you to trust the elite government experts with control of the entire “interweb.” Do they have a sense of irony, or what?

The internet is a rather large microcosm for examining the world of the libertarian. This is what the country would be like with libertarian government. New technology. Stuff getting lower cost and more widely available all the time. Freedom to do business or say pretty much whatever you want. Freedom to connect with whoever you want, assuming willingness of the receiver. Things keep getting better, faster, and cheaper. Yay!

Of course there’s some bad along with the good. Pornography. Lies. Theft. Fraud. All things that are already illegal in the non-virtual world for good reason. Yet there they are. And sometimes we’re bombarded with them—images we don’t want to have to unsee. Not to mention pop-up ads interrupting our experience.

In other words, in the libertarian world there are some bad things sharing the same neighborhood with the good. And the libertarian doesn’t bring in officials; the libertarian pulls out his own shotgun, or shrugs it off with a live-and-let-live approach.

I’m not quite a libertarian. But then, the internet isn’t quite a lawless anarchy either.

Anything that is already illegal is also illegal on the internet, so you report it to the police (or whichever appropriate authority for your issue). Prosecutions happen all the time, but the prosecution of such crimes is somewhat below 100% successful response. (Also true for petty theft or home invasion.) But technology has already been developed in response to the market—people who don’t want the filth bombardment can use filters to keep certain sites or types of images from being allowed onto their devices. Same for pop-up ads—just adjust your settings. As for those emails from some guy in Nigeria needing money, or your good friends on a trip to Europe and suddenly in need of funds (even though you know they’re in town, plus they’re not close enough friends for you to be their emergency contact)—you block those as junk mail, and delete without opening any that get through.

If you’re defrauded in a purchase (and you’ve done due diligence by being careful who you’re dealing with and how they handle your personal and financial information), then you have some recourse through your credit card company, as well as the police.

We need constant vigilance. But we do a better job when it’s personal to us than a distant uninvolved bureaucrat would do.

The libertarian-like internet world can be understood on the Spherical Model. The freedom and level of interest are personal, where appropriate. And the free enterprise shows how prosperous such a world can be without some controlling authority limiting the market. The good is what you get in the northern hemisphere of the model (and arguably the western local control quadrant—although appropriate level is necessary for anywhere in the northern hemisphere). But the bad is what you get in the southern hemisphere, southwest quadrant.

Almost all of the bad has to do with civilization issues. Pornography is savage. Fraud is savage. Theft is savage. Anything else is a result of people choosing to do ugly harmful things, for money or just for fun.

I’m in favor of allowing everyone to limit the savagery in their lives. And better law enforcement would be appreciated. Live-and-let-live won’t do when drug deals are taking place in the schoolyard down the street (been there, seen that) or when the worst filth is aimed toward family members in my home.

In an optimistic civilized world, those wanting to protect themselves from pornography would so greatly eclipse the willing consumers that the market would cause that plague to disappear. Until that happens, though, we do need personal, constant vigilance—combined with better technology as more of us show the demand for protecting ourselves in our online world.

Of course we need government for legal protections—as we do now. What we absolutely do not need is another bureaucracy tasked with deciding who gets what service, at what cost, limiting innovation and progress. We don’t need some bureaucracy deciding what can and cannot be said—for example, on this website. Is it fair that I only express my own opinion instead of the opposing viewpoint? What if the government decides I’m not fair? Or decides I’m so wrong that such ideas should not be expressed?

The internet isn’t broken. Government’s offer to “fix” it is a thinly veiled grab for control over a thus-far free world.

Free and Open Internet

In dictionary world, like the one our founders lived in, the word “regulation” means to make regular—to make sure something can happen regularly, without blocks or interference. That’s what the founders meant by regulating interstate commerce.

But in today’s government, regulation means something else: governmental power to decide when, how, and whether something can happen. It’s arguable that all government regulation prevents, rather than provides, regularity of something happening.

So, when the president announces the need for a brand new public utility, we know it is about government interfering and controlling what is already happening. This week, the president’s speech on net neutrality gives us an opportunity to compare what he says with what will actually happen if his plan is put in place.

Here is the transcript of the minute-and-44-second announcement. I’ve highlighted portions that set my teeth on edge:

Ever since the Internet was created, it’s been organized around basic principles of openness, fairness, and freedom. There’re no gatekeepers deciding which sites you get to access. There’re no toll roads on the information superhighway. This set of principles, the idea of net neutrality, has unleashed the power of the internet and given innovators the chance to thrive.

Abandoning these principles would threaten to end the internet as we know it. That’s why I’m laying out a plan to keep the internet free and open. And that’s why I’m urging the Federal Communications Commission to do everything they can to protect net neutrality for everyone. They should make it clear that, whether you use a computer, phone or tablet, internet providers have a legal obligation not to block or limit your access to a website. Cable companies can’t decide which online stores you can shop at, or which streaming services you can use. And they can’t let any company pay for priority over its competitors.

To put these protections in place, I’m asking the FCC to put these under Title II of a law known as the Telecommunications Act. In plain English, I’m asking them to recognize that for most Americans, the internet has become an essential part of everyday communication and everyday life.

The FCC is an independent agency, and ultimately this decision is theirs alone. But the public has already commented nearly 4 million times, asking the FCC to make sure consumers, not the cable company, gets to decide which sites they use.

Americans are making their voices heard, and standing up for the principles that make the Internet a powerful force for change. As long as I’m president, that’s what I’ll be fighting for too.

 There’s a lot of language manipulation going on here. The first paragraph is basically a fact, and a principle we all agree on.

The second paragraph introduces a crisis: the imminent abandonment of the principle of open internet that we agree on. Where is the threat coming from? He doesn’t say.

I did some research. It’s complicated. It has something to do with the blurring of separation between mobile internet access and the more literal connection of an at-home internet connection. It also has to do with some services, such as Netflix, wanting faster access, so as to provide customers the faster downloads they want.

The claim is that any differentiation is wrong; Netflix, for example, shouldn’t be able to pay for higher streaming speeds, because that would be a disadvantage to those not paying for those faster speeds. And there’s a proposed fear (not really exemplified so far in real life) in which a cable company might decide not to stream one source as fast as it streams another, which might disadvantage certain companies.

So, up until now the internet has been open and innovative—without government regulation to speak of. The Internet is something like the oil boom in North Dakota—succeeding on private land, because government disallowed drilling on public land but couldn’t control private land drilling. (The president claimed the oil boom as a hallmark accomplishment of his presidency, nevertheless.) The Internet is worldwide, open, and free. We pay entrepreneurial companies to give us better and faster—and moving toward less expensive—access to it. All of this has taken place in a free market, not because of government encouragement or subsidy. Government should get credit for nothing except so far staying out of the way of this example of the free market.

So one could assume that, if there is a threat to what we want—if a company limits our service—we will look elsewhere in the market for alternatives. For example, in rural areas, where a cable company might try to control access, there would be a ready market for satellite services. The market has a way of working things out.

But the president is claiming that there’s a public outcry. Four million requests to the FCC for net neutrality. First, the number, as of mid-September was 3.7 million opinions. That’s around 1% of the population. Not all were in favor, but a vast majority were. But, in the election we just had, did it come up anywhere? Was that on the mind of the public? Did a single official get elected because of his/her position in favor of getting government to insert itself in controlling the Internet?

There’s a difference between being in favor of a free and open internet and being in favor of a new regulatory agency, or relabeling the internet as a public utility that the government can control.

Let’s explain it in terms of a highway, since “information superhighway” is a term the president used. So, we have a freeway, with multiple lanes. No one is limiting you, as a driver, to only certain lanes. But someone starts a fear campaign saying, “Red cars could get special treatment; someone could step in and make a rule that only red cars can drive in the left lane, and they can go ten miles an hour faster than the other lanes. That’s not fair. We need a new government agency to step in and make sure no one can set up these special red-car lanes. We need lane neutrality!”

Our roads are free and open now. If someone tried to set up special lanes, without making a case that the market agrees to, the market would naturally find better ways. Setting up a new agency wouldn’t improve things for us; it would, instead, give authority to some agency to determine how the lanes are used. And if you give that authority away, you place the choice on how the lanes will be used in the hands of that agency. You do the exact opposite of protect your free lane use.

There’s a further question about the public outcry for “net neutrality.” A look under the surface is likely to show that it’s the bigger companies, claiming they’re thinking of the little guy, while setting up regulations that will limit entry by new businesses—in other words, will limit their competition.

We have seen this before. I heard Milton Friedman say this in a speech in 1980:

[Businesses] aren’t promoting free enterprise when they ask for handouts and regulations and controls to avoid competition.

The two greatest enemies of free society are intellectuals and businessmen—for opposite reasons. Intellectuals want freedom for themselves but no one else. Businessmen want free enterprise for everyone else, but special consideration for themselves.

And, just an aside, is anyone else bothered that the president is pushing this proposal and then stepping back and saying, since the FCC is an independent agency (i.e., under the executive branch over which he presides), the decision of whether to interfere with our free and open Internet is already in their hands?

If we turn to the principles that lead to freedom, prosperity, and civilization, we can see where a policy will lead. Government must be limited to the proper role of government, as listed in the preamble to the Constitution:

·         Establish Justice

·         Insure domestic Tranquility

·         Provide for the common defence

·         Promote the general Welfare

·         Secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity

There’s nothing in there that says, “When a new technology gets to a point that we all want it, the government should step in and make sure everyone gets it, and makes sure it gets offered in exactly the same quality to everyone, regardless of ability to pay.”

If people use the technology to harm one another, steal another’s property, or in any way endanger life, liberty, or property, then the justice role of government is already in place. If government does anything beyond its proper role, it will cause unintended consequences. Always.

But there’s something we can predict about those unintended consequences: they will be approximately the exact opposite of the purported purpose of the government interference.

So, in this case, we can agree we like having a free and open internet, and we want that to continue. If we have government step in with the claim that we can’t have a free and open internet without it, we can be certain the interference will mean less freedom, less openness, less innovation. There will likely be favoritism to particular businesses or points of view—control a tyrannical government would be especially gleeful to grab.

Online Spheres

In the textbook for the computer class I’m taking, I came across this quote yesterday: 

The Web was built by millions of people simply because they wanted it, without need, greed, fear, hierarchy, authority figures, ethnic identification, advertising, or any form of manipulation. Nothing like this ever happened before in history. We can be blasé about it now, but it is what we will be remembered for. We have been made aware of a new dimension of human potential.—Jaron Lanier, virtual reality pioneer

And today I came across this: “Computers are power, and direct contact with power can bring out the best and worst in a person.”—former computer criminal turned corporate computer programmer

And this one: If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.—Robert X. Cringely, PBS computer curmudgeon [yes, that is how he is labeled in the book]

That third one is mostly for amusement. But the other two got me thinking about how the Internet is a macrocosmic experiment in free and/or anarchical societies. There’s a lot of good and bad that happens. But the freedom allows for so much creativity that as problems arise some of the solutions are invented. It’s impossible to imagine this happening with some layer of central control deciding what can and cannot be done.

In a true civilization, the people choose to self-correct, or to find ways to stop a perpetrator from attacking their lives, liberty, and property. In anarchy the self-policing is limited to only the civilized, and they are prey to the savage. But because of the freedom, the civilized are able to continue to find ways to thwart the attacks. Thriving is indeed taking place for civilized people engaged in the most inventive exchange of creativity ever.

I’m still thinking about the parallels, the ideas we can glean for going upward in freedom, economics thriving, and civilization. Upward needs to be the direction. And thriving in all the spheres is the goal. And the way to get there is something other than imposing southern hemispheric (on the Spherical Model) central planning.