-—————Get back to me when Hayek writes about net neutrality.—————
He did. Pages 76/77, and 174/175.
-————Yes, even Hayek realized that regulation is sometimes necessary.—————
I realize the same. What Hayek points out brilliantly is the difference between regulation for the sake of right/wrong, and new freedoms sold to the people which amount to nothing but setting the central planners free.
The big problem is that what net neutrality claims to have as a goal, already exists. Without net neutrality, we have net neutrality.
This is by far the biggest and most obvious clue as to the difference. That, and what the central planners are saying.
—————That pretty much defines the ISPs interfering with—————
It does.
However, at no time does Hayek propose totalitarian “new freedoms” as a solution to a market based problem.
And yes, Net Neutrality is being sold as a “new freedom”. The “freedom from ISPs”.
This is what he says:
“His use of the word “freedom” is as misleading as it is in the mouth of totalitarian politicians. Like their freedom, the “collective freedom” he offers us is not the freedom of the members of society but the unlimited freedom of the planner to do with society what he pleases”.
Net neutrality promises a collective freedom from ISPs. If only the FCC masters can accumulate enough power to make it so. And their own words back me up.
In the words of our potential FCC masters, they want to control the on/off ramps. THEIR WORDS. Argue otherwise, I dare you.
Exactly, but with some well-known infringements. To keep net neutrality isn't a "new freedom" since we already have it (mostly). Any regulation is stopping and preventing future occurrences of a wrong, the interference in the larger Internet market by one industry leveraging its place as gatekeeper. It's not "freedom from" anything, it's preventing market distortions.
Of course don't think regulation must necessarily be some overly-burdensome bureaucracy. We know there is a huge imbalance of power between the ISPs and customers preventing the free marking from working correctly. Simply having essentially a net neutrality "complaints department" at the FTC (more appropriate), with the FTC having the authority to correct and punish violations, should suffice. From the companies I'd expect at most a yearly compliance statement -- here our our policies, here's how they comply with net neutrality, and if we are using any traffic shaping, here's why it's reasonable (e.g., to provide the best experience for our customers, we give the lowest latency to gaming at the expense of email traffic latency, which nobody would notice).