I agree that government is bad. But Comcast is no better. Your cable bill has been going up and not because of government.
I am very leery of this net-neutrality thing. I agree it seems like a government overreach. But I do not want the ISPs to have the right to throttle up and down individual web-sites I access. Remember that Xfinity is run by Comcast. They will throttle their own site higher than everyone else has access to.
Web-sites pay when they pay for the pipes from their servers to the web. We pay when we pay for the connection from the web to our homes. We should not have a middle man who just takes graft for not slowing down your web traffic. Especially when they are not adding value. They are simply paying the government for a license to a duopoly of internet service.
I want the government to stop spying on my web traffic. And I want the government to stay away from taxing the internet. I want Comcast to provide internet at different bandwidths. But not to change anything that comes over the internet, i.e. change speeds for different sites. I will decide what I want from the web.
Comcast has its own network that goes into everyone’s home. This network is were the cable channels come into your house. Its in the same wire as your Internet. Comcast can sell access to that if they wish. But they should not screw with the web.
Yeah but Comcast is fleeting. The government is forever. Comcast might annoy us for a few years but the markets will innovate and flow around Comcast eventually. Turning it over to government means we're locked into the government paradigm forever. It cuts off all sorts of possibilities. I would rather put up with a short or medium term quasi-monopoly situation stemming from the imperfection of the market than to invoke gubmint and encase everything in amber till the end of time. Plus, why should we give these Marxist a-holes the satisfaction of getting over on us? Have you looked at the backgrounds of the key people (e.g. Robert McChesney) behind the push for net neutrality? They are literal Marxists and they are doing it to strike a blow against capitalism. That is their own words.
The danger of Comcast is nothing compared to the danger of the government. Regulations are forever. Regulations create precedent that expand endlessly in their applications. And Comcast will use its influence with the government to shift those regulations in its favor, in return for things like surveillance.
I’m not an anarchist, nor a hard-core libertarian. I’m more conservative-libertarian because I know regulatory actions are necessary. But they should be like salt and pepper - a little bit goes a long way. These days, though, salt and pepper have become the whole meal.