The Real Reason For Net Neutrality

By now you all have heard about Net Neutrality and what its all about. But what is it really all about? Pundits will have us all arguing over two issues, those who want to keep the net free from government intervention, and those who want government intervention on the net. But is that really the whole truth?


I speculate that there is more to this Net Neutrality drive than just government interventionism. I have made the case that its really all about the government trying to establish a new tax base but I think it goes far deeper than that and way out side of the government.

I believe that people, cooperations, and individuals in government today who want to build the foundation for turning the broad band services of today into the cash cow of tomorrow similar to what they did with electricity back in the 70's. Back then if we needed more power we simply built more power facilities. Power was considered an unlimited resource because we could simply make more. But then someone got the bright idea to limit the amount of power we can produce and thus convert an otherwise unlimited resource into a limited commodity. Now only so much power is generated thanks to environmental regulations, limitations on the construction of nuclear power, and ever tightening restriction on coal and natural gas power planets. Now instead of generating the power a region uses within that region, all power generation is dumped into the national power grid, shared with Canada and Mexico, and power companies, once non profit publicly owned, must now bid for power power thus driving up the price significantly. This had the effect of turning power into a costly limited commodity and our public non profit power utilities into money grubbing greedy cooperations of self interest. We also got a couple of new industries from this. Conservationism, environmentalism, energy star, and of course the power commodity traders themselves. All of this has lead to higher costs and less access. (If you cannot pay the higher costs, then you get no power. You could run your entire home on about $40.00 worth of power per month back in the 70's. Now that same $40.00 won't cover the cost of a 100 watt light bulb, assuming you can even get one now, for that same time.)

Now the Internet has come along and the greed that has come with it knows no equal. The problem is, how do you turn the Internet into an even larger cash cow than it has already has proven to be? Simple, you create new regulation, laws, and a system of government that converts open unlimited bandwidth into a commodity that can then be artificially limited to drive up its price.

Allow me to explain. A few large companies have invested billions in building the foundation of a national, if not international, broad band system. Now greedy cooperate types come along who have nothing to do with the development of this infrastructure and they want in. They look upon it like this, why should we invest in building our own broad band infrastructure when we can just get the government to force those who have already done this to "share" theirs. I give you government interventionism and net neutrality. Now thanks to these new FCC regulations, companies that had nothing to do with the development of the broad band infrastructure network of this nation, paid not a dime to its development, can now force companies that have to give up X amount of their available band width to them. Couple this "spreading the wealth around" tactic with the fact that new regulations have been imposed prohibiting the expansion of new broad band infrastructure development and suddenly what was once a potential unlimited resource, band width, is now a very limited commodity. And here come the higher prices.

The real objective, the greedy end game, is now in full motion. Now the logic is with any limited resource, the more you use, the more you must pay for it Well you might say fine, there is an unlimited amount of broad band capability already and I don't mind paying more for what I use. Really, well its no so limited any more because while the government wants you to pay more for what you use, they also want to give it away at no cost or rather lower cost to low income families. You pays the difference in cost between what you are paying and what the leeches will have to pay? You do that is who. So now not only are you paying for what you use, but also what that freeloading welfare mother is using, and she is using it a lot more than you are. And why would government want to do this? Well for taxes thats why. The logic there is, the more people who have access to the Internet, the more people will use the Internet to buy stuff, email, and conduct business over the net thus generating more tax revenue.

Well we can just expand the network more! Well yes and no. You see without the freedom to develop new broad band infrastructure as mentioned above, companies won't be able to provide more band width. Oh they can apply to the government for permits, access rights, and other costly application fees, tariffs, and taxes to expand their networks, but really in the end, the cost of it will simply be to great to make it worth the investment. These considerable new regulations, permits, jurisdictional approval, environmental studies, government fees, and charges imposed by government regulators and legislators, will dramatically curtail the development of any new broad band infrastructure for the foreseeable future. Now there will of course be "special" dispositions granted to "favorite" companies who will not be held to these new costs and will be paid by the government, at considerable cost to the tax payers, to build new broad band infrastructure. Companies that are owned in part by government types through shell companies and off shore businesses.

Now these new companies that have imposed themselves into the ISP market, have already started to sell their new vision of the Internet to the American public by dropping comments like "oh the influx of streaming video is burdening the broad band system" in order to justifying their end game of charging people more for the same exact service they now enjoy. They will invent all sorts of new factors and causes that will then be billed out to the public as excuses for ever increasing costs for ISP. Eventually, broad band will become an expensive pay for use commodity that few can afford and even fewer will want. Thats when new laws will be passes that will force you to have it. (Think auto insurance and health care.) Gone will be the flat fee rates replaced by broad band meters and an entire new industry for billing, access, etc. ISP providers will have to put their own bandwidth onto the open broad band market and then bid for access to it. Now Qwest or Comcast no longer have access to their full pipe line but rather only 20% of it. That means higher costs to all of us. And since the market will all be tied together, via the broad band commodities bidding process, the prices will become regional and competition will fade as one or two large companies become dominate through government intervention and favorable regulations.

The whole point to Net Neutrality is to force the companies that built the high speed Internet foundation of this nation to give up what they have created and share it with companies that haven't invested a dime into it. These new companies will of course be run by the very people who have promoted Net Neutrality in the first place. Once they are in, and the public has boughten into the notion that broad band is a limited resource, much like oil, water, power, and food, then they can begin to charge more and more for the service. Eventually we'll be back to the early day when AOL used to charge by the minute for ISP access. Any one remember those days? On top of it all, we'll have all those new government taxes to boot.

The cash cow that was the Internet is about to be slaughtered by the government slaughter house and given to people who had nothing to do with its raising. It is safe to say that there are people and companies out there working right now to take control over what other companies have built so they can reap unbelievable profits at our expense.