Anyone who wants freedom in the market place would probably be opposed to net nuetrality, correct? Wouldn’t they believe that a company has a right to throttle bandwidth as they see fit?
McDonalds has the right to no longer sell drinks at their restaurants. I expect they’d lose a lot of customers if they did that though. What’s your point?
How about supermarket neutrality? So that a supermarket cannot decline any food producers and must grant shelf space to anybody who comes forward and requests that his product be sold?
Anybody who believes in property rights must oppose it.
The problem is with prior regulation. Prior regulation causes a drastic limit on the amount and type of internet providers. Politicians will never understand that of course.
“Prior regulation causes a drastic limit on the amount and type of internet providers.”
How so?
You need a license to become an internet provider in all places. This is why there are only a tiny amount of internet providers at lots of places around the world: because the city hands out a monopoly contract to one provider and prevents anyone else.
“his is why there are only a tiny amount of internet providers at lots of places around the world”
Is it hard to get that license? What are the qualifications?
In London British Telecom is the only company allowed to control land lines. Maybe all of England… My cousin couldn’t stop complaining about their monopoly and non-existant service when I was visiting. There was no phone or internet the whole time I was there.
I’m not sure how hard it is to obtain the license, but the telecommunications industry is extremely overtaxed, and over regulated. No corporation likes to be taxed or regulated, but when that taxation and regulation has the power to barr start-up companies from even getting off the ground, the added benefit of a zero competition market puts a smile on the face of any corporate exec. The telecomm industry and the State have long been good friends; the State gets to check up on its subjects essentially whenever it wants to by way of these service providers, and the telecomm companies get a defacto monopoly in a geographic area due to the massive restriction on competition. Regulation always favors established institutional interests over fresh entreprenuership.