as frank lund says, words make a difference. junk bonds bad; high yield bonds good. have you noticed that almost all legislation passed by congress has the word reform in it. financial reform, health reform, campaign finance reform. we are just a country of reformers, making things better all the time.
which brings me to net neutrality. now net neutrality sounds like it must be a good thing. the net is important and neutrality is a good thing so net neutrality must be a really good thing. Switzerland is neutral and they are good right? aside from taking deposits from despots, drug and arms dealers.
anyway down to cases. there was an excellent article in the nytimes of all places but sourced by reuters that framed it as a battle between the pipes and the swipes. the pipes are the people who build the physical infrastructure to deliver bandwidth, verizon, att, direct tv, etc. the swipes are the people that use this bandwidth to deliver digital content like apple, google, microsoft etc.
now the pipes have spent and continue to spend year in and year out tens of billions on capital expenditures. and they want a return on this capital. the swipes and all the app and content providers want to ride on all this capital investment with a somewhat parasitic business model where the costs are born by the pipes and when they either raise prices to support their investment or offer premium service for a premium price; people howl at the evil pipes.
now where else is it ok to have unlimited consumption of a scarce resource for a flat, capped fixed amount? if you use more water, you pay for it. if you use more electricity, heating oil, gasoline, etc you pay for it. so why is it a crime to charge for more bandwidth? it aint free.
this has very little to do with neutrality. it is merely a commercial fight that should get sorted out in the market place. we should aspire to something akin to universal internet connectivity at some reasonable level of bandwidth but if i want more and faster i should be able to get it and have to pay for it.
your thoughts?
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3 comments:
i pay for faster service and i love every minute of it, and i don't mind paying for it. i doubt there will ever be universal internet connectivity. as a free loving capitalist, i get what i pay for, and like you, as long as i have the money i have the freedom to get what i want as well.
understand what you are saying...however, switzerland was not neutral as we all previously thought. many swiss signed up to fight for the nazis, they accepted jewish pillfered money and gold and hid it for the nazis. interesting that life always boils down to who has what. money.
that was my point, that words like neutrality and reform are abused. the swiss have done lots of shitty things while being neutral
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