The Obama Administration with little fanfare, through the Federal Communications Commission, announced today that they will move forward with a rulemaking proceeding to create formal net neutrality rules.
On the surface you might think that rules to prohibit internet providers from selectively blocking or slowing web content and applications – include mobile broadband providers – was a good thing.
In my view it is not. In fact it scares the Hell out of me.
Nobody has had any problem with the network providers doing any of these things. It is just another situation in which the Federal is moving to take over another major segment of the economy. The internet, like the economy has undergone amazing growth for 15 years (is that since Al Gore invented it?). Market functions and entrepreneurial forces have driven this growth. I see no good thing that can come out of government meddling and regulation.
Don’t these people understand yet that when government picks the winners and losers in the marketplace, our capitalistic system is dead?
Don’t they realize when they screw (excuse the technical terminology) the secured bond holders at General Motors to benefit the unions in violation of law that they stop major investors from buying what used to be considered secured debt in major corporations?
When the rules that govern our economic markets and traditional mechanisms for doing business can be altered at the whim of the political leadership from either party, then you are destabilizing the process and private investors will not be able to invest with faith in the system.
We are becomming a banana republic in an economic, if not a political, sense. Long term planning is becoming impossible for investors or major corporations because the basic landscape and rules of debt and equity are becoming unpredictable. And the cause is, in my view, is GOVERNMENT.
You may read some of the news articles today <here> and <here>.
In my view this is an answer to a question that nobody is asking. But the precedent of advancing FCC regulation of the internet is a problem and will not end well.
Another of our Freedoms started to die today.
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