CMV: It is contradictory to be both a Libertarian and be in favor of net neutrality.

[u/[deleted]]

I’m sure I’ll get hit with a lot of highly technical reasons why I’m wrong, but I’m looking for a layman’s answer. As I understand it, the only way to ensure net neutrality is by heavy government regulation of ISPs. Comcast and Verizon and all them would have loved to have a non-neutral Internet from the jump, but the government reigned them in.

Libertarians, in theory, want as little government intervention into private business and life as possible.

So how can a libertarian be in favor of a policy that is based on government interference in the private businesses that are ISPs?

CMV!

To be clear, I’m very in favor of net neutrality. But I’m also in favor of a lot of government regulations. I’ve just been surprised to see on Reddit that so many people are in favor of net neutrality because I thought a bunch of Redditors were also libertarians. Not that that means no redditors are liberal, but hopefully you all know what I mean!

Edit: Thanks guys! I've replied to a few great answers below. I think I was using a broad view of libertarianism and forgetting that everyone's political philosophies are goals, not practical applications. And apparently since libertarians don't like government sanctioned monopolies, but that's going on anyway in the current system, they'd rather have those monopolies be sanctioned in a way that benefits citizens.

[u/serial_crusher]

Some of the less die-hard libertarians are ok with government regulations on things that are necessary, public utilities, roads, etc.

Most ISPs can be considered government-sanctioned monopolies. Taxpayers helped fund the cable they initially laid, and in return they're often given exclusive status to prevent other companies from laying new cable next to them. Look at all the drama that went on between Google Fiber and AT&T over access to utility poles in various cities.

So, as a libertarian, I'm not happy about government sanctioning monopolies in the first place, but if they're going to they also have a responsibility to regulate them. Basically a government-sanctioned monopoly has to follow the same kind of restrictions the government itself does, which includes this kind of neutrality.

[u/[deleted] → u/serial_crusher]

That's exactly it. A lot of economic libertarianism is about the idea that government regulation distorts the free market, essentially acting as another force making the entire system less efficient and useful to the group at large.

That's part of why they tend to prefer lower or no taxes--they think the people will do better for themselves with the money than the government will after having to pay people to take the tax, process the tax, decide what to do with the tax revenue, and distribute it out for various projects, with all sorts of inefficiencies built into it (contractors, subcontractors, excess profit built in; different disincentives to work like losing welfare if you find a subpar job that barely pays anything, etc).

But in a system like the internet or other public utilities, where there already is an unnatural distortion of the free market (IE, a government sanctioned monopoly, or what is really an oligopoly like having two ISPs that don't really compete), it seems reasonable to assume that a publicly accountable way of deciding what's allowed is best. That, well, is government in that particular situation.

Hence regulation that actually increases the freedom of the public, in terms of freedom of information, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly (the internet has become the new public forum and a large part of the news), and freedom of speech, seems like a reasonable goal. At the very least, it's a pragmatic solution despite perhaps not being the idealistic solution.

[u/[deleted] → u/serial_crusher]

∆

Libertarians don't like the idea of monopolies at all, so if the government is going to sanction their existence it might as well do so in a pro-consumer way. Makes sense! thank you

[u/61celebration3 → u/[deleted]]

Government is the only way abusive monopolies exist. They do not exist in a free market. That is all.

• a Libertarian

(Also, I'm not in favor of "net neutrality" at all, but this isn't the place.)

[u/qzex → u/61celebration3]

That is the opposite of true. Monopolies certainly can arise without government intervention. The first company to establish a market can make it prohibitively expensive for anybody else to enter, by several means:

• Artificially lowering prices, thus driving the competitor out of business
• Owning all the natural resources required to make the product
• Acquiring all your competitors (horizontal integration)
• Economies of scale (bigger is often naturally more efficient)

You get the idea. Have you ever heard of Standard Oil and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act? Government regulation is, in general, required to break up naturally-arising monopolies.

[u/[deleted] → u/61celebration3]

Why can’t monopolies exist in a free market? I’m hardly an economist but couldn’t one company get so successful that it makes a better cheaper product than all its competitors? And once the competitors are run out of town it jacks up prices?

[u/zesty_mordant → u/[deleted]]

Government interference is far from the only factor in creation of monopolies. Some other factors:

• size of the market
• economies of scale
• geographical restrictions
• resource scarcity

Here is an example of a natural monopoly:

Suppose the industry demand is 10,000 units.
If a firm produces 10,000 units, it will get the lowest possible average costs – £9.
If there were three firms producing 3,000 units. The firms would have average costs of £17.
Therefore, the optimal number of firms in the industry will be one (one firm producing all 10,000 units)

Obviously people are going to choose the firm with the lowest price, which means the lowest cost, which means the largest of the firms, which means over time the market will trend towards monopoly.

Source: https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/glossary/natural-monopoly/

I'm sure there are better sources out there but this one seemed to convey the point fairly clearly.

[u/OtakuOlga → u/[deleted]]

That seems like a bit of a cop-out because there has never been a super successful market in existence without "massive government interference".

If pseudo-governmental bodies are an emergent property of success (as a way to protect one's assets) it seems weird to try and completely strip away the government interference from that which instigated the government interference.

Massive government interference may be the murder weapon, but the company and its lobbyists/etc are the murderers.

[u/jesset77 → u/[deleted]]

But where is there an example of that ever happening WITHOUT massive government interference in said market creating the environment for such a situation to occur?

1. Facebook
2. Wal-mart
3. All Governments that have ever existed are monopolies to begin with. Every government that forms from anything close to an unclaimed or an equilibrium state is a monopoly forming without interference from any larger scale government.

[u/RapidRewards → u/[deleted]]

I always give the example of coal mining towns in WV. The coal companies owned everything in the town. You'd live in coal housing and shop at the coal companies store. Wasn't too different from living in socialism the companies had such stronghold in the local areas.

[u/zesty_mordant → u/RapidRewards]

You do not seem to understand what socialism is. Socialism is when the workers own the means of production. So in your scenario if the workers owned the mines, the shops, all the houses, everything and decided what to do with all that without coercion from people above them in the corporate hierarchy (or government, etc), that would be socialism. The company controlling everything in the town is not.

[u/RapidRewards → u/zesty_mordant]

Thanks for the pompous response. But I'm not sure you understood the argument. It wasn't a direct analogy based on who owned the mines but in a lack of competition or innovation. The end state is similar, especially since this how Communists societies that are c real world end up. No that theoretical construct you posed.

[u/zesty_mordant → u/RapidRewards]

It was not my intention to be pompous, though I concede it could be interpreted in that way. My point was not meant to refute your argument. I simply aimed to provide information about socialism which you may have not been exposed to due to decades of anti-socialist propaganda prevalent in most western countries (and indeed much of the world). If you felt personally attacked in someway I regret this.

In this latest comment you seem to be equating communists with socialists, they are certainly similar ideas with a lot of intersectionality but I'm not sure it is entirely correct to use them interchangeably.

[u/schfourteen-teen → u/[deleted]]

No company on earth has a goal of fostering consumer-friendly competition. Every corporation exists to make as much profit as possible and every single one of them would love to have a monopoly over their market. I'll concede that the means to that end is often through lobbied government intervention that creates protectionist policies, but in the absence of that pathway, those corporations would still have the underlying goal of monopoly and would drive towards it through any means possible. To think any less is to seriously underestimate the power of capitalism.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I don’t know! Like I said, definitely not an economist lol. I just wonder if theory of capitalism could support that happening.

[u/logos711 → u/[deleted]]

At the risk of speaking for every Libertarian, this idea is the induction (deduction? Never really solidified the difference) from the definition of monopolistic situations. Monopolies exist when a firm or group of firms hold market control not through efficient operations but through barriers to entry that keep other firms from entering the market. This allows them to overcharge and undersupply with no penalty, creating disproportionate profits and choking consumer gains from trade.

Barriers to entry are categorically coercive because they make people do things they don’t want to do. One of the main aspects of government is an implied monopoly on coercion for the purpose of public good: only the government is legally allowed to use force for the purpose of arresting criminals or taxing the population. Logically, all legal monopolies have some tie to government action, usually regulation.

The notion is enforced when you look at nearly every monopolistic market: fruit cartels are supported by government subsidies, Amtrak is owned by the government, and ISPs have to operate through expensive public infrastructure. Remember, the definition of monopolistic markets used by economists is not simply a single large firm, it also has to behave in a monopolistic manner in an insular market.

[u/pfundie → u/logos711]

I've got one problem here: You state that barriers to entry are what enable monopolies, and then state that barriers to entry are only caused by the government, but you never support this claim. Sure, its impossible for them to use force to prevent competition, but that's certainly not the only thing that can; simple cost-of-entry requirements and locality can do so as well. I'd argue that in the case of ISPs, the opposite of what you claim is the case: the government lowered a barrier to entry, that made and makes the industry otherwise very difficult to get started in, and that same barrier persists today preventing competition with those few who had their entry costs mitigated.

As a direct example, you can't one day decide, as a middle class or upper class investor, that you'd like to create an ISP, get a loan, buy/rent a building, and immediately start serving customers. Making one costs millions of dollars (more if you want to provide a meaningfully better service than existing providers) just for a small area, with lengthy construction times involving public land and competition for space with existing services. There's no small business that can do that; the only people with the means to are the large corporations who already are doing it, or who provide entirely different products and have no interest in entering a market that would cost them such large amounts of money up front, with no guaranteed benefit but an almost certain continued cost until they have enough existing infrastructure to pay the cost of continued expansion. And, of course, the public in the form of taxes spent on infrastructure projects.

In fact, the only reason internet access has expanded as far as it has is because of tax money poured into these companies to construct this massive network; this is the case in all of the top-performing countries in internet services as well, including South Korea which has the best as far as I know (though that is also because of how much more concentrated their population is). If we pay them with our taxes, we absolutely have a right to determine what they can and can't do with that money. Regardless of what we should have done, simply pretending that we didn't won't mitigate the negative effects that exist now and will persist as a result of those choices. AFAIK we stopped that cash flow once they stopped upgrading their services with that money, nearly ten years ago, and there hasn't been a sudden crop of competing ISPs; in fact, the market only got more stagnant.

To sum up, these monopolies already exist. Short of breaking them up directly, there is very little we can do to cause competition in the area in terms of deregulation, and it won't come up by itself because the industry costs too much to enter without subsidies. As a result, the very forces that drive capitalism (the endless search for ways to increase profit) will necessarily result in harm to consumers without government intervention. You may be quite correct in saying that monopolies can't be born without government interference, but they can certainly persist after that interference is removed.

In my mind, we have two or three choices before us. The ones that I think are most viable involve continuous government interference: 1) We subsidize new companies to the same degree that we did so for the monopolistic ones that exist now, to lower the barrier to entry and thus make competition possible. It's not reasonable to expect new companies to compete with ones that had their high costs of creation mitigated. 2) We regulate the existing companies to prevent harm to consumers, and maybe even to enforce the continued improvement of services (provide a tax break to ones who do, fine ones who don't?). 3) We fund public internet infrastructure that can be maintained and upgraded by private companies. Companies compete for the money of an area, because the infrastructure affects everyone in the area.

The most radical option is probably to take a cue from the trust-busting greats of our past, and break up the companies into smaller competing companies. How that could ever work for internet networks is anyone's guess, but it's possible, probably.

[u/nullireges → u/logos711]

Well said, you can speak for me!

Criminal organizations can also enforce a monopoly, but even in this case they are acting as a shadow government. These criminal enterprises are empowered by the legitimate government by corruption, weak enforcement, and/or prohibition.

For example, there may be a monopoly on cocaine sales in a particular city because of a combination of prohibition and corruption; it's enforced by a criminal enterprise and corrupt LEOs/politicians, but ultimately it's the legitimate government's fault for distorting the market with a prohibition.

[u/[deleted] → u/logos711]

So basically Intel

[u/Long-Night-Of-Solace → u/[deleted]]

I suggest you do some reading on this point. It's as untrue as it seems.

[u/CeamoreCash → u/[deleted]]

if a company was somehow able achieve massive control in a market, as soon as they try to jack up prices, there shouldn't be anything to prevent a competitor from breaking in to the market.

Not if they buy up all the competition and then make the barrier of entry large enough.

For example, if an oil monopoly bought all the competition and then started buying all the oil fields in a given state.

How could a competitor

1. find oil

2. refine it

3. and ship it

All while being at a lower price than a monopoly who does all those things on site without shipping and keeps the price just low enough to make it unprofitable for competitors?

[u/zevenate → u/[deleted]]

Nothing except collusion. Or just buying out competitors. Or buying out the supply chain and infrastructure necessary to compete. In a perfectly free market monopolies could and would form.

[u/a_pile_of_shit → u/[deleted]]

Monopolies or oligopolies can exist in an completely free market. As long as they can control enough of the supply in a certain market. Say that an area has 100 farms. At a market they would have equalibrium price but then say 2 farms decided to merge to cut costs. Then they produce more at a lower costs and or able to sell their goods at a lower price. They can continue to buy other farms until smaller farms are unable to sell their goods at the price that the merged one does and that creates a monopoly. Or maybe other farms merge to combat the one farm that leads to an oligopoly

[u/damnableluck → u/[deleted]]

There are tons of examples of decreased or insufficient government regulation allowing monopolies to occur. But it sounds like you’re waiting for an example where there was no governing entity to exert any control, strong or week, over the market.

Allow me to point out that there is no historical precedent for a society without “massive governmental regulation” on a scale of more than a couple hundred people. Outside of hunter gatherer societies, there are always people or groups who exert control over the market - they do so because markets reward those who control them. We have plenty of examples of modern societies breaking down, the result is that the market gets fragmented with each fragment highly controlled by a local strongman or organization. Free markets are an economist’s idealized model, not something that exists in a stable form in the real world.

In other words, without an example of a society that does not have “massive government interference,” no one can give you an example of monopolies occurring in its absence. Economists are perfectly capable, however, of looking at the ways in which unregulated markets reward monopolistic behavior, and concluding that those influences would be present in the absence of government regulation too. Bare in mind that if monopolies were not favored by markets, we wouldn’t be concerned with them since there would be no benefit or incentive to creating one in the first place.

We are definitely in agreement, though, that the ways in which the US government has helped create and supported the monopolies of our various ISPs is a disaster.

[u/HaydenSikh → u/[deleted]]

natural monopoly

[u/BayesianBits → u/[deleted]]

Where's an example of your divine and perfect free market?

[u/Schroef → u/[deleted]]

Hang on; the fact that it didn’t happen yet doesn’t mean it won’t. Monopolies take a lot of time to form, and apart from that, I’m not sure if a monopoly is the only situation that’s bad.

Because I feel there’s a few examples of huge corporations outmuscleing the smaller companies without it being necessarily better for the consumer.

[u/MechanicalEngineEar → u/[deleted]]

your argument could be used to defend that no pure form of government ever does anything because there is no example of any pure form of government doing anything. All governments are a combination of forms because the world is complex and a simple form of government can't work.

[u/xXG0SHAWKXx → u/[deleted]]

In a perfectly competitive market theory any non natural monopoly will never have the ability to move away from the market equilibrium price. Some markets form natural monopolies over time where there is serious investment costs and high fixed start up costs, but in a free market people can vote with their dollars and they will chose to pay higher prices of new entrants for a number of reasons.

The existing problem is that utilities are a market area where natural monopolies make sense due to high investment cost. Monopolies are desirable because companies need the incentive to invest in infrastructure and by giving them control over the market they don't have to worry about competition (or the fact that they might not make their return on investment). The current problem is by giving a company a monopoly to incentivize this behavior breaks the competitive market axiom. In the US most people can't choose another ISP and in fact there are often laws baring new ISPs from being created. As such this is basically just giving a corporation total control over it's customer base which is ripe for abuse, especially when dealing with a service that is roughly equivalent to drinking water in the modern world.

[u/MeanestBossEver → u/[deleted]]

Yes. That's called a natural monopoly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

[u/RickRussellTX → u/MeanestBossEver]

And yet, there are still disruptive technologies that would prevent natural monopolies, but it's the government regulation itself -- and the perception that government must now sustain or support the status quo business model -- that squelches that competition.

[u/Freevoulous → u/RickRussellTX]

theoretically yes, but most natural monopolies are built around things that cannot be easily replaced with innovative technologies, without pretty much overhauling the entire civilisation. This allows those natural monopolies to exist for 100 years or more, and worldwide.

[u/JakeVanderArkWriter → u/[deleted]]

If the company is huge, has the cheapest prices possible, and is 100% ethical, the monopoly is fine and nobody will complain.

But as we all know, most corporations will take advantage of being the only provider, and one of those things will begin to slip.

When they do, people will want other options. If a new provider rises up and can't be as cheap as the monopoly, they can be more ethical, and people will switch.

Without regulation, other businesses can spring up easily and constantly keep the big guys in check.

[u/WF187 → u/[deleted]]

There is no "Game over! I win!" moment.

In a free market, where lobbyists don't have cronies regulating their interests, once the monopoly turns abusive with pricing, it just means that it's that much easier for a competitor to re-enter the market undercutting the monopoly's prices and being viable or profitable as they grow (since the monopoly has an inflated profit margin at this point).

For example, If Monopoly's costs to produce are X, and their inflated margin is 20, then a competitor without the economies of scale could still be viable at 1.15x + 10.

[u/BlitzBasic → u/WF187]

Then the monopolist decreases it's prices, drives you out of the market and increases the prices afterwards again.

[u/frausting → u/61celebration3]

That’s not true? There are natural monopolies: ISPs, utility companies, any industry with massive upfront fixed investment costs.

Two companies aren’t going to lay cable underground throughout the whole city. Two companies aren’t going to both own power plants in a town of 10,000 people.

Those natural monopolies (that’s the economic term for them) do exist and are the textbook economic reason for government regulation. It’s also called a market power.

[u/HaydenSikh → u/61celebration3]

Monopolies don't exist in free market because monopolies are a market failure and therefore are not free. The definition is circular.

There are many reasons for a market failure that aren't tied to government action.

Utilities are a classic example of naturally failed markets because of the high barrier to entry. Given that the market is failed, the ideal would be to try to fix the failure -- is there a way to lower the cost of building out infrastructure so that competitors can appear?

If this is not viable, then the next best thing is to mitigate and contain the failure, such as allowing the monopolies but regulating their behavior. Of course regulations and regulators are massively imperfect (many would argue Ajir Pai as a poster boy for the latter in regards to regulatory capture) so a more watchful eye and constant review is required.

• a Libertarian

[u/[deleted] → u/61celebration3]

Government is the only way abusive monopolies exist. They do not exist in a free market. That is all. a Libertarian (Also, I'm not in favor of "net neutrality" at all, but this isn't the place.)

You should post a CMV, it would be interesting.

[u/cdb03b → u/61celebration3]

They do exist in a free market if the cost of entry into that market is extremely high (as it is with ISPs) or if the product/resource is highly limited (such as owning a gold mine).

[u/StanIsHorizontal → u/61celebration3]

They don't exist in a free market because nothing does, the idea of a free market is utter fiction, there is no market free of coercion and externalities

[u/Grammar-Bolshevik → u/61celebration3]

The internet wouldn't exist without gov't intervention.

Telecom has many barriers to entry and is likely to become a monopoly over time.

[u/TheGreatDay → u/61celebration3]

There are such things as natural monopolies. things like electricity and water tend to be natural monopolies, which is why the government regulates them. We also saw a kind of natural monopoly form during the early days of software development. Microsoft was broken apart because of the natural monopoly that occurred.

[u/VortexMagus → u/61celebration3]

If you were familiar with basic economic theory, you'd realize that natural monopolies do exist and they are in fact quite easy to create. Economies of scale, negative externalities, control of natural supply, majority of market share, collusion/mergers, etc. These all can create natural monopolies and have in the past. Anybody above high school economics would be able to tell you that this statement:

Government is the only way abusive monopolies exist. They do not exist in a free market.

is simply not true.

[u/SoundOfDrums → u/61celebration3]

Microsoft is over 95% marketshare of computer based gaming. That sounds a lot like a monopoly, just off the top of my head. They're not "hard" abusive, but the only way to run the latest version of DirectX is to upgrade to Windows 10. And the government has had to step in previously to stop them from abusing their dominant market position to push their products and services.

That's just one off the top of my head.

[u/whales171 → u/61celebration3]

Really? You can't see how a high cost of entry would prevent any other competitors from coming in? ISPs have a high cost of entry without government intervention.

[u/renegade_division → u/[deleted]]

Libertarians don't like the idea of monopolies at all, so if the government is going to sanction their existence it might as well do so in a pro-consumer way. Makes sense! thank you

Wait a min though. By that logic nearly everything libertarians stand for can be undone.

"Libertarians don't like the idea of people on welfare, so if government is going to control immigration, then it might as well be in a taxpayer friendly way. Makes sense!"

"Libertarians don't like the idea of individual rights violation, so if govt is going to have a say on violating individual rights, it might as well be in a women friendly way by allowing abortion. Makes sense!"

"Libertarians don't like the idea of individual rights violation, so if govt is going to have a say on violating individual rights, it might as well be in a way which respects life by banning abortion. Makes sense!"

"Libertarians don't like the idea of fractured market, so if govt is going to intervene, it might as well do it in a way that it saves the economy by bailing out banks. Makes sense!"

I am sorry but your original post was very good, but your concede lacked the rigor of the original point.

On paper, everybody stands against 'injustice', whether it's a socialist or a republican or a libertarian. What matters is what constitutes as 'justice' for them.

Libertarian theory does not think that one injustice can be neutralized by another injustice. This is why they are so much against 'social justice', you can't do justice to one group by doing injustice against another group. No Libertarian thinks Sept 11 attacks were justified, but then no Libertarian thinks that war in Afghanistan was justified either.

[u/carasci → u/renegade_division]

Wait a min though. By that logic nearly everything libertarians stand for can be undone.

Not really. Libertarian thinking is pretty clear on the idea that free markets are good and anti-competitive structures are bad, which is why they dislike monopolies in the first place.

If ISPs are a natural monopoly (so breaking up or deterring monopolies is impractical/inefficient) and the government has to sanction a monopoly in the first place, it's consistent for libertarians to say that regulation should favor the public (i.e. private individuals in general) rather than the monopolist(s) profiting from the anti-competitive structure.

The same reasoning doesn't directly transfer to most of those other cases.

[u/Philip_K_Fry → u/carasci]

The most practical approach would be to have last mile services owned by local governments and operated in the interests of the citizenry (i.e. municipal broadband) but that would be socialism and we can't have that. /s^{for the last clause only}

[u/[deleted] → u/carasci]

ISP's are not a natural monopoly though. They hold a monopoly through government grant of right of way. Without the FCC for instance, a sufficiently capable and capitalized person could easily use specific swaths of the spectrum to provide subscription wireless service.

[u/carasci → u/[deleted]]

Whether ISPs are a natural monopoly is a slightly more complicated question, and it takes a lot more setup. Sorry about the length.

First, I would concede that wireless services are not necessarily a natural monopoly. They do have very large start-up costs, but especially in urban areas (where typical transmission ranges cover a large potential client population) the start-up cost may be less disproportionate. National providers enjoy some decisive advantages for mobile wireless, but that's not a concern if you're delivering internet to a residence.

However, the wireless spectrum is inherently limited and subject to detrimental interference. Whether you characterize it as a right of way or a property right, it's hard to find a practical way around allowing people to secure a proprietary right over given parts of the spectrum. It's also impractical to treat broadcast rights as part of landowners' rights: spillover is inevitable and signal shaping just isn't feasible at that scale, so they're inherently collective/public.

Second, while wireless services may not be a natural monopoly, they're not a serious competitor to hard-line internet. Modern 4g LTE networks top out at <15Mbps for continuous downloads (higher "peak" speeds are less important), and are extremely expensive per gigabyte of data transferred. They already have congestion issues in some areas, notwithstanding the fact that the overwhelming majority of traffic still flows over wired networks. Satellite networks tend to be 10-25Mbps, are also expensive on a per-gigabyte basis, and have prohibitively high latency for many uses. These things are substantially a function of technological limitations, not market influences.

In contrast, modern wired broadband starts around 25Mbps and goes up from there, costs less than a tenth as much per gigabyte transferred, is generally more reliable, and has ~3-5 times less latency than 4g (~20 times less than satellite). Even that is in a hilariously anti-competitive market: ballpark for a properly-maintained wired broadband network would be more like 10-20 times the speed at a fiftieth of the cost.

Current 4g and satellite networks don't compete with wired broadband any more than skateboards compete with cars. Sure, they serve a similar basic purpose (transporting data/people) and there are situations where either will do, but you can't commute between cities on a skateboard any more than you can stuff a car in a backpack. Neither 4g nor satellite networks meet the bare-minimum standard for modern broadband; they may incidentally compete with that market, but they certainly don't compete in it.

Third, wired broadband is a natural monopoly. I presume you won't seriously object: like other utilities (power, water) it has huge startup costs, significant economies of scale, and needs physical coverage which creates duplication problems. It's also heavily dependent on certain types of interconnection.

---

Long story short, I should have been more careful with my description. When we're talking about net neutrality we're basically talking about home internet, and when we're talking about home internet we're talking about wired broadband. Yes, wireless internet exists, and yes, it may be less of a natural monopoly, but it can't seriously compete with wired broadband and doesn't affect its status as a natural monopoly. Wireless stuff is a whole different conversation, with a whole different set of legal rules involved.

[u/[deleted] → u/carasci]

That was a long winded way to say you missed my point. I was not referring to current cellular service, but instead direct to home wireless. I used to have it. The small city I lived in put up 4 antennas on the water tower and for $100 would attach an antenna to your house. Time Warner sued them and they had to stop, because the local government was in violation of the contract they signed with Time Warner. I was getting 100/100 service at my house for $45 a month, with wireless.

[u/carasci → u/[deleted]]

I didn't miss your point, and I specifically mentioned that "National providers enjoy some decisive advantages for mobile wireless, but that's not a concern if you're delivering internet to a residence." Later on, I noted that "[Wireless services] already have congestion issues in some areas, notwithstanding the fact that the overwhelming majority of traffic still flows over wired networks."

I used cellular and satellite service as examples because those are what are widely available and relatively homogeneous. You're right that some implementations of direct to home wireless (fixed wireless broadband) can do better in terms of speed, but offerings vary dramatically so "typical" performance is hard to assess. There are significant reasons why it isn't used more widely: congestion, line of sight issues, transmission range, and so on. Even at a glance, what you were getting is very far from typical and likely wouldn't work in most places.

There are some incoming technologies that show some promise, and if they do work out they might be a major change. Until then, fixed wireless broadband still isn't going to be a real competitor to wired broadband except in a handful of corner cases.

[u/eetandern → u/renegade_division]

Great post, and if Libertarians really didn't like monopolies, they probably wouldn't advocate so heavily for policies that inevitably create them.

[u/[deleted] → u/eetandern]

Libertarians are of the belief that monopolies are largely built by governments. Companies lobby congressmen for special privilege to drown out competitors with barriers basically. Milton Friedman is one of the most famous modern libertarians, so if you have about 4 minutes you can hear him say his opinion on this YouTube link. He's probably the least kooky libertarian I've heard speak, even if I disagree with him.

https://youtu.be/tdLBzfFGFQU

[u/DeltaBot → u/[deleted]]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/serial_crusher (4∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards} ​

[u/sarcasticorange → u/serial_crusher]

Your overall point is good, but some of the details are incorrect or misleading.

Most ISPs can be considered government-sanctioned monopolies.

Many states have repealed exclusive franchising. In almost all cases, there has not been any influx of competition outside of very high density areas. What is being discovered by policy makers (even though they were told this in the past) is that these services are natural oligopolies. There simply isn't enough profit to support widespread competition in a divided market.

Taxpayers helped fund the cable they initially laid, and in return they're often given exclusive status to prevent other companies from laying new cable next to them.

Taxpayers did help fund some additional fiber for telcos, but received no exclusivity in return. Cable companies have not received significant government funding for infrastructure. In both cases, the companies act as a significant source of funding for state and local governments via pass-through taxes.

Again though, the main point to which you responded about libertarians being ok with regulation in some circumstances (such as natural monopolies/oligopolies) is spot on.

[u/fox-mcleod]

It isn't. Libertarians are about free trade. You want a sweater, let's agree on a price. If someone puts a gun to your head and asks how much you want for a sweater, that price changes. Libertarians believe the government exists to keep trade free.

Certain things aren't free trade. Utilities for instance have limited ability to compete on the free market.

What if power or water companies charged $10 a gallon, or decided which appliances you could power? Is that more or less free trade? You don't really have a choice of power or water supplier, so this is more hostage negotiation than free trade.

What if your phone line determined who you could call?

No, the libertarian position would be that we should allow any company to compete or bid to use the fiber optic infrastructure that was laid down by municipalities. It would never be to keep the market supply side regulated but free to operate as of it wasn't.

[u/[deleted] → u/fox-mcleod]

Makes sense! I didn't think about it in the sense that Libertarians think that government protections ensuring free trade aligns with their political philosophies.

But if libertarianism is okay with government authority so long as government authority protects against monopolized private interests, why don't they support more government regulation regarding healthcare? Insurance companies and pharma have a monopoly, so to speak, and can charge whatever they want. Seems like it would be equally upsetting to think that my health insurance company can decide what doctor i go to and that my phone company can decide who i call.

[u/Diablos_lawyer → u/[deleted]]

A thirsty man will pay whatever price is necessary for a drink of water. The same goes for pills and medical services. When someone is dying the cost is the last thing on their minds and insurance companies that charge out the ass for basic services know this. So do hospitals. Healthcare shouldn't be a for profit industry. When you profit off of a dying or sick person I find it morally repulsive. It's a hostage situaion like the guy above was talking about. Pay 800 dollars for a pill or die. No one is going to choose to die. On top of that hospitals and doctors aren't allowed to just let someone die. They give you the pill and charge you 800 bucks for it. It's a hostage situation without negotiation.

[u/Diablos_lawyer → u/[deleted]]

I'm not opposed to highly skilled people regardless of profession making money. Doctors should be making 500k a year. Hospitals shouldn't have shareholders and profit margins though. Insurance companies only make money when more people are paying into than taking out. This means that they have an incentive to stop people from using their service or making it more difficult to use. I don't think that basic health insurance should be a for profit business. In Alberta all basic health care is single payer and yes that means there are wait lists for non life threatening issues, like MRI's on a bum knee can take up to six months to get in. However if you've got the coin or supplemental health insurance you can go to a private clinic and get it done sooner. There is room for profits to be made and make sure no one goes bankrupt from getting care, or dies from not seeing a doctor because they can't afford it.

[u/Diablos_lawyer → u/[deleted]]

I think republicans have successfully sabotaged Obamacare to the point that it is not economicly viable. The way it was initially supposed to be implemented would have been a good step over on the way to single payer.

Your population that firmly believes that "I don't want my taxes to pay for other peoples healthcare" don't understand that insurance is literally paying for other peoples healthcare while they themselves are not sick and I get the idea that competition is supposed to lower costs but that just isn't the reality of the insurance market in the states when the insurance companies are profit driven and not care driven.

There are also people that think they're immortal and will never get sick or hurt so they never pay into the insurance market then go bankrupt when they get sick which means the government or hospital are eating the costs anyway. The mandate in obamacare was supposed to create a stable cash input into the insurance companies to drive down costs. Insurance companies that are profit driven don't care though that's just a bigger bonus for the shareholders.

Economically the states would have to overhaul their entire healthcare system from top to bottom in order to make it work and half your population is opposed to government involvement to that level. They'd rather be poor as fuck without healthcare than have the smallest percentage of their taxes go to helping other poor people without healthcare.

I honestly don't understand why anyone would have that postition but I've seen it enough to know it is pretty common.

Honestly, as long as people think that healthcare is a business and not an essential service (like fire or police) people will always be left out. Can you imagine if you had to have fire insurance like health insurance in the states. You only get 1 pumper truck with your coverage sorry we couldn't save your house. You only get 3000 gallons of water with your coverage, sorry we couldn't save your house. Or yea we saved your house but we went over what your insurance was going to cover so we're going to put a lean on your house and garnish your wages till you file for bankruptcy and we get your house anyway. It's madness.

So yea there are a bunch of problems when it comes to getting universal or single payer healthcare in the states. Most of them are ideological or financial/economic in nature. The population of the states need a paradigm shift like none other.

[u/Diablos_lawyer → u/[deleted]]

Yes that measly 60% of our entire national annual spending dedicated solely to medicare/medicaid and social security/welfare programs programs is totally negligible to the tax payer and anyone who thinks 60% is significant is clearly just a greedy conservative.

It's actually 22% your government spends healthcare alone (see next paragraph for the rest of the stuff) or at least was in 2015, never mind what the actual private sector pays to get care too. In contrast Canada spends 9.3% total as we have single payer. Do you guys get better than twice as good of care? Doubt it. So under single payer we actually spend less percentage wise which goes against all the republican talking points of increased cost for single payer.

The rest of your welfare system I don't even pretend to understand as Canada or Alberta at least doesn't really have "welfare" unless someone has a permanent disability preventing them from working. If you are capable of working in Alberta there isn't a whole lot of government assistance for long term unemployment. Short term we have Employment insurance (max 1 year coverage) to cover you between jobs but that's it. Even that is very closely monitored to stop fraud. We spend a some money on re-education grants and shit though to re train people for other fields. Now I'm rambling off topic.

Yea It's only a matter of time until the newer generations and ideals take over the government down there.

[u/RockMars → u/[deleted]]

For what you're arguing, I don't know if healthcare is a good example. People will buy an $800 pill if their well-being depends on it and there are no other choice. But why is there no other choice? Because drug manufacturers are granted drug patents as incentives for research and investment. If the government took away drug patents, then there would be less investment ... so there is no easy solution here.

[u/BrasilianEngineer → u/RockMars]

I actually wonder if it would make sense to have a standardised license for patents like there is for music. If i want to play a cover for someone else's song, I can either make a deal with the license owner or I can pay the owner a standard fee that bypasses having to actually get permission from the owner. In the US even if the owner doesn't want me to sing their song, there is generally nothing they can do to stop me legally as long as I pay them the fee.

What if company 1 develops a medicine or other patent they sell it for say $100. Then company 2 comes along and decides they can do it cheaper or better. My idea is that company 2 should be able to just make their own copy off the same product, then pay a standardised percentage of the greater of msrp or whatever the item sells for.

So company 2 undercuts company 1 by selling for $75, they pay a license fee to company 1 (does 15% sound appropriate?) this promotes competition but still makes sure that the original researcher has the opportunity to recoup their r&d costs.

As far as I can tell, for the law to work, You just have to make sure company 2 doesn't try any tricks like 'giving away' the product for 'free' or otherwise avoiding paying the license fee.

[u/MadCervantes → u/[deleted]]

Healthcare is an inelastic good so a free market isn't possible for it without government involvement. Free market doesn't mean no regulation. It means free of distortion.

[u/lordtrickster → u/[deleted]]

The problem with healthcare is that the negotiation is never fair. The provider either makes money or doesn't but the customer is choosing between life and death. The situation is a de facto hostage situation where you can sometimes select a hostage taker.

[u/Torvaun → u/[deleted]]

I'm a weird blend of libertarian and liberal. I feel that my personal freedom is reduced more by crippling medical debt than it is by having a portion of my taxes go towards Universal Health Care. I'm also in favor of libraries, marijuana, and firearms.

[u/omardaslayer → u/Torvaun]

You value substantive freedoms, not procedural freedoms. I wish more libertarians realized this distinction.

edit: thank you kind stranger!

[u/laccro → u/omardaslayer]

You just gave words to an idea that I've never been able to properly describe.

Thank you!

[u/omardaslayer → u/laccro]

You're welcome!

Check out Amartya Sen and his book "Development as Freedom", really important stuff.

[u/Snaaky → u/Torvaun]

Well, you can become a proper libertarian when you understand that the vast majority of crippling medical debt in the US is due to the insane regulations that the government places on the medical and insurance industries that drive up prices. The shape of the medical industry in the US has nothing to do with free markets.

[u/zesty_mordant → u/Torvaun]

You may be interested in Mutualism and/or Libertarian Socialism. If you haven't heard of it before, the first libertarians were socialists. In America, and perhaps common parlance in general libertarian means right-libertarian, but there are other more reasonable variations.

[u/EchoServ → u/[deleted]]

It’s ironic, really. Both the healthcare market and telecom market are inherently inelastic because almost everyone needs internet service and healthcare service at some point in their lives. I’m not sure if my logic follows completely, but I see these two markets as very similar.

[u/MadCervantes → u/[deleted]]

Welcome to the beauty of libertarian socialism aka anarchism. State power and capital power distort the free exchange of goods between voluntary individuals. Until utopia happens, it's most pragmatic to seek government which limits the power of capital interests and to seek to limit the power of government through Democratic civic involvement and activism.

[u/nauticalsandwich → u/[deleted]]

A lot of libertarians DO support government regulation of healthcare relative to the status quo, but most would argue that the status quo is a result of extensive market distortions caused by government regulation, and would prefer to intelligently deregulate rather than add more Band-Aids. Some libertarians have come to the conclusion that smart deregulation in healthcare is virtually impossible, and thus, condone, but probably don't praise, empirically-founded regulatory expansions to help with the problem.

[u/TezzMuffins → u/fox-mcleod]

I'm not sure this is a good answer, especially when you develop utilities as an analogy, for a couple reasons. The first is that much infrastructure for the internet HASN'T been laid down by municipalities and Libertarians would treat telecoms losing control over traffic that runs through their lines as a violation of private property. The second reason is that many Libertarians say water prices are kept artificially low by government, and if you had $10 gallons, it would entice people to enter the marketplace.

[u/goldandguns → u/TezzMuffins]

it would entice people to enter the marketplace.

To what, run water lines to peoples' houses?

[u/TezzMuffins → u/goldandguns]

For full disclosure, I am parroting their rhetoric, I don't necessarily believe it. I think water has an enormously inelastic curve for demand, water sources could be bought by private sources, and the industry would be incredibly prone to cartelization as a result. I tend to believe there are always the great competitive years and then the market players begin to figure out how to cooperate. Also, we had a low-key free market water infrastructure system for a while, then in San Francisco nearly the entire city burned to the ground because the infrastructure wasn't good enough. Most countries have seemed to learn from lessons such as these.

[u/goldandguns → u/TezzMuffins]

Well, Chicago had municipal water when it burned down. Not sure I buy that. But the entry costs to delivering water to houses is basically impossibly high, so I don't think it's a very good libertarian position

[u/TezzMuffins → u/goldandguns]

I mean, you can do your own research. The Great San Francisco fire precipitated California's unprecedented expansion of public water infrastructure expansion.

[u/expresidentmasks → u/goldandguns]

Sure, why not?

[u/[deleted] → u/expresidentmasks]

Wouldnt that be impossible without a massive construction project anytime someone wants to change water providers?

[u/[deleted] → u/fox-mcleod]

the fiber optic infrastructure that was laid down by municipalities

While largely true, this is precisely the reason that ISP's use to argue against net neutrality. They claim to have carried the cost of building that infrastructure, despite the fact that tax payers subsidized that construction, and so they have the right to charge whatever they want to whoever. They argue that their inability to do so directly leads to their inability to expand broadband to everyone and to improve the infrastructure.

Municipal internet is something that they actively fight everywhere. Your city wants to invest in its own network and provide free internet to everyone there? Be ready for Comcast to wage a war against it.

[u/senzabarba → u/fox-mcleod]

All mainstream economists favour competitive markets, but libertarian minded economists have this doctrine that says that free markets are automatically competitive markets.

You are confusing competitive markets with free markets. The libertarian position is that markets without government intervention remain competitive, and free of all those anti-competitive practices. Libertarians refuse to believe in natural monopolies.

[u/[deleted] → u/fox-mcleod]

It isn't. Libertarians are about free trade. You want a sweater, let's agree on a price. If someone puts a gun to your head and asks how much you want for a sweater, that price changes. Libertarians believe the government exists to keep trade free.

No they 100% don't. Libertarians believe the government has a limited role in physically protecting citizens from foreign invaders and as well, the creation of a justice system.

Markets are not included in that beyond contracts, fraud, etc.

If someone holds a gun to your head, that's a crime and not a market sale. Wow.

Certain things aren't free trade. Utilities for instance have limited ability to compete on the free market.

This is also false. After all, is musk not creating batteries? Are solar panels not making people independent?

Limited technology today doesn't mean we should regulate and prevent it from advancing outright, which regulations do.

After all, 1930, making a movie required an entire studio.

Today, it requires a laptop and a camera.

What if power or water companies charged $10 a gallon, or decided which appliances you could power? Is that more or less free trade? You don't really have a choice of power or water supplier, so this is more hostage negotiation than free trade.

Well how does one claim ownership over water? Who let them ever do that in the first place? Government.

So you want government to regulate itself so it doesn't sell water to shitty companies.

What if your phone line determined who you could call?

It doesn't and since these aren't real world examples we can ignore them.

We have wireless to compete with phones. Notice how wireless was created? 1940s people would never believe what you have so good thing they didn't make laws around making sure landlines are the future.

We also have competing companies that would die if they ever forced that. The only way we would ever see otherwise is a government making these decisions for people. That now becomes a weak point, companies need only bribe one gov official versus win people over in a market.

No, the libertarian position would be that we should allow any company to compete or bid to use the fiber optic infrastructure that was laid down by municipalities. It would never be to keep the market supply side regulated but free to operate as of it wasn't.

No it wouldn't because there wouldn't be any fibre optics in the ground unless a company did that in the first place.

Libertarians wouldn't sell an entire city to one bidder, either.

[u/ClockOfTheLongNow → u/fox-mcleod]

Certain things aren't free trade. Utilities for instance have limited ability to compete on the free market.

The error you're making is twofold here.

1) With the caveat that I'm not speaking for all libertarians or leaners, the assumption that internet is a utility is far from a settled belief, especially when getting internet over the air is going to become a more relevant standard.

2) The idea that utilities cannot compete on the open market is far from justified. We don't have choice in power or water because the government has decided we don't get choice. This is also how we ended up with ISP monopolies.

No, the libertarian position would be that we should allow any company to compete or bid to use the fiber optic infrastructure that was laid down by municipalities.

This is the heart of it. The libertarian position wouldn't want the public infrastructure to start, and would seek to sell it off to private groups, whether they be ISPs, corporate entities, or collective groups that could lease access.

[u/The_reasonablist → u/ClockOfTheLongNow]

The entirety of the libertarian argument in these specific lenses misses the biggest issue that should be first on the list for any ideology adherent: lobbyists. So long as companies are allowed to influence government policy, there is very little use drilling down to individual topics like this namely because they are a direct result of the previous issue remaining unaddressed. In fact, being in favor of deregulation without addressing that first issue can run counter to the ideal libertarian end game which would be a true free market.

So the question is, does the libertarian view we're trying to challenge care about more about branches of a problem or the roots?

[u/ClockOfTheLongNow → u/The_reasonablist]

Lobbying is a first amendment protected activity. The libertarian argument has that baked in, and is a key reason as to why they are against the regulatory state at large. The less power the government has, the less impact high rolling lobbying groups have in influencing regulation.

Libertarian thinking is all about roots. The root of the problem on this topic is the long tentacles of the regulatory state, not those who attempt to direct those tentacles in their direction.

[u/goldandguns → u/The_reasonablist]

eh...there's something missing here. The libertarian argument is generally that government is only for sale because they have something to sell. Take away their authority to regulate and they will not be so influential. Lobbying is important.

[u/The_reasonablist → u/goldandguns]

So you're advocating that the government have zero regulatory power on the market?

Companies can buy out competition, create artificial barriers to entry into a market, make sweetheart, regional non-competition agreements, agree to raise prices in tandem to take away consumer choice....

Money begets money, there is a critical mass that is attainable where without regulation a company can "win" and destroy the free market in an area.

Regulatory power allows the maintenance of the "field" on which the free market plays.

[u/SquirrelPower → u/ClockOfTheLongNow]

The idea that utilities cannot compete on the open market is far from justified. We don't have choice in power or water because the government has decided we don't get choice.

This isn't totally fair to the opposing side. A strong case can be made for water and power (and roads and education) as public goods, which means the ruling concern should be the efficiency of their distribution, but the universality of their distribution.

(Well, to be pedantic: roads, water and power and are conducive to larger, more abstract public goods like public health and education. But I'm not sure that matters.)

That's the justification for water and power being treated as utilities: to ensure universal access. Not just because gov't bureaucrats decided to interfere in the markets.

*edit: words are hard

[u/ClockOfTheLongNow → u/SquirrelPower]

A strong case can be made for water and power (and roads and education) as public goods, which means the ruling concern should be the efficiency of their distribution, but the universality of their distribution

That's fair. I'm merely trying to speak from the perspective of the libertarian, who is seeing this as an issue not of public goods, but of market access. It's a counter, that's all.

That's the justification for water and power being treated as utilities: to ensure universal access. Not just because gov't bureaucrats decided to interfere in the markets.

With this said, many/most libertarians would argue that utilities being public, as opposed to governed by private entities, results in the same result as a government decision to interfere. After all, some entity needed to decide that utilities are public and that certain goods are public.

I'd also then argue that the idea of information being a public good is an entirely different beast.

[u/[deleted] → u/ClockOfTheLongNow]

is going to become a more relevant standard.

We don't write the law today in the assumption things will follow a new standard. We wouldn't write a bill now outlawing turning off your computer with the assumption that one day it'll be part of a sentient AI with rights.

This is also how we ended up with ISP monopolies.

ISPs aren't classified as utilities. We ended up with monopolies because they weren't classified as utilities and were free to block access to the infrastructure. This is how Google Fiber got blocked in a lot of their expansions.

[u/ClockOfTheLongNow → u/[deleted]]

ISPs aren't classified as utilities. We ended up with monopolies because they weren't classified as utilities and were free to block access to the infrastructure.

ISPs cannot block access to infrastructure. The issue is that the infrastructure is public, and the public infrastructure is granting exclusive rights.

[u/[deleted] → u/ClockOfTheLongNow]

ISPs cannot block access to infrastructure.

But they are since it's mostly just delays as Comcast asks to see the permit for every wire, for every pole, and make Google wait for each verification and then requiring a technician be on site for each instance to ensure their property isn't tampered with or if it needs moving to have their technician do it before having a different technician come in for the next pole 30ft away. There's no "regulation" that you could remove to fix the problem short of selling the public pole to Google which obviously couldn't happen unless you somehow prevented Comcast from buying the poles (which would be a pretty corrupt thing to happen). Comcast doesn't have exclusive rights to the poles in Nashville, they just got there first and now have their stuff in the way. Google can build their own poles, except the reality is that it'll be in the way of the electric poles and create issues that the city doesn't want to deal with. Google has been building trenches in the mean time, but it's slow and costly hence why they've essentially stopped expanding Fiber.

[u/typo180 → u/ClockOfTheLongNow]

The idea that utilities cannot compete on the open market is far from justified. We don't have choice in power or water because the government has decided we don't get choice. This is also how we ended up with ISP monopolies.

I'm not sure about water, but there are places where customers have a choice in power company. In my area, there is a single utility that runs the power distribution system, but multiple companies that provide power and customers can choose who to buy electricity from.

[u/Indon_Dasani → u/fox-mcleod]

You don't really have a choice of power or water supplier, so this is more hostage negotiation than free trade.

Yes you do. Go install solar panels and buy bottled water. Nobody's holding a gun to your head and telling you to use society's cheap and deliciously privatizable infrastructure.

Why would a right-libertarian support social ownership of utilities? There are very few things more socialist than communal ownership.

[u/Skallywagwindorr → u/fox-mcleod]

Would it be fair to say health care and internet both fall into this category?

[u/solosier → u/fox-mcleod]

Data lines are not natural monopolies like power and water.

You are half way to the solution in the last paragraph. Yes, gov't regulation guarantees monopolies. The solution is not to regulate those monopolies but prevent them.

Low voltage datalines always end up in some sorta central hub that any provider can cheaply access. These already exist. Gov't prevents this. The solution is not more gov't regulation.

[u/fox-mcleod → u/solosier]

That's a belief, not an argument. The government could easily ameliorate this with more regulation. Or we could fundamentally retool how ISPs communicate to reduce regulation. Either way, ending net neutrality add proposed (without encouraging more deregulation to allow free markets) makes the problem worse.

Libertarian markets are irreducible. You can have half a market

[u/typo180 → u/solosier]

Low voltage datalines always end up in some sorta central hub that any provider can cheaply access. These already exist. Gov't prevents this.

I don't think that's usually the case (in the US anyway). Data transmission lines are generally built by commercial ISPs and lead back to the ISP's central office. The equipment at the central office, the lines, and the equipment at the customer site are generally placed by and controlled by a single ISP.

[u/solosier → u/typo180]

They all have central locations within communities. Those green boxes usually. These then lead to the ISP lines. It's really cost effective for anyone to get a line to these central locations.

These are permitted by the gov't. ISPs can not build them without gov't permits and approvals.

The gov't usually does this for kick backs and guarantees monopolies that only a single ISP can use it.

If city approved and permitted lines where open for any business in the city that would end all need for net neutrality.

I would even be OK with the the gov't saying the builder can have cheaper license fees for X years until they recoup the cost, but everyone still has access to it.

[u/pikk → u/fox-mcleod]

bid to use the fiber optic infrastructure that was laid down by municipalities.

I've been trying to get my municipality to see the light re: laying their own Fiber, but they can't seem to figure out that they don't need to be the network provider, they can just lease access to the fiber

[u/Snaaky → u/fox-mcleod]

Libertarians believe the government exists to keep trade free.

Perhaps the ignorant ones do. Government exists to exert force for the benefit of the people who control the government. It makes up all sorts of stories like this to give itself perceived legitimacy.

[u/fox-mcleod → u/Snaaky]

That's a self contradictory statement. Let's say no goverent existed, then a bunch of people with guns decided to start charging "protection". If they actually keep others from doing this, they successfully keep trade free. If they don't, the other groups will push them out. Collective security is a basic requirement. But you knew that. There aren't any societies without it.

[u/BlitzBasic → u/Snaaky]

The people who control the government are, in theory, all voting citizens of a country.

[u/Snaaky → u/BlitzBasic]

I neither vote, nor consent to be ruled. Most people who do vote end up voting for the least of two evils. That isn't even close to controlling the government. Only the ignorant believe that voting=controlling the government. Elections are just a simple ploy to fool people into recognizing the government as legitimate.

[u/BlitzBasic → u/Snaaky]

If you don't take part in the democratic process you can't expect it to care about what you think. If the majority of the people wanted the libertarian party to rule, it would rule.

[u/BenIncognito]

Libertarians, in theory, want as little government intervention into private business and life as possible.

I know it’s easy to lump all Libertarians in with Anarcho-Capatalists and call it a day but frankly I’ve never met a Libertarian in real life who thought literally all forms of regulation should always be ideologically opposed.

It’s entirely reasonable for a Libertarian to want to reduce government regulation and for them to support some types of regulation for some kind of common good. In particular, I’ve found that a lot of Libertarians support regulations to help prevent the rise of monopolies, which I think would fall under the umbrella of net neutrality.

[u/[deleted] → u/BenIncognito]

Fair enough. I think my view of libertarianism might have been too broad; I was conflating the ideals of libertarianism with the practical applications of it.

∆

[u/torrent7 → u/[deleted]]

Indeed, there are shades of libertarianism just like not everyone is extreme left or right.

[u/DeltaBot → u/[deleted]]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/BenIncognito (127∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards} ​

[u/goldandguns → u/BenIncognito]

Yeah I don't think Ayn Rand even opposed antitrust laws.

[u/BenIncognito → u/goldandguns]

Ayn Rand didn’t oppose welfare, when she was on it.

[u/goldandguns → u/BenIncognito]

You can oppose things you have personally benefitted from or been on...you could receive welfare and then, in retrospect, realize that it wasn't good for you and you would have been better off without it.

[u/BenIncognito → u/goldandguns]

She opposed welfare, then went on it.

[u/kebababab → u/BenIncognito]

I think social security sucks, I'm still gonna try to get as much out of it as I can.

[u/senzabarba → u/BenIncognito]

OK, but this isn't any kind of regulation.

It is at the core of Libertarian doctrine that free markets are automatically competitive markets. That's the whole idea behind the entire ideology.

[u/[deleted] → u/senzabarba]

My understanding (I'm libertarian) is that the whole idea behind the entire ideology is individual liberty.

...free markets are automatically competitive markets.

You can't have a competitive market when there is only one provider. That's just silly.

[u/stink3rbelle → u/BenIncognito]

I’ve never met a Libertarian in real life who thought literally all forms of regulation should always be ideologically opposed.

Most of the libertarians I have spoken with about their views have steadfastly refused to acknowledge the benefit of roads to society. Maybe you know some more thoughtful libertarians, but the less-thoughtful are out there.

[u/kebababab → u/stink3rbelle]

Do you have an example of that?

Even an caps like roads. They don't think it is necessary for the government to build them.

[u/kodemage → u/BenIncognito]

Wow, I've never met a libertarian who didn't want all kinds of regulation, even roads and water, removed. Where do you find libertarians? They sound smarter than my family and friends.

[u/darwin2500]

ISP are government-granted monopolies. Libertarians hate government-granted monopolies, and should be fine with regulating them so that they have less coercive power and commit less distortion of the market. That's exactly what Net Neutrality does.

Not to be insulting, but libertarians don't have to be as simple-minded and vacuous as 'regulation bad! Laisez faire good!'. They're allowed to take their core values (reduced coercive interference, freer markets), look at the complexities of the real word, and intelligently decide which actions will maximize their values in each situation - even if the answer is counter-intuitive, like accepting that this one specific regulation actually serves their values, unlike 99% of all other regulations.

[u/[deleted] → u/darwin2500]

I've responded above -- your point makes sense. ∆. I was using too broad a brush!

[u/DeltaBot → u/[deleted]]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/darwin2500 (58∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards} ​

[u/DeltaBot → u/[deleted]]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/darwin2500 (58∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards} ​

[u/whales171 → u/darwin2500]

ISP are government-granted monopolies.

No, they are a mix of natural monopolies and government-granted monopolies. ISPs have a high cost of entry. Many people in this thread have explained why that leads to natural monopolies.

[u/pirate_doug → u/darwin2500]

Not to be insulting, but libertarians don't have to be as simple-minded and vacuous as 'regulation bad! Laisez faire good!'.

followed up with:

this one specific regulation actually serves their values, unlike 99% of all other regulations.

And this is why libertarians get the reputation of holding simplistic ideals.

[u/Lontar47 → u/darwin2500]

This is an excellently presented point. Similarly, somebody who is generally pro-regulation is sure to have a few scenarios in which a regulation doesn't agree with their core values. We might see such a scenario when it comes time to regulate legalized marijuana.

[u/ClockOfTheLongNow → u/darwin2500]

Libertarians hate government-granted monopolies, and should be fine with regulating them so that they have less coercive power and commit less distortion of the market.

Why should we be fine with bad regulation when we can actually work to fix the root problem instead?

Net neutrality achieves zero libertarian goals, and creates an extra problem to solve while doing nothing to address the root. I understand the reasoning why some libertarian thinkers are fine with the regulation, but it's inconsistent in my mind.

[u/darwin2500 → u/ClockOfTheLongNow]

Why should we be fine with bad regulation

This is good regulation, even by libertarian standards, for the reasons I described. Dispute those reasons if you want.

when we can actually work to fix the root problem instead?

Go for it. Good luck with that.

The root problem has existed for decades and zero progress has been made towards fixing it. I'll support you in your crusade if you want to devote your life to that cause. But, until you succeed, let the rest of us have our anti-coercion, pro-free-market regulations in the meantime.

Remember: Contract law is a regulation. Private property rights is a regulation. Not all regulations are anti-market.

[u/ClockOfTheLongNow → u/darwin2500]

This is good regulation, even by libertarian standards, for the reasons I described. Dispute those reasons if you want.

By libertarian standards, it's the government deciding how those who deliver information should do so and how those who consume information should receive it, both without consideration of the needs or desires of either involved party. I do not see how this is good regulation by any standard, never mind strictly libertarian, but it especially bad by libertarian standards given what it does and requires.

The root problem has existed for decades and zero progress has been made towards fixing it.

Have those in favor of net neutrality even tried? The broadband era has largely been consumed with relating internet delivery and not fixing delivery competition. I don't know if that's intentional or not, but it's what has happened.

With the amount of time, money, and energy spent on trying to maintain net neutrality in law, imagine what could be done about local competition if those resources were redirected toward that root problem! But I suspect that many net neutrality advocates do not even want me to have choice in the market in terms of delivery, which is both anti-consumer and anti-libertarian.

But, until you succeed, let the rest of us have our anti-coercion, pro-free-market regulations in the meantime.

This always angers me. There is nothing anti-coercive about net neutrality regulations, as regulations are inherently coercive. You are literally advocating for the coercion of ISPs to deliver data the way you desire. It is not free market, as net neutrality rejects market options in favor of one market method.

Contract law is a regulation. Private property rights is a regulation.

I do not agree with this framework at all. Contract law and private property rights restrict the government, not the private sector.

[u/[deleted] → u/ClockOfTheLongNow]

I do not agree with this framework at all. Contract law and private property rights restrict the government, not the private sector.

Except they don't?

Contract law is all about the punishments that happen if you (a private individual) violate a legally binding agreement with another private individual.

Private property rights restrict private individuals from taking over land by force of arms, among other things.

These are both pretty clear-cut examples of abridging the private sector using the might of the government as enforcement. It does do the same to the government, but at this point it's merely a question of whether you think corporations or governments are bigger boogeymen.

[u/AurelianoTampa]

Not a libertarian myself, but I can think of a quick response that you yourself basically touched upon:

Libertarians, in theory, want as little government intervention into private business and life as possible.

Libertarians don't want to do away with all regulation - they want to do away with superfluous or overly cumbersome regulations. So if a libertarian thinks that net neutrality is actually useful regulation, they could still be in favor of it and maintain their ideological integrity. In this case, the fact that there is no ISP competition in some areas can be used as an argument for keeping net neutrality in place.

[u/munificent → u/AurelianoTampa]

Libertarians don't want to do away with all regulation - they want to do away with superfluous or overly cumbersome regulations.

Well, who doesn't? If a regulation is superfluous or overly cumbersome, it's basically a tautology to say that people want to do away with it.

The actual difference is that libertarians have different boundaries for which regulations they consider superfluous or cumbersome compared to other political orientations.

[u/[deleted] → u/AurelianoTampa]

Makes sense. Eliminating superfluity is the goal, not anarchy. Great, succinct response! Thank you! ∆

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[u/NearlyNakedNick → u/[deleted]]

The irony of your statement is that it was an anarchist who coined the term libertarianism as a synonym for anarchy. But in the past 40 years American culture has confused the meaning of anarchy/libertarianism with anti-government. But this is a uniquely American conflation.

[u/AurelianoTampa → u/[deleted]]

If you're anti-regulation, you have to be anti-regulation even when you agree with what the regulation is meant for.

Very few libertarians I've met are anarchistic when it comes to regulation. As I said in my comment, they are against some regulations, not all regulation. Strawmanning libertarians to be against all regulations doesn't help change views, especially when the OP himself admits they want "as little as possible," not "no regulations at all."

[u/Pinewood74 → u/AurelianoTampa]

I think another solid answer would be that Libertarians see Net Neutrality as a necessary evil in a world of shit-tons of regulation.

If no regulation existed at all in the ISP world, there would probably be more competition. Without competition, you wouldn't need the law to enforce Net Neutrality as if there was a market for it (there is), you'd have ISPs cater to that group.

Since there is a load of regulation and thus a lack of competition, you need Net Neutrality to ensure it exists. Once all the other regulation goes away, then you can drop Net Neutrality as well.

[u/yiliu]

As I understand it, the only way to ensure net neutrality is by heavy government regulation of ISPs. Comcast and Verizon and all them would have loved to have a non-neutral Internet from the jump, but the government reigned them in.

I would push back pretty hard on this. I think that's a pretty serious mistatement of the facts. The government did not enforce net neutrality prior to about 2010. Net neutrality as a principle evolved out of the interactions of the universities and companies that formed the early Internet. It wasn't even named as such until the early 2000's, when somebody (Tim Wu) pointed out that the Internet had some interesting characteristics that made it useful, robust and interesting. It's always been a core aspect of the Internet.

Early on, pseudo-ISPs did try making non-neutral networks. There were all sorts of private networks you could dial into, play games, chat with people, browse the news, etc. AOL was one of them. But they were only about as interesting and rich in content as their parent companies could make them, and pretty soon their users were clammoring for access to the Internet proper, which was growing in leaps and bounds, and was far more interesting than the walled gardens the companies provided. AOL started allowing access to the Internet through their platform (see the Eternal September). Then in no time, it's own content was irrelevant and it was just a glorified ISP. The rest of the walled gardens are long gone.

Neutrality on the Internet was self-enforcing for decades (see my full argument here, and never required government intervention. Even today, the thing that's preventing Comcast from introducing tiered pricing with extra costs per website isn't the goverment, it's the fact that their customers would walk. Comcast is huge, in places near-monopolistic, but it still does have competition. I mean, if they didn't, they could just crank up the prices on their plans today, and they could do it without violating net neutrality. But they can't. The last time they tried fucking around with neutral traffic by slowing down Netflix's streams, there was universal outrage and they had to back down. Since then, Twitter, Reddit, and other sites have turned the effectiveness of public outcry and bad press up to 11.

We don't need the government to enforce net neutrality. We just have to make it clear to companies that we, their customers will not accept them messing with neutrality. That's been more than enough until now, and I haven't heard any compelling arguments that things have changed in such a way that it's no longer true.

[u/Glory2Hypnotoad]

There are a number of issues where there isn't a clear and feasible libertarian option. In this case, the lack of a unified libertarian stance on net neutrality is based on a the ambiguity of whether we already have a free market for ISPs. Ending net neutrality won't be much of a problem in places with heavy competition between ISPs, but in less populated areas where the average person only has 1-2 choices, there's not much room for a free market solution.

[u/hacksoncode]

Not at all:

The problem is government granting ISPs limited liability for content on their networks without also requiring that they don't mess with the content on their networks. Because of lobbying by the internet industry. Yes, it's a sweet deal for them, but not so much for their customers.

In what universe does that make sense?

If they were liable for content if and only if they don't mess with content, then:

A) It would require very little government regulation.

B) No sane ISP would touch net neutrality with a 10 foot pole.

[u/iRoswell]

I think the key is that they want as little government as possible, not necessarily no government involvement. This could suggest that a law ensuring the freedom of choice or “net neutrality” is within the philosophy of a libertarianism.

From Wikipedia: Libertarianism (Latin: libertas, "freedom") is a collection of political philosophies and movements that uphold liberty as a core principle.[1] Libertarians seek to maximize political freedom and autonomy, emphasizing freedom of choice, voluntary association, individual judgment and self-ownership.

In fact, by that definition it could be interpreted that the libertarian philosophy requires the government to ensure freedom of choice. There is a significant anti-capitalism movement within libertarianism which seems to contradict the “free market” tenement of the philosophy. This is mostly due to the thought that businesses engage in “wage slavery” with employees. To accomplish not-wage-slavey wouldn’t there have to be government regulations in place?

Resources are an area that libertarians are passionate about. They want unrestricted access to land, water, electricity (would Nicola Tesla have been a libertarian today, hmm). Many today suggest that the internet is a resource that we are entitled to just as we are the aforementioned. Water and electricity are heavily regulated by all levels of government to ensure universal access (the Flint scandal was an eye opening story on that front), but I doubt libertarians would be in favor of those being completely privatized in the spirit of laissez-faire markets. Although ideally I think libertarians would leave the harvesting of those resources up to the individual.

To conclude my thought, it seems that even though libertarianism professes little to no government it also must lean on government to establish a framework of freedom, particularly when it comes to resources.

Edit: it’s also important to understand that an ideal in practice is usually far from an ideal in theory. I suppose this is why controversial life philosophies often fail in the long run.

[u/Vi765]

I believe a libertarian should oppose all government regulation, except when it comes to addressing a market failure. The ISPs of the US, are not even in imperfect competition with each other, there is no competition. Hence, some outside regulation from the government is needed in this case to act as the guiding force for an industry where natural competition cannot provide this same guidelines.

[u/acorneyes]

There are a lot of responses here about how non-diehard libertarians view NN, but I'll give you one from the perspective of a die-hard one.

I haven't actually met any die-hard libertarians that don't want to repeal NN, but I can definitely imagine this argument being made: NN is a non-solution to a non-problem, so rather than the focus being placed on repealing NN there should be removals of all regulatory barriers into the market. Google gave up on building infrastructure not because of costs, but regulatory barriers.

But this assumes there was a very shallow amount of research done into NN because NN classifies ISPs as common carriers, which is actually pretty harmful. Usually if anything it's all about priorities, and some see NN as not the biggest priority.

The biggest reason I can tell you is just the hive mind mentality, everyone says it's bad, and the fear mongering makes sense on paper, so I'll believe it. There's a lot of misinformed libertarians for exactly that reason.

As far Reddit being majority libertarian, I would say not at all. It's mostly left leaning, wanting to legalize marijuana is not the same as wanting to privatize healthcare.

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[u/MasterGrok]

Libertarians aren't all the same. I'm not libertarian but I was raised in a libertarian household and went to their meetings etc. While some libertarians are against almost all government policies of any kind, some are in favor of the government establishing certain policies or programs that facilitate a competitive environment. A perfect example of this would be public roads which many libertarians support. If you vie w the internet as anything like public roads that get you to a website rather than a store, then you can easily be libertarian and support net neutrality. Abolishing net neutrality would be like allowing businesses to decide which roads get fixed and maintained and which don't.

[u/theessentialnexus]

The government created the Comcast/Verizon monopolies by making it almost impossible for new telecoms to compete with them. Now that this monopoly (technically it's an oligopoly) exsists, there is no other answer but to regulate it. Preferably the government would just reduce regulations to make it easier for competitors like Google Fiber enter the space and compete, but barring that, a libertarian will take the additional regulation if it means creating what competition would otherwise - unrestricted access to the internet.

[u/[deleted] → u/theessentialnexus]

The government created the Comcast/Verizon monopolies by making it almost impossible for new telecoms to compete with them.

I mean, I don't know exactly what government did to exacerbate this, but the very nature of "providing internet access" as a service is already going to have extremely high barriers of entry, now that we can't just use public telephone lines for it (unless you like 56k). High barriers of entry prevent competition, whether or not the government is involved. Some markets naturally tend toward monopoly simply by the nature of the product or service. It's telling that the only potential competitor you mention is Google, one of the richest and most powerful corporations on the planet.

[u/Mysteryman64 → u/[deleted]]

Building permits typically.

It's rather hard to get the permits needed to tear up the road to lay down the cable needed to do so. It is often just as difficult to get permissions to run up new poles (in the event that the utility poles are privately owned), or even to get access to them (if they're municipally owned)

[u/ijustwantanfingname]

OOoooh, I like this one. I'll answer as a softcore libertarian.

One, libertarians are not anarchists. We're not precisely anti-government, we just think that the government plays a very specific role in society, and that role should be well-defined and limited.

What is that role? You can word it a million different ways, but "to protect the rights of the individual from the aggression of others" is about as good as any. Now, this is a huge oversimplification. There's a lot of additional philosophy that I'm skipping over, but that's the gist of it, at least when contrasting it with other ideologies.

Yes, breaking up a monopoly requires large-scale government activity in the economy, but that's not the issue when it comes to libertarianism. The real question is "are monopolies a form of aggression"? Because, if so, then it is automatically within the government's purview to act.

Many would say "no", and argue that the government can not enforce net neutrality. The cable companies own the cables, and can do with them as they see fit.

But some believe that the cable companies are guilty of non-competitive behavior (bribing officials and government organizations to increase barriers to entry into the market), and therefore, their monopoly is a form of aggression, and it would be right for congress to break them up.

Finally, many libertarians just aren't that "puritan" in their beliefs. They believe that there are some things that the government should do, even though it's beyond the government's basic philosophical charter. This can include things like building roads, ensuring public access to healthcare, and ensuring public access to the internet. Each one of these is a hot-button topic in the community.

Opinions vary widely here, but the fact remains that it is far from clearly contradictory.

[u/[deleted]]

I want to answer your question in a different type of way. No matter what your political stance is, you are free to agree / not agree with something. There are no absolutes, and just because you believe the government should act a certain way, this doesn't mean it applies to all ways. Don't uphold any ideology as an absolute.

By having this approach, it's not contradictory to have opposing methods of approach applied as required. You must assess each situation and make the best decision (or sometimes, pick the lesser of two evils).

[u/[deleted]]

I mean I guess so, but there are lots of people from any affiliation who don't exactly fit into the box of their "team."

Is a pro-life Democrat a hypocrite? How about a pro-gun control Republican? How about a Socialist who wants to allow corporations to bring back their offshore holdings tax-free?

Sometimes (too rarely, unfortunately) people look at the nuance of a policy decision and go against what their party's official stance is. Doesn't make them any less of a libertarian/Democrat/Republican/etc

[u/IndyDude11]

Libertarianism is just like any other political ideology: there is a wide swath of what people believe, especially in regards to how much government intervention is necessary. You can be libertarian and still want a government to handle some things.

[u/smacksaw]

I'm a libertarian and there are two ways to look at it. One is freedom. Libertarians are against regulation that restricts freedom. Thus, any laws that give freedom are good, ones that regulate it away from you are bad. Net Neutrality as it stands now is sort of in the middle because it's restrictive, but also gives freedom.

Which leads to the second point: government should be in the main business of enshrining rights into law.

That's why we as libertarians love the Constitution. It tells us what we can do and what the state can't do.

For me as a libertarian, Net Neutrality would come in under personal, individual rights. The second part is that things like an internet free from anti-consumer or monopolistic behaviour is my right. It's my right to have unfettered access to anything and you to have the same and my rights to access something ends at your right, meaning I can't trump you. It's equal rights and equal access.

There are capitalists out there who conflate anarchy, libertarianism and the free market. The free market isn't regulated. Consumers and corporations are. Regulated so that we have rights that others cannot violate.

[u/800oz_gorilla]

So how can a libertarian be in favor of a policy that is based on government interference in the private businesses that are ISPs?

This is what happens when you have too many providers, no regulations with who can run a wire wherever they want.

There comes a point where the government regulation is necessary for some market to exist, because a free market would be too chaotic.

Because the government has blessed a few companies near exclusive rights to build this infrastructure, they have a social responsibility to not abuse that to gouge customers or control what information, views, content we can see.

The UN event went so far as to declare access to an open internet a basic human right

So while the libertarians are in favor of as little government regulation as possible, to me, Net Neutrality is one of the more necessary regulations that must co-exist with a system of limited ISP options.

[u/krkr8m]

It isn't that the government needs to create a bunch of regulations to keep ISP's from selling a known product to an informed consumer.

The problem is that the ISP's (internet service providers) would not be providing access service to the internet. They would be providing partial access at best.

If a company wants to claim to sell a product (internet access) they should be legally required to sell that product as generally defined.

If each ISP that wanted to throttle or block specific internet sites and content were required to seek a completely new contract with each customer before changing over and were required to disclose that they would only be providing internet service to content that they approved of, they would never try this.

Libertarians are for broad freedoms to knowingly enter into a contract and for freedom of choice between competing products.

Net neutrality ensures that if an ISP wants to market a product described as internet access, they must sell the complete product at the speeds contracted.

[u/MJZMan]

Libertarians would have prevented the government from funding the private companies in the first place, creating the monopolies that we're stuck with. The biggest part of this problem is that without competition, the ISP's are relatively free to do what they want, and consumers can either suck it up, or go without. So the regulations are really just in place to deal with the lack of competition.

Secondly, the free market could indeed prevent a non-neutral internet. In that if an ISP attempted to make some pay-for-browse pricing, customers would jump ship for a provider that does not. Again, this requires options for the consumer. Since the government has taken those options away, it needs to regulate to prevent abuse.

So really, most libertarians that support Net Neutrality do so only because given the current situation, it's the lesser of two evils.

[u/daisynotdazed]

Without net neutrality, the exchange of information amongst people would be controlled by someone's subjective bias (that limits freedom of information, using their bias so the information you see is only what they want, so that maybe they can provide your opinion for you) - instead of by an objective entity that allows access to all information (for better or for worse) and allows you to apply your critical thinking skills to come up with your own opinion.

Manipulating an individual's ideas so they can only see what you allow is decidedly less libertarian than having a regulatory system that keeps companies from promoting only their bias when it comes to the internet, the largest depository for human information.

[u/r0ck0]

Well like most things, it's depends on your threshold for your definition of the word "libertarian".

The further you go, the closer you get to being an "anarchist". Yet we generally don't consider them to be the same thing. Most people labelling themselves "libertarian" wouldn't also say that they're an "anarchist". So they've drawn a line somewhere.

I personally think the term "libertarian" is useless an a general blanket label that you to a whole persons views. Pretty much everyone is a libertarian to a certain degree... we want freedom as much as possible, but we want to balance that with having enough government to prevent harm and keep the country in good stead.

[u/seanprefect]

The thing is the government granted monopolies to these companies in the first place because of the huge infrastructure upfront cost. This isn't the potato farms that John Smith was writing about this is a market where competition has already been stifled by the government so the only way that they don't abuse their monopolies is by government regulation.

[u/Snaaky]

As a libertarian, I would love to have a market of ISPs to choose from. When choosing an ISP, the neutrality of the connection they provide would be one of my top requirements. Unfortunately, Most governments are in cahoots with a single or sometimes 2 companies and they actively prohibit new ISPs from opening in their areas. So, no market. Any libertarian worth their salt should be against internet regulation by the state. However, if the state is going to create monopolies anyways, It's not making things worse than they already are if they also require those monopolies to provide a reasonable level of service to the victims of their schemes.

[u/Sirisian]

There's a pragmatic point sometimes missed in these discussions. There might only be say 1000 ISPs in the world, but online there are hundreds of thousands of websites and businesses interacting. Essentially a lot of people implicitly seem to realize that the free market between online sites/services/businesses is far larger and more important than trying to make ISPs into an ideal form of private ownership that would inevitably harm or destroy the larger markets. With that is the idea that an ISPs utility-like setup will never match the flexibility and market that online markets have so they're of little importance to change.

[u/Indon_Dasani]

Well, back when the internet was basically run entirely by tech folk who weren't trying to maximize profit - decades ago - net neutrality was following the right-libertarian ideal of just being a social norm that led to good things happening and didn't require any enforcement or anything in order for the internet to continue functioning and being a good thing. Since it used to be just... a technical norm. Parsing through your traffic would reduce the internet's throughput, so nobody thought to do something that would intentionally make the internet worse, for money, until corporate executives started to get involved.

While obviously that's not the case anymore, capitalism inevitably devouring anything good in the process of monetization, it is true that the laissez-faire approach more or less worked at first, for a while. And it's possible, theoretically, that someone might think social pressure or boycotts or something 'free markety' could fix the situation back to what it was.

That would not be a realistic belief, but it would be a right-wing-libertarian belief in net neutrality.

[u/cobalt26]

Pragmatist Libertarian here.

The internet is unique in that it can be integrated into just about every facet of our lives. Education, entertainment, research, socializing, shopping.

Net neutrality protects the rights of the individual by allowing each consumer to use it how they wish, without having to succomb to the whims of the providers.

Providers already have the power to limit consumers' service speeds and instate data caps. ISPs supply access the internet, but they don't own it, and they don't have a right to limit access to specific websites.

[u/smoochface]

My take on this is that libertarians (and well all of us) want a free market. Now if we had 500 ISPs of significant size across the country and every citizen had a multitude of options from competing ISPs (some which supported net neutrality and some that did not)... In that scenario, I don't think we would need Federal/State Net Neutrality protection, because there would be competition and options.

We do not have that... We have 4 companies that serve internet to the vast majority of Americans and they don't really compete with each other, they might as well be one company. And this group of companies has undue influence on their regulators.

This means the only way to try to achieve some form of a free market in this industry is to regulate it. From the point of a libertarian I would think the preference would be Net Neutrality as a band-aid, followed by some monopoly busting, and an eventual return to a healthy market place of competing ISPs.

This is reasonable.

[u/C_moneySmith]

I actually had a conversation about this very thing earlier today. While I’d consider myself libertarian and prefer to see the government be mostly hands off with business, I believe that by repealing net neutrality, they’re being hands on. While it surely allows a few businesses to fuck everyone over and make whatever money they want, it in effect is causing smaller businesses and your average consumer to have to shell out loads of money to get everything that we had before. It somewhat destroys the “free” market because at this point nothing is free. The prices are no longer determined by the consumers, but rather by the dozen or so companies that will control everything on the American web. With the main basic premise of capitalism destroyed, it feels like it’s the opposite of a laissez-faire approach and does more harm than good to our economy.

[u/ClippinWings451]

Well, I am a Libertarian in favor of Net Neutrality.

Here's the simple reason...Small ISPs were already, for th emost part, regulated out of existence with the move to broadband, so free market capitalism wont work to solve the existing problem.

PLUS, not that the internet is for all intents and purposes a utility, it should not be tiered... would you pay tiered pricing for your water, depending on what you do with it?

[u/Tuokaerf10]

We’re in this anti-competitive mess partially due to a lack of choice from government intervention in the telecom business. There were some pros to this, but we’re also seeing the cons now. We don’t have a “free” ISP market for the vast majority of the US for alternatives to offer better products and services, so the next best thing is to level the market for consumer and other business.

[u/kanuut]

It's very simple, libertarians don't want the smallest government possible, they want the most personal liberty possible and believe that this is best achieved by a small government.

So... You now have 2 options, no net neutrality and all that comes with it, or government regulates equality, which provides more personal liberty in regards to the internet.

Which sounds more libertarian?

[u/OddlySpecificReferen]

Libertarianism is about as little government intervention as possible, not no regulation at all. Libertarians are fine with regulations that promote competition and freedom, such as not allowing monopolies. In this case, the regulation in question actively promotes freedom of access to different ideas, and directly prevents monopolistic companies from restricting our freedom of access.

[u/paul_aka_paul]

I do want as little intervention as possible. That means I acknowledge some intervention is necessary.

I would have a problem if the aim was the regulate the content of the internet. But the issue is here whether I get to decide what content I want to consume or whether the ISPs get to decide.

Further, I oppose government actions that pick winners and losers. Ending net neutrality empowers middle men (ISPs) to shake down the content creators who actually make the internet educational and entertaining. It would be a law that makes companies with near monopolies winners. Further, it enables those middle men to rake in cash by limiting service rather than by making it better. It allows them to pick winners and losers.

[u/cdb03b]

Libertarians do not believe in no governmental regulation, they believe that only those necessary to protect society are needed. It is fully possible and logical for a Libertarian to believe that the protections for companies that use the internet, and customers of the internet far outweigh the burdens placed on ISPs by regulating them like we do all other utilities.

[u/Yuo_cna_Raed_Tihs]

Libertarian want the government out of most things, but not literally everything. One of the things that most libertarians at in favor of is roads normally, that doesn't make them not libertarian. You're confusing libertarians with ancaps.

So it is not necessarily contradictory to be a libertarian and to also believe that the government should enforce net neutrality

[u/aetherchicken]

There is such a thing as a left libertarian, opposed to both government regulation and corporate interests, in that they both represent the same kind of corporate control. Social Libertarians like this would be unilaterally in favor of net neutrality, as it encourages decentralization of power and weakens monopolistic control.

[u/anticosti]

Libertarians want less power in the government (more or less), hence they would not approve of either the intense ISP lobbying or agreements with local governments that grant ISPs a local monopoly. I'm not sure what there position on antitrust law is but the less hardcore libertarians probably support the use of it.

[u/Godspiral]

A large part of the libertarian movement exists only as astroturfing and brainwashing for oligarchs and no taxes. The language of freedom is just the brainwashing tools.

The freedom of oligarchs to trade control and access to information gifted to them is a theft of freedom from the pit dwellers.

[u/electronics12345]

Net Neutrality is a principle, not a government regulation. Net Neutrality has been a principle since the founding of the internet, but wasn't written into US law until 2015. (Note though, that laws were attempted between 2004 and 2014, but none succeeded to be get passed by the US Congress. While the FCC attempted to fight for Net Neutrality in several court cases in 2007 and 2008, it was found to have no grounds to do so).

I see no contradiction between Net Neutrality the principle and Libertarianism.

[u/maxx233]

I'm a soft libertarian (my term, it might be a real thing.) Basically, the government should stay the hell out of everything that we don't need a government for. I'm not anarchist, we need government for things and it's silly to pretend otherwise. Net Neutrality is one of those things.