Fix the FCC? No, ABOLISH the FCC!
by Vince?Daliessio
(PHOTO:?The approximate level of internet access that?proponents Of "Net Neutrality" want everyone to have)
I'm sick of these "Net Neutrality" people who, while shilling for Google, pretend to be concerned about "competition", and worry about how "most people don't have a choice" for internet service, as a wedge to get people to support even more onerous and destructive regulation of communications by the hapless FCC than exists now.
This is just a?baldfaced lie, and I'll prove it. Example A;
In my town, I have at least?4 choices for internet service, even though I could easily have dozens,(which I'll get to);
Comcast
Verizon DSL
Modem over POTS (sure, it isn't optimal, but it's a choice, actually several, at several price points)
Internet over Wireless
Any of these choices could fill, more or less, my need for internet access. But then, the NN crowd begins to qualify; "HIGH-SPEED internet access" OK, fair enough, my list now is;
Comcast
Verizon DSL
Internet over Wireless
THEN they qualify some more; the (nonexistent) lack of competition makes internet access more costly?for Americans than for people in other (poorer) countries, prompting me to ask;?how do you fix that by?turning the internet into the Bell System??
And we might add that both the cost theory and labor theory of value have lost to?Mises' subjective value theorem, i.e., in a free market people pay what a good or service is worth to them, not what third-party critics think it should be, so please don't bring that smelly old argument in here, Komrade.
Alright, their economic arguments don't hold water. Let's consider Example #2.?A couple of the LibertyGuys live in an area of Delaware County PA that is served by;
Comcast
Verizon DSL
Verizon FIOS
This mix will also be available in more and more areas, including my own, as it is rolled out.
OK, so the lack of competition argument doesn't hold water either. Comcast and Verizon are beating each other's brains in, albeit slowly, since the Federally-regulated Verizon has been trailing the state-regulated Comcast into the high-speed internet markets. A little more competition would be good, but at the price of more regulation and a huge bureaucracy?
But competition would be even more fierce, and internet services rolled out even faster if the FCC simply turned off the lights and went home (the state regulators too). Accompanied by a certain amount of monopoly-unwinding (which could be negotiated), complete deregulation is the only thing that will save the internet from calcifying into an unfree, cartellized mess of little good to anybody.
I will bet a dollar that, immediately upon real, total deregulation, enterprising folks will erect inexpensive WiFi networks to compete with Comcast and Verizon for subscribers in a given locality. The technology is there, it's cheap, and it works?(and I'm not talking about Philadelphia's corrupt, bowdlerized "free" $10 $15 $20 $? WiFi system that will never work as advertized, period).
I know this because last year I built an up-to-400-duplex-connection, 14 Mbps 802.11a wireless network that covers a 4 square mile area and cost around $10K, and I am a complete, blithering?wireless idiot. Millions of people would be able to do better for less, pushing the cost way down to where it is profitable even at a competitive low price.
Look, we know for sure that Comcast AND Verizon are gigantic, thieving, evil bastards, competition or no, but they only have the power to do ill because the government grants and enforces?monopolies for them.
Cut away the FCC, and let a million WiFi networks bloom!