A lot of people jumped on the Net Neutrality bandwagon when it was introduced a few years ago. It is currently the law in the US, Europe, and to some degree in Canada. But this sets a scary precedent and is based on unfounded fears and a misunderstanding of how the market works.
Net neutrality is a law that says internet service providers cannot offer faster access to certain websites for a fee to businesses. For example, Verizon could not charge Yahoo $1 million per year to give customers faster access to their content. The theory behind the law is that if ISPs can charge more for faster speeds, there will be a segregated internet and it will no longer be “fair and democratic”. Proponents believe you should have access to Google and Bob’s website at the same speed, and this is a right.
People are looking at this issue in a very illogical way, but it’s a normal way of thinking when it comes to the market. People will bring up hypothetical situation which have never happened, but because they believe it’s “possible”, they fear it will happen and the government needs to step in to make sure it doesn’t. This is essentially the case for every kind of regulation.
But look at the situation. Before net neutrality laws existed, ISPs did not charge companies huge fees to access the fast part of the internet. They could have but didn’t. In most regions, there is competition. Customers want an internet with equal speeds for all websites. If customers find out that Rogers makes a handful of sites fast and slows down all the others, they will switch to Bell or another service provider. Also, look at the heavy competition. Rogers constantly advertises that they are the “fastest”. Bell offers Fiber Optic which is incredibly fast. Speeds of the internet have consistently gone up to the point where you can download entire movies in a matter of minutes. Does anyone ask why companies are doing this? Legally speaking, they could just keep offering dial-up. In fact, they are not even required to offer anything, yet they do.
Do people not realize the reason speeds are constantly going up, computers are getting better, and more and more content is being offered on the internet is a result of capitalism and the market? Yet people take this for granted and fail to recognize how competition works in their favour. It’s hard to believe the cognitive dissonance that occurs here. On the one hand people are benefitting daily from companies providing continually-improving products and services, and on the other hand, they vilify businesses and believe they do nothing but bad things.
But one of the things I fear is less freedom, not more. My fear is that as people give more and more power to the government over the internet, eventually it will gain unwanted control over it. With too much power, what will stop the government from declaring certain points of view illegal or hate speech. People in Canada are routinely fined and imprisoned for having unpopular viewpoints. What makes anyone think this won’t extend to the internet once the government is in complete control? I can imagine this extending to many areas. Blocking unpopular political commentators like Alex Jones, blocking unpopular moral commentators including the Catholic Church if it condemns homosexual acts, etc. The list goes on. Can no one else see this danger?
Some of the effects of net neutrality have proven extremely stupid. For example, it was ruled that zero-rating was illegal. Zero-rating is when an ISP offers a free streaming or other service without making customers use their bandwidth allowance. For example, if a mobile user has a 1 gigabyte data package, a company might say watching Netflix doesn’t count toward that total. But this was deemed illegal. I guess charging customers is preferable to giving them certain free services. Who is this benefitting?
Why do people think the government, which generally raises prices substantially, is large, ungainly, unresponsive, and often oppressive is our best option for providing good internet service? Why can’t people see that internet quality and speed has improved considerably because of the market and competition? Why do people fear a scenario which could have happened for well over a decade but hasn’t?
The answer to these questions might be that people misjudge policies based on perceived motivation rather than on actual results. They see companies as greedy, only seeking to improve the bottom line and thus cannot be trusted to protect our best interests. Although the first part can be taken for granted, the second is false because of the power of the market. People need to ask the follow-up question of “then what”. A company could increase prices or reduce quality, but then what? What will happen in real life? Well, if it’s a free market, a better alternative will come about.
The second part of this mentality comes from the false belief that government does not have self-interested parties but rather is a selfless safeguard against greedy entities. But the government is a much worse ally than businesses because government operates military-enforced monopolies. It has very little accountability by its very structure. Some say voting is a check on government power. But voting is infinitely less powerful than the market. A government will enact hundreds of pieces of legislation, which few people can even keep track of. Then we are presented with one or two alternatives every 4 years at voting time. Good luck influencing one particular law. Then we get one vote out of a million or 30 million. Our individual power is like a drop of water in the ocean. But with a business, if I don’t like the service or quality, I immediately take my business elsewhere. This has immediate effect. I’ve often issued a complaint to a company and received immediate satisfaction. Imagine complaining to the government. If they answer months later, the response is usually unsatisfactory and has little effect.
To demand more government to solve a problem of service quality is nonsensical and ultimately doomed to failure, and Net Neutrality is no different.
