What do liberal House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Christian Coalition have in common? No, it’s not a penchant for government-funded jet rides — it’s a misguided belief about net neutrality, proposed rules that could affect the future of Internet management.
The net neutrality debate is basically a question of whether or not broadband service providers can manage their networks for quality of service and potentially charge more money for greater bandwidth use. That’s a pretty straightforward question, but it has been twisted by those who don’t want to see the Internet “change.”
Consider what that means. No change would mean the Internet stays exactly where it is: Speeds don’t get faster, and consumers don’t get more services. That’s a silly idea, but it appeals to those who think we are in the midst of some golden age that must be preserved.
What needs to happen instead is for normal market rules to be allowed to work — when goods get scarce, businesses are given incentives through market prices to produce more.Think about downloading videos, for instance. Anyone who has ever suffered a lengthy wait for a big file to download will want better-quality service and be willing to pay the provider. That only makes sense, but net neutrality proponents — in reality, partisans of Net regulation — say that Americans should be worried about the big, bad network providers.
[…]
Read more here.