Man I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around this part:
This will kill the open marketplace that has enabled millions of small businesses and created America’s 5 most valuable companies.
Ummm... it's those same
most valuable monopolistic companies pushing to make this money grab happen! The market we had (which was far from a free market) created these monsters. Now they want to take over the internet and jack up the rates like some Mafia hoodlum.
Are we sure the market we had was that great?
Internet providers will effectively be able to impose a tax on every sector of the American economy.
Only government can impose a tax.
This is about business wanting to raise its rates and get us all to pay more. This is where my libertarian leanings kick in, because if
I own an ISP, or a cable, or a fiber optic wave guide, I would like the ability to charge whatever rate I feel comfortable charging my customers.
If I charge too much, somebody will undercut me to get the business and I will go broke. If I charge too little I won't be able to meet my expenses and I will go broke.
Now this logic falls down if you only have two or three giant companies providing all these services, and they engage in price-fixing or cooperation with the same intent, spending Millions to Lobby Congress and rip you off.
See if that's what's going on then net neutrality is just a Band-Aid on the real problem, which is allowing monopolistic businesses like Amazon and Microsoft to even exist.
I mean if you're going to start flinging around noble words about Level Playing Fields and neutrality, then you better not allow corporations so large that they have undue
influence over the government.
When the government allowed the baby bells to reform, they promised that this would allow them to deliver rural internet service at reasonable prices, and other services at reduced prices.
Of course now that the Monopoly exists again the struggle is back on.
Inexpensive rural internet never happened, the whole reality changed over from wires to wireless.
There was a time, I believe, when in order to have the Miracles of modern industrialization we had to have giant corporations. For Ford to build the Model T for a price that ordinary people could afford, the Ford Company needed a huge operation.
A host of small corporations with the same total capacity to build cars would not be able to do so at an economical price. Ordinary People could not afford these cars, and most of the car companies would go out of business. This is in fact what happened, with American car companies evolving from hundreds to The Big Three.
But the world of manufacturing has changed and the world of data has likewise changed. The old rules are no good.
I'm not sure how to reconcile the free market with the undesirable existence of Mega corporations.