Matthew Butterick on Net Neutrality

> The popular idea is that it has something to do with, you know, freedom and democracy and all that.

In practice, it has more to do with anti-trust. But it's clearly related to Internet freedom as well.

> Big Telco must share the costs of carrying all this new traffic.

No, it's about double dipping. ISPs are already charging their own users for using the network. What they want to do, is to also charge services for reaching the user (or at least not to have problems with interconnection). It's a pure troll tax of the type "because we own the bridge". There is no justification for that.

> Today, picking a side in this debate seems like throwing in with one set of corporate assholes over another.

> But if we entrust Big Tech and Big Telco to preserve those virtues, then we definitely deserve whatever internet we get.

The author contradicts himself. If he doesn't pick the position about Net neutrality, monopolists will do it for him.

Part of what net neutrality ensures is that Big Tech can push as much data across the internet as it wants; Big Telco has to deliver it.

Ugh. Net neutrality supporters have not done a good job of explaining why this is not the case. Netflix already pays for all its traffic, and ISPs are perfectly free to charge subscribers more for higher bandwidth or total transfers.