I'm not sure why you are surprised...

Yup you can't live your life until 2008 without internet if you have any interest in it. Even if you are 65 years old and a new technology arrives that changes everything you would probably use it within 5 years. But McCain hates progress and likes the way things were in 1950.

reading more into the article, it doesn't seem having much to do with Net Neutrality itself, but something about blocking some "net neutrality regulations". I'm not sure what this "regulations" is about, but I'd say the Net should NOT be regulated by the government, even if in the name of "Net Neutrality", the Net should be a FREE place, first and foremost free from government regulations.

So if Mr. McCain is trying to block some government regulations of the Net, whether it's called "net neutrality regulation", "net freedom regulation", "net benevolence regulation", or whatever, I actually think he has a good point there. We should have a free market and a free Net. If you want government regulations everywhere, just come to China.

kaixin001: "So if Mr. McCain is trying to block some government regulations of the Net, whether it's called 'net neutrality regulation', 'net freedom regulation', 'net benevolence regulation', or whatever, I actually think he has a good point there."

Absolutely. "Net neutrality" is starting to sound awfully Orwellian. Even Eric Schmidt is ambivalent.

You don't have Net Neutrality when GOVERNMENT SPONSORED MONOPOLIES (where do you think they get the wireless spectrum from? the right of ways to put their cable and fiber under our public streets? etc.) when government sponsored monopolies can do what they want with the pipes that deliver the internet to you. The government, with our OK, gave the carriers the monopolies and now, with our OK, I think it's completely reasonable that the government say that they are not allowed to use those monopolies to shut out competitors and curtail innovation and choice.

- A

Yeah, that's the point. It's already a government problem because they have monopolies and no (viable) competition. As much as you want things unregulated, the government needs to keep them from abusing it until they get some real competition, because right now, there's no way for market forces to keep them in check.

"As much as you want things unregulated, the government needs to keep them from abusing it until they get some real competition, because right now, there's no way for market forces to keep them in check."

Who's regulating the regulators?

"Who's regulating the regulators?"

Unseen, it's you and me. We have these things called elections where an informed citizenry goes to these things called polls and casts something called a ballot. In doing so, we determine who will run this country and what kinds of policies and laws will be enacted and enforced. It's a pretty cool system. You should read up on it.

- A

We tried absolute absence of regulation. For example, Alan Greenspan opposed government intervention in almost anything. He even opposed investigation of financial fraud. Then he was "astonished" that markets are not self-regulating.

No, it is essential that government make and enforce laws. I don't know anything about the net neutrality question, but to invoke some mindless ideology in opposition to any government oversight is senseless.

I guess McCain's working on the maverick principle that de-regulation will do the same wonders for the Internet that it did for the financial sector...

"It's a pretty cool system. You should read up on it."

Oh, I have. It's also the same elected government that oversees the Pentagon, the CIA, the IRS and was supposed to be overseeing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis

The news media are in the process of creating a great new historical myth. This is the myth that our present financial crisis is the result of economic freedom and laissez-faire capitalism.

The attempt to place the blame on laissez faire is readily confirmed by a Google search under the terms "crisis + laissez faire."

[...]

The utter absurdity of statements claiming that the present political-economic environment of the United States in some sense represents laissez-faire capitalism becomes as glaringly obvious as anything can be when one keeps in mind the extremely limited role of government under laissez-faire and then considers the following facts about the present-day United States:

1. Government spending in the United States currently equals more than forty percent of national income, i.e., the sum of all wages and salaries and profits and interest earned in the country. This is without counting any of the massive off-budget spending such as that on account of the government enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Nor does it count any of the recent spending on assorted "bailouts." What this means is that substantially more than forty dollars of every one hundred dollars of output are appropriated by the government against the will of the individual citizens who produce that output. [...]

2. There are presently fifteen federal cabinet departments, nine of which exist for the very purpose of respectively interfering with housing, transportation, healthcare, education, energy, mining, agriculture, labor, and commerce, and virtually all of which nowadays routinely ride roughshod over one or more important aspects of the economic freedom of the individual. [...]

3. The economic interference of today's cabinet departments is reinforced and amplified by more than one hundred federal agencies and commissions, the most well known of which include, besides the IRS, the FRB and FDIC, the FBI and CIA, the EPA, FDA, SEC, CFTC, NLRB, FTC, FCC, FERC, FEMA, FAA, CAA, INS, OHSA, CPSC, NHTSA, EEOC, BATF, DEA, NIH, and NASA. [...]

4. To complete this catalog of government interference and its trampling of any vestige of laissez faire, as of the end of 2007, the last full year for which data are available, the Federal Register contained fully seventy-three thousand pages of detailed government regulations. This is an increase of more than ten thousand pages since 1978, the very years during which our system, according to one of The New York Times articles quoted above, has been "tilted in favor of business deregulation and against new rules." [...]

Government Intervention Actually Responsible for the Crisis

Beyond all this is the further fact that the actual responsibility for our financial crisis lies precisely with massive government intervention, above all the intervention of the Federal Reserve System in attempting to create capital out of thin air, in the belief that the mere creation of money and its being made available in the loan market is a substitute for capital created by producing and saving.

[...]

http://mises.org/story/3165

Regulations set up crisis
Saturday, Jan. 17, 2009

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20090117a1.html

"Believing that recent decades were marked by an orgy of deregulation and the retreat of government intervention requires a complete suspension of any sense of reality."

Regulations set up crisis

BALI — Claims that "unbridled capitalism" is behind the current credit crunch and financial turmoil are misleading and remarkably uninformed. This is usually accompanied by suggestions that "blind faith" in market self-regulation was a handmaiden in this mess. We are then told that the future must involve greater political management of capitalism.

It's as if adding one hollow assertion (unsupported by fact) upon another and then repeating them endlessly will somehow change reality. These assertions involve canards of epic proportions, because the reality is that politically imposed checks and balances are the status quo.

Indeed, managed capitalism has been the aim of most modern governments ranging from social democrats to national socialists as well as so-called liberal democracies. In most instances, constraints on markets were the result of self-serving populism used to boost electoral support.

A presumption that global financial distress arose from unrestrained management of capital using high degrees of leverage willfully ignores the role of loose monetary policies. As it is, artificially cheap credit conjured up by central bankers undermined the notion of risk and provided the excessive liquidity to pump air into the bubbles.

Believing that recent decades were marked by an orgy of deregulation and the retreat of government intervention requires a complete suspension of any sense of reality. Despite strategic retreats by governments to liberalize trade and capital flows, most government budgets increased at a rate faster than economic growth.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20090117a1.html

Quote FreeWhat:
"The news media are in the process of creating a great new historical myth. This is the myth that our present financial crisis is the result of economic freedom and laissez-faire capitalism."

Did you know that Bernie Madoff didn't have to get audited? And the federal government was denied the resources needed to check into what he was doing. That's what is meant by "laissez-faire". Thank you for your insight, but I prefer my financial markets policed. And my Internet if necessary.

Asa, you might have to cut off discussion. This is likely going to attract a lot of political trolls.

@Asa & Dave Miller,

"...GOVERNMENT SPONSORED MONOPOLIES..."

"...It's already a government problem..."

So the government caused all these net neutrality problems, and now you trust the government to regulate net neutrality?

@VanillaMozilla,

"but I prefer my financial markets policed. And my Internet if necessary."

Greet the internet police.

http://taian.cyberpolice.cn/Index.html

"We tried absolute absence of regulation." --VanillaMozilla

Yeah, I don't want to get into some political debate either. But ABSOLUTE absence of regulation is a myth, fit only for a bumper sticker.