Against net neutrality
How can the government regulate the neutrality of the Internet? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?
In this March file photo, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is interviewed at his office in Washington. New rules aimed at prohibiting broadband providers from becoming gatekeepers of Internet traffic now have enough votes to pass the Federal Communications Commission.
Jacquelyn Martin / AP
As a recent column in the Wall Street Journal reminds us, online freedom is jeopardized in the name of “net neutrality” (The FCC’s Threat to Internet Freedom). This is just another case of the state re-labeling things to sound benign but that are really invasions of liberty and property rights–another good example being use of the term “intellectual property” to masque the true nature of state-granted monopoly privilege rights (patent and copyright) (see my post Intellectual Properganda).
Skip to next paragraph
This is the institutional blog of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and many of its affiliated writers and scholars commenting on economic affairs of the day.
Recent posts
Subscribe Today to the Monitor
It is true that some corporations probably have extra-market power to control aspects of the Internet, as the result of state interventions such as IP, FCC licensing, antitrust law, big business favoritism, and so on. But the solution is not to grant the state even more power to regulate private companies.This is the criminal gang that has fouled things up in the first place. Another recent example of federal Chutzpah is the Obama administration’s proposal to provide a “Web Privacy ‘Bill of Rights’“–how obscene. The mob that is the greatest threat to online privacy freedom, and rights will protect us? I’m reminded of the phrase, “We’re from the government. And we’re here to help.” Thanks, but no thanks, guys.
These are the same parasites who do everything they can to hobble and destroy business and innovation–they impose costly regulations; tax individuals, making employees more costly; inflate the money supply and cause destructive business cycles; impose insane, murderous policies on pharmaceutical and medical innovations via the FDA; and then impose double tax by taxing corporations too, after imposing Sarbannes Oxley on them for the “privilege” to exist as a corporation (a privilege that is not a privilege; corporations do not need state privileges to exist–see Legitimizing the Corporation and Other Posts; Richman and Carson on the BP Oil Spill; Should Libertarians Oppose “Capitalism”?; Rothbard on Corporations and Limited Liability for Tort; Comment on Knapp’s Big Government, Big Business — Conjoined Twins; Pilon on Corporations: A Discussion with Kevin Carson; Defending Corporations: Block and Huebert).
