Congressman John Sarbanes Favors FCC Takeover of the Internet

In response to my e-mail in opposition to the FCC subjecting the Internet to its ancient and bureaucratic controls, the Democrat Congressman of my unbelievably gerrymandered district in Maryland replied today:

Mr. Anderson,

Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition to net neutrality. I always appreciate hearing from individuals who carefully follow the legislative proceedings of Congress.  On February 4, 2015, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Wheeler proposed a set of rules to safeguard net neutrality. These rules include reclassifying broadband service as a public utility under Title II to allow for greater oversight and consumer protection; prohibiting the blocking of lawful websites, the impairing of lawful Internet traffic, and the prioritization of certain traffic for a fee; requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to protect customers' private information; and providing widespread access to Internet service. February 26, 2015, the FCC voted to approve the proposed rules.

 I strongly believe that technology-including broadband, digital communications and other information technology - is an important tool for the economic and social advancement of individuals and communities. Going forward, I also believe that we must put in place a regulatory framework that ensures the relationships between consumers and providers are fair and equitable. As a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has jurisdiction over telecommunications issues, I will be certain to keep your views in mind when the House of Representatives considers any relevant legislation.

Again, thank you for your input on this important issue. If I can be of further assistance to you, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

John P. Sarbanes
Member of Congress

To which I replied:

John,

Government does not make the affairs of man fair and equitable. It simply replaces voluntary acts of cooperation in the private sector with coercion to achieve political, rather than individual, purposes. With government so big that the People do not understand what it is doing, let alone the effects of its actions, those political purposes become the purposes of special interests. The takeover of the free Internet by the FCC only means that my individual choices will be replaced by the government's enforcement of special interests' will. All of the verbiage about protecting individuals is just the usual smokescreen behind which government once again wrests individual value choices out of our hands. It is a false front so that government can further expand its ignorant micromanagement of our individual lives.

You have to admit that you do not know me, so it is not plausible when you claim to be protecting my interests, about which you know nothing. What is more, it is highly pretentious of you to assume that you know better how to manage my life than I do. Because I know this, I much prefer making the voluntary associations with others in the private sector of my choice, compared to being the subject of government coercion in my associations.

Charles

Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D.

http://www.AndersonMaterials.com
http://AndersonMaterials.blogspot.com
http://ObjectivistIndividualist.blogspot.com/

Of course the Big Government proponents have a biased viewpoint that government is benevolent, while companies operating in the private sector are largely malevolent. It is assumed by many that the profit motive pushes companies to behave immorally and without regard to the interests of their customers. How odd it is that the profit motive which is exactly what mostly motivates companies to behave morally and with a great regard for the interests of their customers is assumed by so many to have the opposite effects. Meanwhile, governments which have the power motive are assumed to be benevolent!

To be sure, when governments are small and effectively managed by the People with the intelligent use of their votes, government has a substantial interest in the best interest of the People. But as I have so frequently argued, when government becomes big enough, the People are no longer able to effectively manage it. While with the occasional company that comes along and has little interest in its customer's welfare, it can usually be avoided by taking one's business elsewhere, except when government has given that company a monopoly. The action to deny a government coercive control over us is usually more drastic. It requires us to uproot ourselves, our families, and our businesses to move out of the jurisdiction of that government. This is a sufficiently drastic remedy that its avoidance is a powerful argument for highly limited government.

FCC Upset with Verizon and Google Private Agreement on Internet

The FCC has been holding closed-door talks with lobbyists to reach agreement on ways to regulate Internet traffic without making major changes to existing laws.  However, Verizon Communications Inc. and Google Inc. reached an agreement of their own on Internet traffic rules that would allow Verizon to move some broadband traffic at higher speeds at premium prices.  This has angered the FCC, which is seeking the power to dictate how Internet providers manage traffic on the networks they have built at great expense themselves.

The FCC was under attack about the closed-door meetings as another of many violations of the Obama pledge for transparency in government.  The FCC called off these talks upon the announcement of the Verizon-Google agreement.  The FCC very much wants the power to enforce what it calls Net Neutrality, which supposedly means that all broadband traffic must be carried at the same speed at the same price.  This does not allow the investors in the broadband networks as much flexibility in pricing their services and as much opportunity to make a good return on their investments as they might have under other negotiated terms with customers.  Net Neutrality would result in slower networks, lower volume handling capabilities, and if operated through a political gateway such as the FCC, almost certain restrictions on content, probably based upon a lowest common denominator viewpoint of morality and based upon the political viewpoints of the party in power.

Some inter-company private agreements may seem inconvenient to some of us at one time or another, but that inconvenience has historically proven minor compared to the inconvenience of government regulation.  A good case in point is the regulation of the railroads because many people did not think it was "fair" for the railroads to charge less to large-volume shippers and to long-distance shippers.  Regulation by the Interstate Commerce Commission of the railroads did much to bring on the long-term decline of the railroads.  The result was a decrease in the growth of track mileage, a slowdown as regulations increased in the rate at which freight rates had been dropping under competition, a decrease in innovation, and the growth of a few very large rail systems because the ICC did not allow existing smaller railroads to pool their resources to handle a shipper's needs with agreed upon rates over longer distances on the tracks of multiple railroads.  The long-term growth and the competitive nature of the railroads was stunted by the ICC.  This is the usual pattern for industries regulated by government.  For the moment, the Verizon-Google agreement may be a bump in the road for the FCC attempt to similarly manage the Internet.

It is also a victory for property rights, albeit momentarily.  The government does not have the right to impose duties upon property owners which require them to offer services using that property which they do not voluntarily wish to perform, as things are customarily done in the free market.  The government does not have the right to push investors and their operations managers into involuntary servitude either.  Freedom in the market place is essential so that we will have as many personal choices as possible.

Net Neutrality Enforcement by the FCC and Free Speech

Net Neutrality is a term that brings back memories of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requiring that conservative as well as liberal viewpoints had to be aired on television networks, local TV stations, and radio stations after the events of the late 1960s led many to believe the country was about to fall into the hands of socialists.  Ayn Rand, perhaps due to her early experience with a country having been taken over by socialists when she was a child in the Soviet Union, was in favor of this requirement as a last gasp attempt to prevent a socialist takeover in the United States.  This was one of the few major issues that I disagreed with her on.  While the socialists were hurting the country, I did not think they were on the verge of taking the USA over and putting it under their control.  I thought that Americans who believed in the principle of individual rights still had sufficient means to make use of their free speech rights.  I thought it was dangerous to do anything that would interfere with free speech and set a precedent for such interference in the future.  This turned out to be the case.

Moving to the present and the recent past, we have heard a great many complaints from the socialists associated with Obama and the Democrat Congress about people with viewpoints in opposition to theirs.  This atmosphere of control over speech by the left has long been the rule on most college campuses.  An intricate matrix of politically correct viewpoints are allowed and those with viewpoints outside this matrix are called bigots, rednecks, NASCAR people, trailer trash, and racists.  Students not on board are threatened with expulsion and faculty with a failure to gain tenure.  The socialists clearly do want this same politically correct culture of restricted free speech to be transferred into every American's life.  In many companies, particularly large ones with considerable government business, political correctness rules the day.  Obama's and his comrade's comments about Fox News have not only expressed dislike of that organization's multivariate viewpoints, but have sometimes suggested a desire to limit what it can say with regulations and controls.  Other of his friends have expressed a desire to control what is said on the Internet.  This is hardly surprising given that the left, wherever it has free reign, as it does on most college campuses, has always lost its interest in free speech.  In fact, no socialist country ever tolerates free speech in the way we have traditionally in the United States.

With this as background, let us consider what Glenn Beck has to say in the video clip of a part of his program here.

While much of what he says is true, some perspective is needed.  First, the primary issue of Net Neutrality is whether the companies that operate the lines that provide us with our Internet information should continue to be able to manage the flow of data to optimize the overall service.  As is the case with all resources, bandwidth on these Internet lines is finite.  It is not always the case that everyone hooked up to such a line can upload and download as much data as they wish.  The lines sometimes become overloaded.  The most vociferous and determined company opposing Net Neutrality is Comcast.  This is probably because Comcast has less bandwidth than, say, does Verizon in many areas.  They have no choice but to limit user access in some way.  Allegations have been made that they limited that access in ways that gave their own content an advantage over the content of others.  This may be true, but it is not clear that the issue was one of their trying to cut off socialist or conservative viewpoints from their subscribers.  Some companies, especially those who dealt with large files that they want to send to their customers and who take in large files sent to them from their customers, do not like the fact that Comcast sometimes did not allow a large file to be uploaded at a particular time when they had too little bandwidth to meet the demand.  All the other major Internet line providers also assert that they need to manage their bandwidth also, since all of them have finite bandwidth.  The Net Neutrality proponents do not want any special restrictions aimed at them, despite the fact that they produce many large files that rapidly fill the finite bandwidth of the Internet provider's lines.

Some socialist organizations have banded together with the large file handling point-to-point companies in favor of Net Neutrality.  Why?  Probably because they simply want to get the power of the FCC expanded to give them the power to regulate the Internet.  And yes, they no doubt do want the FCC to later use this power to regulate the Internet to control the viewpoints expressed on the Internet.  That is not the immediate issue being addressed at this time, however.  These socialist organizations are also trying to establish their expertise on such Internet matters and gain publicity.

Of course, we should remain alert to any increase in the powers of the FCC in any case.  It has much too much power now and it does have a lot of potential for the future misuse of that power specifically to allow those in power to squelch viewpoints at variance with their own.  The FCC has always tended to act in restraint of the free markets and this has never been a good thing.

Fortunately, the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. ruled on 6 April 2010 that the FCC has failed to show that it has the authority under Title 1 of the Communications Act of 1934 to tell broadband Internet providers how they could manage their finite bandwidth issues.  At least, the FCC could not do it the way they were attempting to do it.  Being a grasping federal agency always looking to expand its power, the FCC will try and try again to gain control over the Internet, but it has not yet found the formula for doing so.