Minority thinking …
I was reading this article the other day, “Every Time You Vote against Net Neutrality, Your ISP Kills a Night Elf.” I know that I am in the minority thinking like this, but our government doesn’t exactly have a sterling record when it comes to the types of regulation that these guys advocate. I’m reminded of the businesses of James J. Hill. He built the first privately funded transcontinental railroad in the U.S. He was able to do this without government subsidies because he built farms and industry along the route to ensure the success of his railroad. One of the companies that he started, a steamship company that opened up east Asian markets to U.S. cotton and wheat, relied on the railroad to move export goods at a reduced rate to the ports.
The other three transcontinental railroads had been heavily subsidized by the government, and farmers in the west complained to Congress about the economic power that these railroads were exerting. As a result the government created the Interstate Commerce Commission and granted them vast regulatory powers restricting who could own or operate railroads, and the maximum or minimum rates that they could charge for shipping. James J. Hill was forced to shutdown his steamship company because he was no longer allowed to offer discounts on getting products to the port. On the other hand, the companies that Congress was seeking to regulate were the ones that benefited the most from the regulation.
Fast forward to the present. You have giant cable and telecommunications companies that have been expanding and improving their infrastructure, hoping to earn a return on their investment by offering VOIP and IPTV services in the future. You have companies who rely on this infrastructure, but who haven’t been forced to invest in it, and in some cases are already offering VOIP or IPTV services. I don’t think it’s a stretch to see a parallel between what is happening here and what happened a hundred years ago. I also don’t think that I’m going out on a limb by suggesting that any attempt by the government to legislate the same kinds of regulations into the ISP industry that they legislated into the railroad industry a century ago would likely backfire the same way it did then.
