We Less Government types like less government – for a vast and varied panoply of reasons.
For purposes of today’s excursion – let us focus on but one part of but one.
We like less government – because a market free from unnecessary government impositions delivers the most good to the most people.
Businesses are in business – to please customers. And are in competition with other businesses – to please customers. The more customers a business pleases – the more customers it gets.
So the economic self-interest of the businesses – not only protects the customers from harm, but ensures the customers the maximum satisfaction from the businesses looking to get their business.
So regulation to stop businesses from engaging in behavior that will harm customers – is almost always completely and utterly unnecessary.
You can impose regulations saying “Soda companies shall not put poison in their beverages.” And without engaging in a Web search – I am almost positive many governments have.
But soda companies want customers – and they want repeat customers. So they are exceedingly unlikely to put poison in their beverages.
The regulations – are wholly unnecessary.
And then you have opened the monstrous can of worms – that is a perpetually incompetent and politicized government defining what soda “poison” is.
Our government – and many, many others – has ridiculously deemed carbon dioxide a planet-poisoning “pollutant.” You know, CO2 – the stuff every plant on the planet inhales. Which is almost certainly the stupidest government definition – in a human history chock full of them.
So I am quite sure Coke and Pepsi don’t want government going there with them.
We Less Government types have spent the last two decades – almost since the inception of the private sector Internet – fending off Leftist attempts to impose massive-government-regulations Network Neutrality upon the Web.
And very many of the Leftists and their Net Neutrality attempts – were for years and years funded by Google.
Google wants Net Neutrality – because it would deliver them HUGE government cronyism.
But one massive cronyism advantage:
Google is a HUGE hog of Internet bandwidth. Net Neutrality outlaws them paying for any of it.
Which means you and I will pay a whole lot more for our Internet access – to subsidize the likes of monster hog Google.
Because Google would benefit hugely from Net Neutrality, Google has spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying for it – and propping up Leftist “consumer” groups to lobby and screech and shout for Net Neutrality on their behalf.
The lie the Left tells to engender support for Net Neutrality?
The big, bad Internet Service Providers (ISPs) – the companies whom we hire to connect us to the Web – will block us from connecting to the Web.
Get that? Net Neutrality’s proponents claim the ISP customer service businesses – will refuse to service their customers.
That’s the kernel of anti-Reality – upon which the entirety of the monstrous Net Neutrality lie is built.
Except no ISP has ever blocked anyone (from lawful content) – ever. Because it is literally antithetical to their business model.
It would be like Coke and Pepsi – refusing to sell Coke and Pepsi.
And you know who knows this? Net Neutrality-shoving Google:
“Phil Harrison, vice president and general manager of Google, was asked about data caps and the threat they pose to Stadia, the company’s fledgling cloud gaming platform. His response suggested that he believes ISPs will voluntarily lift the data caps for game streamers:
“‘The ISPs have a strong history of staying ahead of consumer trend and if you look at the history of data caps in those small number of markets — and it’s actually a relatively small number of markets that have [data caps] — the trend over time, when music streaming and download became popular, especially in the early days when it was not necessarily legitimate, data caps moved up. Then with the evolution of TV and film streaming, data caps moved up, and we expect that will continue to be the case.”
Emphasis ours. Because it’s game-set-match for Net Neutrality – and its proponents have lost. And it is Google admitting it.
“The ISPs have a strong history of staying ahead of consumer trend” – means ISPs have a strong history of looking out for what their customers want…and giving it to them.
Whether it’s on ever-increasing (or no) data caps – or never, ever blocking anyone from going anywhere on the Web.
No Net Neutrality regulations required.
Because the ISPs’ free market desire to get the most customers possible – mandates they do these customer-pleasing things.
No Net Neutrality regulations required.
So, thanks to Google for (inadvertently) finally coming clean.
There are no Net Neutrality regulations required.
This first appeared in Red State.