Net Neutrality Is 'Marxist,' According To a Koch-Backed Astroturf Group 531
Jason Koebler (3528235) writes American Commitment, a conservative group with strong ties to the Koch brothers has been bombarding inboxes with emails filled with disinformation and fearmongering in an attempt to start a "grassroots" campaign to kill net neutrality — at one point suggesting that "Marxists" think that preserving net neutrality is a good idea. American Commitment president Phil Kerpen suggests that reclassifying the internet as a public utility is the "first step in the fight to destroy American capitalism altogether" and says that the FCC is plotting a "federal Internet takeover," a move that "sounds more like a story coming out of China or Russia."
What's so American (Score:5, Insightful)
About paying for open, unfettered access, and having some bean counter with an agenda decide what you can ACTUALLY see?
And Marxism fails because it view labor as something nobody really wants to do, and ignores transportation, distribution and associated concerns as necessary evils.
Here, the last-mile providers are acting like Marxists. They see only this big customer base of theirs as having any intrinsic worth.
Never mind that if they don't provide unfettered access, and don't manage to stifle all competition, they won't continue to HAVE that kind of customer base.
Net neutrality is about being able to use the internet connection you pay for, for any purpose that suits you (with nods towards the concept of "legal activity" of course) without having your traffic interfered with.
Net neutrality is about preventing illegal censorship.
Net neutrality is about protecting you from unscrupulous business practices by major (and minor) providers of both the transport and last-mile variety.
So screw the Koch Brothers and their idiot shilling.
Re:What's so American (Score:5, Insightful)
Net neutrality is like being able to drive on back country roads and public without cock blocks, or booths at every corner. Without it you get toll roads everywhere, and you constantly have to pay by the mile, or bit the MB, per content, on top of having your basic ISP connection. Some Internet backbones would get overloaded from crowds because of cheap surfing pathways, but the rich would have their luxury Internet highways uncongested, but high cost. Should you wander unto one of these highways, it'd be like stumbling into a high class restaurant, and accidentally eating there, when all you wanted was a burger. Even on regular Internet surfing you could quickly drain your bank account balance to zero via toll road-like per mile fees. However there is something to be said about availability of high class restaurants, they are nice to have, as long as you're not forced to eat there, and without net neutrality, you might be forced to go through only the high cost toll roads, at least occasionally, to access simple things like check your email, or file a job application, to the point where you might completely abandon the Internet altogether, and vote for regular paper mail, instead via the US post office, instead of Email, and on your foot walk into a branch banking instead of on line banking. Maybe that's what they want, de-Internetize the world. Come on, we love Google, Ebay, Email, Youtube, mp3 downloads, ebooks, Amazon, and especially what the Internet was made for: pron.
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"Without it you get toll roads everywhere, and you constantly have to pay by the mile"
Ah, yes, the libertarian dream.
That very hypothetical scenario is the actual reason I'm not a libertarian. Back in college it was popular to say you were a libertarian, but one day we were talking about roads and the non-hypocrites had to admit that, yes, a libertarian country would be 100% toll roads. I abandoned that stupid philosophy that day. I don't want to live in an ideologically pure world; I want to live in a good
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Uh, every road in America is a toll road.
I'm not sure you use the words toll road quite like anyone else in the world. A toll is a fee, which is distinct from a tax. A tax goes into a pool, a fee is spent on a specific service. If I cross a bridge and each crossing of a bridge costs $2, I am paying a toll (or a fee). If I have $2 of every gallon of gasoline be put into a general road maintenance fund to be spent all over the county, state, what have you, I paid a tax. The tax requires a central authority, the toll does not. That's at the crux.
Re:Bring on the toll roads (Score:4, Informative)
After reading this [townhall.com], please let me know what would be so awful about 100% toll roads.
All roads are already toll roads, in that their maintenance is paid for by gas taxes. What would be so awful about that money going to an efficient enterprise, as opposed to an inefficient bureaucracy?
Toll and tax are distinct. Also, not all enterprises are efficient and not all governments are bureaucratic.
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After reading this [townhall.com], please let me know what would be so awful about 100% toll roads.
This makes an easy comparison.
Currently, you pay a gas tax, per kilometer. No-body cares *what* you do with the gas at that point, or where you go. You can drive on freeways, you can commute to work, you can roadtrip across the country, you can just drive around the block for hours on end if you want. The only limit is the physical ability of the roads (expressed as a speed limit).
Conversely, a toll road will charge you for each segment of road. Suddenly, *where* this road is and what it connects to becomes
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Net neutrality is not about the end user paying the same amount regardless of bandwidth usage. It's about the ISPs not treating content providers differently based on their competition with the ISP, their content or charging them extra when it's the end user making the demand. I have no problem with the end user paying for their level of bandwidth usage.
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Indeed, Marxism and all of its derivatives lack the essential value flag mechanisms that make any other economic system work, which is why they will fail even in the presence of abundance, so I agree with your assessment that the last mile providers are acting like Marxists.
Re:What's so American (Score:5, Insightful)
What is this Cold War obsession with misrepresenting Marxism in as many ways as possible just to make it seem ridiculous (or evil)? Stalin nodded in the direction of Marxism while behaving as a totalitarian despot, but he also nodded in the direction of atheism, while the USA is culturally based in deism and protestant work ethic, an entirely irrational, religious principle. The American capitalist revolution (against British late stage feudalism) and its development through late C20 has reflected Marx's view of how capitalism would unfold in a developed nation.
In particular, Marx does not "view labour as something nobody really wants to do" - wtf do you get that from? Marx viewed exploitation as something nobody should want to experience, but the Marxist progression of history is based on an increasing voluntary desire to do labour - from socialism through to communism - rather than to exploit others' labour. Prerequisite is firstly that people get to keep the fruits of their labour, and finally that people will realise the benefits of a sharing economy.
To be clear, I'm not Marxist, just like I'm not Christian, nor capitalist, nor Muslim, nor any -ist or -im nor -ian, really. But I don't try to mischaracterise any of these like an us vs. them. One of the biggest contradictions of human intelligence is its desire to over-simplify the world - to make up for our human sense of inadequacy: we are intelligent enough to recognise our cluelessness, but not wise enough to fix it, so we invent umbrella ideologies, insecurely eliminating all other possibilities.
All Koch is doing here is pandering to the Marx=evil knee-jerkers, like the Soviets pandered over and over to the capitalism=evil knee-jerkers. To think, we used to laugh at Russia for swallowing such simpleton propaganda!
Re:What's so American (Score:5, Insightful)
So does Capitalism. In fact, it's a stated goal.
Which is why Apple and the other high tech companies in California were colluding to keep prices down, and why they like H1B visas.
Capitalism is now about undercutting the value of labor, and driving everyone to a lower wage, so that the assholes running the show can get more bonuses.
Capitalism is just as much about fucking everybody over as Communism ever was.
If you think Capitalism doesn't do the exact same things, you're a moron.
Re: What's so American (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: What's so American (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it all some stupid game to you of racking up points? Tit for tat? Are you still capable of any moral clarity?
Do you feel it instructive to name a list of rich guys just because there's an article reacting to something David Koch said and you've been told that these are the other side's rich guys? Is everything a matter of moral equivalence to you?
No wonder the US is in trouble. People have watched so much cable TV and listened to so much talk radio that they have lost the ability to evaluate anything clearly, and can only see it through a partisan lens. You felt you had to stick up for the Koch Brothers because your talk radio favorites have told you they're "one of us" and you've got two names you can lay down whenever someone says, "Koch Brothers". As if it meant something.
Do you even know what this discussion is about or are you just in react mode?
Re: What's so American (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense. Who even cares what party the Kochs are? Are they GOP or Tea Party or libertarians or who even knows how they vote. They're just corporatists, like Soros and Bloomberg.
They may not all be the same, but they all play for the same team.
You're full of shit. You think people who support Net Neutrality are the ones wanting to "manipulate the markets"?
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"They may not all be the same, but they all play for the same team."
No they don't. Pay attention.
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And Marxism fails because it view labor as something nobody really wants to do ...
That is the exact opposite of how Marx viewed labour. For Marx, labour was the very essence of self-expression. You are what you produce. A critique of capitalism, and especially Fordism was that the worker is alienated from their own labour, and thus from the very essence of their self. Not only Marxism, but Socialist theorists pre-dating him assume that labour was something people really wanted to do, and left alone wi
Re:What's so American (Score:4, Insightful)
And Marxism fails because it view labor as something nobody really wants to do ...
That is the exact opposite of how Marx viewed labour. For Marx, labour was the very essence of self-expression.
Indeed, it was Ayn Rand who viewed labor as something only a very small number of heroic, good-looking, and rich people wanted to do. Her theory was that the rest of humanity needs to be threatened with starvation or they would only steal from their betters.
Sure, it is all Koch brothers' fault... (Score:5, Informative)
They certainly are [wired.com] — thanks to the monopoly-power once given to them by the government [cato.org].
The solution to this, however, is not creating more rules for them to follow (with more boards and commissions to — ineffectively — ensure compliance) — these only make it harder for a would-be newcomers to appear — but to make this market properly competitive.
While the public anger is (somewhat clumsily, but still effectively) once again redirected against the Koch Brothers [salon.com], "Big Cable" donates to the ruling party en masse [huffingtonpost.com], CEOs play golf with the President [politico.com] and otherwise do the ruling party's bidding [nationalreview.com]. Is it likely, that further monopolization [nytimes.com] will be blocked?
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NB here in Canada, the large cable and telephone providers basically *must* license their connections to your home to other service providers. This is a regulation of course, and not just a 'free market' concept, but it does mean not having sixteen companies all trying to run their own copper down your street.
My local service provider is Cogeco for instance, and I switched to Teksavvy without having a single piece of coax changed in my house. Teksavvy pays Cogeco, Cogeco still maintains the wire, and I pa
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Re:What's so American (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you stupid, or just ignorant?
Net neutrality isn't about giving everyone the exact same internet connection speeds. Net neutrality is about securing that everyone gets equal access to services. Most importantly, it means that ISPs can't artificially create "fast lanes" and "slow lanes" for various services, depending on how lucrative of a deal they strike with content providers.
Re:What's so American (Score:5, Insightful)
You are confusing things. Net neutrality isn't about what tier of service you have. It is about ensuring that you aren't getting purposefully manipulated speed for the tier you have. Let's use your examples since you seem to understand those...
Do you think the MIT researcher should pay for the higher tier and be slowed down to Grandma's speed for some sites?
Do you think your overnight package should be 3 days to certain destinations for the same price of overnight delivery?
Do you think those that pay for the supersonic speed should be shuttled to the Grayhound station for certain destinations because that destination didn't pay the airlines for it?
Re:What's so American (Score:5, Insightful)
Should your google queries be put in a slow lane with 10k ms ping because they didn't fork over $100 mil for premium service?
Should netflix pay premium for every mb because they're a "high bandwidth user" or face throttling to speeds where compression drops to 120p?
Should ISPs be allowed to have an even more oppressive position than they already have?
Re:What's so American (Score:5, Insightful)
More important than whether a huge corporate site like Google or Netflix can get onto the fast lane(who can afford it as a cost of doing business) is whether smaller users and vendors have that opportunity. If access to the fast lane is only possible by paying large sums of money, then it effectively locks out "the little man" who cannot afford those rates. This effectively changes the Internet from a platform where anybody can put up a site dedicated to his hobby and - if it proves popular - hit it big (sort of like Google started out) to something curated by large corporations, like the rest of the media world. The Internet's great strength is that it gives everybody a voice - and a chance at the brass ring, if that's what they want - and not just those allowed to speak by the media conglomerates.
Without Net Neutrality, the internet would look like CableTV does today: a bunch of channels (websites) run by large corporations, all trending to a common denominatior, with a narrow channel dedicated to "public access" that nobody visits.
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Cable TV is heavily regulated, AND in effect regulated by cable companies themselves. Look what happened to Aereo. It implemented a delivery system all its own, which the SCOTUS ruled was a cable service, after which lower courts prevented it from being the very cable service the SCOTUS mandated it was.
Horror stories like this are what cause people to fear any sort of regulation on the grounds that it will servce some hidden corporate interest. If Net neutrality is to succeed it must be pursued as an indivi
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So you rent a car from my compsny and use it to drive to the store once a week and to work every day. So why shouldn't the company you work for have to pay me in addition to your rental?
That is what you just said more or less. The ISP alreadty collects fees for netflix to be on thier network from the end user who subscribe to thrir service. It wouldn't be all that offensive if the service advertised and sold couldn't support netflix and the payment was to enable it, but it clearly can support viewing netfli
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Actually, quite the contrary. I'm arguing that you get what you paid for and who you paid is not entitled to not give you that or give you less depending on if a third party doesn't pony up in addition.
Consumer reports or whatever doesn't need to be involved at all. I purchase a 12 meg unlimited connection and the ISP simply is not delivering on the goods they sold if they purposely limit it because netflix doesn't purchase a fast lane.
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If we let the free market sort it out, no doubt Consumer Reports will print an article revealing which ISPs deliver Netflix content at good speeds, and which ISPs deliver Netflix content at lousy speeds.
That's just fine if I have my choice of ISP's to select from but I'm basically limited to two (Comcast or Quest). What I'd prefer is that the cable into my house is treated as a public utility that any ISP can avail themselves of. That would spur real competition between ISP's to get my business.
Re:What's so American (Score:5, Insightful)
>Do you think everyone needs the same speed?
That was emphatically negated in the previous comment.
Net neutrality isn't about preventing different tiers of service either. It's about preventing businesses from colluding to distort the market with bribes and kickbacks by slowing and blocking competing business.
When the primary arguments from the anti-neutrality camp are based on disinformation you know the case is pretty clear-cut.
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different tiers perhaps.
but then they should advertise it as such.
"buy our extremely limited internet shitniz that allows you to use just our inhouse services for extra fees, because we don't actually even want to provide you with a connection to other movie providers even if you pay use". because of the size of the isp's it's bad business for them to provide you with access to competing content services EVEN IF YOU WANTED TO PAY EXTRA because it's off from their other service, that they could charge for y
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Learned, used and discarded. It is not worth the effort to argue in a civil manner with blithering idiots. They deliberately misunderstand everything.
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And this is the problem. The blithering idiot ratio is skyrocketing. We need to start calling these people morons, humiliating them in public so that being a moron is actually something that people do not aspire to be.
Re: What's so American (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's so American (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it's about stifling future innovation.
Net Neutrality is not about regulating the Internet. It's about preserving free speech on the Internet. This is what Aaron Swartz fought for, and you should too.
Where I live there are 2 broadband providers, COMCAST (cable) and VERIZON (fios). Every other place I have lived there was only one option.
Right now it would be perfectly legal for either of them to trash my traffic to comcastsucks.blogspot.com or other sites and there's very little I can do about it (well I often tunnel through a VPS provider and my download speeds for a lot of content goes up dramatically, but I have to pay extra for that, and luckily comcast is not yet throttling SSH or OpenVPN!). As far as innovation, the only thing they innovate is ways to annoy me with every changing rates, arrays of stupid unwanted services and marketing calls. Currently they (Comcast) wants to raise the rate for my broadband only (no tv) from 48 monthly to 65. However if I get a cable box and subscribe for TV services it will be 49/month for a year. I don't own a TV, but I have to get a cable box and have it sit in my closet for the cheaper rate. It's obscenely stupid, but that's comcast for you. I have no doubt that this change will double or triple the amount of junk mail they send me.
What would be wonderful is if there were other ISPs that could compete with Comcast and verizon using the same wires. What would also be wonderful would be if ISPs were required to respect 1st amendment, you know to promise not to quash freedom of speech. Less important to me, but probably pretty important would be to require ISPs to not abuse their position to try to lock users into or out of one video service (like Netflix) or another.
Re:What's so American (Score:5, Insightful)
Where I live there are 2 broadband providers, COMCAST (cable) and VERIZON (fios). Every other place I have lived there was only one option.
This is really all one needs to know. If anyone believes that anything good is going to come out of a situation with local monopolies, well, that person is simply wrong. And if there are no local monopolies, there is every reason to believe that the market is going to sort this out way, way better than some bureaucrat with an agenda.
Fight the local monopolies. That is the only truly important thing right now.
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Re:What's so American (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with fighting the local monopolies? The big cable company ISPs have carved up the country into blocks where they almost never compete. The phone company ISPs can overlap with the cable company ISPs in some areas, but they are big as well and don't want to disrupt the market. Whenever something disruptive starts to show itself, the big ISPs either lobby to crush it (see: Municipal Broadband) or buy it out and crush it. They're using their monopoly might to keep their monopoly might. In other words, the big ISPs keep their monopolies because they are big ISPs and there's nothing us little guys can do to stop them.
But don't worry because if we let Comcast and Time Warner merge into an even bigger ISP, then they'll be kept in check by Google Fiber being in a handful of markets. (Before anyone points out Google Fiber as proving me wrong, AT&T tried to stop Google Fiber from expanding. Probably the only reason that Comcast doesn't try to crush them is that they're using them as an example of "competition" during the merger the same way Microsoft pointed to Apple as competition in the desktop PC market when Apple had about 1% of the market and Microsoft had about 99%.)
Re:What's so American (Score:4, Insightful)
Having a TV cable company provide Internet service is a technical natural, with a fast network of last-mile cabling in place, but a legal horror because having one provider for both services represents a conflict of interest. Much usage throttling is prompted by cable companies' fear of cord-cutting. This may require a separate antitrust decision to resolve.
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Actually, it's about stifling future innovation. I can easily imagine new technology sometime in the near future which requires blazingly high pings. Perhaps a massively distributed neural net kind of thing, done over the internet. But the traffic for this innovation will be limited to the speeds the derps across the street use for their cat videos.... they will not be able to pay for such speed, even if they want to, no matter what the requirements of their innovation require, they will be limited to the speeds your grandmother gets for her gardening forum.
You realize that net neutrality is exactly what ensures your special traffic for your neural net doesn't get stifled, right? People are complaining because certain high bandwidth protocols are currently being slowed in favor of YouTube cat videos and your grandmother's gardening forum. In fact, some high bandwidth video protocols or sites are being slowed in favor of video protocols or sites for a service a parent or related company provides. Doesn't matter how much you're willing to pay. When the inter
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Or look at the airways prior to FCC. Like most people who just knee jerk hate some government group, they don't bother to find out the history of why it exists, nor do they seem to have the mental capacity to look at what would happen if it went away.
It's like they think all the regulation and agency just appeared for no reason at all.
Re: What's so American (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course you mean to "compare the two". You're doing the same Cold War red-scare bullshit that the Koch Brothers' mouthpiece, "American Commitment" is trying to do. By putting two terms side-by-side you're trying to equate them in the mind of people who are as incapable of analysis as you are.
You don't know a single thing about Net Neutrality, do you? You don't have any idea what it means or what it's for. You saw "Koch Brothers" in the title of the post and you came here to fly your Republican flag, is all. "Common Core"... When you start name-checking Common Core you know you're deep in talk radio land.
Re: What's so American (Score:4, Informative)
You weren't the only one to start calling yourself an "independent" after GWB.
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The constitution is not simply a document telling the government what it cannot do. It also sets up the rules by which the government will operate and defines the relationship between the government and the citizen. Additionally,the constitution outlines the duties and responsibilities of citizens.
Re:What's so American (Score:5, Insightful)
The Kochs shill for their holdings in power companies by spreading bullshit about wind and solar power.
Enemies of the free market, trying to squash any competition
The Kochs shill for Mike Pompeo so he will do their dirty work in Washington.
Enemies of representative lawmaking,
I'm so tired of hearing how they claim to be Libertarian. I swear they registered just for the publicity.
Because they aren't Libertarians. If I were a true Libertarian I would be pissed at how the name has been stolen
Libertarian today stands for selfish prick who refuses to do anything that isn't in their immediate self interest. And they look a whole awful lot like far right wing Republicans.
The concept of live and let live, and personal freedom of the original Libertarians is long gone. "Enlightened Self Interest" has been replaced by "Self Interest" only.
Urgh (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you Americans *still* not gotten over this whole Marxist/Communist/Socialist = EVIL thing yet? Your government really did a good job with the propaganda during the Cold War it seems.
Re:Urgh (Score:5, Insightful)
Marxism is probably preferable to the feudal society these guys are promoting.
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Marxism is probably preferable to the feudal society these guys are promoting.
That's an interesting comparison. Ignoring the question of whether "these guys" are promoting feudalism, I find it interesting to think about which actually is better, Marxism or feudalism, as an economic system.
From an ideological perspective, Marxism is better, in theory at least, because placing all ownership of property in the hands of a few lords is blatantly unfair. From a practical perspective, though, I'm not sure there's a difference, because every attempt to implement Marxism on any scale larger
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Have you Americans *still* not gotten over this whole Marxist/Communist/Socialist = EVIL thing yet? Your government really did a good job with the propaganda during the Cold War it seems.
Because it does technically run counter to what our country was founded on. The basis of all of those beliefs seem to be the whole Vulcan thing "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one" The USA was founded on a strong principle of individual freedom.
In truth, any system taken to an extreme is bad. Those three were taken way too far. Stalin really did murder somewhere around 30 million people after all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
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Have you Americans *still* not gotten over this whole Marxist/Communist/Socialist = EVIL thing yet?
Why would they? From what I've seen there are a great number of them that don't even understand their own nation's founding principles; I can't count the number of times I've heard/read people complain about private entities not abiding by the first amendment. Getting over a smear campaign against the red/yellow terror from decades ago is likely one of the least of their worries.
Re:Urgh (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, we're getting there. During the past two elections, studies done about people's reaction to the word "Socialism" have shifted drastically. Among those under 30, there is actually a majority who see as a positive term.
Give it time.
I call it the "ABBA Effect". People have heard for years that Sweden is socialist, and then people saw ABBA on TV and thought, "Hey, they've got pop stars and hot chicks in short skirts over there! Maybe Socialism's not so bad after all." When you see people on "socialized" medicine who are happy and healthy with nice teeth and shapely asses, there is something subtle that shifts. It starts in the pants and slowly works its way towards the brain.
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Have you Americans *still* not gotten over this whole Marxist/Communist/Socialist = EVIL thing yet? Your government really did a good job with the propaganda during the Cold War it seems.
Holy shit, dude. It's not the propaganda from the Cold War, it's the tens of millions of dead bodies that Communism produced last century. In my book, that is EVIL, yes. That doesn't mean there aren't other evils in the world or that the US has always been the bastion of freedom that we should be or any of that.
I cannot fathom how someone could be arguing in 2014 that Communism isn't evil.
Re:Urgh (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Socialism is simply about people cooperating with one another to work for the public good, which might be via the government, but can equally be in voluntary groups - the cooperative movement, for example, is considered socialist by virtually everyone, be they rabid anti-socialist or red hippie alike, yet has nothing to do with government. And let's not get started on unions... Robert Owen, considered by most the "Father of Socialism", had no government role at all in what he was working on, he'd be admired by many libertarians if it wasn't for that damned dirty S word blinkering
I always figured Jesus Christ predated Owen as a socialist thinker which, incidentally, also causes me to be amused over how so many socialist hating conservatives also claim to be devout Christians.
Re:Urgh (Score:5, Informative)
I always figured Jesus Christ predated Owen as a socialist thinker which, incidentally, also causes me to be amused over how so many socialist hating conservatives also claim to be devout Christians.
-- Acts 2:44-47
-- Acts 4:32-35
The first Christian church in history was a festering den of socialism.
This tells me that a lot of "Christians" need to reconsider their politics, or at least their committment to cut-throat capitalism.
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The first Christian church in history was a festering den of socialism.
This tells me that a lot of "Christians" need to reconsider their politics, or at least their committment to cut-throat capitalism.
Precisesely and he was also a card carrying pacifist. The really funny part is that I still got modded down as "Overrated" for pointing this out his socialist tendencies. I suppose in the minds of Slashdot modpoint wielding christian conservatives, Jesus Christ must have been a militaristic advocate of predatory corporate capitalism....
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You might want to look up what 'socialism' means ... it refers to "a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."
The problem of course is that slightly more socialist countries like Canada or some of northern Europe are just *barely* socialist, having socialized medicine, schooling, care for the poor, etc. but not nearly so much as advised by Marx. Unfortunately the Ame
Re:Urgh (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see why some people considers communism to be evil considering that the attempts at implementation doesn't have a good track record. What really irks me is really those who go with socialist = EVIL. Not only does it disregard the Nordic socialist countries but it also speaks of an extreme ignorance of what a socialism is and that US fits that definition very well.
That is by design. The oligarchs in the US don't want the citizenry getting the idea that American Capitalism may not be the best way to structure things. That's why socialism and communism were so demonized; they are a threat to the dominant paradigm. If people were to get the idea that government can function to make everyone's lives better and make this a more equal society (equality of opportunity, not outcome) they might start to object to the accumulation of inordinate wealth and the power and privilege that comes with it. They might also wonder why the rich keep getting richer while everyone else has to make do with less and less. I think you can see why the .1% doesn't want us going down that road.
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So, what the Kochs are saying is that if we have Net Neutrality 100 million people will die?
Well, that's reasonable. We should probably forget all about that Net Neutrality thing.
Next Koch campaign: "Net Neutrality is like Ebola!"
Re:Urgh (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you people always imagine that nobody else has read and completely understood what marx was gabbling about. Marx was the author of the communist manifesto along with Engels wherein he declaimed mandatory adherence to rules such as "confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels" and "centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state". In reality Stalin was the purest Marxist that ever lived, and the degenerate state he spawned was the embodiment of Marxs' ideals. And keep in mind that Marx was a perenially drunken adulterous reprobate who refused to repay loans and acknowledge his own illegitimate children.
What's that you say, they were just doing it wrong? Everyone seems to do it wrong, how many more millions need to be murdered before you people get it through your thick skulls that it's a nonfunctional religion?
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Net Neutrality Is 'Marxist,' According To a Koch-Backed Astroturf Group
No, net neutrality is not Marxist. Net neutrality is very much a capitalist policy, as distinct from being a corporatist policy.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
This is the correct response. Net neutrality is the only way to preserve freedom in the "market" of Internet services. The ISP market is not an example of free market capitalism. There are various governmental restrictions on where you can lay infrastructure, and the cost of that infrastructure presents an extremely high barrier to entry. This results in a monopoly or duopoly in most areas in the United States. Therefore, we're not talking about a "free market".
So if you want to allow for a free marke
I guess roads are too (Score:2, Insightful)
Unless they're tollways. And apparently the Koch brothers would prefer if all roads were tollways.
American capitalism (Score:2, Informative)
What would be so bad about changing American capitalism? As if moderating part of it would automatically send the American society deep into communism.
But staying on topic, net neutrality IS a good idea, and I do hope that so-called Marxist as well as anyone else believes so. Saying it would be bad because group X or Y think so, is the stupidest thing ever. These sort of argumentation can get so fast out of control...
SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid (Score:2)
Dumbest argument ever (Score:5, Insightful)
Marxists think net neutrality is good, therefore net neutrality is bad.
You know what... Marxists think breathing is good, therefore breathing is bad also?
Such arguments are never valid.
Orwell missed out ... (Score:2)
... he should have invented "the Goldstein brothers", not just Emmanuel Goldstein.
There's just something more sinister sounding about brothers, isn't there?
(This comment has nothing to do with the merits or lack thereof of "net neutrality", BTW.)
Kochs will ruin capitalism by short sighted greed (Score:3, Informative)
Which Marx? (Score:2)
Karl or Groucho? If they mean the latter, I might even believe them.
Will
Decreasing living standard (Score:2)
All of the neo-mercantilist economist promoting what Koch labels "american capitalism" have been disproven empirically, sure they can push the logic utopians always do but nobody who have tried to practice it have ended up with anything but disaster. And America ceased being
Stupid namecalling (Score:4, Insightful)
Calling something "Marxist" seems like an attempt to make further discussion unnecessary, comparable when in more civilised countries something is called "fascist". And calling someone who pleads for unbrideled capitalism as |leading to American situations" is also supposed to cut off further discussion, as no sane person wants that to happen.
Marx became an insult (Score:3)
It is amazing that Marx became an insult. Marx just told us that the wealthier want to get even more rich, which in the end makes labor unable to purchase the goods produced, and hence capitalism destroys itself.
I guess they confuse Marx and Stalin.
*@^$#&* Koch brothers (Score:3, Informative)
Some versions of it are marxist. (Score:3)
Here is how you translate it into capitalist terms. Because this is a communication problem.
1. End all state backed communication monopolies because they make a free ISP market impossible. Anyone arguing this on capitalist terms will agree with this point. This would include AT&T, Verizon, TWC, Comcast, etc. They all enjoy regional monopolies that are backed by local governments and it is ILLEGAL to compete with them in many cases. This is the situation that allows abusive ISP policy in most cases.
2. Ask for clarity and brevity in contracts so that the consumer knows the terms of the contract they're signing. Capitalists shouldn't have a problem with this since informed consent is a central tenet of capitalism. And once those contracts are in place the ISPs will have a hard time claiming they have a right to throttle connections when that right wasn't stipulated in the contract.
3. Make it a stipulated portion of the ISP contract that it includes OR DOES NOT include access to all other networks on the internet.
4. Ask for a simplification of the regulations required for an ISP start up. Capitalists should like small business and understand that a healthy market requires them. As such, they should make it easier for small ISPs to get going and transition to medium sized ISPs should they prove successful.
Etc.
Look, a major problem of the net neutrality argument is that it IS couched in communist lingo. I'm not saying it is right or wrong or even criticizing communism. But we have to be honest about that point and keep in mind that many will reflexively oppose it simply for smelling of communism.
So if you care about net neutrality... consider what I said above because it could work as easily as anything.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem with your analysis is that the laissez-faire folks would see points all of your stipulations as Marxist.
1. In unfettered capitalism monopolies are fine. While you don't want regulated markets. construction of monopolies through price manipulation etc. is fine. This is how we ended up with stuff like Standard Oil. Look what happened with the breakup of AT&T - gradually the companies formed by the split re-merged. Only regulation has prevented formation of a monopoly.
2, 3 and 4 are obviously r
How Stupid are Elected Representatives? (Score:5, Insightful)
How stupid do you have to be to read this sort of thing and say "oh yeah, good point". I mean, if you see "public utility" and "Marxist" being joined together, do you think "hmm... yes, I see what you mean", or do you think "hang on, but aren't the electrical grid, water, gas, roads and other things public utilities? We're not in a marxist state, so what's one more utility to worry about?".
Easiest Definition of Net Neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than say Net Neutrality, which is ambiguous and a bit high high minded, call it what it really is. It is protecting from ISP double dipping. As an industry (in the USA and Canada), it is already a bloated spider feasting parasitically on society, as seen by the overwhelming consumer hatred of those companies, which somehow manage to stay in business... (I am saying rhetorically, I know how).
What they want to do, is have the ability to not only charge the consumer of media, but also the producer. It is like a perfect fucking storm of profit! As the middle man just skimming money off everyone involved. The problem is, I as the consumer have already paid for my damn service. If I plan on using it to only access simple webpages or if I plan on streaming Netflix all day everyday, that is my right, and I pay for the privilege of doing so. We have all moved to the damn CAP system already, so if I consume more than Granny Twinkles, I PAY for it. However now they want to take my service, which I already pay for, and say well since so much is going to Netflix, we want to change them more money, and if they refuse, slow the connection.... to the consumer, who has already damn well paid for the service in the first place. Or conversely if the company pays the extortion, they will simply pass the cost onto the consumer, so either way, the consumer is going to pay or get less service no matter what happens.
Anyway it is rapacious greed pure and simple, it is double dipping, it is wrong. These companies already have too many advantages, and constantly abuse both the system and their customers every chance they get for more profits. The reason the folks like Koch and the rest like it is they have money to gain, and the vast population has money to lose. This is not ideological (all this crap about Marxism etc...), but some idiots will think it is, and support idea, even though it is by far not in their best interests to do so. The republicans/conservatives have been playing the same shell game for years, where a large chunk of their support comes from these uninformed ideological idiots who are voting against themselves over and over again based on some fictional ideal, that doesn't even apply or even make sense given a situation. However using whatever media (and if your name is Koch, and in the USA) you have plenty of media to abuse, to convince the people to accept whatever snake oil you are selling...
Not "Koch-backed" (Score:3)
RTFA - there's no association with the Koch boogeymen other than that the president of the "astroturf group" used to work for a group which did have Koch ties.
The author of the article expressly states that he doesn't know who funds the group. Its title is inaccurate and irresponsible.
Re: (Score:2)
I can find plenty of astroturfing groups that are soros backed and do the same thing, [...]."
Examples please?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Except a lot of the Koch funded groups including the Heartland Group and others are taken quite seriously by the voting public.
Its a major issue.
Re: (Score:3)
>I can find plenty of astroturfing groups that are soros backed and do the same thing, but that doesn't make it "front page news."
Maybe it's because, mostly when liberal organisations fund something, it's something the majority of voters wanted anyway ?
Re: (Score:3)
>I can find plenty of astroturfing groups that are soros backed and do the same thing, but that doesn't make it "front page news."
Maybe it's because, mostly when liberal organisations fund something, it's something the majority of voters wanted anyway ?
You're both wrong, actually.
For OP, the trick is in the source: Sure, HuffPo isn't going to post any articles that point out how Soros uses his riches to influence government in the exact same method as the Koch brothers, albeit tugging in the opposite direction, but FOX will sure make it "front page news." Vice-versa is also the case.
For you, well, that statement is just wishful thinking. Basically, if you have one or two super-rich guys bankrolling the whole she-bang, it's a safe bet that the majority in
Re: (Score:3)
You're a bit naive there.
I'm not the one claiming "voters want that" because the groups I choose to support bankroll the effort.
NOTHING happens in US politics without a billionaire backing it. Nothing at all. No matter how badly the public wants it.
Thus (further) negating your previous claim.
I merely posited that this is slightly more common on the left side of the spectrum because the interests of liberal billionaires are slightly closer to the public interest in the first place.
Because that's what you want to believe, not because it's a statement of empirical fact. Ergo, naivete.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, in your entire post, literally the ONLY thing that isn't a complete falsehood is "This is the same entity that gave us the Broadcast Flag".
You have no idea what net neutrality is about, you have no idea what it means, and you clearly haven't got the foggiest IDEA what Marxism means.
Re:Not Net Neutrality (Score:5, Informative)
Citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]
You know nothing about Marxism. First learn what it ACTUALLY says, THEN you can try to critique it.
Net Neutrality bears no RESEMBLENCE to what you are describing in your post: it is simply an injunction that customers should get what they are PAYING for - which is unfettered access to the ENTIRE internet. Painting it as anything else is a lie.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh -and the idea that you are obligated to sell a customer that which he actually paid for and keep the promises you made is the very foundation of Capitalism, attempts to do otherwise is known as fraud.
Even the most libertarian systems of thought still hold that one of the government's LEGITIMATE jobs is the prevention of fraudulent trade.
The entire concept has literally nothing to do with Marxism, which is NOT by the way the opposite of Capitalism, both are just two theories out of a gigantic spectrum of
Re: (Score:3)
A myth- Western civilization embraced and was built on literally dozens of different economic systems, capitalism didn't take over until the industrial revolution.
And have you noticed any particular changes in western civilisation since then?
Capitalism had nothing to do with the growth of Western civilization, which in any event, is no more civilized or advanced than Eastern civilization or Balcan civilization.
Eh "civilised" is a moving target, some people think that the only civilised societies are hunter gatherers living in grass huts, but by any rational measure western civilisation is the most advanced set of countries on the planet. Advances which incidentally spurred major social changes - science and engineering for example produced washing machine, fridges, cookers, all of the white goods, then capitalism made these goods both
Re: (Score:2)
I came here for abuse.
Re: (Score:2)
You declared that Marxist would love net neutrality which proves a complete lack of understanding of both.
A Marxist would have no opinion on net neutrality at all. A Leninist would - and the Leninist would OPPOSE net neutrality on the basis that it still has private ISPs, to the Leninist the entire internet infrastructure would be run by the state only.
To an anarcho-socialist it would be ideally run by a consensus system with specialists appointed to manage things who are instantly recallable and can be rep
Re: (Score:2)
Net Neutrality is a rule that can apply to any node that routes packets; meaning pretty much all of them.
I appreciate the energy you're putting into Marxism vs. other labels, but that's really not the important point I'm making.
Re: (Score:3)
"Net neutrality (also network neutrality or Internet neutrality) is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication."
That's what Net Neutrality is, as opposed to whatever it is you're describing in your post.
Re: (Score:2)
That's what I said; I gave the technical definition. Go and look up how TCP negotiates connection speeds: By dropping packets.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not just dropping packages. ISPs can come up with all sorts of ways to distort traffic to extract more revenue, which can be far more subtle (and evil) than selectively dropping packages. For example, when customers try to go to Google, the ISP could send them to Bing (for a kickback), or rewrite Amazon affiliate tags so all Amazon purchases pay a percentage of the ISP. These aren't hypothetical - look at what wireless cell phone companies do to their customers and to content providers - it's a nightma
Re: (Score:3)
Forged RST packets, captive portals, and injecting into webpages are wrong, they are fraud (i.e. slap them with a class-action lawsuit), but it's not a violation of Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality involves routing rules, period. (Use the respective terms: Forged packets and captive portals.)
The FCC might be proposing regulations around Net Neutrality; but the point of the article doesn't concern that, it's that FCC shouldn't be the packet police.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not sure what you're getting at; I think you mean to qualify "considering only Wikipedia/Facebook traffic, each being used equally, each should account for about 50% of packet drops", but that's not necessarily correct either, Facebook has much more streaming media than Wikipedia and would likely show considerably more packet loss.
I'm also not sure we want to go all-out on the "treat all data equally" idea militantly; what does that mean? If I pay for a dedicated pipe at a data center, I'm paying per Mb
Re: (Score:3)
Simply designating ISPs as utilities does nothing to ensure net neutrality of any kind, although it can be path to enforce net neutrality requirements. On the other hand, it could also enable
Re: (Score:3)
I really wasn't trying to get into Marxism, but as an armchair university professor, I would guess that a computer network is necessarily built of capital (i.e. nodes of routers and computers), and the alternative to prevent suppression of the working class would be collective ownership of the routers; with some arbitrary "equitable" and/or "fair" routing scheme, which I guess would look like Net Neutrality (and it is, so far as I can tell, a good routing principle).
Aside, Adam Smith also casually used Labo
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The Koch brothers get criticized a lot because they're secretive billionaires with a political agenda, who pump their fortune into the US political system through sneaky means on a massive scale, funneling their money through hundreds of "anonymous" groups so that it's difficult to trace, writing legislation to promote their agenda and businesses, and trying to get it passed when nobody is looking, and generally doing their best to subvert the democratic process. Oddly enough, the vast majority of Americans