<story><title>FCC to be led by Ajit Pai, staunch opponent of consumer protection rules</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/fcc-to-be-led-by-ajit-pai-staunch-opponent-of-consumer-protection-rules/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>entee</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m quite opposed to the guy&amp;#x27;s ideas from what I&amp;#x27;ve read so far, but here&amp;#x27;s one perspective:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2010&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;opinion&amp;#x2F;21Benkler.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2010&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;opinion&amp;#x2F;21Benkler.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some of the ways to look at it is that if providers can sell a fastlane to Netflix they can reduce prices for the consumer. Other arguments that have been advanced include having a fast lane for medical devices or emergency services.&lt;p&gt;I could see an argument in favor if the rest of the marketplace was highly competitive and you could just switch to a different provider if the provider you had was behaving abusively. That&amp;#x27;s not the case in most of the US where you have a duopoly at best for fast internet.&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find this guy&amp;#x27;s proposals to be bad policy for individual consumers, but they&amp;#x27;re pretty great for ISPs. They would argue that in the end that&amp;#x27;s great for consumers too, but as far as I am concerned, that remains to be seen.</text></item><item><author>rashkov</author><text>Is there a sympathetic view of Ajit Pai that anyone could offer?&lt;p&gt;I can understand how he would be opposed to the pro-consumer agenda of Wheeler&amp;#x27;s FCC. To be sure, there might be a better way of solving these problems using a free market mechanism, instead of top-down regulation which is antithetical to the libertarian&amp;#x2F;conservative ethos.&lt;p&gt;For example, previous HN discussions have surfaced how some european countries have a deregulated last mile, giving the consumer a nearly zero-friction way to switch between ISPs.&lt;p&gt;I just can&amp;#x27;t imagine Pai doing anything like this. I can only anticipate him enhancing the monopolistic powers of the big ISPs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gshulegaard</author><text>&amp;gt; if providers can sell a fastlane to Netflix they can reduce prices for the consumer.&lt;p&gt;Historically, this is not shown to be how companies act.  The implicit assumption here is that a supplier has some sort of benevolent desire.  But the reality is that if a company can increase revenue, they will do so without redistributing it to the benefit of their customers or even employees.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; They would argue that in the end that&amp;#x27;s great for consumers too, but as far as I am concerned, that remains to be seen.&lt;p&gt;We have seen it, and it&amp;#x27;s not great for consumers.  Trickle-down economics is a fallacy.  It&amp;#x27;s also been debunked by Economists very thoroughly.</text></comment>
<story><title>FCC to be led by Ajit Pai, staunch opponent of consumer protection rules</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/fcc-to-be-led-by-ajit-pai-staunch-opponent-of-consumer-protection-rules/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>entee</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m quite opposed to the guy&amp;#x27;s ideas from what I&amp;#x27;ve read so far, but here&amp;#x27;s one perspective:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2010&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;opinion&amp;#x2F;21Benkler.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2010&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;opinion&amp;#x2F;21Benkler.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some of the ways to look at it is that if providers can sell a fastlane to Netflix they can reduce prices for the consumer. Other arguments that have been advanced include having a fast lane for medical devices or emergency services.&lt;p&gt;I could see an argument in favor if the rest of the marketplace was highly competitive and you could just switch to a different provider if the provider you had was behaving abusively. That&amp;#x27;s not the case in most of the US where you have a duopoly at best for fast internet.&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find this guy&amp;#x27;s proposals to be bad policy for individual consumers, but they&amp;#x27;re pretty great for ISPs. They would argue that in the end that&amp;#x27;s great for consumers too, but as far as I am concerned, that remains to be seen.</text></item><item><author>rashkov</author><text>Is there a sympathetic view of Ajit Pai that anyone could offer?&lt;p&gt;I can understand how he would be opposed to the pro-consumer agenda of Wheeler&amp;#x27;s FCC. To be sure, there might be a better way of solving these problems using a free market mechanism, instead of top-down regulation which is antithetical to the libertarian&amp;#x2F;conservative ethos.&lt;p&gt;For example, previous HN discussions have surfaced how some european countries have a deregulated last mile, giving the consumer a nearly zero-friction way to switch between ISPs.&lt;p&gt;I just can&amp;#x27;t imagine Pai doing anything like this. I can only anticipate him enhancing the monopolistic powers of the big ISPs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rashkov</author><text>I completely agree with you, but I would put it into even stronger terms. Paid fast lanes are not an experiment worth performing, in the hope that ISPs pass the savings down to consumers. The ISPs have absolutely zero incentive to pass the savings onto consumers when they have no real competition.&lt;p&gt;Any free-market thinker should recognize this to be self-evident, so if they really want to give ISPs the freedom to offer paid fast-lanes, then they have to solve the competition problem first.</text></comment>