Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/02/08/net-neutrality-congress-push.html
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Not true, more then Pay would win. The large ISPs also win, they get to charge you more money for the same thing you are already buying!
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I am all for neutrality but the best argument I’ve heard against it is that these mega-corporations are for it. I suffer from anti-corporate bias.
What say you, mutants?
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Obviously the sovereignty of parliament precludes a permanent solution in the ordinary sense of the term, but I wonder if - as a general solution - it would be possible to ‘weight’ legislation to reflect it’s robustness at inception.
Assume, for example, that 100 lawmakers vote on three pieces of legislation;
- Law 1: 51 vote for, 49 vote against. Unpopular law passes with slimest of majorities
- Law 2: 75 vote for, 25 vote against. Popular law passes with robust majority
- Law 3: 99 vote for, 1 votes against. Wildly popular law passes in a landslide.
To repeal each of those laws would require more votes than were cast to pass it.
So,
- the unpopular Law 1 would merely require 52 votes to see it repealed (or amended, or whatever the right term is)
- Law 2 is pretty popular, and so at least 76 votes would be needed to overturn it.
- Law 3, on the other hand, would require literally every legislator to vote against it.
In the usual case, this would ensure popular laws would be very hard to get rid of, while controversial laws would be subject to change almost every time another party took power. It combines support for the status quo with flexibility for change, based on how popular or ‘settled’ a law is.
Would that work?
(and I do get that the Net Neutrality thing that’s the subject of the OP here is a ruling by an appointed official, rather than the result of a legislative process)
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It looks suspicious.
Mutant want Net Neutrality - Ryjkyk conveniently forget mega-corporations that got rules changed to kill Net Neutrality - Ryjkyj have anti-corporate bias my Mutant ass
If that’s the best argument against net neutrality, then there really is no argument against it.
A better solution is to build network cooperatives and refuse to connect between the big ISPs. Then watch as the capitalists screech about monopoly while you’re just a mom/pop ISP. Perfect PR storm.
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And that is in the sincerest possible way a feature, not a bug. Particularly when compared with
which is so buggy that triple distilled DDT is called for.
I want net neutrality and I fucking hate Comcast more than just about anything. I just like to examine the arguments I hear so that I can try to understand them.
We already have a process that contemplates what you have in mind, at least partially. It’s much more difficult to pass a constitutional amendment than a law, and much more difficult to repeal one (which generally requires another amendment). Most state constitutions work more or less the same way. In my home state, for instance, getting the referendum for a constitutional amendment on the ballot requires a supermajority of both houses in two consecutive sessions of the legislature - and then the referendum has to pass. There’s also a mandatory referendum that the legislature must call at least once every twenty years: “shall a constitutional convention be called?”, but the voters have not accepted it since 1967, and in 1967, none of the amendments proposed by the convention carried even a single county. (The ordinary amendment process based on two sessions of the legislature followed by a referendum is alive and well.)
Yeah,good points. I guess I was thinking to make something like that the general case, rather than reserved for special legislation. And also to weight the ‘protection’ against amendment based on how popular it was at inception.
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