Whom do you trust with the Internet?
Published March 6, 2015
By Tom Campbell
by Tom Campbell, Executive Producer and Moderator, NC SPIN, March 5, 2015.
Perhaps you have been listening to the yays and nays concerning the net neutrality decision of the FCC, which also gave the City of Wilson permission to expand their Greenlight Internet service. Where you stand on them basically comes down to whom you trust: big business or big government? For many of us the answer is neither.
For most of my professional life owning and operating small businesses I recognized a responsibility to four groups of stakeholders: the owners, the employees of the business, its customers and the community in which we operated. I was taught that the enterprises that did the right thing by most of those stakeholders were most successful and always felt most other businesses believed the same.
Not so today. The more companies expand the further they remove themselves from those who work for them, buy from them and live where they operate. Two things consume big publicly traded corporations: profits and stock prices. They pay obeisance almost exclusively to shareholders (mostly large institutional investors) and their top executives. Witness the financial sector’s greedy crash, automakers who put profits above safe airbags or ignition switches and industrial pollution and coal ash spills as but a few of many examples that prove the point.
We’ve watched megopolies like Time Warner-Comcast, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple make George Orwell’s 1984 predictions of Big Brother look infantile. These companies know more about you than you can imagine, including your relative age and sex; what you watch, when and for how long; who you are likely to vote for; where you live; and what you likely earn, purchase and do for recreation. Don’t believe it? Search for any product, then watch how fast it pops up as an ad on Internet pages you view.
Many businesses have grown so large as to be labeled “too big to fail,” increasing both their size and influence over us every day. The Federal Trade Commission, formed 100 years ago this month, was supposed to protect consumers and promote competition but has become a toothless tiger, as has the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators.
I don’t trust big government either. Most of us can tell tales of bureaucrats and onerous regulations that cost us money, complicate our lives and delay our actions. Just like big business, the larger and more powerful government becomes the less it is in touch with and concerned about you and me.
We need checks and balances on both. As an individual I have little influence on corporate America and while I don’t have much control over government I feel some influence by voting for those who do.
Supposedly nobody owns but everybody owns the Internet. The Federal Communications Commission, charged with regulating public airways, is tasked with purview. Only time will tell what impact net neutrality will have, but someone needs to make sure you and I won’t be forced into an ever-constricting communications pipeline while the big players gobble up all the bandwidth and pay substantially lower rates for so doing.
In the end I don’t trust either big business or big government but I sleep better at night believing somebody is providing some checks and balances to keep the playing field at least a little more level. Right now I like net neutrality.
March 6, 2015 at 8:28 am
Frank Burns says:
Under Obama, we no longer can trust any government agency to be objective and non political. We've seen how he has behaved by using the IRS for his political ends. For that reason, we must fight his efforts to regulate the internet. I have this nagging feeling that the FCC rulings will omit web sites that don't agree with Obama's approach like the Drudge Report or locally Carolina Plot Hound.
March 6, 2015 at 8:55 am
Richard Bunce says:
You too are old enough to remember when telephone service was only available from Ma Bell using a Ma Bell phone and the only long distance was from AT&T and featured high rates... that is what government regulation does.
As for business/corporations, if you do not like a business then do not do business with them, work for them, buy their stocks/bonds. A government bureaucrat will never watch out for you as well as you can. That government bureaucrat is just as likely to be subjective as objective, to hand a business a sweet ruling then resign and go work for them at an outrageous compensation level.
March 6, 2015 at 9:45 am
Norm Kelly says:
Is there an alternative to big government interfering in YET ANOTHER market? For the most part, every business market is better with the least amount of government interference. So, aside from the FCC creating over 300 pages of regulations on the free Internet, is there an alternative that would protect citizens even more? Is there a way to prevent big Internet service providers from becoming monopolies that some government agency wants to label 'too big to fail'?
The answer, of course, is YES there is always an alternative to government getting more involved in people's daily lives. Except government exists for the purpose of self-preservation and kingdom building.
There's already a government agency that is tasked with preventing monopolies, and 'too big to fail' institutions. The central planners should be doing things like preventing the merger of TimeWarner and Comcast. They prevented AT&T from acquiring T-Mobile because they said it would create too much of a monopoly and remove competition for the consumer. What exactly would be the difference between allowing TWC/Comcast to merge from preventing AT&T/T-Mob? None. It is the responsibility of the central planners to PREVENT, DENY the merger of TWC and Comcast. I've been a TWC customer in the past. Their service is mostly acceptable. Their customer service is terrible - cuz I can't use the word I want to use to describe them without being edited by the blog-master. Comparing Comcast service with TWC makes TWC look like a God-send! There is NO WAY I would put up with the level of service/customer service that Comcast is known for. So, central planners allowing a virtual monopoly of Comcast/TWC should be prevented from happening because it would create a virtual monopoly, but also because their customer service would get even worse. If that's possible. Once they are allowed to merge by their allies in Washington, they will have even less reason to improve or maintain current terrible service levels because they would know that customers options are so extremely limited. Yet, central planners are expected to allow this merger.
If central planners did their job, the job they are tasked with, instead of browsing porn at work, then monopolies would be prevented, and there would be virtually no need for big government to feel the need to 'regulate' the Internet. Which do I fear more: big government or big business? Big Government of course. Why? Because with business there is USUALLY an alternative, where I get to make choices. With big government there are no other choices, no alternatives. Government squashes competition. Witness state-sponsored gambling vs. private business gambling. Before NC forced state-sponsored gambling upon us, probably violating state law to accomplish it while demons ruled Raleigh, they insured private business gambling was eliminated. With the implementation of socialized medicine, private health insurance markets are going away in favor of government insurance plans. It's only going to get worse, if we actually listen to the socialists in Washington!
So the choice is for them to do their job and prevent monopolies. Otherwise, they get into the business of controlling US and what WE are allowed to do with out Internet service. Oh, and the new big government regulation WILL increase my cost while limiting my choices and probably reducing my data rate! Wanna bet the cost to maintain the same level of speed will go up now that the central planners are interfering in the market? Name one other area they've interfered with that hasn't caused either price increases to consumers, lower service to consumers, or both. It's also likely that services provided over the Internet will get more expensive. What's the chances complying with new federal regulations will allow services such as Netflix to maintain their low cost? What's the chances streaming Internet radio will stay as inexpensive as it is? If not for regulating, controlling, businesses like these, what other purpose does big government control serve? These won't be cost increases because the private businesses are greedy. These will be cost increases forced upon private businesses due to government control of the once-free market. Costs that will be forced upon these private businesses that WILL be passed on to consumers. One way or another, regulators will find a way to increase the cost of doing business for Internet businesses. It's what gives regulators POWER!
March 6, 2015 at 1:29 pm
Tom Hauck says:
Thank you for a provocative column.
Sometimes I think you write your columns to keep the conservatives awake.
I do not know how anyone can have a specific opinion on this ruling until we see the 300 hidden pages of rules. One wonders why they do not do their rulemaking in the sunlight for all to see and comment upon?
The sad facts are that this Administration and the people they appoint to run the Committees, Commissions and Offices all seem to be in favor of inserting government bureaucracy into everything. All Administrations depend on the bureaucracy and they are guarding their jobs. The examples that we have of the government not being efficient or actually hindering normal activity are the IRS (stopping those they do not like), the VA (inviting sick soldiers to come for their appointments very late, sometimes after they have died and at the convenience of the VA employees rather than the sick soldiers), the Border Patrol (letting "guns walk" until one of their own is murdered), the Marine Management Service (MMS) that did not do their job of overseeing the offshore drilling rigs until the BP disaster, the EPA who have chosen to interfere in every privately owned mud puddle in the country, and on and on.
I could go on but the others above have covered this material very well.
