Your quote is a great example of Pai strategically shining Net Neutrality in a negative light. In the current day and age there is plenty of concern around and overreaching government so hey, lets make the argument that this vote is about giving the government less control of the internet!

Except that's not what this vote is about. The government currently says that ISP's must treat internet traffic equally. This is a good thing and is hardly micromanaging. Without it, an ISP is able to kill their competition and extort other companies.

Examples: In 2005 the FCC ordered an ISP to stop blocking VOIP calls on their network. The ISP had their own phone service, so they started to block VOIP services on their network in order to force customers to use their phone product. Without NN, this is okay.

In 2005 the AT&T CEO claimed that "Anybody who expects to use our pipes for free is nuts!". ISP's want to demand a cut from every website just to reach their customers. Without NN, this is okay.

In 2012 AT&T decides to block FaceTime on its mobile networks for subscribers unless they enter into a “Mobile Share” plan. Without NN, this is okay.

There are more examples available, these all came from http://whatisnetneutrality.org/timeline.

The internet should really be nothing more than a dumb pipe. Your ISP should be doing nothing more than connecting you to the internet. They should not have a say in what websites you go toor what services you can use. They should not be able to force websites to pay for access to their customer base. The ISP should provide you X Mbps for Y GB of bandwidth and that's it.

I'll share a case against the current NN framework, even if I don't wholly buy it.

First of all, this vote is factually about giving the government less regulatory power by reclassifying ISPs under Title 1. The legal basis for Net Neutrality under Title II allows the government to dictate prices and essentially regulate ISPs like they do water or electric utilities. Obviously ISPs would prefer to not have this axe swinging over their heads.

> The government currently says that ISP's must treat internet traffic equally. This is a good thing and is hardly micromanaging.

It's a matter of opinion whether this is a good thing. One counter-argument is that it limits the size of the menu that ISPs can offer. My parents, for example, want fast home Internet access but do not watch streaming video. However home ISPs cannot offer downgraded video, so my parents must pay more.

Zero-rated ("free streaming") music - blatantly non-NN - is another argument. Obviously people like streaming music for free. NN proponents think this makes it hard for startups to compete with deep-pocketed established players. But this does not seem to be happening: lots and lots of services, both big and small, are now zero-rated on popular plans.

> The internet should really be nothing more than a dumb pipe.

Well, maybe it shouldn't. Applications have different needs: twitch games want low latency, streaming services want high bandwidth, overnight downloads can have low priority, etc. If you had a knob that controlled your Internet latency, wouldn't you use it?

But even if you believe it should be dumb, is it proper to declare that ISPs are natural monopolies and therefore ought to be regulated aggressively under Title II? Or is it better to apply a light touch and find ways to encourage competition, under the premise that competitive markets are more consumer-friendly? The recent upheavals in the mobile telecom market (led by T-Mobile) show that established players can be more vulnerable than they look.

I think basically we don't know. The most compelling arguments for NN are all hypothetical, because we have been living under a NN regime so far.

> If you had a knob that controlled your Internet latency, wouldn't you use it?

Generally, people would prefer that they have this control, not that the ISP has this control for them and does what the ISP wants.

Less government regulation makes sense in places that don't endanger people (e.g. food quality) and in fields with a lot of competition. A large number of people in the united states only have access to one ISP, or one fast ISP[1].

Your single ISP available to you could decide that you don't get to access your favorite site(s) without charging an additional fee to access them. They could refuse to offer any unknown sites, and just offer facebook, youtube, etc, each costing some number of dollars to use.

Net neutrality prevents this.

1. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/50-mi...

If competition is working effectively, then government management usually does more harm than good. The question is, is competition working effectively in telecommunications? In much of the country, I suspect that the answer is no.

And the reason for the lack of competition is, again, the government with its enforcement of ISP monopolies. Why don't they stop micromanaging the markets there as well?

Even without the government's involvement, infrastructure (internet (cables, dishes), transportation (e.g. roads, rails), cell service, sewage, electricity) all has such a massive initial investment that competition just won't naturally happen.

A company has to lay so much fiber or wire to service even a reasonable number of households that the barrier to entry is huge.

Thank you. That's very succinct and a good framing of the issue.

The biggest argument for maintaining net neutrality is so that ISPs don't provide worse service to websites competing with their own products. The most obvious case there being Netflix vs your cable company's streaming service. If you get high latency and frequent video stutter when using Netflix but not for your ISP's version, you'll use that. Even if the cause of that stutter is your ISP.

It is, when the industry in question has repeatedly shown themselves to act in a bad manner.

Further, "governing least" is a terrible idea, because that also implies that they're going to fail to govern in situations where they should.

To my mind, governing least means judiciously intervening when it actually requires it, but no more. If this is a situation where intervention makes sense, I am fine with that. I am just trying to comprehend if it is or not.