That's exactly right. A utility implies a commodity item. Take the electric business for example, you might compete on price, but quality is never part of the equation. There isn't a "better" electricity. It's all the same. A phone line is a phone line. You can't pay more for a better quality phone line -- it facilitates phone calls. There aren't "faster" phone lines -- a phone call is a phone call. Obviously I am talking land lines here. Same with water. There aren't any water companies competing based on the fact that they provide Evian on tap. Even if you wanted to pay the price to have Evian on tap, it will never happen; water is water in terms of a utility. Making the Internet a utility will destroy competition because it commoditizes it.
I know that some percentage of the HN community seems to love government regulation and feels that capitalism is somehow evil, but te government has a long track record of being highly inefficient and mostly immune to market forces. If you don't like the drivers license office service, too bad, it's the only game in town; there's no incentive to improve it. I find it ironic that despite the Libertarian leanings of many of us here, there's some desire to implement more regulation, more restrictions and less competition. How does less competition improve anything? Without incentives, the market-driven pressure to make it faster and cheaper disappears.
I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the consequences of regulating the Internet and presumably taxing it like a utility. There are significant unintended consequences.
It's not that capitalism is evil, it's that you have to make observations about some markets where capitalism is naturally working or failing.
The current state of broadband doesn't have any competition to destroy with regulation... last-mile internet should fall under a utility because it's already been tested in the market and there simply hasn't been any demonstration of competition because there is no direct financial incentive on the open market to overbuild on the last mile and compete.
I know that some percentage of the HN community seems to love government regulation and feels that capitalism is somehow evil, but te government has a long track record of being highly inefficient and mostly immune to market forces. If you don't like the drivers license office service, too bad, it's the only game in town; there's no incentive to improve it. I find it ironic that despite the Libertarian leanings of many of us here, there's some desire to implement more regulation, more restrictions and less competition. How does less competition improve anything? Without incentives, the market-driven pressure to make it faster and cheaper disappears.
I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the consequences of regulating the Internet and presumably taxing it like a utility. There are significant unintended consequences.