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StillWaters  ·  2443 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Let's formulate an official Hubski response to the FCC

I support your proposal, yet also note the hesitation expressed of "speaking for all users". Perhaps a middle-ground would be if you develop a text and say that this is an expression of several users of Hubski. And then also provide some platform (either something online like Change.org or e-mail or snail-mail) enabling those of us who wish to sign to do so.

As for input, I always refer to the father of Capitalism:

    The interest of the dealers [referring to stock owners, manufacturers, and merchants], however, in any particular branch of trade or manufacture, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, and absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1991), pages 219-220)

Numerous places Smith refers to monopolies as being the opposite of a free market, and warns of the harm it does to governments, consumers and business. He goes on to say:

    The legislature, were it possible that its deliberations could be always directed, not by the clamorous importunity of partial interests, but by an extensive view of the general good, ought upon this very account, perhaps, to be particularly careful neither to establish any new monopolies of this kind, nor to extend further those which are already established. Every such regulation introduces some degree of real disorder into the constitution of the state, which it will be difficult afterwards to cure without occasioning another disorder. (WN IV.ii.44)

Any network - whether virtual or physical - that ties sellers to buyers, is always a high risk to be utilized to create a natural monopoy (or duopoly - AT&T and Comcast) that enables the network operator to extort both the sellers and buyers.

Especially with the Republicans in charge of the process I believe that arguing that their proposal goes against fundamental principles of capitalism is more likely to have an effect.