Tellin' ya. Y'all need to be on Trump's mailing list. Nowhere else will you find thoughtful, intelligent commentary from the conservative point of view.
- By now, it may seem that there must be something legally wrong with the FCC’s net neutrality regulations. Under the U.S. Constitution, only Congress can give a specific power to an executive agency (like the FCC)—usually through a statute. Here’s the kicker: the FCC claimed that Congress gave them the power to regulate the internet through the Communications Act of 1934. The observant reader will notice that this law was passed a long time before the internet even existed, though the Act did give the FCC power to regulate “Common Carriers” like radio, wire communication, and telephone companies.
Thoughtful, intelligent commentary.
- Maureen Collins has a B.A. in philosophy from The Catholic University of America. While a proud Hoosier from Indiana, she currently lives and works in Washington DC.
Thoughtful, intelligent commentary.
Actually it sounds like Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, commonly called Capitalism. I must confess I didn't read it all. The excessive use of emotive and biased language and the absence of non-emotional arguments is such a "turn-off".The free market, they say, is inherently unfair and only a third party—the government—can determine how content should be treated. But that sounds exactly like textbook New-Deal progressivism.
It sounds like Republican Adam Smith, the guy the Right invented so they wouldn't have to acknowledge that Smith wanted market interventions minimized, not eliminated. - Wealth of Nations, pp. 267To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers…The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.
Ah, Republican Adam Smith - hadn't heard of him but that makes sense. I assume it is RAS who thinks Citizen United is a good idea, because the original Adam Smith expressed great concern of the Parliamentarians being influenced by dealers and corporations, warning it would undermine the Free Market, the government and society.
Hehe, love it! And I'm surprised I haven't seen it before. Over on reddit I used to tease obnoxious Republican supporters by highlighting how anti-capitalism the current Republicans are. It is surprising how few of them were familiar with Adam Smith's philosophy. Sometimes I teased them also on the Jesus element, but that quickly became too emotional.
How long has this Net Neutrality argument been going? Five years? Ten? I remember, way back when, getting into an argument with one of my friends about Net Neutrality and censorship. They were convinced that Net Neutrality allowed internet providers to censor what you see on the internet and I was running in circles trying to explain to them that it's the exact opposite. The headline to this post creates a weird deja vu.
Having worked in energy to me it seems absolutely idiotic to not go for net neutrality. Open access to transmission lines helped the free market by increasing the number and diversity of electrical suppliers and improving the consumer options. Open access to interstate natural gas pipelines similarly improved the free market drivers for the natural gas segment. It is exactly the same debate that happens with all network monopolies - telecom, railroads, etc. Anyone in favor of the free market should be supporting net neutrality.
Man. I feel like I'm painting him in a bad light now, because he's honestly such a good guy. We'd just get into really weird discussions sometimes though, because when we agreed, we'd really agree, but when we disagreed, we were like oil and water. I kind of wish I recorded some of them. They'd be fun to go back and listen to.