I have mixed feelings about the Tea Party. On one hand, I think that they have much more of a legitimate point than most people attribute to them — they are a sign and a symbol of American dissent, and an indicator of how truly bad things have gotten economically and politically. I’ve never quite understood the allegations of racism levied against the Tea Party, and somewhat secretly I’ve always assumed them to be some sort of Journolist-esque attempt by Democrats to quash dissent. On the other hand, however, I tend to have a strong distaste for protesters, and I’ve seen a lot of ridiculous rhetoric out of so-called “Tea Partiers”. The Tea Party tends to start off well (“we’re being taxed too much”) and end up in the weeds quickly (“[insert state here] needs to secede from the union”), meaning I have a hard time taking them seriously most of the time.
But there is one thing I can unequivocally stand against the Tea Party on with no questions: net neutrality. Somewhat stupidly waving the banner against government power, many Tea Partiers are coming out vehemently against net neutrality, claiming that the government preventing corporate intervention in the internet would be an expensive overexertion of government power. The assertion, of course, is that it is an affront to “free speech and free markets”.
Really?
The concept of net neutrality is very much focused upon the idea of free speech and free markets. Net neutrality simply limits companies from “tiering”, censoring, or otherwise tampering with internet access they provide, thus providing paying customers with unconditional, unrestricted access to the internet. This is done to help both customers and website owners, both of whom who would fundamentally lose money if ISPs arbitrarily charged money based on internet usage. Even more worrying, the lack of net neutrality legislation could easily result in a hindering of free speech — for example, who would be surprised of Comcast began to “accidentally” block websites containing anti-Comcast information?
I’m a big fan of laissez-faire economics. The problem is, 100% pure laissez-faire does not entirely work — the government has to, in many situations, regulate the interactions between consumers and companies to ensure fair trade for both parties. In the case of net neutrality, in a perfect world, net neutrality would not be entirely necessary — however, we are far from a perfect world, and the purported detrimental effects net neutrality legislation would have (supposedly squashing free markets) would be quickly trumped by the positive effects (support of free speech, etc).
Tags: Corporations, economics, FCC, Journolist, Laissez-faire, law, Net Neutrality, Politics, TEA Party
