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The Trump administration is suing California to quash its new net neutrality law
The Trump administration said Sunday it will sue California in an effort to block what some experts have described as the toughest net neutrality law ever enacted in the United States, setting up a high-stakes legal showdown over the future of the Internet.
California on Sunday became the largest state to adopt its own rules requiring Internet providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon to treat all web traffic equally. Golden State legislators took the step of writing their law after the Federal Communications Commission scrapped nationwide protections last year, citing the regulatory burdens they had caused for the telecom industry.
Mere hours after California's proposal became law, however, senior Justice Department officials told The Washington Post they would take the state to court on grounds that the federal government, not state leaders, has the exclusive power to regulate net neutrality. DOJ officials stressed the FCC had been granted such authority from Congress to ensure that all 50 states don't seek to write their own, potentially conflicting, rules governing the web.
Also at Ars Technica, TechDirt, and Politico.
Previously: California Gov. Signs Nation’s Strictest Net Neutrality Rules Into Law
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:44PM (82 children)
If the bytes that represent your Grandmother's chain email take 10 minutes to reach you, that's not a problem.
If the bytes that represent a frame of your Netflix movie take 10 minutes to reach you, then that's a problem.
Folks, believe it or not, the Internet exists in reality, not cyberspace. Pushing a byte from one machine to another requires resources, and the best way to make sure that those resources are being used productively (i.e., sustainably in the long term), it's best to leave those decisions to the market place, not some one-size-fits-all powergrab by virtue-signaling bureaucrats.
Even more importantly, that's the best way to make sure that each person is paying his fair share. If the Internet is being built out to cater to you Netflix bingers, then you Netflix bingers should be paying for that development; as someone who doesn't watch Netflix, I shouldn't be helping you foot the bill.
Will there be ups and downs and abuses? Yes. But the end result of market action is always best. Always.
What's that you say? The telecommunications industry isn't in a "Free" market, so it needs to be regulated by government? That just means you think we need government to save us from government—that just means the real solution i to get government out of the telecommunications industry, not push government into it even more.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:51PM (6 children)
No, it means we recognize that telecoms are a natural monopoly so they can never be a free market. Now if in deregulating, you can also change the reality of the start up costs of laying fiber, building cell towers, and other infrastructure cost, then you'd be on to something.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:12PM (3 children)
Sorry, but I'm not sold on this "Natural monopoly" bullshit.
For one thing, "The startup costs are a barrier to entry" is not enough to warrant special treatment.
Actually, now that I think about it, that's the irrational foundation of ALL leftist thinking:
It costs so much to keep living, the government ought to treat me specially; the government ought to pay for everything I need or even want, and the government should tell us how to live and what to say, and (damnit!) what to think!
My ego is so fragile that it needs to be handled with care; the government ought to enforce a safe space for me.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:22PM (2 children)
Running a high throughput strawman operation here, I see. Is it profitable?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:39PM (1 child)
I'm guessing it gives you high bloodpressure. Believing that much in the free-from-government market (or anything else) can't be healthy.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday October 03 2018, @12:34AM
The start-up costs to build competing strawman argument are just too damn high. Thus making the opposition's point, I guess.
(Score: 2, Informative) by fustakrakich on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:56PM (1 child)
Evidently those "natural" monopolies are an endangered species, because they're all government protected with exclusive contracts that prohibit competition.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Informative) by NewNic on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:04PM
No, they are not. CA prohibits such exclusive contracts.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:04PM (9 children)
You want free market?
1. stop giving taxpayer money to corporation to build the network to the tune of $5billon/year [wired.com]
2. abolish the right-of-way and allow everybody and their dog (community network included) to hang or bury whatever wires they want to deliver internet to whoever asks for it.
Without these two, you are not in a "market action" situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:17PM (2 children)
That would give the Mesh network people a lot more incentive to push their tech, because they wouldn't be fighting the coercive power of government. They'd just have to win minds.
I'd like to see people set up a much more decentralized, reactionary, amorphous, much more local-point-to-local-point Internet; it might be a lot slower, but it will be a lot more resilient.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:02PM
This is true. Until we can eliminate the ISP, the internet is up against a brick wall. There is no redundancy when you can be cut off by any authority so easily.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:27PM
I plan to set up Tor Hidden Services for all my sites.
While Tor can be slow as molasses, it is exceedingly difficult to censor it. Censorship of the Internet by repressive regimes is a far far more serious problem than spanking your monkey to Penthouse Television.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:34PM (4 children)
2. abolish the right-of-way and allow everybody and their dog (community network included) to hang or bury whatever wires they want to deliver internet to whoever asks for it.
Including on other people's private property! Keep in mind that right-of-way is what allowed people to dig up my lawn to run that fiber in the first place.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:41PM (3 children)
You're still whining that the cable crew kill all three crabgrass plants in your yard? FFS, man, get over it!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:51PM
No, I'm pointing out that if you de-regulate something that can only exist due to regulation you're going to have a bad time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:48PM (1 child)
That's very insensitive. Plants have feelings too you know!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:24PM
They do, and they are crying out for help due to global warming:
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/04/130415-trees-drought-water-science-global-warming-sounds/ [nationalgeographic.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:25PM
This is from high school history in 1981 so I don't remember the details.
There was a time when all long-distance oil transport was done by rail, because the railway companies refused to sell right of way to the pipeline companies. At the time train transport was far more common than it is today, so a pipeline could never get very far.
But somehow a pipeline company managed to purchase a very short section of railway. They pulled up a couple lengths of track, dug a trench, buried their pipeline and replaced the rail in less than a day.
Apparently that all by itself led to pipelines taking over as the leading method for oil transport.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:07PM (17 children)
Net neutrality isn't about traffic shaping based on application, it's about traffic shaping based on who sends/receives the traffic. Prioritizing video packets is fine. Prioritizing GAFA packets isn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:13PM (7 children)
I don't know what a GAFA packet is... Can they prioritize Youtube videos of people dancing their PhD dissertations*?
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/and-winner-year-s-dance-your-phd-contest [sciencemag.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:24PM (6 children)
Let me duckduckgo that for you [lmddgtfy.net]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:28PM (5 children)
Weird, there already is a term for this:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fang-stocks-fb-amzn.asp [investopedia.com]
Why do Europeans leave Netflix out?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:13PM (4 children)
Not the same. FANG is "acronym for four high-performing technology stocks" (little interest for Europeans) while GAFA [qz.com] is more synonymous (for Europeans) with "invading personal privacy or new ways to avoid paying their fair share."
Probably because Netflix is less invasive re privacy and hasn't played the tax avoidance game in Europe (yet?) to the extent GAFA did?
Anyway, even if there are a few European country with Netflix market penetration over 50% [emarketer.com], you'll note that the most populous European countries show a penetration rate of under 40% (Germany - 35%, France, Italy, Spain don't figure in the chart so the rate is under 33%). One on top of the other, I reckon Netflix penetration rate in Europe is around 25% at best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:38PM (1 child)
Thanks, that makes sense. Maybe they made up their own acronym because FANG - Netflix = ***
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:41PM
So, yes. They don't want to defame FAG, but not for the English-centric reason you think.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:11PM (1 child)
> Netflix penetration rate
I think I know how they could give those numbers a boost :D
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday October 03 2018, @12:24AM
Could you give us more inside, deep penetrating insight?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:21PM (8 children)
Those Netflix users should be charged more for building out the infrastructure.
The source matters. REAL RESOURCES are being used. The people who are using them should be paying for it (that's what "Fair Share" means to a capitalist), and that means it might make sense to charge based on the source.
This is what I want: A 25 Mb/s connection to Netflix (e.g., special Netflix infrastructure with guaranteed throughput), and a variable 3 Mb/s generic connection to the Internet.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:45PM (7 children)
What you want is called cable TV - only you want your cable TV provider to be Netflix
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:11PM
You seem to think you're saying something, but I don't know what it is.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:33PM (5 children)
There's nothing left to watch on Netflix, unless you're interested in blue orcs dressed up as cops or pan-sexual simultaneous global orgies.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:08PM
Yeah I noticed that. What happened to all the John Wayne flicks?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:29PM
You get more and more crabby every day. Time to invest in a good lawn chair.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday October 03 2018, @12:48AM (1 child)
I'm interested, and I have Netflix. I cannot find the title. Please advise.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 03 2018, @02:09AM
sense8. enjoy.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:10AM
Just started Maniac (Netflix Original). Pretty cool so far.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:23PM (6 children)
Yes, that's was how it works: I buy 30MiB/s line from my ISP. He better delivers that 30MiB/s. He didn't sell me 30MiB/s maybe on a sunny day and when the tides are right, they sell 30MiB/s. What the ISP's are doing is selling 30MiB/s to 10 people while they only ever had 30MiB/s total to begin with.
To defend that they sold 10 x the capacity that they have, they now shout that regulation is causing issues. Because they want to oversell that bandwidth even more. This time not to their customers who "recently" started to notice they got screwed as they start using latency/bandwidth sensitive services, but to those that provide the services. Claiming that they are exerting to much pressure on their network. Well, if they only sold 1 x 30MiB/s, there wouldn't be a problem on their network to begin with. (Keep in mind that those service companies also already bought their bandwidth from the ISPs, so everyone is already paying for their own network/bandwidth use)
Net neutrality prevents them from overselling their network in a particular way. It doesn't prevent them from overselling the customer side, but the customers as said above started noticing it so that becomes a bigger problem. They are probably hoping to blackmail the latency sensitive services to get more money. They can then prioritize that traffic so less people notice they aren't getting what they paid for + the ISP gets away with the blackmail money.
Your example from grandmothers bytes is also not fair. What they want to do is; company X is bribing them so their bytes will go faster, independent of their priority / latency requirements or anything QoS related. Company Y, like ambulance service or such, is not bribing the ISP so their bytes get delayed, again irrelevant to their QoS requirements.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:34PM (5 children)
Firstly, I'm sure you mean 30 Mbps.
Secondly, you expect a 30 Mbps connection what? And what about latency? You think downloading data from some guy's computer in rural India is going to get the same throughput/latency as downloading data from YouTube?
You know why YouTube is so fast? Because they BUILT the fucking infrastructure for it—you know, real resources. Sure, as far as you know, you just connect to "youtube.com" no matter where you are, but name gets resolved to a server that is close to you geographically, etc.
Same thing with Netflix; they started working with ISPs to place special-purpose nodes in their networks in order to deliver content more effectively to the last mile.
CHRIST!
Can't you people see that the only way things get done is because people build special-purpose fast lanes. And, who should be paying for building out that infrastructure? WHO? Who should be paying for maintaining it? Who should have authority over it? Comcast sure as fuck isn't going to let Netflix increasingly take authority over its infrastructure.
The only humane way to resolve these questions is with voluntary trade, not Uncle Sam's pistol in your face.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:03PM (1 child)
Ah, been to busy testing in MiB/s lately.
Strange that you use the same argument: Netflix et al already paid for it. And obviously they bought much higher upload speeds than that rural guy someplace unknown. Yes I'm aware there are technical limitations that may mean I'm not getting 30Mbps to anywhere. However if the other side paid for 30Mbps upload and I paid for 30Mbps download, and I'm using enough parallel connections, I'm expecting to get that 30Mbps (ok maybe 29 and some change) even to some poor rural backwater town in the middle of nowhere on the other side of the planet. Note that I'm not saying that I get 1ms latency to India, I didn't buy a 1ms latency line to everywhere, I did buy bandwidth capacity of 30Mbps.
That's how the streaming apps work, they use bandwidth to buffer enough of the video so if your latency spikes for a few seconds you don't notice it. Even if their latency is 10s; if you start and buffer 20seconds with enough bandwidth you shouldn't have a problem the rest of the movie. Now I don't know if Netflix/Youtube bought enough upload capacity, but since to my knowledge no ISP has ever complained about that, I can assume they bought plenty.
Yes, youtube et al also placed equipment at the ISP's to improve their service even more. (Having to wait 20s to start a video would be a hassle to many)
The other problem you mention is "voluntary" trade. If you think your contract with your ISP is voluntary trade, well, I'm not living in the US, so good luck with that. Hint, try negotiating a small contract term. E.g. revoking their right to change the contract at will. I'm sure you can voluntarily change to the other ISP with the same insane contract terms.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:20PM
Your scenario only makes sense if you're both connecting via the same ISP, and if the ISP has enough buffering to relay the data between you to. Your position is based on a world that DOES NOT EXIST. That's why ISPs sell "up to" some bandwidth.
Actually, Netflix is famous for having true streaming. Until recently, they didn't really do any significant buffering, relying instead on being able to switch on the fly to streams of varying average bit rates.
With regard to voluntary trade, all I hear from you is "I'm entitled to MOAR!!!!11111". That being said, you should know that telecoms behave so badly in part because they have been blessed by local governments to be legally coercive monopolies. Government. GOVERNMENT.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:36PM (1 child)
You know, I'm not so sure 30 Men-in-Blacks per second isn't the right measure of what we get from the Internet...
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:04PM
The typical Libraries Of Congress unit doesn't specify resolution of the pictures, leaving unacceptable ambiguity.
The HD MiB or 4K MiB is a fixed quantity of information, as long as Comcast doesn't throw away half the bytes. Closer to SI grade unit.
Yet, the "Gigli" would be better, since it is fixed and hidden in a safe vault forever, never to be touched or seen again. One would not want to base their unit system on the everchanging quantity knows as Star Wars.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:50PM
More
contractsturtles!contractsturtles all way down!"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:32PM (2 children)
I have to admit, this is a more effective form of trolling than the ancap stuff.
My hat is off to you.
I still want to see more weather war though :(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:36PM (1 child)
Maybe you should start engaging with people's arguments instead of acting like we're all in on some topic inside joke.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:13PM
lawl. You're not hiding your style well. Don't worry. It can be a secret just between us.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LVDOVICVS on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:38PM (5 children)
"But the end result of market action is always best. Always."
Bullshit.
Markets crash. Failure != success.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:25PM (4 children)
Especially the big ones.
Then, reactionary Governmental policy drags out the recovery.
And, you know what? Failure does equate to success, eventually. Here's the big secret: Nobody knows what he's doing; it's good to fail fast and cheap, and thereby feel one's way into a productive habit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:00PM (3 children)
> it's good to fail fast and cheap,
Maybe sometimes this is a reasonable approach, but not for the car analogy.
Don't try telling that to the cyclist that the Uber ran over in Tempe AZ.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:38PM (2 children)
Cars have been around for a century; they are so safe now because of that trial and error.
And you know what? Seat belts are still one of the dumbest designs of a car. You know why? Their design is mandated by government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:33PM (1 child)
In that case, I recommend you engage in civil disobedience by not wearing your seatbelt....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:40AM
I really think they forgot the SARCASM tag.
(Score: 2) by jimbrooking on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:38PM (21 children)
The Magical Market where all terms or a transaction are fully and accurately disclosed; the kind and extent of the qualities of the goods or service are disclosed to the buyer, warranties are given for these qualities' standards; the complete cost of ownership is in plain view of both parties. This might be the "market" of which AC speaks from her post as a telecom lobbyist, but this is a Magical Market because it doesn't exist.
Not to beat up on the poor downtrodden ISPs, but punishing someone for exceeding a limit they didn't know was there on an "unlimited" service shouldn't happen, should it? Quoting someone a bandwidth to be delivered for a certain price, then delivering half or less of that bandwidth shouldn't happen either, should it? Giving the seller's content priority (e.g., fully rated bandwith) while providing competing (i.e., all other) content a fraction of the rated bandwidth doesn't seem like it's a product of the "Magic Market".
Corporations like ISPs and most others are born with DNA that forces them to make profits however they can. And part of the eternal struggle to make more money is to dislodge barriers like those pesky regulators that "hamstring" them and "stifle innovation" and all the other epithets lobbed at people trying to protect consumers from lies, misleading statements, and the myriad of frauds that accompany sales and marketing of internet services and so much more!
If corporate shills would stop the lies and behave like human beings, rather than economic predators, they might get a little more sympathy. But they just don't seem able to do that. I guess it really is in their DNA.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:06PM (11 children)
As far as I can tell, GP's worldview amounts to: Either The Market Is Always Right, or the Commies are coming to work us all to death in the gulags. Any suggestion that the market is not always right, no matter how well-justified, is merely a front for international Communism.
In short, it's a bit from Calvin & Hobbes [gocomics.com].
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:44PM (2 children)
Who are these special, transhuman, angelic beings you have running your quasi-religiously revered monopoly on violence called "government"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:25PM (1 child)
Obviously governments made of men cannot work! Therefore we must kill all men! [soylentnews.org] Once the Mother Earth has been cleansed of men, angelic women will create an anarcho-capitalist utopia!
(Score: 5, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:53PM
Ssssshhhh! You're not supposed to tell them yet...!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:31PM (1 child)
Who are these special, transhuman, angelic beings you have running your quasi-religiously revered monopoly on violence called "government"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:06PM
Obviously governments made of more than 3 men cannot work, and neither can governments made of 3 or fewer men! Therefore, all 3 of us must kill all men! [soylentnews.org] Once the Mother Earth has been cleansed of men, angelic women will create an 3 planet anarcho-capitalist federation spanning Venus, Earth, and Mars!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Arik on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:15PM (5 children)
"A Free Market," properly defined, can solve all economic problems, perhaps not perfectly, but at least in a fashion closer to perfect than any alternative.
However "a Free Market" is also a platonic ideal, something that never quite exists in reality.
The takeaway if you really understand that is to start paying attention to the ways in which particular markets that *do* exist deviate from that platonic ideal.
The takeaway if you're a typical burger victim without the attention span to actually understand it, however, is that every market is perfect and can do no wrong.
Very very incorrect application of essentially correct axiom. Very very sloppy application. This is why semantics is not "just semantics" but vitally important!
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:26PM (4 children)
Free markets work great if the following conditions are met:
1. There are lots of buyers in all markets.
2. There are lots of sellers in all markets.
3. Externalities (costs of producing widgets not paid by the seller during production) are eliminated or reduced to a minimal level.
4. The expense of the item in question isn't part of the point of buying it (what's sometimes called a "snob good").
5. There are viable options for one or both parties to walk away at any time.
So, for instance, markets enable most people who want a halfway decent pizza in the US to be able to get one delivered to their home at a very reasonable price. That's because all the conditions are pretty well met: Lots of people like to eat pizza, it's relatively easy to set up a pretty good pizza place to compete even with the big chains, most of the costs of making pizzas are priced in fairly well, nobody really wants to pay extra just to say they've bought an expensive pizza, and if you don't like any of the options for pizza you can cook your own food or order Chinese takeout instead.
The problem is that a lot of markets fail one of those conditions quite badly. And that wouldn't be a big deal if that affected 5-10% of the GDP worth of the economy. But they're actually affecting more like 40-50% of the GDP worth of the US economy.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:27PM (3 children)
"1. There are lots of buyers in all markets."
Doesn't really have to be a LOT of buyers. Does need to be plural, certainly, at least two, and larger numbers are generally better, but no hard requirement on buyers or sellers.
"3. Externalities (costs of producing widgets not paid by the seller during production) are eliminated or reduced to a minimal level."
And there's a big one, that affects virtually every market on Earth. There's a ton of 'regulation' and most of it works to shift externalities to the benefit of the politically connected.
"4. The expense of the item in question isn't part of the point of buying it (what's sometimes called a "snob good")."
A free market in snob goods wouldn't be something I'd be proud of necessarily, but I see no necessary contradiction. The market for fashion doesn't seem to work that awfully, at least once you get past the fundamental propositions which the customers for that sort of stuff clearly have.
"5. There are viable options for one or both parties to walk away at any time."
Well yeah, strongly implied by the adjective 'Free.'
Also implied - lack of restrictions on entry to and exit from the market. This is another big difference - in real world markets, particularly the most lucrative ones, there are incredible barriers to entry, mostly the result of regulation.
And another necessary condition is that the buyers and sellers are accurately informed and understand what they're getting. This is what took the market for PCs off the rails, once the market grew large enough that people who had no idea what a computer even is were the biggest buyers, it became trivially easy for the manufacturers to adopt all manner of consumer-hostile actions without facing effective resistance.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:30PM (2 children)
The points about "lots" of buyers and sellers has to do with the degree to which individual players in the market have the power to set the standard market price of the product in question.
Now, in a market with only 1 seller, that seller has the power to set a price that is artificially high, because there's no risk of competition, which means that the buyers either have to pay whatever the monopolist demands or do without that product. How artificially high that price will be depends mostly on the ease of doing without the product: For instance, you might have a complete monopoly on selling a particular video game, but that's probably not going to boost the price that much because everyone can live perfectly well without that game. By contrast, a complete monopoly on a life-saving medication is going to be able to artificially boost the price a great deal, because the buyers can't live without it at all. The 2 major downsides of this are (1) it pulls extra cash from the buyers that might otherwise go to other things, and (2) it gives the monopolist no incentive to innovate technologically to reduce its costs of production because it's far easier to just squeeze the buyers some more.
You argue that with 2 sellers, things get better. They do, but not as much as you think, because now the only incentive you've added in to drop the price is to undercut the other seller. Whether or not this is a smart move is a matter of game theory and Nash equilibria. If your price is P, and you have C customers, you could drop your price to P' in the hopes of increasing your customer base to C', but that only makes sense if P' * C' is more than P * C, and there's the risk that your competitor will follow suit and lower their price to P' in order to hang onto those customers you just tried to snag and then you both just lost out. And there's a potential move in the other direction: You raise your price to P', risking the reduction of your customer base to C', but that is always a good idea if P' * C' is more than P * C, and if your competitor follows suit you'll both gain at the expense of your customers. As an example of this in action, prior to the days of Internet flight booking it was common practice for airlines to increase fares at about 4:45 PM on a Friday afternoon, wait until around 10 AM on Monday morning to see if their competition on those routes followed along, and if they didn't drop the fares back down again.
It takes around 10 sellers before the game theory becomes too complicated to adjust to, at which point the market is properly competitive, and the way to increase profits is to produce the product more efficiently or develop a reputation for higher quality that enables you to charge more.
The same logic applies to 1 or a few buyers, except that instead of keeping prices artificially high, they make prices artificially low, taking advantage of the seller's predicament that the only available options are "sell at below the right price" or "don't sell", and the seller may have already invested heavily in capital needed to be in the business and thus can't afford the "don't sell" option.
As for the bit about regulation, you don't seem to understand what externalities actually are. Another example of an externality: Your next door neighbor decides to turn their property into a garbage dump. Fine for them, but now the price of your property dropped a whole lot because nobody wants to live next to a dump. A zoning rule that made that illegal would not be an externality, it would be preventing an externality.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday October 03 2018, @12:20AM
Actually it doesn't if the sellers are smart. In fact it can go up to 5-6 or even more. We call this "cartels" in banking and have had many examples where there were more than 2 or 3 parties involved to screw over others. Even when you have a dozen sellers, there can be cartels setup to screw the rest of the other sellers and overall market. Ditto on the buyers side.
I'm not necessarily agreeing/disagreeing with your post, just pointing out that even when there are quite a few sellers/buyers the market can still get screwed and this isn't just paper theory, have happened and will continue to happen - even with regulations, if folks think they can get away with it they will still do it. Of course you probably get less of this kind of behavior with regulation than without.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:52AM
They have to be buying and selling of their own will, they have to be free to simply leave without making a deal if they want to, but the logic still works. As long as there is no coërcion and accurate information, there are only two possible outcomes - both go home with what they had, for no loss, or they agree to a trade which is mutually beneficial.
Of course if party A desperately needs what party B has and there's no other way to get it, he may be willing to pay quite a lot to get it, but that in and of itself doesn't make the market coërcive or unfree, and it doesn't mean that the transactions reached are not STILL mutually beneficial. Given lack of coërcion and accurate information, it's axiomatic - the trade will not take place unless it's beneficial to BOTH parties.
Of course larger markets with more participants have advantages in efficiency and so on, but that's neither required nor sufficient.
And with more players there does appear more opportunity for mischief of many kinds as well. In a way, it's almost the opposite to your hypothesis that many buyers and many sellers are required - the more people are involved, the greater the chance someone manages to lobby for regulation impeding entry etc.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:31PM (8 children)
The only person talking about magical ideas is you; you're talking to the straw man in your own head.
The Free Market is an iterative process; it doesn't require full disclosure, angels, or even competence. This is in stark contrast to the attempts at central planning by know-nothing, paper-pushing bureaucrats in government.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:12PM (1 child)
The Free Market likes plagues which make people buy expensive medical services. Since medical services have some of the highest profit margin, the Free Market will push for as much plague as possible, especially as traditional physical labor is reduced, making the sick computer worker the best overall thing for the economy. Collecting bodies in the street is not a profit-making endeavor, unless they are fresh enough to sell the organs, and snowplows can be used to keep the streets open for the Healthy Class.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:05PM
This pretty much describes the current US healthcare system, except obesity is even more profitable that plague. Its hard to sell someone plague, but high grain diets on the other hand....
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:47PM (3 children)
It most certainly does. Without full disclosure, market participants cannot make informed decisions.
"In contract theory and economics, information asymmetry deals with the study of decisions in transactions where one party has more or better information than the other. This asymmetry creates an imbalance of power in transactions, which can sometimes cause the transactions to go awry, a kind of market failure in the worst case."
IOW, you don't even understand the very philosophy you so vehemently support. A trait you share with every other "Free markets will always work best" advocate. To us adults, though, you sound no different than someone yelling, "Hammers are always the best tool."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:33PM (1 child)
You even quoted it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @12:02AM
IOW, it's okay you got fucked over, the next person can use that information to avoid it.
Yeah, that's a workable system for most people.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:01PM
I'm not speaking of insider trading.
The problem is that there is far too much information, and that investors tend to avail themselves of the same sources of information as most of the other investors do.
This lead to the very poorly-understood mini-recession of 2015-16, that economists only recently have unraveled: among other factors, cheap oil prices lead to petroleum equipment manufacturing being shut down because it couldn't be sold cheaply enough. That led to widespread unemployment in America's heartland, which itself led to that same place being the reason Trump got elected.
I am _completely_ convinced that I can accurately predict when the stock of a certain industry will rise or fall. That same information is readily available to anyone, however the nature of the stock market does not lead investors to pay any attention at all to the particular metric I refer to.
That I haven't already made a killing in stocks is because I've been spending all my money on hookers and blow [warplife.com].
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:41PM (1 child)
You've obviously never purchased a used car before. The seller is typically trying to do everything in their power to hide information from you in that situation, while you are trying to gather as much information as possible to use in your own negotiations with the seller.
Nobody has suggested that supernatural forces should be involved in the economy. And nobody has suggested that the government is omnipotent or omniscient either: The government can do a lot of useful things that don't require omniscience. For instance, "Hey, these waste chemicals that these 15 companies have been dumping into the river made the water so nasty that it caught fire, and also poisoned 500,000 people. So we're going to make those 15 companies stop dumping those chemicals and instead either treat them or store them somewhere."
I'm now quite certain you've never once had to deal with anything broken where you either lacked the expertise or the ability to fix it. For instance, you've never been stuck trying to fix a problem with a proprietary software system where the only information you can get from that system is "An error has occurred. Please contact your technical support team."
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:47PM
Indeed. One wonders what this guy would have made of the TVA [wikipedia.org] back in the 1930s. After all, the "Free Market" will cure everything!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:41PM (3 children)
Sigh. NN allows for Quality of Service, numb nuts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:28PM
Soon, you'll see regulatory agencies requiring network admins to file paperwork asking for permission to set QoS settings for this service or that service.
Why can't you people see this? Either you let the government dictate QoS, or you let the engineers and bean counters who are making sure everyone gets paid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:55PM
No it doesn't, keep buying that lie you brain dead maggot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:29PM
Du-uh! But is it good or bad quality?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:22PM
Sure, but what Net Neutrality addresses is when the ISPs own Shittee Video Service's packets arrive in a millisecond but Netflix's take 10 minutes.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:48PM (2 children)
Slavery was quite popular for hundreds of years here in the New World, because the free market provided labor for farms that was quite a lot cheaper than paying employees.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:01PM (1 child)
Everything about it was steeped in government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:06PM
Oh my... now that is comedy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @12:56PM
Ideology is not a replacement for understanding.
Have a nie day.