Taxi driver analogies
2009.08.26 22:49 by Leo Antunes - 8 CommentsThis may seem obvious and old, specially for those with FOSS backgrounds, but considering the not-so-current developments*, this seemed like an appropriate time to speak my mind on the subject.
Imagine a world where all markets work the same way: you go in, browse the wares at your leisure, picking the ripest fruit, the freshest salad, and then the market simply pays a driver to take it all to your house, while you come back home in your own means of transportation, whatever that is.
You pay your way to the market, the market pays for the transport of the wares back to your house, and reverts that cost back to you in form of slightly higher prices.
In the end you’re both paying for transport, which isn’t the main product of the transaction, but is a necessary infrastructural part of it in this strange little fictional world of ours.
Now imagine you take the cab to the market, but upon arrival the driver charges not only you for the ride, but also the market for making sure you’re not mysteriously stuck in traffic for 2 hours while underway.
Sounds a bit like a sort of protection racket, right? That’s in general terms what some ISPs around the world are trying to do to alleviate for the fact that their aggressive marketing gimmicks have sold more bandwidth than they can currently profitably maintain.
And that’s why I am in favor of some form of legislation to guarantee network neutrality, particularly because I don’t believe the free-market rules will be enough to keep the ISPs from introducing small fees, which won’t be that big a problem for the big players, but could severely hamper the small guy’s ability to reach his audience. Not to mention the impact of suppressing less profitable traffic on new technologies, since new applications over new protocols become second-class citizens.
On the other hand, over-regulation can also have a stifling effect and it’s not exactly easy creating laws that protect the principle instead of the technical details, but I’m clearly for attempting it.
Just my two cents, as always.
* yes, I still read Slashdot, get over it. Does anyone in NL know if it’s really that serious? Or did the press spin a bit of FUD? My German is certainly not good enough for me to read Dutch.
I can live with the idea of ISPs restricting certain types of traffic during day time. With the transport analogy you used it is something like prohibiting the big and slow supply trucks to travel in rush hour to supply the shops, but let them travel by night
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The analogy focused on the user experience and I probably should have said that in this parallel universe the shops have magically endless supplies, just for simplicity’s sake.
So the trucks in question aren’t being used for supply, but instead solely for deliveries, which means a setup like daytime selection of traffic would immediately affect the user’s shopping experience, since they would only receive their wares hours after buying them.
It would probably also have been better to say that the roads in this world have infinite width and that the speed with which the users receive their wares is only determined as a factor of the amount of money they’re willing to spend on faster cab drivers and the amount of money the market is willing to pay for more truck drivers.
But then again, perhaps analogies really aren’t the best way to argue about something like this.
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A free market is not a market without rules, any more than a free society is a society without laws. Societies and markets require laws/rules to keep them free – to restrain those with power so that they do not use it to bully, cajole, intimidate, force or otherwise restrict the freedoms of those with less power.
Yes, rules are a restriction on freedoms, but some of them are often necessary to e.g. protect the freedom of your nose to remain unsullied by my swinging fist. Finding the balance point of enough rules to protect necessary freedoms, but not so many that other freedoms are not encroached upon is the hard part.
Do not allow the large and powerful to fool you into thinking that a free market is the same as an unregulated market. It is not.
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Thoroughly agreed on all points.
I do believe the free-market has rules (the terms are even conveniently written side-by-side on the post), but what I fear is the possibility that these general rules might not be enough to stymie the abuse of power, particularly when it’s spun as “the only option to save the internet from those pesky 1% of over-downloaders”.
But hopefully I’m wrong. Either that or someone comes up with effective legislation in some influential country.
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I am not sure that you get the full meaning of my post.
There is no reason to assume that pro-net-neutrality legislation is somehow opposed to a “free market”, or makes a the market for network services “non-free”. The two may be (and probably are, IMHO) entirely compatible.
Is there a free market for food products in your country? Yes? What about legislation that requires that that food is prepared in hygienic conditions, has a list of ingredients on the packaging and some kind of “use by” or “best before” date? Does that interfere with the freedom of suppliers of food products? Well … that depends. It does not interfere with the freedom of suppliers to enter the market, and to compete with each other on a level playing field, as they must all abide by the same rules. It does interfere with their freedom to provide incredibly cheap food that might poison you, but that’s not a freedom we think is important due to the harm it could cause, even though it might be a differentiator that businesses might want to compete on in order to maximise profits for their shareholders.
Pro-net-neutrality legislation is rather similar. If in place, it should do nothing to prevent network providers from entering the market and competing with each other on a level playing field. In that manner, such legislation is entirely compatible with the market remaining “free” in all ways that matter.
It does prevent businesses from providing crappy services to their customers, which is something that businesses would like to do if they could get away with it because it’s cheap. So, by claiming that rules in general, and pro-net-neutrality legislation in particular, is somehow anti-free-market, (and by implicit association therefore anti-capitalistic, and by further association socialist/communist) they manage to perpetuate the idea/myth that “the free-market has rules [...] but what I fear is the possibility that these general rules might not be enough to stymie the abuse of power”.
No! Pro-net-neutrality legislation can legitimately be *part of* the capitalistic free-market rules in the networks services provider sector.
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It seems to me we’re trying to say exactly the same thing and strangely misunderstanding each other over and over again. :)
Let’s do a quick point-by-point to see if we’re on the same page:
Did you interpret my OP as pro or contra net-neutrality? Because I’m in favor of it, at least on principle. Which is to say I’m neither in favor of any specific legislation I’ve seen which tried to achieve it, nor against achieving it without further regulation, but I find it unlikely we should manage without extra regulation, which is currently – to the best of my knowledge – not in place anywhere (and this is a point I should have stressed before: I think the current free-market rules can’t cut it, but new ones might).
Do I think pro-net-neutrality legislation incompatible with the notion of free-market? No, definitely not. I see it as a nudge in the right direction. (Incidentally, “nudge” gives a pretty good idea of the kind of force I envision such legislation having)
I also agree that there’s a myth of the anti-free-market being perpetuated, but the quote you took seems a bit off in that context. My argument that the current (should have stressed this) “rules might not be enough to stymie the abuse of power” in no way attempts to align pro-net-neutrality legislation with anti-free-market legislation. Precisely the opposite. The only diverging part is the “current”, as in: “the current free-market can’t hold its own, but with a legal nudge, it might”.
[This paragraph sounds like preaching to the choir, so don't interpret it as a counter-argument]
You said it yourself with the example of food products: they need some minimal specific legal framework to work as a safety net for the customers. This framework – like the “best before” example – probably wouldn’t make sense in any other market besides products with a limited shelf life, but is invaluable in this given market. The same IMHO applies to the Internet. It’s a market with its own characteristics and needs some minor legal tweaking to ensure the same basic liberties and safeguards to customers.
(Here we could probably inject devil’s-advocate arguments about privacy expectations online, but that’s a whole new discussion; I’d propose another post to base this discussion on, care to write it? :) )
In the end, the only thing I still see us – perhaps – disagreeing about, is the fact that I’m still a bit skeptic about pro-net-neutrality legislation, simply because the term doesn’t seem to have a letter-of-the-law definition anywhere in the world, and therefore could be used to smuggle any sort of legal shenanigans under its cover. But that’s unfortunately pretty standard with any sort of new legislation nowadays, so I’m not particularly affected by this particular line of thought.
And again: I’m still on principle for net-neutrality, with or without new specific legislation.
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“It seems to me we’re trying to say exactly the same thing and strangely misunderstanding each other over and over again.”
Yes, that can happen a lot. :-)
“Do I think pro-net-neutrality legislation incompatible with the notion of free-market? No, definitely not.”
Ah. This is where my misunderstanding came from. I got that you were pro-net-neutrality-legislation *and* pro-free-market, but mistakenly thought that you saw a fundamental tension or incompatibility between the two positions. I’ve noticed a lot of people on the intarwebs have the notion that a free market is necessarily a deregulated one – a confusion that businesses (mostly large ones) seem to perpetuate.
“I’m still a bit skeptic about pro-net-neutrality legislation, simply because the term doesn’t seem to have a letter-of-the-law definition anywhere in the world, and therefore could be used to smuggle any sort of legal shenanigans under its cover.”
Oh yes, I can completely agree on the need to keep a *very* close eye on legislators.
So, we are on the same page after all. :-)
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Oh, ok, that was easier than I thought! :)
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