US President Biden has asked the FCC, via executive order, to restore the Obama era net neutrality rules.  I would make the argument that net neutrality is unneeded simply because the internet changed the world before it, and speeds and availability have increased since the rules were done away with under the last administration. In fact, the “two-tier” internet everyone was afraid would happen, where some sites got preferred treatment and others had to pay more, without government intervention never came to be.

You may ask, “Shouldn’t we still have it to keep companies honest, or just in case?” Well, I would suggest you take a look at Canada. America’s hat has some of the strictest net neutrality rules anywhere and the US has pretty much the exact same internet service with the same speeds. So, implementing something that is unnecessary, only opens the door to unintended consequences. 

I will give you an example, years back the federal government allocated billions to build out internet service in rural areas across the US.  Sounds great, right.  Well, in a few areas some small communities may have gotten high speed internet as local utilities got into the internet business using money they were given (at a cost of billions to taxpayers,) but the real consequence was that satellite internet and local ISPs that were building out couldn’t compete with the billions coming in.  There was no real competition for the hastily built systems offered by local utilities as these other companies had to spend their own money and set actual pricing to cover cost. Once the competition was gone and the free money from the federal government was used up, these utilities realized they didn’t know what they were doing and couldn’t manage the systems, so they raised prices to replace bad work, rebuild systems and cover the actual cost of the systems. The final result in most areas was that billions were spent to provide inferior service.

(Just as note, high speed internet has been available nationwide via satellite for quite a while. I understand that it is limited compared to what is offered in more populated areas and isn’t great for gaming. Some of the reason for this, though, is that they were limited in improvements and mergers by government regulations and were competing against billions of dollars the federal government was giving away to the areas where their customers were. Unintended consequences of government regulation actually slowed the rollout of internet service in rural areas.)

You can look back at Canada for another unintended consequence. Although small, internet providers were not allowed to give away free music downloads to customers because of their net neutrality laws. I don’t know the long term affects, but it sounds like if companies can’t give things away, then the government is regulating pricing, at least to some degree.

The only argument I have seen for net neutrality is to stop a problem that is not yet been a problem.  Ken Engelhart, a communications lawyer, says it better than me:

“I think we should relax and enjoy the internet. The modern internet is “neutral,” not because the government made it so, but because it evolved naturally that way. Neutrality, in other words, is an organic and emergent product of the internet — and we don’t need fancy new regulations to keep it that way.”

Please disagree with me in the comments. I think I am on the opposite side of this issue from most people here.