You're absolutely right. However, the probability that meaningful competition will break through the enormous barriers to entry that Comcast, et al have erected before they manage to irreparably damage one of the few remaining growth industries in the US (tech) is near zero.
Sorry to pick on you, but the responses of net neutrality advocates vis-à-vis competition sound like the standard strategy of the Foreign Office when dealing with crisis from Yes, Prime Minister.
"maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do", it's a natural monopoly.
"maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now", they already have a stronghold.
I've never seen a net neutrality advocate be opposed to competition. I also don't know a single net neutrality advocate who was in favor of letting the wide variety of early ISPs decay into the sad monopolistic situation we have now.
All they're saying is that given that we no longer have an effective marketplace to reign in in the oligopoly in place, we need regulation to limit the harm. They are basically saying we should extend our approach to the phone network to the broadband network.
Why is it also their job to fix the conditions in the US that led to this? Net neutrality regulations are relatively simple: if the FCC (or possibly Congress) makes it happen, it will be pretty straightforward. But the lack of competition in the US broadband market can't be fixed with small regulation changes. It requires a wholesale reexamination of current economic dogma, deep changes in our approach to business regulation at multiple levels of government, and probably changing entirely the way we fund elections.
I just don't see much discussion around the topic; that may be because it's obvious for everyone inside the topic that it's unfixable, but as an outsider who lives in a very corrupt country (among the developed) but which nevertheless has plenty of broadband competition, I just find it very hard to believe that it almost requires a political revolution to increase competition in that market - or that at least that's obvious to everyone.
Yeah, there's a lot of history here, so I can see why it's mysterious to outsiders. But as somebody who has been following this since a teen, I believe a proposal of "let's increase competition" will go absolutely nowhere in the US. A very quick summary:
In the 80s a judge broke up our national communications monopoly [1]. That came as the result of action starting in the 70s, when business regulation had some teeth. To aid that, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 created the notion of the Competitive Local Exchange Carrier [2], allowing local competition for phone service by forcing the local-monopoly phone companies to share their wires. But that came just as telephone service was starting to become irrelevant, and didn't touch the local monopolies of the cable companies.
Eventually, AT&T basically put itself back together [3]. And that happened because the climate for business regulation had shifted; anti-trust enforcement has now withered away to the point that it's ok with oligopoly and near-monopoly. Why? Well, I think that's partly a US shift to managerialist thinking, aided by billionaires funding plenty of think tanks and professorships that just happen to promote then notion that billionaires and their companies should be able to do as they please.
This is all compounded by the insane US campaign finance system, where we end up with legislators that are very strongly pro-money. There is a lot of talk about supporting "free markets", but very little interest in healthy markets, ones where competition is a meaningful check on the action of dominant players. We had a very competitive ISP market, but it's basically gone now, and surprisingly few mourn it.
So basically, the whole political tide of the last 30 years in the US has been away from the kinds of governmental interventions that would restore real competition in the broadband market. It's so bad that 20 states have laws against municipalities providing broadband to their own citizens. [4]
So yeah, I'm just not expecting meaningful pro-competition action in the next 10 years. Net neutrality, though, is an achievable short term goal, because that's basically defending the status quo.
I know all that history, though. But around here we went over a similar transition (single public carrier got broken up not that long ago), and it's hard to argue we're any less pro-money. I just don't find the argument that it's impossible that convincing.
Ok. It's not my job to help you understand US politics, so I can live with you not being convinced. If you would like to take some action based on your theory that the change is possible, I encourage that.
