Why Ajit Pai's decision killing Obama's net neutrality FCC regulation is good

Sometimes you have to wonder how sincere people are when they gnash their teeth and pull out their hair over President Trump blocking or reversing an Obama-era regulation.

The latest cries of distress about anarchy and market apocalypse can be heard about an announcement by the Federal Communications Commission that it will roll back “net neutrality.”

Net neutrality’s dubious value is made obvious by the misleading way Democrats and many news outlets reported the decision. “F.C.C. plans net neutrality repeal in a victory for telecoms,” wrote the New York Times. Missing from the headline or lede was that the decision was a loss for Netflix, Amazon, Google, and other corporate giants that provider content.

This is the Democratic line. By portraying deregulation as a bonbon for Big Business, and concealing the hit taken by some of the biggest businesses (see above), these partial accounts avoid debating the issue on its merits and dwindle into demagoguery, where they are comfortable. This is an established pattern with net neutrality. When the FCC voted in 2015 to impose net neutrality rules, the text of the relevant rule wasn’t published until after the vote.

So, let’s look at the merits. Net neutrality is, generally, good in principle, for it lays down the law that the networks over which we get information should not discriminate between one type of information and another. For example, it would be wrong if AT&T prevented its Internet customers from searching for prices charged by other cellphone providers. You wouldn’t want Comcast blocking access to articles complaining about its customer service.