Dead Horses

"Dead Horses"--my favorite song off the Rolling Stones' album "Jockey Fingers."

That being neither here nor there, I was thinking about the internet recently and realized that something about net neutrality puzzles me.

When the telephone was first made available to the public, it was not on a universal basis. Certain people had telephones (like the drugstore) because they paid the access fee. Not everyone even wanted a telephone. In the case of the drugstore, the phone was a loss-leader; it drew people to the store and hopefully they bought something after they used (or while waiting to use) the phone.

Private citizens were less than enthusiastic about telephones--they also didn't use the telegraph. Simply put, access was too expensive and almost no one knew anybody far enough away to justify the charge.

Perhaps it was our Jacksonian heritage; in any event, in the early 20th century a great hue and cry was raised over whether all people should have guaranteed access to telephones. And the decision was yes, they should. High rates and limited coverage were seen as overly discriminatory--despite the fact that telephone companies did not mind providing limited service. They were at a loss as to how they would make a profit through universal service. Sunk costs and maintenance ate up too much money--exactly the situation faced by railroads in the 19th century. Railroads made the most money on short, regular trips. In response to demand for access by farmers, however, the rails were extended (overextended) into most minor municipalities and across long distances. These costs were never recouped.

The telegraph companies' saving grace was that they were able to convince the railroads to let them string wires alongside tracks (which isn't hard to do if you are Jay Gould and you own both Western Union and the Union Pacific simultaneously). This development meant that if wires needed maintenance, the telegraph companies could just send out a rail car instead of horse-and-buggy.

Telephone companies in urban areas attempted to keep costs down in similar ways: often they tried to combine their installation of wires with other projects--this is why Chicago has a few miles of very cute little mini-railroad tunnels under the Loop. The tunnels carried away coal ash from the department stores and simultaneously provided ready-made space for sewage, telephone, and electrical wires. Predatory entrepreneurs with City Hall connections were quick to secure those franchises, too.

Anyway, back to net neutrality. The end of the telephone story is that phone companies implemented a differential pricing structure in response to the shift from exclusivity to inclusivity. To guarantee access to all potential customers, the companies made certain features optional and expensive. Moreover, if you wanted to use a public phone, you needed a nickel/dime/quarter.

Now, the internet is something I know very little about. I don't know what sort of infrastructure it requires, nor do I know who provides it (telecom companies?).

But I do know that the suggestion that major corporations ought to be able to procure high-speed access for their visitors, as well as short download times and better display features, for a higher price, seems just fine.

Yes, I do in fact think that big business should be able to charge more for access to the internet along a tiered pricing structure reminiscent of old telephone rates. I also think that small concerns should get less bandwidth and lower resolution sites. Download times will be longer? OK, though such an argument seems counter-intuitive (ESPN.com, because of its innumerable bells and whistles, loads far slower than stripped-down sites like Google.com).

Old-time telephone rates were predicated on the idea that people know what they need. If you don't make long-distance calls, then you don't need to pay for long-distance service. Today, that service is provided "free" with most home phone plans. Yet, I can choose which cable TV channels I want to watch and pay less as a result. This isn't a question of fair-vs.-unfair, or of cutting off knowledge for the masses (I challenge anyone to show that the internet teaches anybody anything useful); the left's opposition to making the internet more corporate stands upon a silly notion that it "should" be "free" to "all."

Congress is full of old people who think the internet is a set of tubes with trucks driving through them, so it's not surprising that Congress has no idea what to do about this issue. Larger telephone, internet, and cable companies want to institute differential pricing and limit the resources available to small web concerns, and that gets everybody's dander up because we think this is an infringement of free trade, free thought, etc. We like to be simple, Andy Jackson-type folks.

Well, that's not a great idea as far as I can see. I, personally, don't want unlimited internet access. The internet is, by and large, a huge time-waster. The virtual landscape is nearly devoid of content. Why would we demand unlimited access to something that wastes our time? I demand unlimited, unfettered access to LSD and Pink Floyd laser light shows! I demand unlimited access to soccer! I demand unlimited access to trivial information I'm not even creative enough to think of on my own and instead require a machine to retrieve for me if I can give it basic commands which often enough I cannot because my brain is quite stunted by American existence!

All attempted humor aside, I would be happy to choose how much access I have, and pay for only that. There is no possible length of download or poor screen resolution, or number of annoying pop-up ads, that could make me go to People Magazine Online. Or Fox News Online. Or CNN Online.

If major media outlets think that knee-capping the little sites will help them, they are mistaken. Old media is irrevocably in decline because of what it is, not what it downloads as. I'll take the internet subscription package where I never have to see any TV personalities--much less sex offenders like Bill O'Reilly--ever again, please. And, I'll gladly pay full price for it and wait a few more seconds for the pages I want to appear.

What else am I missing?