Reading 08: Does Anyone Really KNOW If Net Neutrality is Better?

When I first heard about Net Neutrality years ago, my first thought was that repealing it would be very bad— partially just because everyone on the internet seemed in agreement on that — but honestly I just wasn’t informed to make an intellegent decision. However after doing the readings this week I think it’s less of an issue of being uninformed and more just not being able to predict the future. I think that innovation is important, but I see both arguments for net neutrality increasing innovation and the arguments for repealing increasing innovation — I’m just not sure which is right. This exact question was posed in the reading “Is Net Neutrality Good or Bad for Innovation?”. Specifially, the reading mentioned how even the super smart models are unable to predict the effect it would have on competition, prices, and innovation. Based on what I have learned so far if I had to vote on this issue now I would put my vote behind keeping Net Neutrality, but the reality is that I can not say with a large amount of confidence that my vote will lead to the outcome I hope it would (I have this thought everytime I ever vote for anything political but I digress.)

One thing that I think might be important to point out in this debate is that even if we cannot know Net Neutrality’s full effect on innovation, we can imagine the types of companies that will be harmed by or will benefit from it and make a decision based partially on that. For example, small companies that could benefit from super fast internet speed may find a benefit in being in this so called “fast lane” and see it’s benefits outweigh the cost, but other small companies who decide speed isn’t their top concern might just be hurt by being “comparably slow” even if they really did nothing to change that. I think this might be a somewhat unsatisfying answer but I really still don’t think I’m fully prepared to take a side in this issue after reading this week’s articles. I know I think that we should help small businesses to foster innovation and growth but contrary to a lot of people’s beliefs I’m still not fully convinced that Net Neutrality is that answer.