As if in answer to my question Andy Kessler pens an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal which, I presume, gives the broadband carriers’ side of the “net neutrality” argument:

But the Internet cannot function as a public utility. First, public utilities don’t serve the public; they serve themselves, usually by maneuvering through Byzantine regulations that they helped craft. Utilities are about tariffs, rate bases, price caps and other chokeholds that kill real price discovery and almost guarantee the misallocation of resources. I would know; I used to work for AT&T in the early 1980s when it was a phone utility. Its past may offer a glimpse of the broadband future. Innovation gets strangled.

So far the comparison between the major broadband carriers and Ma Bell or the electric companies seems pretty strong. Except, of course, that the broadband companies are profiting from technologies in the public domain or that were invented by somebody else rather than developing any of their own. He continues:

If the Internet is reclassified as a utility, online innovation will slow to the same glacial pace that beset AT&T and other utilities, with all the same bad incentives. Research will focus on ways to bill you—as wireless companies do with calling and data plans—rather than new services. Imagine if Uber had to petition the FCC to ask for your location.

I wish Mr. Kessler had given us some examples of the innovations produced by the major broadband carriers. Offhand I can’t think of any. I can think of scads of “online innovations” produced by small companies or by Google or Netflix but I can’t think of any produced by the major broadband carriers. I tell a lie. Their innovations are in billing: Americans pay more for worse service than people who live in other developed countries do.

In other words, to my eye Mr. Kessler appears to be attacking the innovators on behalf of the freeriders in the name of future innovations that the freeriders will never produce. I said we were living in an age of irony.

Richard Cohen articulates the argument that there’s a moral obligation for Hillary Clinton to run for president:

It’s not possible that Clinton is actually mulling over whether to run. Not only does she have a moral obligation to do so — she’s repressing other potential candidacies and vacuuming up their funds — but the sooner she drops the standard political pose and exudes genuine feelings, the better a candidate she will be. She is not the Democratic Party’s best hope. She is its only hope.

as well as the argument against her running:

I have grave doubts about Hillary Clinton’s viability. She still has no resounding message, and in an anti-Washington era she is the very personification of the loathed capital city. Her credentials, her experience, her marriage to Bill and her association with President Obama will be used against her. By many measures, she may be the best candidate, but this is a country that punished George W. Bush for an unnecessary war by inexplicably electing him to a second term. He was, as they say, likable.

Not to mention that for a party whose winning coalition consists of Hispanics, blacks, the young, and single women, Hillary Clinton seems an unlikely standard bearer.

We are living in an ironic age. She’ll probably run as an outsider.

Yesterday President Obama demonstrated that he is not irrelevant by directing the FCC to regulate broadband Internet providers as utilities to ensure “net neutrality”, allowing customers to access the sites they cared to without throttling or blocking in order to promote sites the carriers preferred.

I am a fair-minded person person and try to give differing points of view a fair hearing. Can someone explain to me the argument in favor of allowing the carriers to control traffic as they care to? Please keep in mind that every major carrier operates under exclusive franchises, became wealthy under exclusive franchises, and that the carriers didn’t invent the protocols they’re profiting from now.

Proprietary networks were tried repeatedly. They all flopped. It’s only the adoption of the public Internet that allowed the creation of the world as we and the carriers know it.

Nick Gillespie complains bitterly about the move:

Reason contributor and Clemson University economic historian Thomas W. Hazlett defines Net Neutrality as “a set of rules…regulating the business model of your local ISP.” The definition gets to the heart of the matter. There are specific interests who are doing well by the current system—Netflix, for instance—and they want to maintain the status quo. That’s understandable but the idea that the government will do a good job of regulating the Internet (whether by blanket decrees or on a case-by-case basis) is unconvincing, to say the least. The most likely outcome is that regulators will freeze in place today’s business models, thereby slowing innovation and change.

or, in other words, he’s lining up on the side of monopolists, granted their monopolies by government action, against content providers in the name of I’m not exactly sure what. I think he may be instantiating the dividing line between anarcho-capitalists and libertarians. I think he just doesn’t like government intervention, not realizing that the companies he’s defending have benefited so mightily from government intervention.

Every week members of the Watcher’s Council weigh on a single question. This week’s forum is here.

The forum question this week was “What Is Your Take On The Election? What Do You See In The Future?”

I didn’t submit a response for the forum this week. I’m tired of the question. Most of my fellow Watchers are far more negative about the president than I. I think they’re mistaken or mislead; they think I can’t see what’s as plain as the nose on my face.

Paul Krugman reminds me of the most famous typographical error in the history of printing: the omission of the word “not” in the printing of the Sixth Commandment of the Ten Commandments in a 17th century edition of the Bible. I think that Dr. Krugman is wrong. The best contemporaneous evidence we have of the authors’ intentions in the PPACA is the issue he notes was not a typo but a miscalculation on their part. They wanted to provide an incentive for states to set up their own exchanges. Oops.

Now Dr. Krugman wants the Court to correct the law’s design errors.

The PPACA is an enormous Rube Goldberg, as most of our major programs are. The differences between it and other major social programs is that it has never enjoyed bipartisan or popular support, yet another miscalculation, and its ambitions and scope are so sweeping. Draft in haste, repent at leisure.

Charles Blahous has an interesting post in which he analyzes a number of prospective reforms to the PPACA from the standpoint of three criteria:

• Does the reform correct a substantive problem with the law?
• Does it have or can it get bipartisan support?
• Does it improve or at least not worsen the law’s finances?

Unsurprisingly, although there are many prospective targets for reforming the law, none satisfy all of those criteria. It seems to me that the next step in this analysis should be an attempt at quantifying the effects of repeal.

Just as a reminder my view of the PPACA is that I think it’s a distraction. It needs to be fully implemented as soon as possible so we can return to the desperately needed chore of reforming our healthcare system with an eye towards cost reduction. To whatever extent the PPACA reduces healthcare costs that aspect of it operates in geological time and we don’t have geological time in which to make the changes we need.

Speaking of entertainment, I’m now taking a hiatus on streaming Australian television (the last show I was watching is a family drama called Packed to the Rafters). I’m streaming a CBC series called Republic of Doyle set in Newfoundland. It’s a hoot.

My wife is binge-watching Parenthood on Netflix. I watch it with her when the opportunity arises. She says her objective is to catch up so she can watch the series finale when it broadcasts.

I’m still watching The Walking Dead although I think the fall season has started a bit slowly. Maybe it’ll perk up but it looks to me as though they’d run out of story lines which is the problem with series TV. I think most of the comic book-based series on TV have run out of steam for that reason.

“Lame duck” sessions of Congress are sessions of Congress that are convened after general elections and before the incoming Congress takes office. They’re most commonly convened to do the work that the Congress had refused to do before the election, especially spending bills to keep the federal government going, either by continuing resolution or by explicit spending bills.

However, it’s not uncommon that egregiously stupid things are done during lame duck sessions. Here are my picks for some of the dumbest things Congress has done during a lame duck session:

• The 103^rd Congress implemented the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
• The House of the 105^th Congress voted to impeach President William J. Clinton.
• The 107^th Congress created the Department of Homeland Security.
• The 112^th Congress allowed the moratorium on payroll taxes to expire.

I’m still taking nominations.

I’m taking nominations for the dumbest things done during lame duck sessions of Congress. It’s a broad field.