On Aug 19, 2010, at 16:48, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 19 Aug 2010, Harry Penner wrote:
>
>> I'm making sweeping generalizations because although it may seem like a
>> small technical issue it's subject to the same basic laws of
>> governmental intervention as anything else.
>
> What are the "basic laws of governmental intervention?"  You don't seem
> like much of an expert to me, but maybe you can refer me to a text book on
> this subject.  Is this something that all experts in econ/poli-sci agree
> on or is this just an idea that you are trying to promote in opposition to
> the views of many experts?
>
Who said I'm an expert, or that someone has to be an expert to ask you
to think past the end of your nose?  This is a LUG for crying out loud
-- aren't we all independent thinkers here?
>
>> Of course regulation is a double-edged sword.  Some helps keep us safe,
>> and some helps make us miserable.  But all of it restricts our choices,
>> because that's what regulations are designed to DO.
>
> If a government regulation prevents a corporation from poisoning your
> drinking water and crippling you or killing your children, you actually
> end up with more choices than you would have had if there had been no
> regulation.

No. Better choices, maybe, because it might take away bad ones, but I
challenge you to show me a case where regulation gives you *more*
choices than you would have without it, except where it is just
correcting a previous overrestrictive regulation or law.
>
> A regulation restricts some entity from doing something, but it might
> restrict someone from limiting your choices (e.g., by killing you or
> poisoning your land).
>
Certainly.  Those are the good ones. But they're not all good, and
it's far from a given that all regulations do that kind of good, or
even that most do more good than bad. Rather than trying to argue that
regs are good or bad in the aggregate, we should be careful to examine
any proposed or imagined reg (which I think is what the net neutrality
one is at this point) to make sure that (a) it is in fact needed
because there is no other way, and (b) the longer term effects will be
net positive.

Seriously, is this really an alien idea?  Don't you do it on a micro
level when coding or refactoring, or implementing a system policy?

-Harry