The Only Republican in San Francisco

Locking out talent

The Senate has introduced a new bill intended to make it harder to hire foreigners into high-tech positions:

The 32-page Senate bill would impose a host of additional obligations on employers. They would be required to pledge that they made a "good faith" effort to hire an American before taking on an H-1B worker and that the foreigner was not displacing a prospective U.S. worker. [...]

In an attempt to discourage employers from hiring foreigners at lower wages than their American counterparts would command, employers would have to pay all H-1B workers the "prevailing wage," as calculated by a different method that raises the minimum to a higher level than it currently stands. [...]

This is a step in exactly the wrong direction, and it is particularly shocking that it has appeared so quickly after Bill Gates and others rightly implored Congress to do the opposite -- to let as many talented people in as wish to come.

Make no mistake: the new Democratic majority is beholden to economic ideas than are outdated at best, and xenophobic at worst. The only people who benefit from these sorts of policies are union leaders. Everyone else -- from US consumers to those who happen to be brown and born in other places -- is worse off.

The best thing we can do for our economy is to let highly-trained, highly-paid inventors set up shop here. Such people pay more taxes and create more jobs than any other segment of society. Sun Microsystems is a good example:

McNealy observed that Khosla and Bechtolsheim both were born in another country, as was James Gosling, who was instrumental in the creation of the Java software technology.

"We are absolutely torching ourselves by not letting all the really smart people come here to the valley. We shouldn't let them in unless we get them to commit to staying at least 10 years. Instead, we do the exact opposite," McNealy said. "Why don't we want another James Gosling or Vinod Khosla to set up shop here."

And the Internal Revenue Service hasn't suffered from Sun's international connections. "How many billions of dollars of taxes have you paid?" McNealy asked of Khosla and Bechtolsheim. "You are hardly a burden on our society."

Our goal must not be to "protect" American workers, but to protect the things that make America a place where people want to work. Understand the difference?

High-tech work can happen anywhere in the world, and the work will follow the talent. If India retains better talent than the US, much of the work will simply flow across borders and be done there. Ditto China, Estonia, and other hot spots.

We can't force wealth and productivity to stay within our borders. Such ham-handed legislation merely pushes smart people, and the wealth they produce, to find other accommodations.

And if you want to look at this geopolitically: a person that desires to work in the US is voting with their feet. If you believe that the world is dividing itself between progress (free markets & democracy) and regression (resurgent socialism & theocracy), then it seems that we should embrace these "voters" with open arms.

No single country can't maintain a lock on any particular industry over the long term. The place where a country can compete is in hospitality toward wealth creation. Shouldn't we do so?

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Update: The Immigration Service opened H-1B applications for fiscal 2008 yesterday. Guess how long it took to reach the limit?

What sort of business imposes a ceiling on its potential customers? There's only one kind. 

US broadband mythology

Cynthia over at IP Democracy has an analysis (of an analysis) of US broadband in comparison with the world, to which I will add an analysis.

She contends that the US is falling behind in broadband and implies that we are in bad shape and need more government involvement. She makes some cogent points, but doesn't dig deep enough.

The first and most predictable example she points to is South Korea, and she claims that they have 100Mb/s upload and download speeds. I will make the equally predictable point that population density does matter (scroll down), but the real question is: how does she know that they actually get 100Mb up and down? She doesn't, and the original article doesn't -- it's just a meme that gets reported a lot.

An outfit called Analysys looked at actual network performance vs advertised performance [pdf], and found that South Koreans only get around 40% of what they pay for, at least for the "fast" plans, while the US gets over 90%. Their actual bandwidth is around 20Mb on the high end, while in the US we get around 13Mb.

Yes, Korea is still faster, but with 10 times the population density and the drum beat of a Korean miracle, shouldn't we expect something more miraculous?

Due to this inefficiency, the South Koreans pay around $3/Mb for connectivity vs around $5/Mb in the US. Since laying a mile of fiber will reach 10x as many people in Korea, shouldn't their prices be around 10x lower? Or even 5x? In fact, it sounds like the Koreans are getting ripped off, considering the efficiencies available to them.

Further, our actual throughput is well ahead of all of the European countries included in the Analysys survey. In working with colleagues at my company's European offices, I know this to be the case. I will take real bandwidth over advertised bandwidth any day.

Richard Hoffman (author of the original analysis) attempts to take apart the population density argument by pointing to countries with lower densities than ours who have better broadband penetration:

That argument falters, however, when one considers that five of the 11 nations that lead the U.S. in per capita broadband penetration, including Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Canada, have significantly lower population densities than the U.S.

...and that's fine. But notice that four of these five countries are Scandinavian welfare states. Really, he is offering a single counter-example with a number of different names.

These countries do not refute the population density argument. Rather, they illuminate what I have said before: that socialism can only succeed in a homogeneous population. These countries are among the least diverse in the world -- so much so that the Human Genome Project chose Scandinavia because of its limited gene pool.

If the goal is broadband penetration in a non-diverse economy, Scandinavia offers a good example. The government can make spending decisions with which a majority of the population will agree. The rest of world, especially the US, requires a little more diversity of opinion and priorities.

In fact, we can combine all of Scandinavia, call it a country and still be smaller than a single US state --  say, Florida, which is a leader in broadband. In just one year, the US added more new broadband users (24 million) than the total populations of Richard's Scandinavian examples. So what are we comparing, exactly?

So while Cynthia's and Richard's articles offer some interesting insights, they are not blowing the lid off of any broadband myths. In fact, they are often simply repeating them.

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Look, we can consider broadband policy to be about keeping up with some mythical Joneses, or we can consider broadband policy to be about making the best choices for our citizens and our economy.

The idea that our state of broadband is hurting our economy is betrayed by the facts: a look at our job creation, unemployment, per capita incomes and growth rates tell a very different story. None of this should be taken for granted, of course, but the "broadband = competitiveness" meme is not borne out. How many jobs is Iceland creating, by the way?

If broadband penetration in the US is relatively low, we might consider the possibility that citizens have given it a certain priority in their lives. We'll get higher rates over time -- Richard notes 24 million new US broadband users over the course of a year, a 40% increase. But to have the government setting policy on this is to impose a priority on citizens that they have not chosen for themselves.

Of course I would like to see more and faster broadband. We are building a lot of it in this country, and broadband use and availability are growing apace. Let's focus on doing the right thing, instead of making a superficial top-10 list.

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Related: Martin Geddes asks us not to panic:

If we separately ranked US states, or divided the UK up into regions, the picture would change radically. London and southeast England would look great. So would a few US states like Virginia.

Some of those little regions with greater connectivity have familiar name tags. Like ‘Norway’, and ‘Luxembourg’. Yes, they’re real countries. [...] Yet their position in the rankings is an artificial by-product of how we divide up the statistics. It means nothing to the median European or North American.

If North and South Korea had a massive reconcilliation tomorrow, and thus the Unified Korean Republic plummeted to #102 in the world, do you think things are getting better, or worse? (Hint: begins with ‘b’.)

That's the question. We can easily point out that California and Florida have broadband rates that exceed those of the cited "leaders", with similar populations. So aren't they on the list?

If we want a meaningful list, let's talk apples to apples: compare actual, usable broadband across a number of large and diverse economies. How about North America vs the Euro area? Or versus the greater Far East?

Yahoo messenger for Vista

For techies, here is a nice-looking version of Yahoo Messenger for the upcoming Windows Vista. I'm a programmer and also an IM person. This particular version is interesting to me because it takes advantage of a lot of the cool stuff that Vista promises. You'll see a button for a Video Preview, that will give you the best demo.

Attention ladies

Stephen Hawking is back on the market. Talk about cojones. As I recall it, he took up with his nurse while married to his first wife.

I had a brief brush with greatness while at a physics conference a few years ago. Dr. Hawking and posse strolled by me in the hallway. They even cordoned off a parking spot in front for him. Every field has its celebrities, and its fanboys.

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Update: Reader Bo points out that the good doctor is subtly making his preferences known. I'm telling ya, this physics thing is hot. If I could only convince my girlfriend of that....

EU tries to design security software

As a follow-on to my previous article on the EU's interference with Microsoft, today we learn that the European Commission would like to be in the business of a designing security software. They are on shaky legal footing here, and their technological footing is non-existent.

Here is an example of ad-hoc lawmaking:

Responding to expressions of concern by the company over the Commission's stance, EU competition spokesman Jonathan Todd told a briefing it was up to Microsoft, as "a near monopolist," to ensure compliance with EU antitrust rules in the new system.

I don't know a whole lot about European antitrust, but I can't imagine that "near-monopolist" is defined or even mentioned in the text of those laws. Mr. Todd is not basing his opinions on law, but of the opaque judgments of an unelected commission. He is asking Microsoft not to comply with written law, but rather to predict the judgments of that commission in the future.

Further, he postulates on what the market "should" look like:

Open competition and diversity were the best way of improving software security, he said.

"Such diversity and innovation could be at risk if Microsoft was allowed to foreclose the existing competition in computer security markets...by bundling its own security products into its dominant operating system," Todd said.

I agree that open competition, diversity and innovation are the cornerstones of the software business. But Mr. Todd's commission is proposing that Microsoft be prevented from bringing a new product to market.

That means less diversity, less competition and less innovation. The EC would like to force Microsoft to sell a less-functional and less-secure version of their software.

The last time they did this, consumers ignored it entirely. And why wouldn't they? The EC forced an inferior product on a public that never demanded it.

Mr. Todd's economic theories are speculative, vague, and unsupported by evidence. In the absence of such evidence, the EC must let the customers decide.

Consumers and technology firms are vastly smarter on this topic than a bureacracy can ever hope to be. In truth, the EC is not looking to protect competition, it is looking to protect competitors. Its intentions and methods are the exact opposite of what it claims to promote.

European Commission annexes Microsoft

Two months ago, the European Commission issued a $357 million fine against Microsoft for allegedly not complying with its antitrust order. Prior to that, in 2004, the EU realized a handsome $613 million dollar windfall from the company. Somewhere in Brussels, some buggy whips must have needed gilding.

To help illustrate these numbers: that amount of money could pay 100 new bureaucrats a $100,000 salary for, um, 97 years.

Further, that amount does not include the 300 people that Microsoft has dedicated to complying with the EC, by writing voluminous documentation. Imagine if these folks were writing software or surveying customers or creating startups. There are good reasons that we don't want government agencies allocating resources, and this is a textbook case.

But that doesn't stop the EC from trying to justify it:

"Microsoft has told me they are now devoting substantial resources to compliance," Kroes said. "It is a great pity they didn't do this two years ago...If they had begun in earnest (then), the burden on Microsoft's staff would have been much lighter."

I am always glad to hear a powerful (and unelected) bureaucrat telling a private company how to organize its employees. Some might call it annexation.

All this despite the fact that Microsoft's are the most documented, reviewed, tested, deployed, hacked, probed and reverse-engineered products on the planet.

The commissioner felt it necessary to add:

"The launch of Vista [Microsoft's next major operating system] next year will hopefully take all this into account"

Put another way: that's some nice intellectual property you got there. Wouldn't want anything to, you know, happen to it.

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Today, we hear a rumor that Microsoft might delay the release of Vista in the European market. Why? For fear of crossing the authorities. And the authorities are dismayed!

The European Commission responded sharply, saying it was "misleading to imply that the Commission could be the cause of delays in launching Vista in Europe."

Actually, such hesitation on the part of Microsoft is perfectly rational. After paying nearly $1 billion in fines, based on an unelected commission's judgment of its products, this caution strikes me as the only reasonable approach.

Thankfully, there are still some folks in the EU who understand that it is consumers who will be hurt by all this:

European Parliament members brought the issue to a head Thursday with a letter to the commission expressing concern that the process could prompt a Vista delay in Europe. [...]

"It is alarming that one of the world's most successful technology companies considers the European Commission's attitude a 'risk factor' that might delay European companies' access to future Microsoft products such as Windows Vista," Chris Heaton-Harris, Peter Skinner, Sharon Bowles and Michal Kaminski wrote in the letter to Kroes.

And a substantial risk factor it is. The likely outcome is that European technology customers -- the ones whose opinions matter most -- will have to wait longer than the rest of the world when it comes to new innovations. And, big tech firms will think twice about investing in places where the EC has jurisdiction.

Microsoft needs to finish the product and get it out the door in those parts of the world where they will not be punished for doing so. Then, they need to circle back to decide if and when it is worth their while to release it in Europe.

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Addendum: In case you are wondering if I am some sort of MS shill, get over it. I use their products, I also use a Mac, plus a lot of Adobe stuff, Firefox, and of course their myriad online competitors such as Google. The crux of my position (not unlike my position on net neutrality) is that the value of technology can only grow via the interactions of creators and consumers.

Google asks no one's permission in refining its search algorithm; no one tells Adobe how to engineer Photoshop. Both are best-of-class products that have made the world a better place, and whose success rests entirely on their customers' opinions of them.

If you think that governments can successfully dictate the design of technologies and markets, I've got a Paykan to sell you.

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Update: John Carroll has a good take on this as well. He points out this important characteristic of antitrust law: an entity cannot know whether they are breaking the law beforehand.

Antitrust is NOT like laws against murder, or theft, or other "crimes" laws have been written to prevent. It's pretty easy to determine whether or not someone has been killed, or something stolen.

Antitrust isn't like that. Antitrust laws don't provide ANY guidance as to a standard by which to judge whether or not a company is a "monopoly," nor any rules - much less limits - governing what should be done once a company is declared a monopoly.

I suspect this will put Microsoft and the EC in increasingly awkward positions as Vista approaches. One of John's commenters calls such laws ex post facto and therefore unconstitutional, as well.

The EC is trying to play gotcha. They are saying that Microsoft has to comply with laws, but won't say exactly what the laws dictate or what compliance looks like. Maybe they are hoping for a post-Vista payday?

Global warming and priorities

I’ve put forward a bit of skepticism recently about global warming, but I should probably explain a bit further. I am perfectly willing to accept science that says the earth is warming, and that there is a good chance that some of it is man-made. No problem, so long as the argument is about the science.

My skepticism — call it fear — is about the motives of those who are using it as a political agenda, or even a theology. For some, the end-is-nigh appeal of global warming is manifold.

First, a certain liberal guilt is twinged by a logic that says “we are bad and we deserve this”. After all, we in the West are prosperous (read: gluttonous) and for the last hundred years we have reduced suffering on a grand level. Call it the vengeful god motive.

Second, but closely related, is anti-capitalist opportunism. A typically lefty/statist response to a problem is to immediately look at things we can take away from people: their cars, their electricity, their money.

Let’s accept that the earth is warming and that we have some grasp of what’s happening. Now what? There are very hard choices to be made about our standard of living and that of the rest of the world. Who is laying out these choices in a serious way?

A test was recently put to UN staffers by an environmentalist named Bjorn Lomborg: given an additional $50 billion, how would you spend it to best benefit humanity? They were given such issues as disease, poverty, free trade and yes, climate change.

They found, consistently, that climate change came last in their priorities. This is the heart of the question:

The ambassadors thought it wiser to spend money on things they knew would work. Promoting breast-feeding, for example, costs very little and is proven to save lives. It also helps infants grow up stronger and more intelligent, which means they will earn more as adults. Vitamin A supplements cost as little as $1, save lives and stop people from going blind. And so on.

For climate change, the trouble is that though few dispute that it is occurring, no one knows how severe it will be or what damage it will cause. And the proposed solutions are staggeringly expensive. Mr Lomborg reckons that the benefits of implementing the Kyoto protocol would probably outweigh the costs, but not until 2100.

Kimberly Strassel at OpinionJournal explores Mr. Lomborg’s findings further:

Two hundred years ago, he explains, sitting forward in his chair in this newspaper's Manhattan offices, the left was an "incredibly rational movement." It believed in "encyclopedias," in hard facts, and in the idea that mastery of these basics would help "make a better society." Since then, the world's do-gooders have succumbed to "romanticism; they've become more dreamy." This is a problem in his view, and so this "self-avowed slight lefty" is determined to nudge the whole world back toward "rationalism." [...]

While the economists were from varying political stripes, they largely agreed. The numbers were just so compelling: $1 spent preventing HIV/AIDS would result in about $40 of social benefits, so the economists put it at the top of the list (followed by malnutrition, free trade and malaria). In contrast, $1 spent to abate global warming would result in only about two cents to 25 cents worth of good; so that project dropped to the bottom.

Of course, this is not to minimize the dangers we might face with this thing we call global warming. It has more to do with moving beyond moral obviousness and toward solutions which honestly evaluate pros and cons.

I will have a post soon about the importance of incentives over punishments in this area. When faced with a problem 100 years in the making, we need a plan that that sustains over the next 100, beyond simply assuaging our guilt.

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Bob Samuelson lays out these questions and asks much harder ones over at the Washington Post.

Some healthy skepticism

The other night I was watching Al Gore on Letterman talking about global warming and promoting his movie. I am an admitted skeptic on the subject, and honestly don’t know what to believe. I do know that many people are accepting the existence of global warming for reasons that are less than scientific.

One phrase which struck me was when Gore declared “The scientific debate is over”, motioning his hands like an umpire calling “safe”. What a strange and manipulative thing to say -- this little rhetorical catch-phrase is intended to tell his audience not to consider any ideas but the ones he is promoting. Hardly the words of a critical thinker, and hardly an invitation for people to do their own research and form their own opinions. It is pure dogma.

Richard Lindzen, who is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, heard Gore repeat his catch-phrase on another show and begs to differ:

What exactly is this debate that Mr. Gore is referring to? Is there really a scientific community that is debating all these issues and then somehow agreeing in unison? Far from such a thing being over, it has never been clear to me what this "debate" actually is in the first place. [...]

A clearer claim as to what debate has ended is provided by the environmental journalist Gregg Easterbrook. He concludes that the scientific community now agrees that significant warming is occurring, and that there is clear evidence of human influences on the climate system. This is still a most peculiar claim. At some level, it has never been widely contested. Most of the climate community has agreed since 1988 that global mean temperatures have increased on the order of one degree Fahrenheit over the past century, having risen significantly from about 1919 to 1940, decreased between 1940 and the early '70s, increased again until the '90s, and remaining essentially flat since 1998. [...]

So what, then, is one to make of this alleged debate? I would suggest at least three points.

First, nonscientists generally do not want to bother with understanding the science. Claims of consensus relieve policy types, environmental advocates and politicians of any need to do so. Such claims also serve to intimidate the public and even scientists -- especially those outside the area of climate dynamics. Secondly, given that the question of human attribution largely cannot be resolved, its use in promoting visions of disaster constitutes nothing so much as a bait-and-switch scam. That is an inauspicious beginning to what Mr. Gore claims is not a political issue but a "moral" crusade.

Lastly, there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition. An earlier attempt at this was accompanied by tragedy. Perhaps Marx was right. This time around we may have farce -- if we're lucky.

Put simply, to the extent that our discussion is scientific, the debate is quite serious and ongoing. Only when we leave the realm of science can we declare the debate over.

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Believers in global warming make the point that, even if we don’t know all the science, shouldn’t we act now, considering the potential consequences? Fine, but they often overlook an important question: what about the poorest parts of the world?

The problem is one of poverty and prosperity. We are rich in this country and we are among the most energy-efficient in the world, when measured by carbon production per $ of GDP. (Our numbers would be improved with more nuclear.)

As other countries of the world increase their wealth (especially China and India), we should expect their energy use to rise proportionately. If we are to try to control global warming by changing our ways, we may be asking people to limit their prosperity, since wealth is the most fundamental driver of energy use and carbon production.

It is unlikely that rich Westerners will give up much prosperity. Of course there are things we can do, and I am excited about them (plug-in hybrids, E85, nuclear). But these changes will dovetail into our economy, if we decide we want them. We can afford it, and we might even improve our prosperity in the long term.

It is the countries and the people who are building towards prosperity that will be asked to give up the most. India and China are highly polluting and they are just beginning to move up the prosperity scale. Keep in mind that the US economy is over 5x as large as China’s, with only 1/4 of their population. They have a long way to go and a lot of big plans.

Global warming advocates have precisely no intention of reducing their own standards of living, and offer little evaluation of cost-benefit for those whose standards will be reduced.

This why it is so dangerous to blindly sign on to global warming alarmism. If we pass bad laws based on incomplete science, we are asking a lot of poor people around the world to stay poor. We self-congratulating Westerners will never see them, but in our hearts will know we are “good people” for having “saved the planet”.

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Look, I understand that if Gore’s predictions are true then it is a problem for all of us. I am all for new, efficient technologies as I mentioned above. But we must do a serious, scientific cost-benefit:

• What is the degree of global warming?
• What role do humans play in it?
• What are the forecasts for the future?

These are not yes-or-no questions, but matters of degree. As uncomfortable as it might be, we must measure the cost of environmental degradation vs. the benefits of new prosperity. Are we willing accept half a degree of global warming to lift 100,000,000 million people out of poverty? What is the right trade-off?

In fact, we make these sorts of evaluations every day.

Here is a simple analogy: a family of four lives on the outskirts of the Brazilian rainforest, in a mud hut. If they were to clear and farm an acre of land, they could afford a better home, an outhouse, more food and medicine and mosquito netting. They might be able to vaccinate their children and send them to school. These children, in turn, grow up to be teachers and nurses.

If we are going to save an acre of rainforest, are we also willing to commit a family to a life of relative misery? After all, as you read this, the land you are sitting on was (probably) once forested. It was cleared for your benefit, and even if you didn’t ask for it, you accept it as part of your standard of living.

By our actions, we do believe that there is an acceptable trade-off between environment and standard of living. Now we need to do the hard work of deciding whether others are allowed to make the same calculation.

I think the debate is not over...

Sonia Arrison on Net Neutrality

Here’s Sonia Arrison writing on "net neutrality" over at News.com. Be sure to check out the comments at bottom, some interesting stuff going on there. A lot of traditionalists from the phone-monopoly age arguing against her.

The essence of the issue, to me, is not what has come before but what comes next. At stake is the possibility that the FCC would be, first and foremost, categorizing technologies for the purpose of regulating them.

While this may be tempting as an intellectual exercise, it is extremely short-sighted. Ten years ago, when the last major telecom bill was passed, there was no understanding of concepts like VoIP (Skype, Vonage), peer-to-peer in all its forms (BitTorrent) or video search engines (Google). They could not be anticipated, as this is the nature of revolutionary technology.

Because they weren’t anticipated, they were not regulated. It goes to show that the most important technologies come to be based on innovation and merit in the eyes of the consumer, not government definition. The short history of the Web is a great testament to this.

There are no existing net neutrality regulations. There have been no confirmed net neutrality problems. Such legislation is a punishment in search of a crime.

The consumer will make the call. If Google video runs 10% faster than Uncle John’s Animal Husbandry Blog, because Google paid for better performance, I don’t think the consumer will revolt. They will vote with their $$.

If a carrier abuses its position in the market — a very remote possibility, given the ever-increasing levels of competition — it can be dealt with under existing anti-monopoly regulations. Let’s cross that hypothetical bridge when we come to it.

To mix a metaphor, let’s not kill chickens before they are hatched. Let’s not let bureaucrats decide what the Internet is, while it's still in its infancy.

Update: a poll on this subject over at Light Reading. Sounds like the tech libertarians are in the majority.

Quick bit on Net neutrality

This News.com article addresses some Senate hearings today on the concept of “net neutrality” -- the idea that carriers such as AT&T and Sprint should not prioritize certain traffic over others.

Some folks, such as Mark Cuban, would like the option to pay more for better performance. This seems reasonable to me, and a good way to pay for the high-bandwidth apps of the future.

That’s the key here: this is an argument about the future, where the serious high-bandwidth apps live. If the bandwidth providers can’t be compensated for building, um, bandwidth, then why would they invest?

If you prefer that the Internet never evolves from its current state, the concept of net neutrality is for you. While the terminology sounds, um, neutral, it really means that the government decides what companies can and cannot do with their pipes. It is a tired socialist argument based on imagined scarcity.

Bandwidth providers should be free to offer a premium product to those who are willing to pay for it. If you are willing to pay for a faster PC, a better meal or better clothes, I don’t see why a company should not be able to pay for better network performance.

Unfortunately, many are frightened that the organic nature of the net, where anyone can publish and be guaranteed delivery of their content, is imperiled. History does not support this prediction.

The likely outcome is that some companies will pay for high-speed lanes, and consumers reap the benefit of a better offering. Next-generation pipes get built because it is profitable to do so, and there is more bandwidth for everyone. Worst case, those who don’t pay a premium stay at their current level.

There is no question that bandwidth demands will continue to expand apace. The question is, do we allow the industry to build according the demand?

Another scenario: if the Internet infrastructure cannot keep up, then many companies will skip the 'net entirely and built their own private networks. The bandwidth will be built, it's just a question of whether it is part of the actual Internet. Google is already doing it.

Of course the bandwidth providers are in it for the money, just like Google and Apple and everyone else. That profit motive has given us great innovations like the iPod and Google Maps. I want the fat pipes of the future.

More and better here from the Progress & Freedom Foundation.

Update 8 Feb: The article at top implies that Google, Microsoft and others are arguing for net neutrality provisions. I don’t read it that way. It is more accurate to say that these firms are taking a generally libertarian position but are concerned about the fair application of net neutrality, should it come to pass. Perhaps I have something more to learn here -- are they afraid of the RBOCs?