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Op-Eds

@Twitter: Net Neutrality For Thee, But Not For We

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“Net Neutrality” is back in the news. On May 16, the US Senate voted 52-47 to undo the Federal Communication Commission’s undoing of the previous FCC’s doing of … yes, it’s complicated. There are really only three important things to know:

First, Net Neutrality as implemented by the FCC in 2015 was a bad solution to a non-existent problem — a corporate welfare program for Big Data at one end and an Internet censorship enabling act at the other, pitched to the public as the fix for an Internet that wasn’t broken.

Secondly, when Net Neutrality ended in 2017, something else didn’t end — the world. The Internet continued (and continues) to hum right along, with or without Net Neutrality.

Thirdly, the Senate vote is a tale told by politicians, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Repeal of the repeal of Net Neutrality won’t pass the US House of Representatives, and if it did President Trump wouldn’t sign it. It’s just grandstanding.

In other news, it seems that one of Net Neutrality’s big supporters — Twitter — doesn’t really support Net Neutrality. Or, rather, it supports Net Neutrality for everyone else, just not for itself.

Back in 2015, in a blog post titled “Why Twitter faves #NetNeutrality,” Twitter manager William Carty wrote: “[T]he Internet provides an almost frictionless experience for an individual to communicate with the world … We need clear, enforceable, legally sustainable rules to ensure that the Internet remains open and continues to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers. This is the heart of Twitter.”

Pretty standard Net Neutrality dogma: “Free and Open Internet.” No “fast lanes” for some people’s data while everyone else gets pushed into the “slow lane.”

But on May 16, Twitter announced, you guessed it, a fast lane for itself and a slow lane for third party apps. The Verge reports on coming changes to the company’s API which “prevent new tweets from streaming into an app in real time” and “delay some push notifications.”

Companies that use lots of bandwidth love the idea of Net Neutrality because it’s a subsidy.

Under Net Neutrality, Internet Service Providers aren’t allowed to charge bandwidth hogs extra for providing more, bigger, faster pipes for their data to travel down. Big Data doesn’t want to have to charge their advertisers (Twitter) or subscribers (Netflix) more to cover the costs of those pipes. Net Neutrality shifts those costs, by law, to Big Telecom. In other words, to your cable bill.

When it comes to their own apps, though, this “no fast lane, no slow lane” stuff goes out the window in a hot second. They want to cash the corporate welfare checks, not write the corporate welfare checks.

But it’s in the best interest of regular users to do away with the corporate welfare checks altogether. Let’s just pay an extra buck or two for our Netflix accounts instead of trying to shift parts of our bandwidth bills to the little old lady next door who checks her email twice a week.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Op-Eds

Note to Seattle: If You Want Less of Something, Tax it

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Seattle (photo by Rattlhed via Wikipedia -- public domain)
Seattle (photo by Rattlhed via Wikipedia — public domain)

What’s the best way to help the homeless? While there are lots of reasons for homelessness in America, ranging from mental illness to the use of e.g. “sex offender registries” to put certain areas off-limits to certain people, poverty likely places high on the list — and a major cause of poverty is the inability to find a good job.

Apparently the city council of Seattle, Washington, disagrees. On May 14, the council voted unanimously to start reducing the Emerald City’s employment opportunities for the purpose of funding the city government’s homeless services and affordable housing schemes.

They didn’t put it that way, of course. In fact, at least one city council member accused companies like Amazon and Starbucks of “blackmail” for pointing out the obvious and inevitable consequence of demanding that employers pay a $275 annual “head tax” on each full-time employee in the city.

According to the Associated Press coverage of the tax, it would “raise roughly $48 million a year to build new affordable housing units and provide emergency homeless services.” That figure is likely based on on an untenable assumption: That Seattle will continue to have as many or more full-time employees working within the city limits after the tax is implemented than it had before the tax was passed.

In fact, what Seattle’s politicians are telling prospective employers and current employers is “don’t locate here, and if you are already located here, move away, or at least don’t expand.”

The tax may raise some money, but its main effect will be to increase unemployment in Seattle.

Its secondary effect will be to raise the cost of building “affordable housing” in the city since the labor cost for every carpenter, bricklayer, electrician, etc. will go up. And the cost of everything else, too. Grocers and cab companies and landscapers and restaurants aren’t going to just grin and fork over the tax. They’re going to raise prices to cover it.

Both of those effects lead to a tertiary effect: Fewer jobs and more expensive housing, transportation, food, etc. will mean more, not fewer, homeless people.

Naturally, the likely “solution” to the problem getting worse rather than better will be to increase the tax. And that likelihood creates “regime uncertainty.” Perhaps some companies would consider the other benefits of locating in Seattle worth $275 per year per employee. But if the tax can go from $275 to $500 to $1,000 at the drop of a hat, Seattle just won’t look like a good place to start a new enterprise or expand an existing one.

I dislike “targeted” tax measures because they smack of social engineering. But if Seattle’s politicians really want to help the homeless by messing with the tax code, the better way would be to offer tax BREAKS to companies that employ people, and especially companies that employ people to build homes.

Seattle cannot and will not tax its way out of its homelessness and housing problems. But it should at least stop looking for ways to tax itself more deeply into those problems.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

The Iran Nuclear Deal Isn’t Just a Good Idea — It’s the Law

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English: The United Nations Security Council C...
English: The United Nations Security Council Chamber in New York, also known as the Norwegian Room (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On May 8, President Donald Trump announced US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, colloquially known as “the Iran nuclear deal.”

While that decision has come under criticism for being both a really bad idea and a severe betrayal of trust, both of which are true, it’s worth noting that the US withdrawal is also a breach of treaty obligations, and that such obligations are, per the US Constitution and co-equal with it, “the Supreme Law of the Land.”

But wait — aren’t defenders of the withdrawal correct in noting that the JCPOA isn’t a treaty at all? Yes, they are, although some err in referring to it as an “executive order.” It isn’t even that. It’s merely a “State Department Political Commitment” which can be wadded up and thrown in the trash any time …

… except that the treaty in question is not the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It’s the United Nations Charter, delivered to the US Senate by President Harry Truman and duly ratified by that body on July 28, 1945 by a vote of 89-2.

Under Article 25 of the UN Charter, “members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council.”

On July 20, 2015, the members of that body, including the United States, unanimously endorsed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in UN Security Council Resolution 2231.

It seems unlikely that Samantha Power, US ambassador to the UN at the time, didn’t know what she was committing the US government to when she voted for the resolution rather than exercising the US’s veto power on the Security Council. After all, the resolution itself contains text “[u]nderscoring that Member States are obligated under Article 25 of the Charter of the United Nations to accept and carry out the Security Council’s decisions.”

Was the JCPOA a “good deal?” Not especially so for the  Iranians. Even though they apparently had no nuclear weapons program after 2004 at the latest, and even though they were apparently in full compliance with their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (unlike the US), they made a bunch of concessions to US demagoguery (and demagoguery from Israel, an ACTUAL rogue nuclear state) in order to get some of their own money (seized by the US government) back and get some sanctions (which should never have existed) lifted.

For the US government, it was an excellent deal, a face-saving way of hitting the reset button on nearly 40 years of failed policy vis a vis Iran. By letting Iran rejoin “the civilized world,” the US received the same opportunity — an opportunity that Trump just blew by way of loudly warning the world that the US government can’t be trusted to keep its word. Or honor its treaty obligations.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY