Net Neutrality has been a hot topic these past couple of days due to the chair of the FCC, Ajit Pai, currently attempting to streamline the process to eliminate net neutrality rules set in motion by the Obama administration in February 2015. What many people consider humanity's greatest source of creativity, knowledge, and wanton aggression, the Internet itself is currently under attack again.
Net Neutrality has not been around for a long time. Companies used to be able to charge for access to certain platforms. Companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon were able to throttle connections to certain content in favor of content they want to push (either because it is good for the company or it was paid to be pushed). This was overturned first in 2010 when companies first made a general and not law-binding agreement that they would stop throttling connections, allowing proto-neutrality to flourish. It was not until later in the Obama administration that Net Neutrality was pushed by the FCC, allowing independent creators, artists and business owners to create a presence on the internet with equal opportunity as the larger corporations using streamlined tagging with usage of HTML and CSS.
From the amount of independent civilians that use the internet to help supplement their businesses and make money off the internet, the economy, and in essence, the value of the dollar, flourishes.
Summary of the Economy
The first misconception that I need to address: the dollar is a currency. A coin (quarter, nickel, dime) is currency. A mostly metallic coin (silver dollar) is money. Anything that holds value for another entity is a currency. All currencies are I.O.U.s. All metallic coins that are maintained with precious metals are money. This is extremely important when you attempt to read the next part of my explanation.
The U.S. economy used to be backed by the gold standard. Every note that changed hands had a reference to the standard, stating that by law you were able to trade in your note for its value in gold and silver. However, due to the increasing global economical landscape, the standard was changed to the amount of human capital that exists within the economy. This means that the amount of workers in the United States economy is what gives the currency value.
Some people believe that printing more currency will help create more value in the dollar. This actually leads to inflation, as printing more I.O.U.s decrease the proportional value of the human capital in conjunction with the currency itself. Completely stopping the printing of the dollar is actually a bad idea as well, as due to missing notes and the amount of currency changing hands, the supply of the note will decrease, and create a surplus of human capital. That is actually a bad thing, as a surplus of human capital means that there is a market failure, and there is not enough currency in circulation to help stabilize spending. Therefore, the United States isn't always printing money, but due to constant costs and evaluations, the U.S. only prints more currency when it is absolutely necessary.
With electronic banking, technically the printing of currency becomes somewhat a tricky topic, as the constant changing of numbers valued as I.O.U.s practically became currency continuing to be distributed, so the effect of stopping the process of printing at certain points becomes an obsolete argument.
Why is this important to net neutrality?
Net Neutrality and the Economy
According to the Internet Association, which is an organization comprised of big-wig companies such as AirBnB, Facebook, and Google, research on internet employment from 2012 categorical data taken from United States Census data from 2010 as well as their own findings, the industry that is solely comprised of internet employment and nothing else makes up an $ 896.2 billion industry. Compared to other industries such as construction and computer electronics (which held $586.7 billion and $252.6 billion respectively in 2012), the Internet itself is the United State's largest employer.
According to data taken in 2007 and compared to data taken in 2012, there was an annual growth rate of internet jobs of 15.78% compounded, from 1.3 million jobs to 2.8 million. That is a lot of employment. Compared to the rest of the employed in the United States, internet jobs count as 5.54% of the U.S. economy back in 2012, and if it continued with the same trend, the amount of jobs in 2017 should equal upwards of around 4 million.
Not all jobs are independently employed, but accounting an extremely radical estimation of independently employed users by sites such as YouTube, Etsy, Twitch, and various music aggregation websites, 62% of internet jobs are either independent supplementary or independent solitary.
New and old independent business owners that started to rely on the internet to help supplement their costumer base were able to save money due to the easy and relatively cheap access to internet advertising and website construction, allowing more money to be allocated to more important matters, supplies and maintenance. By destroying Net Neutrality, you are allowing the ISPs (internet service providers) to give certain websites a faster connection to you if they paid the exuberant amount of money for it.
For example, if you have an independent family-owned Mexican restaurant that relies on your website for reservations, menu items, and exclusivity just so you can diversify yourself from competitors, you may have to change to a larger provider (i.e. Yelp!) if net neutrality was taken away, leaving you to be a lossless item on a massive list of restaurants that cannot diversify. Average restaurant costumer bases lose a rather large percentage of costumers each year alone. If you cannot diversify, then you cannot continue surviving.
In conjunction with economical pitfalls, it also throttles creativity and innovation. By allowing ISPs to have complete control over the internet and having us at their whim, individuals with impressive and inventive ideas cannot easily enter the consumer marketplace nor can easily be funded outright as some of them are today. This means a lack of new companies, including healthy competition, enter the market. It also scares new idealists from entering the market outright due to monetary costs.
New and creative individuals on sites like YouTube, Twitch, DeviantArt, Tumblr, and Etsy may not be able to afford to continue going to those sites if the ISPs make us have to pay for decent connections.
The New "Censorship"
At this point, you may be wondering if this is a blatant attack on the First Amendment, and more importantly, your freedom of speech.
Lawfully, an sadly, no, it isn't against the law for ISPs to effectively censor what you see on the internet. The First Amendment only applies to items the U.S. government affects. And because the FCC is actually an independent entity, the First Amendment technically does not apply.
There is a small light, however. If anyone in the government supports the FCC ruling of net neutrality in any official way, it can be interpreted by the Supreme Court as a violation of the First Amendment, as the offices of those officials "officially" endorsed the decision.
What Can You Do?
Contact your government officials. Call your senators. Flood the FCC calling offices. Make your voice heard!
The FCC votes on December 14th, and because of the majority of Republican seats on the council, it is almost assured that we will lose net neutrality.
Citation
Internet Association Report: https://cdn1.internetassociation.org/wp-content/up...
Forbes Censorship: https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https...
