Binary Freedom

A recent controversy has arisen in the tech world. The issue is over “net neutrality”. The firestorms came after several major high speed internet providers proposed a system by which higher paying customers’ data would be granted a higher priority while on the particular company’s network. Critics claim that this policy is unfair and even have gone as far as to say illegal.

Let us for a moment do what countless reporters and editors refuse to do, examine all of the premises involved in making this kind of statement.

• A small business owner/entrepreneur has a right to influence the policies of the company that provides them their service


• The net is some sort of egalitarian collective


• It is immoral and/or illegal for a company to decide how the service it has developed and maintains should be used

The fact is, a small business owner (or anyone for that matter) has no right to coerce another into providing him with an internet connection, let alone some sort of “equal treatment”. The fact is, those little fiber optic cables skirting pulses of light around don’t just appear, they are the product of a long chain of productive thought and labor. The companies involved developed or paid another to develop those technologies and no one has any right to it save the rights its owners grant. Is it wrong for airlines to offer “tiered services” such as first and economy classes? What about hotels that have suite level rooms as well as more affordable ones? Or how about the various package delivery providers? Should an organ donor’s kidney be forced to be shipped along with that letter to Santa in spite of the recipient’s willingness to pay extra, just in the name of egalitarianism?

Here is the fallacy few have had the courage and brain power to discover. While human beings by their nature should be seen equal in the eyes of a jury, they need not be metaphysically equal. They in fact can be equal in this regard, but if one individual chooses to utilize his or her brain while another does not, it is pure evil to cut down the productive genius in name of the mindless savage, all the while pandering to “equality”. No one has a right to those networks. A store selling trinkets cannot subjugate a cable company to provide them the same bandwidth as a high-tech GPS tracking service. If there is a legitimate small business with good ideas, then it will only hurt the cable companies that decide to make it irrationally harder for them.

The net is not an egalitarian playground. It was brought about by individual achievement. Yes, the net was initiated by a government agency but that is largely irrelevant. Every important advance has been made by some private firm. Using that as an argument for the collective nature of it is just as rational as attributing the modern automobile entirely to the inventor of the wheel.

Freedom is indeed a binary entity. You either have it or you do not. You cannot maintain a system by which companies are left “free” to develop these magnificent services but are told how and where to provide them. It is in effect telling a car manufacture that he can produce a luxury car, only he must charge the same as the competition’s lowliest motorized scooter.

The lesson to the world is: stop trying to control that which you have not created.