 Hi everyone, this is Chih-chou. Welcome to my channel. Now I've been asked to give you guys my opinion regarding net neutrality and I agreed to do so and I agreed to put together a video for this. And I sort of initially outlined a few different concepts. We're going to talk about create some visuals and stuff like this, but I decided to sort of step back from that and not go down so many rabbit holes and basically take a look at the debate from both sides, both factions, really, the pro-net neutrality side and the anti-net neutrality side, and take a look at the main arguments being presented. And then what we'll do, we'll take a look at the flaws associated with both arguments and then I'll give you my perspective of which way I think we should be leaning towards, right? And there's a couple of things to keep in mind. The definition of net neutrality is basically this, that information traveling online should not be discriminated against, right? That me communicating with you or you communicating with someone else or you consuming some kind of content or creating some kind of content, whatever you decide to share online or consume online should not be discriminated against. Basically, no discrimination against data, right? Maybe based on who's creating it, the website is originating from what the content is or based on how much someone is willing to pay, right? So my content being created online should be treated the same way as any other data being created and shared online, like that's the concept of net neutrality. The other thing we have to really appreciate is that this debate about net neutrality is an economic debate, right? And as we've talked about before, politics and economics have to be sort of spoken in the same breath, right? They have to thought about in the same sentence because there's no distinction between politics and economics in our current political geopolitical system right now, right? Right now politics and economics have been merged together and as we've talked about right now the way it's working out is economics is trumping politics. So all political decisions in large part are made based on economic gains. What their economic effects will be for that society if they will be economically beneficial or if they won't be. And the time frame varies depending on the decision, right? Sometimes political decisions are made based on very short-term economic gains. Maybe 5, 2, 5, even 10 years is fairly short for a country or political decisions being made and what the economic effects of those decisions will be 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 years from now, right? And this is playing out in multiple fronts, okay? So those are the two things we have to keep in mind before we can actually look at both sides of the debate, right? What net neutrality is, which is data cannot be discriminated against based on anything, right? For any reason and that this is more of an economic debate, okay? As far as two sides of the argument are concerned, there is the pro-net neutrality side which states that the internet should be treated as a public utility and a public utility is basically infrastructure that's been established to transmit information or provide services to the general public may be electricity, gas, water, sewage, transportation, or whatnot, right? So the pro-net neutrality side says that the internet should be treated as a public utility. That means it would fall under the umbrella of being governed, right? Being regulated by the government, right? So net neutrality debate is basically saying the internet should be in the hands of the government and regulated by the government and in the most ideal sense, in the most ideal dogma being presented, the government is supposed to be representing the people, right? Government by the people for the people and if you live in a country where that exists more power to you, most western countries or most countries around the world are not really governments representing the people that have been selected by the people, right? So we're going to assume that whichever government we're talking about right now is a government for the people, by the people representing the people, representing the public and the net neutrality side says since this infrastructure, the internet is going to be treated as a public utility, then the government should be able to regulate the internet and the reason that most of the people that support net neutrality are giving for the internet to be treated as a public utility is most valid, the most valid argument anyway being presented is that the infrastructure for the internet was publicly funded because in every country in the United States and Canada hundreds of billions of dollars were given to corporations to build and structure the infrastructure to roll out the infrastructure for the internet and since the funding for this infrastructure was provided by the public by taxpayer money and the public should have control of this infrastructure, which means it falls under New Umbrella of being a public utility hence regulation by the government if the government represents the people, right? And across the globe governments have funded the infrastructure for the internet, right? And all of that money given to these private organizations was not really used for, you know, every cent was unaccounted for to be used to build up the infrastructure. A lot of that money was given out as dividends to shareholders, was given out as bonuses to executives, was used as stock buyback, was used to increase the assets of the corporation, right? So a lot of that public money that was given to these corporations to build up the infrastructure was not used to build out infrastructure, but was used to solidify their control of a certain industry that being for now the discussion being the ISPs, that control that are sort of the gatekeepers of or the wardens of caretakers of the infrastructure that the public funded to build to be able to have what we have right now, right? And this is played out over decades, right? A lot of the internet that we're seeing right now, broadband and whatnot, that was rolled out many many many years ago, right? The side of the debate that opposes net neutrality, that wants to abolish net neutrality and get rid of regulation, because their main argument is that the internet should not be regulated by centralized organizations, centralized entity. It should be allowed to be it should be allowed for the free market to decide how the internet will be treated and how data will be transmitted and consumed, right? The side of the debate that is for abolishing net neutrality states the following that as soon as you get rid of this regulation as soon as you get rid of this centralized control of the internet, what we're going to see is a wave of innovation hitting the market as long as the market is open and free for anyone to enter the system to provide options for consumers and for creators, those who want to transmit and consume information online through the internet, then as soon as that regulation is gone, then what we're going to see, we're going to see a lot of different options being presented to consumers where what we're going to see is prices reducing and innovation kicking up and the experience we're going to have online is going to be vastly greater than the experience we're having online right now where there is regulation where prices are fixed and there is no real chance of competition or even collaboration, because collaboration is legit in both sides of the argument, right? And that's sort of the main point that both sides of the debate are making and I'm sorry if I'm you know skimming over anything really fast and stuff like this, but I just wanted to present the main argument being made, that the net neutrality side is saying that this was a publicly funded project to build out the infrastructure that since it was publicly funded, then it should be under the control of the government. If the government theoretically represents the people, then it's a public utility and the government, the people, should be able to regulate that utility. The side that wants to abolish that neutrality states that it should be left to the open market to decide how the internet is going to function and by doing that what we're going to see is prices reducing and services improving and technology coming to play and a lot of disruptive innovation being incorporated into the internet where the experience becomes better and greater and faster, okay, and cheaper. Now as far as the flaws in the arguments from both sides of the debate, let's deal with the net neutrality side first because that also plays out with those who want to abolish net neutrality and then we'll deal with the flaw associated with those who want to abolish net neutrality and that also plays out with the people, the flaws associated with people that want net neutrality in play, right? Which is really based on our current economic system and current political system, right? Now the flaw associated with those who want net neutrality to be the law of the land, for the internet to be treated as a public utility, the flaw is this, which is something that those who oppose net neutrality point out. The flaw is this, that if all that power is consolidated into one entity, that being the government, then as the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely, is what's going to take place, which is basically the government is going to regulate the internet to a level where there will be no price fluctuations, there will be no competition, there will be no innovation because no one will have an incentive to enter the market because everything is controlled by one central entity, and in the limit we have seen what has occurred throughout history when governments are given complete absolute control over communication, transportation, all aspects of life for a society, right? If the government goes south, turns dark and they want to slowly strangle, tighten the news around the citizens of their country, then giving them complete control of the way information is transmitted, how people communicate, could lead down a pretty dark path, and we've seen that play out throughout history, multiple countries around the globe irrelevant to their first world, second world, or third world, right? And that is one major flaw that those who are proposing that we have net neutrality as law of the land have to always consider that giving so much power to one entity could turn south, could be a very bad thing if that government decides to eliminate certain mindsets, certain discourse from that society, right? And that shouldn't really need to be pointed out anymore beyond that, okay? The flaw associated with those who oppose net neutrality, who are pro-free market, getting rid of regulation, government regulation, the flaw in that argument is that they're assuming that right now our current economic system is an open market where competition is allowed to flourish, where innovation is allowed to take hold, where prices are not fixed, right? Because if anything we've learned from the 2008 financial crisis, if you want to call it that, right? It was a scam, one of the greatest, the greatest theft in human history, right? The people who orchestrated that crisis, we've talked about this a little bit, but the people who orchestrated that crisis, none of them were held accountable. The people nor the organizations were held accountable for what they brought about. Not only that, those people would have put into power, right? And they were given positions in government where they changed laws to make sure they would never be held accountable for what took place, what they orchestrated, right? And what we've seen happen last, not just during this financial crisis, but since for last three decades or so, three or four decades is consolidation of power into a handful of corporations that are controlled by a handful of people, a handful of families really if you want to think about it, right? A sort of a their own clique and people controlling majority of the way we communicate, conduct business, consume food. Every aspect of our current economic system is controlled by a handful of organizations, which for their part are controlled by a handful of people who are sitting on the boards of all the corporations in power, right? 30 years ago, we had multiple sources of news and entertainment that we could sample, right? Right now, there's basically four or five corporations that control 95 percent of mainstream media, right? Maybe news, newspapers, tv shows, movies, music, right? So there's serious consolidation that has taken place in our current economic system and there is centralization of power within this so-called open market, right? And if we allow the internet, the way that we're deciding to communicate, the way information is being transmitted within a certain society, for that right, for that power to be given to corporations that are not held accountable to the public, then we're again going down a fairly dark road where the corporations control everything, right? And it's a very dangerous experiment to play with the internet because most people that are for abolishing regulation, most people that are opposing net neutrality, that want to abolish net neutrality understand that our current economic system is not really an open economic system, right? It's not open for new companies, new people to come in there and provide alternate means of communication, alternate products, alternate services to established corporations, right? Most people know that. It's not occurring in our banking system. It's not occurring in finance, Wall Street. It's not occurring in our healthcare system. It's not occurring across the board in our current economic system. And for us to play this experiment to try to make the internet the first open type of economic system within our society is a very dangerous thing to do because the repercussions of giving that power to these private and private corporations and corporations, they may be public, they may be on Wall Street, to a handful of people is the repercussions could be quite severe. I think for for us if we're going to conduct that experiment to try to see what happens if we actually do have an open economic system, right? The free market taking hold, I think we should try that with something that the repercussions aren't so severe as giving control away for the transmission of information. Maybe we should try it with finance, with banking. Maybe we should try it with healthcare first, right? In large parts. Okay. Maybe we should try it with even transportation before we try it for information because information is the backbone of a society. And as far as I'm concerned the way I lean what my opinion is regarding keeping net neutrality, reposing net neutrality for net neutrality because there's absolutely no way that I would have been able to do what I'm doing, create the content that I'm doing, creating to share the amount of information, the amount of material that I've shared online if it wasn't for basically the non-discrimination of information of data by ISPs, by those who have been awarded stewardship over the infrastructure of the internet, right? There are flaws associated with that. We're seeing censorship and filtering taking place right now, right? Censorship taking place through corporations where there are certain certain ideas, certain discussions that they do not want transmitted on their platforms. And that's going to take place no matter if there is net neutrality or if there isn't net neutrality. I think if there isn't net neutrality that censorship by corporations is going to be much more severe than it is right now with new net neutrality, right? And on the next level, the government control has to be monitored of what discourse can be online, what type of information can be transmitted online, shared online, right? Because if that power gets out of hand, then the only type of information that will be shared online is only government-approved information. And if we have that, then we don't have a government that's by the people for the people. We have a tyranny, right? Or, you know, there's different terminologies for that oligarchy, technocracy. There's a whole bunch of things you can call that kind of system, but it's not a government for the people, by the people, or by the people, for the people where everyone has equal rights to share their ideas and discuss whatever it is they want to discuss without being censored and punished and filtered and throttled for having that discussion. The same type of things that will happen under a so-called open system where a handful of corporations control the flow of information, right? And one thing we have to keep in mind is the people who are on the boards of directors of the corporations that are producing content may it be entertainment, news, may it be newspapers, may it be music, whatever it may be that are creating media to consume. And the people that are on board of directors of those corporations are also on the board of directors of some of the largest ISP corporations that are also on the board of directors or some of the banks that control the flow of funds within a certain society. So, again, when, if net neutrality is lost, it doesn't mean we're in an open market where there'll be a lot of competition entering the scene and we're going to get better choices, better innovation and the internet experience that we're going to have is going to be vastly greater than what we're having right now because those corporations, their first order of business is to increase shareholder value. The way they increase shareholder value is to control everything, every aspect of the flow of information. May it be what is transmitted at high speed, how it's transmitted at high speed and how much funding certain projects get to be able to transmit that information at high speed, right? And there's one other argument I've heard people make is as an individual sharing information online, I'm limited on the funds I can provide to go on a fast lane to communicate with people, to share this information. And a lot of people have made the argument that all you have to do is piggyback off of platforms that actually are going to pay the price to have the information transmitted on their platforms at high speed. But censorship does come into play here as well. The censorship that is occurring on YouTube, on Facebook, on Twitter right now is the same type of censorship that's going to occur if there is no net neutrality. But I think the censorship, if there is no net neutrality, will be more extreme, right? Because there won't be the ability of public outcry, right? Because the internet will be taken out of the hands of the public domain, right? So there's nothing really the public can do other than not visit those platforms. We've seen how that's going to play out, right? It's very, you know, a handful of people might leave certain large platforms, but unless something, some kind of new innovation is coming to play, some new company that's going to be providing something much better than what it is that people are using right now, most people will not migrate to the new platforms. And since the internet has been, you know, being built, rolled out in the last, very heavily in the last couple of decades, two to three decades, then the price of entry for any corporation or any individual that wants to offer that alternative is very high, right? Because we have to keep in mind the infrastructure for the internet was built out by public funds, by taxpayer funds in the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, specifically in certain countries, trillions of dollars globally, right? And the price point for entry for that is huge. There's no way that any new company can come into play right now. And even, you know, they might take away a small fraction of the market share for some of these established companies, but they're not going to take away a huge chunk of it, right? So thinking about, you know, assuming that letting the markets decide of how the internet will operate and how information will be treated and which companies will prosper and which ones will not, leaving that to the open market is pretty short-sighted because that's not what we're seeing right now. And that's, you know, something that should be obvious to everyone. And I think it is obvious to everyone based on what transpired during our economic crisis, right? So that's sort of my opinion regarding net neutrality. I've taken a fair bit of notes here. I was going to talk about a lot more things, but I figured I'd sort of leave it there and just let you know where I stand regarding this. And I'm 100% pro-net neutrality. And I've been pro-net neutrality for a long time now. I wrote a few different articles back in 2006, 2007 when the phrase net neutrality really came on the scene. Net neutrality was coined, I believe, in 2003. That's the first time the term was used. And it took a little bit of time for it to filter out through the general public, but the internet was sort of built on the concept of data cannot be discriminated against, right? So the concept of net neutrality was in the beginning stages of the internet, right? That's what the internet was built out for, where people could communicate, share information without discrimination, right? But the term net neutrality came into play in 2003 or so. And if you want to sort of take a look at what I wrote when I was writing, sharing some information on my previous site, I'll provide a couple of links to the articles that I wrote back in 2006, 2007, and I believe 2009 and stuff. And I continue to write about net neutrality and what was going on online for a number of years on that previous site. So I'll provide the links in the description of this video. And they'll take you to archive.org, because that's where they went archived. And if you do decide to read those articles, please read them with a grain of salt, because we've learned a lot more since then, right? So there's more pros and cons that we could look at from both sides of the argument. But the general just is there that the only way for us to be able to at least have a pretense of control of the flow of information without our nations is to keep net neutrality alive, right? At least if we keep net neutrality alive, we have the possibility of making sure it's regulated the right way, because there's still the pretense of the public. There's still the pretense of a government for the people by the people right now. If we eliminate net neutrality, then that pretense is gone as well. And there is no public control of information within a nation. And that's given to the hands of private corporations or public corporations online that are controlled by a handful of people that are sitting on the board of directors of those corporations that actually have a vested interest in what is being transmitted, how it's being transmitted, and how it's being funded, all right? So they control everything. And the public will no longer be able to do anything about that, right? Unless something dramatic happens in a form of a revolution or something, which is some people argue, which is desperately needed at the moment, okay? So that's my two cents on pro-net neutrality. I hope that answers the questions that most people had regarding what my take is regarding net neutrality and why in support of net neutrality as being opposed to getting rid of net neutrality, right? Because I don't believe we have an open market right now. And we'll talk a lot about this in the future. And we're going to approach it through the realm of economics, talking about the mathematics of economics, that way we don't have to directly tackle politics, okay? For multiple reasons we're doing this. I've talked about this, and we'll talk about this a lot more. The reason that I'm approaching it from this perspective, and mainly it's because I believe our society will be greatly improved if everyone was littered in the language of mathematics, that I don't want anything that I'm sharing on this platform to take away from that information about mathematics and how mathematics can be incorporated within our lives for anyone that wants to learn that concept, that mindset, that language, to have the ability to use that tool to improve their lives. I don't want censorship to eliminate the ability for that information to reach as many people as possible, which is something that both sides of the coin of pro-net neutrality and opposing net neutrality also face, which is huge, which is censorship, control of information, right? And the question is, do we want at least some kind of pretense that the public actually controls the flow of information within a society, or we're just going to give that up completely outright and leave it to the so-called market, if there was such a thing as a free open market to decide how that information will be treated, okay? That's it for now. I'll see you guys in the next video.