Only if you use the internet primarily for streaming. If you use the internet primarily for something else, with "net neutrality", you will be paying for the video streaming traffic (which makes up 60% of downstream traffic) even though you don't use it for that. If Netflix is required to pay the ISPs, Netflix just increases their prices and it doesn't affect internet users who don't primarily stream video.
Damn, maybe we should get rid of "electricity neutrality" too. Would be great if we just charged extra to all these bitcoin miners and marijuana grow farms so I wouldn't have to subsidize their electricity use.
Electricity prices are dominated by supply vs. demand. There are many sources of electricity available, some of them being very cheap (hydro) some of them expensive (currently gas).
When demand for electricity goes up, the cheap power sources are going to be running at capacity, and utilities will need to buy more expensive power. This increases the marginal cost of electricity for everyone.
So just because Bitcoin miners pay for electricity, doesn't mean we aren't subsidising them. We are subsidising them by paying more for imported power even though our needs could easily be covered by cheap, local power sources.
The way to fix this would be to charge progressive prices depending on usage, ie. every person gets to use 1000kWh at the cheap local hydro power price, then the price increases gradually, and any electricity usage beyond 10000kWh/person/year you need to pay the full market price of electricity.
What you are describing is merely competition. Everyone pays the same marginal amount per kWh for a given amount of electricity—ignoring minor details like connection charges and time-of-day pricing. Yes, having more aggregate demand will tend to raise prices for everyone, but that doesn't amount to a subsidy.
Internet access is typically billed as "unlimited" so those who use it very little pay a high rate per bit transferred, while those who use it a lot pay a low rate. Some of this is due to the base cost of providing service (fixed last-mile connection costs incurred whether the line is used or not) but the rest is a subsidy from low users to high users. How much of each is debatable; the costs of home internet are largely concentrated in the last-mile connection costs rather than bandwidth and data centers, yet the bandwidth still isn't free.
It's really the same thing as in the flat rate case. It's a bit less unfair since the cost rises linearly, but it's not enough to leave small consumers unaffected. People who consume small amounts of a utility still pay more because of people who consume a lot.
> People who consume small amounts of a utility still pay more because of people who consume a lot.
No, they really don't. People consuming small amounts and large amounts both pay more due to higher aggregate demand. If it weren't for the many small users the aggregate demand would be lower and the large users would also be paying less—do you consider that a subsidy in the opposite direction? No, of course not—because a price being bid up by competing consumers is not what is meant by the term "subsidy".
Now, if you banned large users from the system, or imposed discriminatory pricing as you previously suggested for the purpose of keeping prices low for the small users, that would be a subsidy: interference in the market to benefit one group at the expense of another.
With electricity you don’t care where your energy is coming from. It’s not like “Oh! I only charge my laptop with nuclear energy because it runs better”.
With internet, where the data comes from and goes to is the whole point.
I do though -- it costs money to produce electricity. So if more electricity is used overall my costs ultimately go up to accommodate. Perhaps fuel prices increase, or to offset the cost of additional power plants to support the higher demand, or any number of other reasons. Paying by your usage does offset this but it doesn't help if the total amount of demand increases.
It also costs more money to support higher bandwidth of network travel. But unlike with electricity, there is no cost (to network providers) to generate the data, since the data is usually paid for by the source. This means the average consumer doesn't get any of the benefit of the increased pricing -- it has not changed how the internet providers charge to consumers at all, only how they charge content makers. And customers who like the content get increased costs on top of that.
Therefore, I don't see any benefit by removing net neutrality -- it can only hurt consumers. If it only benefits network providers, why should I support it?
Industrial usage rates and rules are different in every country I believe if you use huge amounts.
At least here in Spain I pay more for monthly fees because I tend to use more for hearing with electricity. So it's baseline kwh a month consumption. Also different contracts when you want to use a lot of current at the same time.
This is already done in sensible parts of the world to some extent where consumer electricity is priced differently from electricity for business purposes... but yes, a more fine grained control would lead to better prices for most users.
California, sort of: They figure out what sort of place you own, pigeon hole it with other "similar" places and charge you more per kilowatt hour if you use more than they think you need. It's a procrustean bed approach.
A lot of electricity in the US is charged differently during "off-peak hours". I know some EV owners who take advantage of this by scheduling when they charge their cars.
Thanks, that's a more relevant example of discriminatory pricing. I wonder though if people defending net neutrality would look at this and think "off-peak pricing is wrong, everyone should pay the same..."
> I wonder though if people defending net neutrality would look at this and think "off-peak pricing is wrong, everyone should pay the same..."
Probably not, as it has nothing to do with where the electricity is coming from or how it's being used. Having different rates for different times of the day which still apply to all users and all services is not generally perceived as a violation of neutrality.
Suppose there was a broadband provider charging more for data transmitted when the network is congested, don't you think it would be a violation of net neutrality?
No, not as long as they charged everyone equally for the same service during the congested times without regard for how the bits were being used.
The point of net neutrality is that ISPs should ignore the content, source, and destination of the packets they carry when it comes to prioritization and pricing. QoS is fine as long as it's under the subscriber's control (for example, via DSCP tags), but it can be an issue if it leads to the ISP one subscriber's traffic over another's based on the services being accessed. Tiered services (paying for higher bandwidth, lower latency, etc.) are also fine so long as the tiers assigned to each class of traffic are chosen by the subscriber and not tied to specific protocols or peers.
Consider the USPS as a model of neutrality: they offer various grades of service from bulk package deliveries to Priority Mail but everyone paying for the same service gets (more or less) equal treatment.
Actually, my point above was that if we are going to get rid of net neutrality, it makes logical sense to also get rid of neutrality for electricity since it's more likely to be beneficial there than for the internet.
I'm honestly surprised at the backlash against net neutrality on here.
Probably not many, but you're probably not going to have much luck changing the minds of people on net neutrality. Judging from your comments, you and I probably agree on the issue, but I think technical folks in particular have pretty well-entrenched opinions on the topic.
Ok, but these subsidies are not based on a specific group. Some might think to be bad to subsidize Tesla, but would there be such a thing as subsidies for weed farmers?
The reason I am asking: unless there are such subsidies, it would mean that people pay proportional to their usage, so OP's joke about "electricity neutrality" would not only be wrong, it would be against net neutrality as well.
Such things are complicated to figure out fully, the subsidized power might not be subsidized directly by the power generators / power distributors. In some cases two bills are generated for the duration of the power subsidy so the subsidized part only sees the subsidized rate.
Isn't this why Internet service providers have multiple bandwidth tiers? If you don't want to use your Internet connection for bandwidth-intensive tasks, you can save money by buying a slower plan.
