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Tyler Cowen on Net Neutrality

Read the whole post, but here is a taste:

4. Ex ante, it is hard to predict what will “stick” on the Net. I see positive and uninternalized social value in the level of experimentation which we currently enjoy. Profit-maximizing pricing from Verizon and Comcast would choke this off to some degree.

5. Bandwidth might become so scarce that differential pricing is needed to give companies the incentive to create more of it. Then net neutrality could be a bad idea, even in spite of #1-4. But we are not there now and maybe we will never be. Municipal wireless, or some related idea, probably will arrive first. …

6. A related question is this: we all know that road pricing can make economic sense. But should we favor differential and profit-maximizing pricing on non-contestable roads? At low levels of congestion, probably not. It is better to let people get to work.