I would agree with you only if everyone had a choice of that many providers, which is not the case! In my current neighborhood in Boston I have a whopping selection of either America's favorite company Comcast (with bandwidth caps and horrible outdated infrastructure and service) or Verizon DSL (max ~3Mbs down on a good day and only when it doesn't rain). In my previous neighborhood it was only Comcast as it was too far from Verizon's DSL switch. Neither one of those companies have any incentive to improve their networks. Zero. They have a comfortable duopoly and killing net neutrality will only reaffirm their horrible exploitative positions and allow them to start turning the internet into something reminiscent of cable TV, which is their ultimate goal: full control over content providers.
You seem to be intentionally forgetting that these ISPs have segregated themselves such that they do not have to compete with one another. In most of the US, you get one choice of fast internet (Verizon or Comcast or Time Warner) and one choice of slow internet (whatever DSL you can find) - you may not even get satellite or dial up anymore.
So, when Verizon says "Screw you Google and Netflix and Spotify", their customers don't go "hey Comcast/AT&T/Google, c'mere", they say "how much do I have to pay you to make the pain stop... for now..." (The customers of all of these horrible ISPs have been screaming the "hey [other ISP] come to my area" line for literally decades, but the ISPs don't listen because they have either agreed explicitly or implicitly not to push into one another's turf to maximize everyone's profits.)
This is why we need net neutrality. If the market was competitive, it'd be a different story altogether. But it is provably not (hell, they've used the fact the markets are not competitive to try to convince the FTC to allow them to merge with other ISPs because "it would not reduce overall competition, since they do not compete in such-and-such markets"), and despite the government drowning AT&T and its many children with hundreds of billions of dollars over the past few decades to build high speed networks for everyone, they still organized their networks in such a way to maintain monopoly powers (albeit in smaller, more fragmented markets).
ISPs in America do as little as possible, collecting the biggest check as possible, and use the massive profits to squeeze competitors out (like they have successfully done with Google giving up the ghost of expanding even in Mountain View California where they are headquartered and as they are scaling up to do to municipalities creating their own networks like Chattanooga). They're consistently rated as the worst businesses in America, but they are infrastructure, so we pay them anyway. And now they're learning that more profits exist in content than it does in carrying the content fairly, so they want to be the source of the content too. And that means killing net neutrality to making themselves the sole arbiters of the market.
The idea is further that, not only does it make pragmatic sense for so favorably positioned an ISP to act aggressively in defense of that position, but such ISPs have been observed to do so, as for example with AT&T's successful defeat of the recent municipal broadband expansion bill in Tennessee. AT&T's position is that taxpayer money should not be used to fund competition with private industry, which all sounds very fine and upstanding, except that the private industry has already stifled any possibility of competition by means of the sort of monopolistic activity which US governments spent much of the early 20th century working to restrict, in order to prevent the unsavory outcomes that such activity has been observed to produce in direct proportion to the degree in which it's successfully pursued.
So, sure, they can charge high rates for traffic if they want, in addition to charging more or less whatever rates they please simply to provision backhaul in the first place. They can impose a $20/month, or higher, charge for reliable access to video streamed from services other than those they themselves run. They can do whatever they're able to get away with - and in an environment of permissive and favorable legislation and no effective private competition, they get away with a hell of a lot.
In case it matters, I'm really not progressive, and I understand business reasonably well - I've been in private industry my entire career, with no one doing me any favors, and if I didn't have at least a generally accurate idea of how things work, I wouldn't be able to support myself. In particular, I find the current attitude held by the federal, and many state, governments, toward small business enterprises, absurd and execrable - and I've seen the onerous burden such an attitude inflicts on people who go into business for themselves. But the current attitude toward large business is a whole 'nother matter entirely, and I see nothing of value to our polity as a whole in the results of such gross permissiveness. Expanding such permissiveness still further strikes me as very much the wrong thing to do.
"What's the point of paying $100 a month for Facebook and Instagram? I get that on my phone anyway! I don't want Verizon's $100 a month TV plan, I want house of cards."
As the ISP mostly has sunk costs and slim margins if even 5% of its user base leaves in a certain market that will render them insolvent or force them to raise prices, causing more departures, and higher prices still...
The point is while they don't always have direct competition they do have a decent amount of elasticity of demand.
A big cost for ISP's is customer acquisition, even if they change back their policies it will be years, maybe decades to recover. I think if an ISP did this on any large scale it would be suicide.
I guarantee you Comcast has made the same calculation, too, down to the fractional cent. Whatever vig they charge, if they do, will be scaled accordingly.
Also keep in mind they would still be subject to anti-trust regulation, they really can only take it so far before getting broken up again.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Comcast is increasing the monthly cost of Nextflix
"Dear Valued Customer,
Here at Netflix we endeavor to offer the highest value for your entertainment dollar, it is with that in mind we regret to inform you that due to sweeping and punitive fee increases brought on at the sole discretion of Comcast we will be forced to raise our prices 425% next billing cycle. Customers of other ISP's will enjoy the same low price that we have always offered, in fact we are offering our service at our cost to Comcast customers at this new rate. Please contact Comcast customer service at 1-800-Comcast if you would like this issue resolved as it is out of our hands.
Have a great day"
So... just to make sure I'm following, this is the outcome you're arguing in favor of?
[0]https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/TrafficObfuscatio... [1]https://github.com/jlund/streisand
https://www.theverge.com/2014/6/4/5778770/netflix-warning-me...
https://qz.com/688033/netflix-launched-this-handy-speed-test...
https://bgr.com/2014/06/11/netflix-video-streaming-speed-tes...
Some may stay and downgrade their service as they don't require as much bandwidth and some may leave Verizon entirely. It's not all roses for them.
Then Comcast, AT&T, Google or anyone else frankly begins offering "True unlimited full access internet" and eats Verizon's breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Meanwhile someone creates a VPN service to get around the blockade.