Why would this surprise anyone? The "tea-party" people are independent-minded socially and economically conservative Gingrich-style limited-government Republicans. (I'm not one of those, but those aren't epithets; those words describe many of my friends).

People who fall into that region of the Nolan Chart tend towards the conviction that the markets are private concerns, and that regulation is a cure worse than any conceivable disease.

I should add that while I'm a "big government leftist" on those charts, even I have reservations about net neutrality as a government policy issue. It looks like a slippery slope to me.

Agreed; I'm a economic libertarian, otherwise a paleocon, except I break with both in "foreign policy"/"defense". And I clearly see the net neutrally problem, most easily explained with the conflict of interest between a telecom company that has it's own TV offerings vs. you using them as a dumb pipe for a la carte offerings they don't get any additional money for.

All that said, I find it extraordinarily difficult to imagine much if any good coming out of proactive government policy; as SamAtt notes, we don't even have to resort to theory to find examples of AngloSaxon (i.e. the most like ours) governments abusing this sort of power.

OpieCunningham's analysis ignores the inconvenient fact that a company or cabal of them can do only so much to me; the government(s) over me can imprison or kill me. And it's largely through government power that they've limited my choices (e.g. if I were to compete with them by setting up a WISP, to whom do have to get spectrum from? That said, they do generally present a nasty problem as the only source of back haul.)

I also don't agree with the Tea Party sentiment but felt this article reflected badly on the author and not the Tea Partiers (I think that's the plural?). The argument itself is a valid one. If you give government the power to regulate what private companies deliver to customers over private lines than it COULD easily lead to censorship. You need look no further than Australia's nation wide content restrictions to realize that.

I'd actually agree with the Tea Party on this if not for two things.

1. I don't truly feel people have a lot of broadband options available to them. Most Americans are still stuck between their phone company and their cable company and that's not enough free market protection.

2. At least in the case of the phone company they have a monopoly on their lines BECAUSE of the Government's half hearted break up of AT&T. Meaning Net Neutrality laws would be the Government undoing their meddling in many ways.

First of all, the "tea party" has no specific position on anything, because there is no such thing as the "tea party" as an organization, with a charter, platform, etc. It is a diffuse movement with no centralized structure of any sort.

It is certain that those who identify themselves as tea-partiers certainly tend to have a lot in common - including a belief in the free market, a political outlook tending towards libetarianism, or lacking that, at least a strict constructionist understanding of the Constitution.

But beyond that, you will find a huge variety of opinions among the group. Some are pro Iraq war, some anti-war entirely. Some are pro death penalty, others opposed to it under all circumstances. I think you will find the same on net neutrality.

I generally identify with the group, but I am adamant that net neutrality must be maintained to protect free speech.

This is just one example of the missing reality in the tea party/libertarian philosophy. As others have pointed out, it comes down to whether you believe government or corporations are better suited to ensure free speech. On the one hand you ostensibly have democratic voting power to ensure government does what you want (ensure free speech) and on the other you have your wallet to ensure corporations do what you want.

The reality is that the wallet approach breaks down quickly in numerous scenarios. In this particular scenario, effective competition is nearly impossible due to the infrastructure costs associated with network connectivity. If you don't like the behavior of one of the half dozen providers, there is little incentive for any of the others to operate in a way that you do like. With little to no capability to "start your own" 4G provider, the half dozen corporations are under no pressure to ensure your free speech or provide access to free speech.

There are numerous flaws with the power of voting, but none of them compare to the flaw in effective corporate monopolies via massive infrastructure costs.

the power of the wallet is more effective. Barriers to entry change over time. Costs go down or disappear all together.

power of the vote works for a while until the citizen votes enough power to the government then the only effective way to lower barriers and change things is through large scale blood letting.