What does Net Nuetrality Mean?

There is a big fight going on the Washington right now about whether what is apparently the current policy of  Federal Regulations, "net neutrality" should be changed to allow Internet pricing according to use.   I've been getting periodical emails from outraged folks claiming this is a Comcast, ATT, Verizon power grab - that we are all going to be pawns of these big corporations extorting money from us.

It is complicated and hard to understand what it is all about, and it is not helped by the term "net neutrality" which seems to have been chosen to be one of those nice sounding buzz words that will create a positive perception without regard to what it is actually about.

Then I heard the other day that some enormous percentage of the band width in the entire world is used up by Net-flix.  It was a mind boggling number, I want to say somewhere around 50% of all the worlds bandwidth is used by Net-Flix, apparently one of the biggest opponents of "Net Neutrality".   It began to make sense to me, I believe.  I could reduce it to a simple, easy to understand principle I could use to make a decision, to wit:

That people that use the net pay in proportion to the how much band width they use.

This changed my whole view of the argument, from leaning toward supporting net neutrality toward being pretty dubious of it being a good thing.  I basically believe good economics requires that the people that use something need to pay for it in proportion to their use, and that not following that system warps both behavior and economics for the worse.

It appears to me that the supporters of Net Neutrality are people who enjoy an unfair economic advantage under the current system, who want to keep it.  Internet entertainment companies can offer entertainment options at prices so cheap people use them much more than they would if they had to pay more to reflect how much they are hogging the bandwidth.  The people whose whole lives revolve around the net and electronic media are riding on the backs of all the companies and people that use the net as a part of their business, or life, but not the central part.

Not being well versed in the law Congress enacted that provides the underpinning for the current regulation of the Internet, beyond the perception it is nonsensical and way to complex, I have no way of knowing if the proposed rule would give an unfair benefit to Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, or other companies through whose system the Internet operates.  But if it does I think we need to address that unfair benefit with oversight of their activities rather than continue to enshrine a rule based on a fundamentally wrong principle as a basic operating premise of the Internet.

Maybe net neutrality was justifiable in the early days of the Internet to jump start use of the Internet.  It kept prices low to encourage people to take advantage of the benefits of the Internet.  But the Internet is no longer a fledgling, the biggest companies in the world are now tech companies largely built around the Internet.  Time to start letting market forces make decisions, not regulators.

Global Warming and Nuclear Power Plants

Nuclear Power plants require enormous amounts of water to cool reactors.   So engineers often put them at or near sea level, often literally at the seashore, where abundant water can be drawn in and discharged.

What happens if the sea level rises 200 feet?   Despite the scientific certainty of the early 50's, we have never developed a safe process for getting rid of spent nuclear fuel rods, our best solution is burying them miles under a mountain out in the desert somewhere.  What will happen to the Nuclear Power plants located near sea level all over the world if the sea levels continue to rise?  How will we deal with all the fuel rods?  Will the physical structure that is the reactor core become a source of radiation in sea water?

Here in California I am thankful we have largely rejected Nuclear Power development over the years.  Within the State there is only one active Nuclear Power Plant, Diablo Canyon on the Central Coast near San Luis Obispo.  Attempts to locate Nuclear Power plants at Bodega Bay, Sun Desert and on the Stanislaus river were defeated before construction was begun.   Plants at Humboldt Bay, San Onofre, Rancho Seco and Vallecitos were built and operated for some period of time, but decommissioned after mechanical problems (typically problems with getting cooling water to the reactor core) generated a lot of bad publicity.   Rancho Seco was closed after approval of the voters of a ballot proposition which pretty much closed the door to future efforts to locate Nuclear Power plants in California.

But virtually every one of the power plants in California were at low elevation, and are near major urban areas.

What is the risk?  Will the closed Rancho Seco contaminate the bay that will created in the area around Sacramento?  Will the closed San Onofre plant contaminate the shoreline that will be where much of coastal Southern California is now?  Will Diablo Valley contaminate the coast from Hearst Castle down to San Luis Obispo (beachfront property with a 200 foot sea level rise) Pismo Beach and beyond.

I don't know, and the problem is even sincere efforts by science to predict the risk have to be taken with a grain of salt.  Far too often science has made pronouncements about reality that turn out to be false.  Scientists, like all of us, are prone to forgot that, paraphrasing the immortal words of Donald Rumsfeld (quoting others before him) - we don't know what we don't know.