Now note that these things may protect and benefit the...
WODC: This House Believes That Provisions of Internet Services Should be a Public Utility
Okay, so I'm going to have to make this a quick round due to some personal issues that I don't really want to get into right now. Anyways let's get to the debate. My opponent states that I am confused, but I am frankly not. By arguing against net neutrality I am arguing down what Milton Friedman has outlined as the three possible monopolies: Public, Private, and Massive Public Regulations on Private Monopolies. All of which are horrendous pratices we must see that for this resolution to be proven for my opponent he must show that they are not already a monopoly and that this Nationalization of the Internet is a good thing as per the resolution. I can simply argue that it may maintain a Private Monopoly and it would still be a win for me while my opponent must argue for the Nationalization of the Internet to mirror that of the US Postal Service and such. Contention 1: Opponent's arguments P1.The Government should only act to enforce the imperatives of Perfect Duties. P2.Universal health care does not meet the standard of a Perfect Duty. C1: Thus, the Government should not act to enforce universal health care. ""Kant's first formulation of the CI states that you are to “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law... Perfect duties come in the form ‘One mustnever (or always) φ to the fullest extent possible in C’, while imperfect duties, since they enjoin the pursuit of an end, come in the form ‘One must sometimes and to some extent φ in C’" [1] According to the above we see that Kant establishes two duties of that of the government; Perfect Duties and Imperfect Duties. Perfect Duties are those things of which the government must provide to ensure that the government and that society is fully functional. What are these things you may ask? These things are the simple things ensured under that of the Social Contract that you give up for a Civilized Society (not to kill, rape, steal, etc...). These things are indeed key as we can see that this ensures that of a Minarchy at the minimum. What that means is that the Government is to ensure that the people are safe. Everything else falls into that of the Imperfect Duties. Now note that these things may protect and benefit the public, we can see that if they're not of the Social Contract like ideals that they automatically fall into this category and SHOULD NOT be carried out by the government, but by Private entities. “Any action is right if it can coexist with everyone's freedom in accordance with a universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice of each can coexist with everyone's freedom in accordance with a universal law” [2] We can see that if the government intervenes on the behalf on the people to infringe on that of an Imperfect duty that they would undermining humanity to achieve their due ends. We can see and must ensure that the Imperfect Duties are carried out by the Private Entites as things like people's health and Private debt is something that is to be delt with by the individual NOT the government. [3] My opponent talks of the price controls, but we can see that this is detremental for the economy. If we look at the Example of said Nationalization of buisnesses and the price control usage we can see that under this price control from the government can cause one of 2 things; 1. That the Government sets the price to high and the public buys less and less of the product and as a result this harms the buisness and the economy and it shows that the people do not want said product. This product's price then raises again in order to make up for the lack of growth forcing the government out of buisness. 2. The governemtn sets the price to low and people will buy the product out and there will be a shortage of said product. [4] My opponent speaks of lacking options and here we can see that this isn't due to the collution of the Private Companies, but this is more or less the collecting and merging of Private Industry in this industry. We can see that the lack of Competition harms the pricing and option as with more competition we can see that there are more companies competitng for lower prices to get custumors who try to get a better deal. We can see that this merging has harmed the economy and that Nationalization will harm it even more. [5] Furthering we just need to look at the Yugos which is a car from the former Yugoslavia. Due to the industry being Nationalized we can see that the quality of the car never improved due to no incentive to improve buisness due to the lack of the market competition. The same thing can and will happen to the internet if you nationalize it. [6] Which is funny, because my opponent is speaking of if we nationalize this internet then we wouldn't have an issue and not turning it to the Private Sector is good. Apparently he would rather drive a Yugo then another car. Contention 2: Unregulated Market vs. Regulated Market My opponent harps on the US having such a terrible internet speed and quality, but they are sadly mistaken. We can see that we are actually 10th in the World for the fastest speed and best internet quality. We are definately not the 40th slot that my opponent mistakably claims. [7 8] My opponent makes a huge contradiction here in this point. He first advocates for Public Nationialization of the Sector, but then states that they're "My only response to this is "yeah duh". The company is looking out for it's best interest. They make out better when they're unregulated." We can see that this is a HUGE concession as my opponent here concedes that under the status quo that the free market is better as "They make out better when they're unregulated" and we can see as I've shown already that the regulation harms the economy, but what my opponent is purposing is suicide. We can easily compare this to the Russian Nationalization of the Oil and Nickle Industry by the "Oligarchy" and see how it pratically ended the Soviet Union due to this economic crisis and we saw Oil prices skyrocket. [4] Contention 3: Status Quo Anti-trust Laws My opponent here makes another concession and fails to realize it. Did you miss it? Let's observe it again, "competition for high-speed wired broadband is lacking and Americans need more competitive choices for faster and better Internet connections, both to take advantage of today's new services, and to incentivize the development of tomorrow's innovations" We can see here by what my opponent decided to point out is that once again we need free market competition over that of the Public Nationalization of this industry as it helps the industry. My opponent has dropped the entire argument that I've made here and we can see that the current Sharman Bill has done it's job. The FCC commissioner himself stated that there's only a handful of violations and those were delt with. Frankly it's doing its job and we can see that despite the mergers of these Providers we can still see that there is still innovation and compeition and this is much needed over the nationalization that my opponent is proposing.