WODC: This House Believes That Provisions of Internet Services Should be a Public Utility

Okay, none of my opponent's arguments against net neutrality work. This debate is not about net neutrality and whether it should be tossed aside or used is beside the point. Somebody could be pro net neutrality and against considering the Internet a utility or somebody can be for considering the Internet a utility and against net neutrality. My opponent has dropped several of my arguments. My opponent has dropped the argument that the cost of infrastructure and entry is so much that it takes a significant amount of control over local markets for a start up to succeed, and since they're the new guy in town it's extremely hard to gain the 30% of the market they need. Broadband companies such as Comcast, have huge natural monopolies, and in a world that requires such a big infrastructure and market penetration to succeed, it's virtually impossible to have a competitive industry. He has dropped my arguments showing that currently the Internet companies have virtual monopolies over local markets. These facts automatically get accepted into any judges calculations as it's too late to bring up new arguments against them as per WODC rules, as well as just a general principle of fairness. LANNAN IS CONFUSED AGAIN My opponent's rebuttal round is spent using arguments against the nationalization of the Internet industry. Let me define nationalization for those who may not be aware of what that is; "Nationalization (American English), (British and Commonwealth spelling nationalisation) is the process of taking a private industry or private assets into public ownership by a national government or state. " . http://en.m.wikipedia.org... This debate is not about taking private assets and turning them into government property. The debate is merely about recognizing that the companies who provide Internet services have too much control over the industry. When a company has too much control over an industry, it's competition is no longer able to act as a check against the company acting against the best interest of the consumer. The regulation that comes with recognizing that Internet services are a public utility, are there to insure a balance between making a profit and treating customers fairly. This type of regulation actually allows a company to keep their monopolies because it understands that these types of services require massive infrastructure. Just like electric companies and consumers would be worse off with more competition in broadband, because it would create an alarming amount of overlapping infrastructures, however that is kinda beside the point. The massive infrastructure actually helps create a natural monopoly as I have argued and my opponent has not contested the natural monopoly exists. Con mentions how theoretically price controls can be too high or too low and harm industry. While I concede that it is possible for the government to charge outrages prices for goods and drive consumers away or charge too little and destroy a company, it is unlikely. Phone service, electricity, and water services have been regulated as utilities for as long as me and my opponent have been alive and my guess is we both have electricity and running water, which is believe it or not, quite affordable. While the landline telephone industry going the way of the dinosaur, when it was a necessity, government regulating it as a utility kept the prices low enough for one to be in virtually every home while the companies providing the services actually made plenty of profits the entire time they were regulated. The regulations, neither harmed consumers or the companies, it merely balanced out the disadvantages of having a monopolized industry, and it should be noted that competition in these specific industries isn't necessarily a good thing either as the massive infrastructures are overlapping and waste a lot of resources. It's one of those situations where people are better off with a regulated monopoly than many competing companies. My opponent moves Onto discussing Kant and what's known as the categorical imperative, but greatly misunderstands the categorical imperative, as well as gives us no reason to favor that moral system, over the normative system we already use. Seeing as how the normative system is the one we already use and We were given no reason to assume Kantian ethics, I say we use normative ethics. The first problem with applying Kantian ethics in this situation is that Kant was describing a system of personal ethics for people to apply, and my opponent is trying to imply personal ethics to the state without explaining why personal ethics are even applicable to a non living entity. According to Kant perfect duties are to be performed all the time, where as imperfect duties were to be performed in some circumstances. Things that are imperfect duties aren't things the state should refrain from as my opponent assumes. If we're applying the categorical imperative to the state, imperfect duties should be done sometimes, meaning that sometimes it is correct to treat a utility as a utility. I've explained why we should do so in this debate. If it is an imperfect duty, it is still one that should be performed based on the reasoning I gave. . http://plato.stanford.edu... Regulated vs Unregulated "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. " Um I linked to a study showing that America is 40th among countries and territories looked at. I actually went through the trouble of quoting stats and quotes from an article on the study, where as my opponent merely says I'm mistaken without pointing out which of the statistics I quoted is wrong or why. I read the article my opponent links to in the comment section. Out of a list of 10 countries we see that the United States is 10th. We have no many ideals how many countries that study looked at or it's method collections. So one list shows the United States in last place of 10 areas and the other shows it as last place of 40 countries. Come on Lannan, last place is last place. Clearly not all countries and areas are included in my list of 40. My list obviously excluded third world nations and the Gal"pagos Islands. There is no need to split hairs here. The point is that the United States could and should do better. A point which my opponent doesn't counter at all. "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"" My statement was that the monopolies do better when they are left unregulated, not that the economy or customers do better. Clearly, my argument is that these companies have too much leverage over consumers and despite the fact that Comcast does better when they don't have as many rules to follow, the average American does worse. My opponent ends that round with a baffling remark about nationalization, which isn't even something we're debating. Status quo and Anti Trust "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. " The quote by the FCC chairman is meant to point out the lack of competition in the Internet industry. The quote is by another person. The chairman may be knowledgable about the problems facing the industry, but I disagree with his conclusions on the solution. He sees the problem is not enough competition and jumps to the most obvious conclusion, however the most obvious solution isn't feasible in this situation as I've shown the industry to be too hard to break into. "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. " I haven't dropped any arguments. The current bill you bring up has done absolutely nothing to prevent these industries from monopolizing (and we haven't even concluded that monopolizing a utility is bad, only that a monopolized utility should be regulated as one. ). I've shown that the current attempts at preventing monopolies has failed in this circumstance, that the industry naturally monopolizes as it needs deep market penetration to be profitable and that the status quo isn't working and we need provisions of Internet services to be recognized as a utility. Conclusion My opponent hasn't even argued against the resolution and instead has argued against nationalization and argued against net neutrality. He has dropped most of my arguments and has baffled me with his interpretations of my arguments. I urge my opponent to read over my arguments several times to comprehend them properly. I also urge him to just forfeit the debate and save the judges the trouble of having to read through all this and analyze it as a formality.