Re: E.U. Lawmakers Approve Tough ‘Net Neutrality’ Rules

Newspeak, the official language of George Orwell’s totalitarian nightmare regime in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, has come to Europe. Billed as a law to protect the consumer from high prices and ensure more access by internet content providers, this new “net neutrality” law is nothing more than a backdoor takeover of the internet by the state in order to reward politically connected constituents today at the expense of entrepreneurs who risk their own capital in order to bring us untold wonders in the future. In all-too-typical fashion, the parasitical state just could not keep its hands off the one engine of economic dynamism in the world–the burgeoning digital economy. Rather than encourage private companies to invest the billions necessary to bring the common people of Europe the full wonders of the digital economy, this legislation will discourage investment by making future profits problematic. Who will invest in something that may never return a profit due to government regulations and price fixing? While so-called consumer groups rejoice that formerly costly services MUST be provided now at no additional cost, Europe will stagnate while the rest of the world leaps ahead in digital services. Never has the analogy of eating one’s seed corn been more apt.

Patrick Barron