Electronic Design magazine discusses this threat to innovation. Everything in this article should be obvious to anyone educated in how things work. A benchmark that separates the politically brainwashed from others who come from where the work gets done:
Will the Internet of Things Survive Without Net Neutrality?
Question: how much innovation will be stifled by destroying net neutrality? Laws to free the market - to create net neutrality - liberated DSL - unfortunately 15 years later. Free market competition finally made DSL available after 1996.
The original IBM PC in 1981 operated on a 300 baud and later 1200 baud modem. Meanwhile, DSL at 1,000,000+ baud could have been available had monopolies (AT&T, baby Bells, etc) not stifled that innovation for so long.
Microsoft had to sue Qwest to finally get DSL service. Innovation (and the resulting increased living standards) is stifled when laws do not restrict and discourage monopolies.
Wackos want less government intervention. That is a secret code for more monopolies, resulting less innovation, and enriched top (entrenched) management.
Same political party also maintained drug prices 40% higher in the US. A deceptive expression spun monopoly protection as health care reform. Ten plus years ago, a law was passed to make criminal anyone who paid 40% less for prescriptions in Canada. According to party extremists, monopolies (and enriching top management MBAs) are good. Those same extremists protect laws that stifle innovation and protect people who hate innovation - MBAs.
Why did AT&T so hate net neutrality? David Isenberg wrote "Rise of the Stupid Network" in 1997. It demonstrated that circuit switch technology is massively inferior to packet switching. So much so that companies entrenched in circuit switch technology should face bankruptcy. We know why AT&T self destructed (had to be sold off in pieces). AT&T hated innovation - since MBA management (including people like Carly Fiorina) wanted profits - not better products and free market competition.
AT&T forced Isenberg to remove his paper from isen.com.
"Isenberg wanted to make AT&T happy so he took it off. (It didn't work; AT&T is still not happy.)".
AT&T wanted monopolies - not innovation. AT&T had long hated net neutrality (as they also did with System Signal 7 - a successful innovation and international standard for telephone communication).
Isenberg left Bell Labs (as did most innovators in that decade resulting in no more innovation in the Bell Labs) because AT&T wanted concepts taught in business schools - more profits, less innovation. less competition.
Philosophy of protecting legacy (anti-innovation) companies at the expense of consumers is demonstrated in this 2002 open letter to Michael Powell - who openly wanted to destroy net neutrality:
The Paradox of the Best Network
Those party extremists hate change and innovation - ie hate net neutrality.