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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   22751 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025

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This comic will always be with us. It amuses me that in the comment section it's talking about Net Neutrality. Remember that massive culture-war issue and how it completely disappeared?

This is one of those losing things that only weirdos think should not be illegal. That's the cross us libertarians bear. Though, unlike price gouging and insider trading, which I think are good things, this does fall under the "immoral" and should come with severe social ramifications. Just like many things, if it is going to be illegal, the law should not pertain to the tool but to the person who misuses the tool. But hey, I guess we just make it illegal to get some things done while your car warms up.

This comic will always be with us.

Thanks for the laugh, first time I've seen that one!

I am interested in hearing your views on insider trading.

Reason article

insider trading is a victimless crime. Markets run on asymmetrical information. Stock prices bounce around because investors are always doing their best to use their own superior information for personal gain. So-called insider information is just one kind of asymmetry, and not a particularly insidious one.

What's more, insider trading tends to make markets more efficient. Here's the Washington Post last year, taking a page from George Mason economist Henry Mannes' book:

Markets work best when goods are priced accurately, which in the context of stocks means that firms' stock prices should accurately reflect their strengths and weaknesses. If a firm is involved in a giant Enron-style scam, the price should be correspondingly lower. But, of course, until the Enron fiasco was unearthed, its stock price decidedly did not reflect that it was cooking the books. That wouldn't have happened if insider trading had been legal. The many Enron insiders who knew what was going on would have sold their shares, the price would have corrected itself and disaster might have been averted.

I agree in theory, but the issue is not with information asymmetries, really - that's just how it's sold as 'fairness' to the public. Insider trading is bad because it radically distorts incentives for insiders and encourages all kinds of violations of fiduciary duty.

Remember that massive culture-war issue and how it completely disappeared?

In hindsight, the many and various traffic patterns on the Internet make strictly-defined "network neutrality" difficulty from a technical perspective, at best: I want my VOIP traffic to get minimal latency, but I want real-time fixed bandwidth for video streaming (or is that variable bitrate these days?), and sometimes I'm downloading, um, Debian ISOs and just want them eventually. Add in LTE bandwidth and I really want my 911 call to take precedence over dozens of zoomers on TikTok. Over-provisioning to avoid real QoS questions is darn expensive.

At the time the concern was that (landline!) ISPs (often cable companies) would start charging for data usage, pricing out competitor then-new streaming services, or worse, start charging for access to sites and services. Despite the official repeal of the neutrality policy, no landline services seem to have started charging for specific site access --- and the obvious sites to charge extra for now (Netflix, Amazon, Disney+) have more money and lawyers than the ISPs ever did. Metered landline bandwidth never was accepted by consumers, although I'm not sure if it's actually prohibited specifically and it's a bit outside of the scope of "neutrality". Honestly, the worst offence against the former policy I recall seeing was a mobile provider teaming with a streaming service to not count against your bandwidth limit.

IMO, the culture war fight was maybe a bit overblown, but if it did something it provided enough cover for our Big Streaming to take off. Is that the win the kids wanted? It is what they were asking for, I guess. Go ask them how they feel about streaming slop now, and maybe opinions would be different.

But it is an interesting observation that active CW fronts just sometimes up and fade away.

At the time the concern was that (landline!) ISPs (often cable companies) would start charging for data usage, pricing out competitor then-new streaming services, or worse, start charging for access to sites and services

Netflix had to build fast.com precisely because these legacy cable companies were screwing with Netflix's customers bandwidth.

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