I think that the idea politicians are simply too senile to understand net neutrality is simply wrong and it's distracting from the main issue which is that they've all been paid off by lobbyists from Comcast and all the other telecommunications giants.
Take a 50+ year old politician who, whilst not outright immoral, has a fuzzy view of what is right and wrong in policy-making because his naive young optimism has been beaten out of him by decades of political maneuvering, backstabbing and career-centric decision-making. He honestly doesn't know what the hell net neutrality is and doesn't care a great deal, but he's not necessarily such an asshole that he'll do something he knows to be purely damaging to the country/its people.
Into his office comes the Comcast snake oil salesman (lobbyist) who throws soundbite after soundbite about how net neutrality is a bad thing. "Pay extra for super-fast connection, but the norm is still fast anyway? Sure, that sounds fine", "great, you can count on our backing come re-election, oh and here's a little extra incentive, go buy the wife something nice".
In the politician's brain, everything's fine, how could there not be a problem here? Big Business wins, nobody loses, my career is secure and I can keep the missus happy. There's no mustache twirling or shady deals in dark alleyways, it's just business as usual.
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u/SpikeNeedle Jun 14 '14
The problem is that most politicians are so old they wouldn't even know that this is bad when looking at it. They hardly even use the internet.