Google chief executive Eric Schmidt favors net neutrality, but only to a point: While the tech player wants to make sure that telecommunications giants don’t steer Internet traffic in a way that would favor some devices or services over others, he also believes that it would be a terrible idea for the government to involve itself as a regulator of the broader Internet.
The impulse is to say, “What a schmuck!” But once they’ve screwed up the internet, that will be one more once-free aspect of American life that will be enslaved forevermore.
Here’s a little rule of thumb to head off objections: If an allegedly-valuable social objective cannot be effected without force, it’s crime.
