The FCC's Impotence is Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, and a Warning Against Silicon Valley Hubris

The general attitude in Silicon Valley about the ability of government to get things done is that, well, it doesn't have the ability to get things done. Ironically, the slow drift towards an evisceration of internet freedom by  internet service providers (ISPs) and their lobbyists -- a drift that most of Silicon Valley is diametrically opposed to -- has been significantly enabled by that prevailing dismissive attitude.

It's not hard to understand why, as a general rule, Silicon Valley would harbor many folks skeptical of Washington. In the web space, steam-rolling builders shape the world in their image (or at least, that's the story that gets told). The nobodies of one day build companies that disrupt historic industries the next. The pace of change is so dramatic and addictive, it's hard to be satisfied at the glacial pace of change that characterizes policy debates.

What many in the Valley forget, however, is that their ability to disrupt industries has had as much to do with historical accident as it has with their own much-vaunted entrepreneurialism.

Net Neutrality is fundamentally about keeping the internet an equal playing field in which all types of content have the same chance to be seen and experienced. Historically speaking, the internet has happened to be a place in which certain types of content are not discriminated against, slowed down, or limited by service providers because of a combination of disincentives and regulatory threat. That has meant that big players have not colluded to cut off the life stream of little players, and it has enabled the disruptive power that looms so large in our mythology.

But there is nothing other than the moral suasion of Net Neutrality advocates and the assertion of regulatory power on the part of the FCC that guarantees that any of that remains the case. Indeed, the Net Neutrality conversation is heating up because the economic advantages of creating tiered service in which certain content creators pay to prioritize their services against others are becoming clearer and clearer, exemplified by the fierce and growing battle for mobile affiliation and the increasing bandwidth burden on service providers as more people get on faster landline and wireless connections.

Put another way, the self-policing that so many in Silicon Valley wish to believe works perfectly fine is beginning to rub up against the fact that when startups grow into great big companies, they throw their power around to preserve and grow their piece of the pie, even (or in some cases, especially) if this means strangling the competition before it becomes competitive. Of course, this is anathema to the startups and venture investors whose business is rooted in big wins and disruptive power. The question is who has the power to preserve the balance?

In democratic societies, the answer to that question is: the government. Businesses and nonprofits do not have the power to determine personal or commercial rights and regulations. They can shape norms, but their ability to do so is a soft, not a hard power. The job of government is to codify norms that best benefit large parts of society into rules that create serious disincentives or outright blocks to business approaches that would undermine those norms.

The government's power to assert this influence, however, is entirely determined by how much authority they're given by citizens and key influencers in society. When entire influential groups of people (ahem, the Valley) talk as though government exists only to bother them, it influences how they (and how others watching) behave, and that behavior influences the actual ability of government to be powerful.

This self-fulfilling prophecy is being enacted in the Federal Communication Commission's seeming inability to stem the tide against the forces looking to dismantle Net Neutrality. While some of that is due to the particular decisions and shortcomings of FCC leadership and the weak federal support of their mission, it is also directly related to our hostility toward government in general.

We can't crap all over the idea of government when it doesn't particular matter to us, or when it's creating regulations that are economically disadvantageous to us, and then expect it to have full power to be there to regulate the norms we think are important when they become threatened by people who disagree with us.

This is a delicate line. Certainly this administration and our governing structures in general deserve skepticism, and often frustration.

But if we wish, in those times when we find ourselves on the same side of and needing the unique legislative and regulatory power bestowed upon government, we must assume that government also deserves our engagement, advocacy, and ultimately, our recognition of its importance in maintaining a just, fair, and free society.

Photo credit: David Paul Ohmer