What strikes me is how Republicans didn't realize net neutrality translates to equal opportunity on the internet, which fits really well with free-market capitalism.
Free markets, like any ideology, usually doesn't serve as first principals from which you derive positions. Rather, feelings dictate positions and ideology is used to justify those positions post hoc.
I don't know if it's sarcasm or not. Positions are dictated by empirical evidence, not feelings. What is false does not become true because I feel it is true. Free markets are efficient in terms of supply and demand. My opinion is that those who are still guided by feelings and always with their backs to reality are the people who ask for more socialism, more regulations and less freedom for all.
Democrats are far more socialist than they used to be. Do you suggest all of the USA political spectrum has moved to the left? I don’t have an opinion on that but I bet lots of people would argue a shift the other way.
I think that’s a problem of perspective. Republicans have always had big government establishment RINOs clashing with small government fiscal conservatives who feel they are too far left for fiscal issues and mixed bag on social issues. Bush era “neocons” get little love today (Romney for example). If you are truly on the center today (rare breed) you might be interested that the neocons hate Trump, and how the GOP establishment is begrudgingly stuck with him.
Polar opposite, if you find yourself agreeing with every socialist proposal and bemoaning yourself that Dems are too far right, it’s probably just perspective of how extreme left you are.
So... are Republicans less free-market than they “used” to be? Or does it only seem that way from your perspective? When you say Republicans, do you mean base, establishment, or Trump?
The US political spectrum has moved towards being more authoritarian in general. As in, large-scale government solutions to whatever is perceived as problems are in vogue on both the left and the right.
That's an Austrian school conflation, and that largely because it refuses to recognize that market failure is a thing. Originally, "free" meant "where actors compete freely" - this excludes not just government regulation, but also monopolies. Since in practice monopolies form in unregulated markets over time, at some point, such a market can become less free than one with active intervention to bust monopolies.
>refuses to recognize that market failure is a thing
So much this. I call it "Econ 101 Syndrome". My undergrad was in Economics, and the amount of damage that has been done by requiring Business majors (and others) to take Econ 101 and only Econ 101 is staggering. People walk away from those courses seeing the world through a lens of perfect competition, no externalities, no information asymmetries, no transaction costs, etc. and so end up coming to a faulty conclusion on every major policy question.
Net Neutrality has nothing to do with free market nor equal opportunity. If anything, it hinders new entrants because it entrenches the interests of Netflix and similar companies that dominate all internet traffic. Net Neutrality has always and will always be about Netflix and similar companies not wanting to be billed for constantly increasing the costs of the ISPs. Pro-net neutrality is pro-regulatory capture for companies like Netflix. No free market capitalist would ever be for regulatory capture.
