Doesn’t seem like a dumb argument to me, although I don’t think net neutrality would have actually interrupted or replaced most of those peering arrangements in practice.
If you’re pushing 15% of all internet traffic you’re going to end up peering, the best I can see net neutrality doing for Netflix is it sets the default payment to $0, giving them a better bargaining position going into any negotiation about peering arrangements, and probably gives them some legal protection against ISPs who might want to throttle Netflix traffic rather than agree to Netflix’s terms.
Internet traffic is not “pushed” onto ISPs. The paying customers of ISPs request data from providers, and they pay those ISPs to receive and deliver that traffic.
If you’re pushing 15% of all internet traffic you’re going to end up peering, the best I can see net neutrality doing for Netflix is it sets the default payment to $0, giving them a better bargaining position going into any negotiation about peering arrangements, and probably gives them some legal protection against ISPs who might want to throttle Netflix traffic rather than agree to Netflix’s terms.