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In 2017, late-night host Stephen Colbert told his audience that it was \u201ca sad day\u201d because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had voted to repeal Net Neutrality, an Obama-era rule that required Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to offer \u201cequal access\u201d and speeds to all lawful websites and content regardless of their source, and prohibiting \u201cfast lanes<\/a>\u201d for certain content.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat that really means, it means repealing regulations that prevented your Internet provider from blocking certain websites or slowing down your data,\u201d Colbert said. \u201cNow they can. And that\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Repeal of these regulations didn\u2019t just portend\u00a0the death of the Internet<\/a>. It marked the triumph of Russia, Colbert suggested, pointing to FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel\u2019s claim that a half-million public comments came from \u201cRussian email addresses.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cC\u2019mon, Russia,\u201d Colbert said. \u201cCan\u2019t you just leave America alone?\u201d<\/p>\n The implication was clear. Killing Net Neutrality would destroy the Internet (and may have been a Putin plot).<\/p>\n Colbert was not the only person to make such claims, of course. Senate Democrats\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0that if we failed to save Net Neutrality, we\u2019d get the Internet \u201cone word at a time.\u201d Actor Mark Ruffalo said that repeal was an \u201cauthoritarian dream,\u201d and actress Alyssa Milano\u00a0called it<\/a>\u00a0a threat to democracy itself.<\/p>\n CNN was slightly less hyperbolic,\u00a0calling repeal<\/a>\u00a0of the regulation \u201cthe end of the Internet as we know it.\u201d<\/p>\n CNN was right, in a sense. The repeal of Net Neutrality \u2014 which occurred in 2018 with the FCC\u2019s \u201cRestoring Internet Freedom Order<\/a>\u201d \u2014\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0mean the end of the Internet as we knew it.<\/p>\n Anyone reading this article can see the Internet didn\u2019t die (hooray!). But few may realize just how much the Internet has\u00a0improved<\/em>\u00a0since Net Neutrality was repealed.<\/p>\n Data released<\/a>\u00a0by FCC commissioner Brendan Carr, the former general counsel of the regulatory body, show that not only did the Internet not die; speeds got exponentially faster. According to data from Ookla, a global leader in Internet access performance metrics, median fixed download speeds have increased by 430 percent since 2017. Median mobile download speeds have increased even more \u2014 by 647 percent, a more than sevenfold surge.<\/p>\n Internet speeds didn\u2019t just get faster, however. They became less expensive in\u00a0real dollars<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIn real terms, the prices for Internet services have dropped by about 9 percent since the beginning of 2018, according to BLS CPI data,\u201d Carr points out. \u201cOn the mobile broadband side alone, real prices have dropped by roughly 18 percent since 2017\u2026 and for the most popular broadband speed tiers, real prices are down 54 percent\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n This is just one part of the Internet boom that occurred following the repeal of Net Neutrality. As the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0recently noted<\/a>, Internet access also exploded.<\/p>\n In 2015, 77 percent of Americans had access to high-speed broadband. By January 2020, that figure had risen to 94 percent, and it didn\u2019t stop there, the paper notes. In 2022, some 400,000 miles of fiber were laid by broadband engineers \u2014 more than\u00a0double<\/em>\u00a0that of 2016.<\/p>\n All of this investment didn\u2019t happen accidentally. It was spurred by a return to laissez-faire Internet regulations reminiscent of the earlier days of the Internet, and was predicted by those who opposed Net Neutrality.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s basic economics,\u201d former FCC head\u00a0Ajit Pai said<\/a>. \u201cThe more heavily you regulate something, the less of it you\u2019re likely to get.\u201d<\/p>\n Pai\u2019s point deserves attention. Supporters of Net Neutrality argued that the policy was necessary to keep ISPs in line so they didn\u2019t rig the game against consumers in pursuit of higher profits.<\/p>\n But it was precisely the lack of regulation (and the pursuit of profits) that spurred the Internet boom. Companies seeking profit poured capital into Internet services in an effort to attract customers by offering a better, faster, and less-expensive product than their competitors.<\/p>\n Internet prices fell and service improved as a result, despite widespread fears that it would result in the \u201cend of the Internet.\u201d Why so many leftists might have genuinely believed the Internet would break without a federal bureaucracy holding its hand can perhaps be found in the views of the father of socialism, Karl Marx.<\/p>\n Marx\u00a0saw competition<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 especially market competition \u2014 as a destructive force:<\/p>\n Competition engenders misery, it foments civil war, it \u2018changes natural zones,\u2019 mixes up nationalities, causes trouble in families, corrupts the public conscience, \u2018subverts the notion of equity, of justice,\u2019 of morality, and what is worse, it destroys free, honest trade, and does not even give in exchange synthetic value, fixed, honest price. It disillusions everyone, even economists. It pushes things so far as to destroy its very self.<\/p>\n The great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises knew better. He saw market competition as the engine of economic production \u2014 \u201cthe sharper competition, the better\u201d \u2014 which is why he disliked comparisons of competition to war.<\/p>\n \u201cThe function of battle is destruction; of competition, construction,\u201d he noted in his 1922 book\u00a0Socialism<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\nSix Years Later<\/strong><\/h2>\n