“Conservatism” as we know it is primarily an Anglo-American tradition. Not all countries have something like it, and Germany definitely does not. Their major ‘right’ coalition (the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union parties) are Christian centrists. The believe in a powerful state, but one that should show compassion and respect for Christian values. They are most definitely not a small government movement.

So it’s telling that even German Chancellor Angela Merkel has come out against Net Neutrality, and for the right reasons.

Ubergizmo quotes Merkel: “An innovation-friendly internet means that there is a guaranteed reliability for special services. These can only develop when predictable quality standards are available.” It’s a bit of an awkward translation, but it’s clear she favors ‘fast lanes’, paid prioritization, and other ways of treating different traffic differently. Innovation trumps a regulated neutrality.

The light touch the US government has shown the Internet since the bipartisan Telecommunication Act mandated it has led to America having world-beating broadband. That’s right, that’s not what the Comcast-hating Net Neuties tell you. That’s because, you know, they want to Gruber the Internet the way they Grubered medical insurance.

Netflix is actually doing great which is, you know, exactly the opposite of what the Net Neutrality propagandists (Netflix itself among them) want you to think. Netflix is pumping out more and more data, sending movies at higher and higher resolutions, which has forced them to raise prices slightly (one dollar), in exchange for making significant investments in infrastructure. This is win-win, and regulation shouldn’t interfere.

Net Neutrality would harm the average person, even if it would act as a subsidy for firms like Google, Amazon, and Netflix (all servers of lots of data). No more winners and losers. No Net Neutrality.

Even Google isn’t a true believer in Neutrality. They’ve declared war on the Pirate Bay freeloaders which, you know, is exactly what Comcast did in the case that first brought Net Neutrality to court, in Comcast v FCC.