I think there is a more nuanced libertarian argument that you haven't mentioned, and that is not so much "I am against all regulation" as much as "I think regulation is generally bad for efficiency and/or disagree with it on moral grounds so I want to be convinced why it is necessary."
In other words, I want to be convinced that:
1) There is a problem here at all. The regulation that is being repealed was only introduced 2 years ago; how did we get along before that?
2) This problem can be solved by this regulation (not all regulation achieves its goals, and sometimes it is even counter productive).
3) Regulation is the best/only solution for this problem (what other solutions to the problem described in 1 have been proposed, and why are they not suitable)
I think serious answers to these types will be far more convincing than the typical simplified arguments along the lines of "What if comcast creates a competitor to netflix and prioritizes its own streaming service".
TL;DR: I think some libertarians are not so much against regulation as they are skeptical of it, and are willing to be convinced that certain regulations are good, on a case-by-case basis.
You say you want to be convinced but when reasonable answers have been supplied in previous threads, by respected figures like jedberg, you seem to have ignored them.
Similarly, this post also doesn't read as the beginning of a debate or a discussion; it reads as the end of one. All three of your demands taken together imply "Net Neutrality doesn't matter. If any regulation is not perfect then we should get rid of it", which is both a ludicrous position to hold on NN, and a facet of "I am against all regulation" which the intro supposedly distanced itself from.
An appeal to reason is all well-and-good, but using it as a sandwich for an obvious Nirvana fallacy, makes your points impossible to swallow.
Can you link me to the replies that I'm ignoring? I can't find any comments by jedberg in this thread.
Also I don't think it's fair to say that since I'm not convinced by what you consider reasonable answers therefore I'm the one who is wrong, instead of entertaining the possibility that those answers are not as convincing as you think, to someone who isn't already convinced.
1) There is a problem here at all. The regulation that is being repealed was only introduced 2 years ago; how did we get along before that?
Yes, there is a problem here. ISPs have already started overstepping the bounds by extorting money from Netflix. T-mobile has a plan out right now that gives you unlimited Netflix, but rate limits everything else. This is a violation of the principles of Net Neutrality.
Yes, there is a problem.
There wasn't much of one before, because the ISPs were very careful not to upset the balance. In the past five years though, they've started seeing what they can get away with. Net Neutrality regulation is a response to the ISPs testing the waters.
2) This problem can be solved by this regulation (not all regulation achieves its goals, and sometimes it is even counter productive).
Probably. It's fairly easy to say "all ISPs have to treat all packets the same." Then have yearly audits of internal routing infrastructure.
3) Regulation is the best/only solution for this problem (what other solutions to the problem described in 1 have been proposed, and why are they not suitable)
I don't believe regulation IS the best solution. Not so much because the regulation itself is bad, but because each set of people who get into power have a different idea of what the regulations should look like, so it ping-pongs back and forth ad-infinitum.
I think the best solution is for towns to build municipal fiber that competes with existing ISPs. The infrastructure could be rented out to local ISPs who compete on the publicly-owned lines. If Comcast wants to charge people out the ass for shitty service that rate limits (or hell, censors) certain websites, go for it...but there are 20 other local companies who give faster speeds for cheaper prices that support Net Neutrality.
The problem is, Comcast generally stops this kind of market competition from happening via propaganda campaigns and jamming through state laws that prohibit it. A municipality entering the market is still a free-market competition, so it should be an option supported by libertarians.
You're right, a lot of this is an education problem.
Many (including myself) have for years thought that this wasn't a problem. How did we get along before this?
But there are dozens of cases before NN was codified, where ISPs were blocking and slowing down traffic. One of the most high profile was how Comcast was slowing down Netflix in the NY Metro Area.
After the rules went into place, Netflix speeds just magically increased, and Comcast said it was a coincidence. Uh huh, sure.
but let's consider the world where the pipes stayed the same size; suddenly the lawyers say you have to stop shaping Netflix traffic (shaping means randomly dropping TCP traffic in order to signal to both ends that congestion exists in the network and they should slow down sending). Lack of shaping means congestion and slowness for all content traversing the same pipe, not just the heaviest users. So people watching Netflix get a slightly better quality and less buffering, but it takes 10 seconds to load any website traversing that pipe.
In other words, I want to be convinced that:
1) There is a problem here at all. The regulation that is being repealed was only introduced 2 years ago; how did we get along before that?
2) This problem can be solved by this regulation (not all regulation achieves its goals, and sometimes it is even counter productive).
3) Regulation is the best/only solution for this problem (what other solutions to the problem described in 1 have been proposed, and why are they not suitable)
I think serious answers to these types will be far more convincing than the typical simplified arguments along the lines of "What if comcast creates a competitor to netflix and prioritizes its own streaming service".
TL;DR: I think some libertarians are not so much against regulation as they are skeptical of it, and are willing to be convinced that certain regulations are good, on a case-by-case basis.