Free Candy

Suppose you live in a place where there is a candy store on every street corner. Open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Anybody, adult or child, could go in there at any time and get whatever candy they wanted. Anything from Godiva chocolates to gummy bears. Since these candy stores are on every corner, you are always within walking distance.

Even though everyone in the country is happy with these circumstances, the government is not. You see, the government is never happy with that which it does not control. So the government, in their collective genius, decides there is an inequality of results at the free candy stores. So to promote "fairness", they must step in and regulate. 

So to create a fair and balanced candy store, the regulators decide those wonderful Godiva chocolates would only be available on Mondays with a maximum of two to a customer. And everyone that comes into the store must take a pound of sugar free black licorice. Other candies would be available at the discretion of the regulators. Oh, and their might be usage fees (taxes) coming soon.

Does my little fable remind you of what is going on with the internet? It should. I spend hours every day on the internet. Reading news, blogging, shopping. Sometimes even sightseeing. I have broadband and a non-windows machine. So I get around pretty quick. I, along with most people, are very happy with the internet as it stands. It provides the openness and freedom that Americans used to enjoy in most aspects of their life.

So now the government, the people that brought you Benghazi, the IRS, the VA, and so many other debacles, want to big foot their way in and control the internet. To what end, other than giving a bunch of anal retentive bureaucrats their jollies.

It is one thing to say, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". But here we have to say, if it ain't broke don't break it. The people that can't keep Chinese hackers out of the Pentagon computers want to control the internet. That would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. So, I suggest that everyone politely tell their Congress Folks that they may want to put a stop to this. People that are on-line vote, also.