The idea of paying for a superior level of service is exactly what net neutrality is supposed to prohibit, so your response just kinda lends credibility to the parent comments analogy.
Service tiers make total sense for mail, even under a "neutral" system. Sometimes people need, for example, guaranteed next day delivery. So, if Amazon wants to pay extra for that service tier like everyone else ... what's the problem?
The real issue is if Amazon gets that service at a discounted rate. They probably do, and I can see arguments for why we wouldn't want them to be able to. But I can't see arguments against service tiers.
Besides, service tiers exist under net neutrality. I can choose to buy a 1Mbps connection, or a 1Gbps connection. The latter gives me a clear advantage. Yet that's allowed under net neutrality because _anyone_ can buy those tiers of service.
Every reason that mail service tiers make sense can be applied to net neutrality too. VOIP, streaming media, multiplayer video games all “need” a much better QoS than say browsing a web page, or downloading a torrent does.
Anybody who wishes to compete with Amazon will also have to pay additional fees to offer an equivalent service, and if high QoS delivery channels become over-subscribed, prices for them will increase. Further discriminating against competition.
> So, if Amazon wants to pay extra for that service tier like everyone else ... what's the problem?
What’s the problem with an ISP creating a seperate QoS tier for people who require it, and charging more for it? It’s exactly the same thing.
> Every reason that mail service tiers make sense can be applied to net neutrality too. VOIP, streaming media, multiplayer video games all “need” a much better QoS than say browsing a web page, or downloading a torrent does.
That's a pretty good argument against net neutrality. It's a bad argument against service tiers for mail.
Not really. It is more akin to paying more monthly for more GB of internet per month or paying more for faster internet.
Net neutrality is supposed to prohibit a company from slowing down a competitor or slowing down things the company disagrees with - so, for example, Comcast shouldn't be slowing down Netflix. For the post office, this would be prioritizing packages from one carrier in the same class of mail over another. Now, there is no saying that the mail is neutral, though, nor that the contracts allow them to be (I really don't know: Maybe they need to prioritize just to keep from having fees that bankrupt them).
If net neutrality is supposed to prevent paying for a superior level of service from the provider you directly contract with, somebody should crack down on all the internet providers that offer different bandwidth/priority for different prices.
There’s not an analogue in this instance for the two sides of a network connection; DHL picks up the packages and drops them off. If you want to argue against price discrimination in general, you’re going to need a stronger argument than an analogy to net neutrality.
