Nice move (as defined by Qwest CEO)

Qwest CEO Dick Notebaert on net neutrality:

Competition is good, makes us better and makes us more creative. That's why when they talk about net neutrality, bad idea. Really silly. What we're talking about has no basis in anything. It's a nice move to make the consumer pay for everything.

Actually, Dick, "what we're talking about" has a firm basis in one very large thing: the free rider problem, and whether or not the internet is a public good (most non-CEO's believe that it is). This old Clinton-era Krugman essay features the most relevant quote:

The democratic process, the only decent way we know for deciding how that coercive power should be used, is itself subject to extremely severe free-rider problems. Rat-choice theorist Samuel Popkin writes (in his 1991 book, The Reasoning Voter): "Everybody's business is nobody's business. If everyone spends an additional hour evaluating the candidates, we all benefit from a better-informed electorate. If everyone but me spends the hour evaluating the candidates and I spend it choosing where to invest my savings, I will get a better return on my investments as well as a better government." As a result, the public at large is, entirely rationally, remarkably ill-informed about politics and policy. And that leaves the field open for special interests--which means people with a large stake in small issues--to buy policies that suit them.

For example, when the House Republicans get bought, then reject a net neutrality amendment.