kwantsu-dudes

IT’S HAPPENING!!! Rand Paul, thank you for taking the time to enter a forum with potential voters. It certainly helps us to feel like our concerns are being listened to and that we may actually have a chance of being represented.

It should be obvious to you, but I want to make it clear, that many of the people here are quite tired of politics and what normally comes with it. AVOIDANCE of questions/details being a large one. You would do yourself a great service and to this community to address what might be more difficult questions and to answer any questions you respond to honestly and in detail. Reddit users can get quite ornery when they believe they are simply being played with. Anyway…

QUESTION: Which one of your political views do you believe catches the most flak from the general public, but doesn’t deserve the amount of criticism it has received? Why?

[EDIT] Thanks again, Rand. Please feel free to come back and answer any questions you didn't have the time to address. Good Luck in Iowa!

Most people that oppose Net Neutrality seem to either be blind partisan monkeys (the same exists on the pro side) or those that favor less government intervention in the marketplace.

As someone that leans Classical Liberal and supports free markets this is why I support NN...

With NN there will be market manipulation by government on the market place of ISPs. But without it, we will have market manipulation by ISPs on the entire online marketplace. I'll take the restrictions on the smaller market to preserve the freedom of the much larger marketplace.

Regulations of ISPs are set on the infrastructure of the internet, not the actual online marketplace itself.

Although, I dont support Title II and the authority it gives the FCC. I'd rather NN be legislated, so that we can actually guarantee it's protection. Because under Title II, the FCC can simply choose not to use their authority to enforce NN protections.

Infrastructure is limited in efficiency. It's simply more efficient to have one line rather than 10. The industry realises this which is why they consolidate and make agreements to have their own specific areas of market control. It simply makes the most economic sense. It is much more prone to monopolization than other industries due to this and other factors such as very strong barriers to entry.

Large ISPs that face competition can simply price them out of the market by taking a temporary loss, as they control a large portion of the infrastructure. They hold possession of the actual online marketplace that its customers desire access to.

Breaking up large ISPs isn't a fix to the problem. They will simply rise again. We currently have laws that require these large ISPs to let smaller ones to use their lines and pay them for that use. But its simply not very profitable for many to operate in that way. Correction made. These laws only exist for telephone line in America currently.

If I had my choice, I'd like the government to take control of these lines and then offer up use of it any ISP. Keeping the price low as to encourage competition and not allowing only certain ISPs to afford it. For how much they have already been subsidized by government, they partially own it anyway. As a free market supporter, I view anytime a private company takes a public subsidy, the government can then have a say on how that business operates, just as any investor could. And these ISPs have already renegged on an agreement to upgrade their lines. So action is justified.

And you dont think that same type of stuff happens to Democrats and Republicans? Deviate and you're a "traitor".

Rand, many young people feel they don't have a voice in politics. Many have attributed this muting to money in politics. How would you alleviate this concern?

Specifically, let's discuss the Citizens United case. You have said you support that ruling. But I would like to know your stance on the dissents opinion on "general treasury funds". These funds were previously restricted, by a previous supreme court ruling, from being used for political campaign purposes because it consists of money that had "little to no correlation" with the beliefs held by the actual persons.

Would you support the idea that "general funds" that come from sources not designated for political purposes shouldn't be allowed to be used on politics? This of course would still allow individuals to still give as much as they wanted to Super PACs and possibly to "political message organizations" such as Citizens United depending on how a line can be drawn. I believe this would help address concerns over "Corporate Donations" while still upholding the individual's right to speech.