Are you ready to pay for what comes next? (Aravind Sivaraj, Wikimedia Commons)

After the recent federal court of appeals ruling to strike down the FCC net neutrality law, there’s a chance you’ll be getting that message sometime in the near future. The law was originally created to prevent Internet providers from “prioritizing” certain websites over others. The worry when the law passed in 2010 was that a company like Comcast could charge Internet users more to go to a news site not owned by Comcast as opposed to one like NBC Universal, which is. 

However, in recent days the worry has centered on the fear of having to pay for premium Internet (streaming videos.) A recent study, conducted by broadband provider Sandvine, found that 45% of all Internet bandwidth is used by people streaming Netflix and YouTube with that number jumping above 50% at peak hours. 

Verizon’s executive vice president released a statement shortly after the ruling saying, “Verizon has been and remains committed to the open Internet that provides customers with competitive choices and unblocked access to lawful websites and content when, where and how they want.” Many people don’t trust the statement and are still hesitant to believe providers aren’t planning to nickel and dime Internet users into the kind of defeated, glazed over state that usually only happens around the sixth hour of Mad Men binge watching. 

Enough virtual ink has been spilled over how and why the court made its decision, I have no desire to go deeper into constitutionality. The issue we need to address is simple yet extends far beyond net neutrality. The issue is this: we have become a culture that thinks it should be allowed to consume endlessly without ever paying for that consumption. 

The Internet doesn’t just exist naturally. There hasn’t always been some “World Wide Web” floating around the stratosphere that we finally figured out how to harness. Much like phone service, cable and electricity the Internet is provided to us by someone else, and was created by someone else. When I want to be able to Facebook and Tweet from my phone, I pay extra. When I want to watch ESPN, TNT and HBO, I pay for them. When I want to be able to flick a switch and see things in my room, I pay for that ability.

I can’t wrap my mind around why we think the same shouldn’t be true of the Internet. Services others provide for us cost money. Life in general costs money. When I go downtown and want to park in a space someone else paid to build, I pay to use that space. Just because the Internet is this ethereal cloud of information and data doesn’t make it any less built by someone else. 

You can only read this article right now because your internet service provider paid to lay broadband cables all around your neighborhood, city and country. We shouldn’t expect companies to spend all that money to provide a service and not get anything in return. Think of that 45 percent figure from earlier. At any given time, 45 percent of the Internet’s capacity and ability is absorbed by a handful of people streaming movies and TV shows one way or another. The 29.2 million people who subscribe to Netflix shouldn’t be using 45 percent of the bandwidth available to the 314 million people in the United States. At that rate if everyone in the country wants to watch Netflix together we’ll just need to increase our bandwidth to 1075 percent of current levels. 

In any other aspect of life when that small a portion of the population consumes that much of a good, we throw a collective fit (occupy Wall Street.) Yet somehow, now that it’s our holy Internet under the microscope we can’t imagine why we should ever have to pay to use a service provided by someone else. We can’t imagine why if someone want’s to use far more than their fair share of a product or service they should have to pay for it. 

The real secret here is that the vast majority of people will never have to pay to use the Internet even if companies like Verizon decide to start charging for premium content. Sites like Hulu, Amazon and HBO Go use a relatively minuscule 3 percent of all Internet bandwidth. Sites like The New York Times, CNN or any other non-video-streaming website are barely a blip on the radar of bandwidth. Most people will never pay a dime above their regular rates to use the Internet.

This is about more than just the Internet though; it is about a culture within the United States that says, “I don’t have to pay for anything I want to use.” We don’t want to pay for parking. We want unlimited data plans on our phones for no extra charge. We’d rather use Spotify than actually pay for a song or album (guilty) and we feel entitled to consume an obscene proportion of limited Internet bandwidth without paying more than those who check their email twice a day. It is a culture that pervades the wealthy class just as much if not more than all the people trying to advance themselves in life who the Tea Party wants to label as moochers and entitlement seekers. 

There’s a much larger problem at work here that has nothing to do with net neutrality or how often you watch Netflix.  It says, “I want my phone to do more, but I want my service provider to foot my bill.” It says I want what I want and you’re going to give it to me for free. 

Here's the thing about overturning net neutrality, in no way is it a tax on the poor. Think of that 9 to10 percent who have Netflix. I would bet a month's cable bill almost none of them are on wellfare. Overturning net neutrality, and opening the possibility of having to pay more if you want to use more of the available Internet, is an extra charge (an appropriate one at that) on the wealthy portions of the country. It acts as an Internet sales tax. 

The beauty of a sales tax is that you pay for exactly what you use. It is perfectly proportional to how many of a nation's resources you consume day-to-day. Charging people more to use a much larger amount of Internet space is as fair a charge as you'll find. It affects the wealthier parts of the nation who want to be able to stream video while allowing every other Internet service to work more efficiently and effectively for those trying to use the web to educate themselves and become one of the people sitting around watching Netflix. 

Unfortunately we're so used to equating corporations with the wealthier classes that we can't see the overturning of this law as the win it really is for both sides. It advances the conservative ideal of less legislation while potentially creating a tax on the wealthy for the excess services they use. Yet, we have demonized corporations to the point that we can't see the forest through the trees. We can’t imagine a company like Verizon wanting people to pay more for a service that costs Verizon more to provide without immediately wondering how it benefits the wealthy. We struggle to see why we should have to pay more when we use more. We twist ourselves into hypocritical knots to criticize the 1% until we realize the repeal of this law levels the internet playing field. 

If there is one lesson we should be able to take away from this net neutrality case it is this: things cost money, you pay when you want to consume more and you can only consume what you can afford. In this case, it means those wealthier people who can afford premium streaming sites like Netflix will pay a proportion equal to how much more than their fair share of the internet they use.

How’s that for a truly neutral fact of life? 

Reach Calum Hayes here, follow him here.