In the tradition of A Modest Proposal, Bob Frankston has turned the net neutrality debate on its head with a brilliant satire called Paying by the Stroll.

I wish I could be like Vixie and live in my own little world, venturing out only once in a while to tell everyone else they are screwing up before returning to my mountain. But I can't. I don't have Vixie's head for programming languages -- English is the only one I know.

Those who bought AT&T before its break-up, and held the pieces through the enactment of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, did quite well. Those who kept their pieces as the industry consolidated and AT&T was brought together again have done poorly.

It's a balance sheet approach, not an income statement

In the last few months cable TV news has moved en masse from cheerleading for the Bush Administration's failed policies to actively ignoring reality.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. And it doesn't mean they won't get you, either.

To most Americans, not to mention most politicians, this is a completely unpalatable solution. The idea that we have to become accustomed to these prices, change our lifestyles to fit these prices, is repugnant to most Americans. Tough.

By hoarding those bits, and demanding high prices to connect with other networks, the Bells could still strangle the Internet. As we've seen they have every incentive to do so -- their fiscal lives are at stake. (The voice revenues are going to disappear, leaving a giant hole in their balance sheets.)

Where the Internet has been failing -- where the liberal blogosphere has been failing -- is that it, too, has been living in the eternal now. The philosophical underpinnings which conservatives in the 1960s built so painstakingly, brick-by-emotional brick -- simply don't exist.

The Thesis is just being born. It is the Open Source Thesis of compromise, of connectivity, of transparency.