The left’s historic power win: How the long-fought “net neutrality” triumph transformed history

[Commentary] Here’s what I think the net neutrality fight means.
First, it is the reemergence of populist politics into the industrial sector.
Second, the entities who emerged in this populist movement included a whole host of small businesses, internet businesses that have become attuned to power and the need for democratic processes to place checks on authoritarian threats that come from private monopolies.
Third, and this is connected to my first point about industrial politics, this is the first significant anti-monopoly principle affirmatively put into legal force since at least the 1970s.
Fourth, and once again this is connected to both industrial politics and to my original opening anecdote, net neutrality is a pricing law. Millions of people acted to make sure that at least some pricing power would be in the hands of the public rather than in the hands of monopolistic owners of cable and telecommunications networks. That’s a really big deal.

[Matt Stoller is a political strategist with a focus on Wall Street]