I woke from a dead sleep this morning at approximately 2:27 AM. I sat bolt upright and thought, “WTF happened when the FCC (Federal Communications Commission — I often clarify abbreviations when awoken suddenly) eliminated the net neutrality rules?”

Wasn’t the world supposed to end? What happened? It’s been two years already.

You will recall that the FCC in the person of its Chairman Ajit Pai (former general counsel for Verizon) drove this effort forward.

The Internet cognoscenti warned us that terrible, truly horrific things would happen:

The Internet would begin to throttle speeds. Your Internet speed would be like the old dial up. In fact, Internet fixed broadband speed has increased by more than 75% according to Ookla, who is sort of an authority on Internet speed.

The elimination of the net neutrality rules would anoint clear winners and losers thereby eliminating competition. In fact, the cost of Internet has gone down while the speeds at that lower cost have gone up. Getting more for less is every consumer’s dream. Competition is fierce.

The repeal of the net neutrality rules would totally eliminate innovation in the Internet space because the newly anointed winners would squash innovation like a cockroach. Startups would no longer be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and boldly innovate. They would have to pay tolls to use the system. Uhhh, not true. 

The change would allow ISPs (Internet Service Providers) both big and small to extract enormously higher fees from small, new companies as competition would be eliminated. This would be particularly hard on startups. Uhhh, also not true.

All of the above would fall on the heads of consumers who would either lose services from Internet bound companies or who would pay more for services that had to pass along their higher costs. And the people said, “Bullshit. That never happened.”

All services would be ramped onto either the SLOW or the FAST lanes and there would be huge cost differentials to be on the FAST lane. Who would pay this? The consumer. Uhhh, didn’t happen. 

Even the CIA got into it, protesting that the repeal of the net neutrality rules would prevent them from blocking terrorist training materials. Asked how that worked out, the CIA recently said, “Uhhh, not as much of a problem as we thought. Please go away.”

The CIA opined that FAST lanes would be monopolized by bad actors who would use their financial muscle to drive their bad content faster and farther. Well, that didn’t happen either.

There was even an opinion that politicians and religious figures would not be able to afford the FAST lanes and they would be stuck in the SLOW lanes. This was decried as censorship. [They were not thinking about all the billionaires running for President, eh?] Well, that didn’t happen either, did it? [Talking to you, MiniMike Bloomberg and all your Twitter ads.]

Bottom line it, Big Red Car

OK, dear reader, here it is:

None of the ills forecast by the liberals, the Democrats, the Internet Illuminati, the coastal elites came to pass.

In fact, from the perspective of the consumer and the startup world — “Laissez les bon temps rouler!” Let the good times roll — faster service at a lower price.

When de-regulated the market figured it all out and NONE of the crazy predictions happened. [Even the CIA got it wrong.]

Trust markets. Trust de-regulation. Is this a great country or what?

All you crazy liberals — y’all are in time out. To all my good pals who used to debate this stuff over on AVC.com, the ones who used to embrace the nonsense — y’all were wrong and not by even a small amount. Suck a lemon.

But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car with 1gig Internet for less than half of what I used to pay 3 years ago.