I'm not arguing for less competition, far from it. If anything, the lack of competition is probably the main cause of the current situation.
However, net neutrality is the bare minimum. We should also advocate for more competition, just not at the expense of neutrality. Imagine we would let a grocery store lax the quality control on their products. They could sell more for cheaper, but the number of people who would get sick (or die) would increase. In a similar way, allowing ISPs to fiddle with throttling would have far negative effects for everybody. (it's not a direct analogy so please don't try to break it, that's not the point).
The $15 price range you mention is very doable, with much faster speeds than we currently have AND without having to compromise on neutrality. Our worldwide ranking is pretty depressing -- compared to what we could/should have. All these foreign ISPs are able to offer cheaper and faster connections without messing with neutrality. If ISPs must segment their offerings in any way then let them do it by speed (which they already do) or by how much data you can download/upload per month, but not by compromising net neutrality.
I think we'll just have to disagree on the actual import of rate-limiting. I do agree that competition is very important.
What I'll leave it with is this: prohibiting rate-limiting at best does nothing to increase competition among ISPs (I have not seen any arguments against this), whereas rate-limiting behavior is something I've never seen in a market with multiple viable ISP choices (by which I mean that dialup and satellite are not close enough to broadband to count). As I started this entire thread with, rate-limiting seems like a red herring.
However, net neutrality is the bare minimum. We should also advocate for more competition, just not at the expense of neutrality. Imagine we would let a grocery store lax the quality control on their products. They could sell more for cheaper, but the number of people who would get sick (or die) would increase. In a similar way, allowing ISPs to fiddle with throttling would have far negative effects for everybody. (it's not a direct analogy so please don't try to break it, that's not the point).
The $15 price range you mention is very doable, with much faster speeds than we currently have AND without having to compromise on neutrality. Our worldwide ranking is pretty depressing -- compared to what we could/should have. All these foreign ISPs are able to offer cheaper and faster connections without messing with neutrality. If ISPs must segment their offerings in any way then let them do it by speed (which they already do) or by how much data you can download/upload per month, but not by compromising net neutrality.