I live in Birmingham, Alabama. Places are spread out here. It isn’t uncommon for people to drive 20 to 30 minutes to work, a shopping mall or a movie theater. The only IMAX theater near me—I live in actual Birmingham city limits, as opposed to the greater metropolitan area—is roughly 25 minutes away. It’s in an upscale strip mall in an AMC theater. The theater used to be a Carmike theater, and before that it used to be a Rave theater.

Before Birmingham had Rave theaters, they only had Regal and Carmike. They were pretty indistinguishable from one another, and I never had a preference. But when Rave came on the scene, I suddenly did have a preference. I didn’t mind driving twice as far and skipping two theaters that were closer to me so that I could sit in a comfortable chair in a theater with a better customer experience.

The big fish ate the little fish, and now we have AMC, with little to no competition. What was once a Regal, Carmike or Rave is now an AMC. It was while I was standing in the concession line to buy my movie tickets at one of these AMCs that I suddenly thought of how this is a great example of what the repeal of net neutrality will look like. I used to have options. I used to be able to stand in line at the box office to buy my tickets. Or, if I had ordered online, I could use the automated kiosk to print my tickets. Now, my option is to stand in line for concessions, and wait two to three times as long while people get popcorn, drinks and their movie tickets all at the same time. It was AMC’s way of creating a captive audience—complete psychological warfare. People think, “Heck, I stood in line this long, behind all the other people getting snacks, I might as well make everyone else wait too.” Capitalism meets rubbernecking.

Maybe you see where I am going with this. There is only one way to bypass this newly manufactured inconvenience: a “Stubs” Members only fast lane, which for a premium, you can use to skip ahead of everyone else in the regular line. And even the premium members still had to suffer an up-sale in the shorter concession line. And this is what an Internet without net neutrality, without modest regulation, will look like soon. You’ll have the privilege of spending a premium to access certain sites with better speed. And services like Netflix will pay ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to deliver their specific content on those fast lanes. Then Netflix and others will simply pass the additional cost associated with the fast lane onto you, the end customer.

What net neutrality did was level the playing field. A new social network trying to come out today won’t be able to compete like Facebook. Facebook’s site will be really fast, and this smaller newcomer will be much slower and just not worth it. You see, officials like Ajit Pai, love the free market. They love competition. But it should be noted in small print, that they don’t love fair competition. I’m all for smaller government and less interference. But, there is a reason why our power utilities are government regulated “monopolies.” Certain utilities are mission critical, life or death, national security impacting services.

At some point you have to look at an industry under closer scrutiny. Once upon a time, we decided we can’t let everyone who wants to build a railroad across the country to create another line bisecting a major city. There are environmental or socioeconomic factors that prohibit completely unfettered industry. The Internet is a must-have utility. And it is run in a way that prohibits real competition. We can’t let everyone who wants to come into a neighborhood lay down another cable/fiber line. In my area, we used to have Charter in certain parts of town and Brighthouse in others. You couldn’t choose between them. I guess you could go with a completely wireless provider, but that isn’t the same. The same speeds aren’t offered on U-verse for example as on a cable/fiber line. Well, Brighthouse changed its name to Spectrum, and now we have Charter Spectrum blanketing our city for residential coverage. The service under either was never spectacular, but they didn’t have to worry about how you felt, because where else could you go? There were two sudo-competitive providers, and now there is just one cable Internet provider.

What we now have is loosened regulations on an oligopoly turning monopoly. We’ve said, surely they will behave and act in the consumer’s best interest. But in the short time since AMC removed all the real competition from Birmingham, we’ve seen them—arguably a sort of movie theater monopoly—institute their own manufactured inconvenience against consumers with their ticket line practices. Would I go to a theater that just lets me buy tickets normally? In a heartbeat, yes! Alas, there is no competing theater to visit. The Internet is just one way consumers are being taken to the cleaners. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is one of the agencies Trump wants to gut. It’s needless, right? All it does is promote fairness and transparency for mortgages, credit cards and other consumer financial products and services. Who could possibly benefit from all that?

You’ve probably seen many popular websites unify against the repeal of net neutrality. Some helped connect constituents to their representatives in congress. And you might be confused by some of their actions. It makes sense for Wikipedia to be in favor of net neutrality. They are a little company asking for donations once a year to keep the servers up and running. They can’t afford a fast lane. But why are Google and Facebook for it? Well, big businesses normally prefer regulation; it insulates them from competition. So if regulation is drying up, how do they stand to benefit? Maybe we should be looking at where their lobbying money is being tossed around in Washington. That should tell a more complete story.

I do know that companies like Google and Facebook make a lot of money by selling their user’s data. And part of what the FCC has done is to allow ISPs to sell their own customer’s Internet usage data. That doesn’t bode well. Facebook gets just a snapshot of their user’s data when people frequent their social network. Google is in the same boat. But an ISP gets the full picture of all your traffic. They see every website. Which data set is more valuable, the snapshot or the full picture? Now Facebook, who doesn’t charge for their service and can’t pass along the price of delivering their site on a “fast lane,” is also looking at their data being less valuable in a market where ISPs can sell your data too. I guess Facebook will need to increase the number of ads we see between actual relevant posts. If net neutrality continues on this path, I would expect Facebook’s stock to take a major hit.

I believe we are suffering at the hands of a broadband monopoly. I believe they have lobbied for and bought a lot of seats in congress and other government agencies. I believe without net neutrality the Internet and its users will suffer. Fair competition will suffer. Small businesses will suffer. What little net neutrality we had was a stop gap measure anyways. It was (and continues to be) agency enforced under the climate of the current political party in power. Obama-era politics were only good for a couple years of protection for the Internet at the FCC. They should have been working towards real, meaningful legislation, but the Internet is a very complex topic. It’s hard for elected officials to wrap their heads around it. Power, water, transport—those are much more understandable. It’s easier to wrap your head around the campaign money coming from broadband companies, than it is to try to understand where monopolies meet Internet infrastructure.

We are in for a legal storm in the near future as the fate of the Internet is battled. I’d encourage you to fervently continue to tell your representatives that you are for net neutrality. Over 83% of people were for it when the FCC subverted the will of the people. But Ajit Pai was appointed by the President, not the people. The FCC is a government agency with congressional oversight, not congress itself. When the issue comes to the floor in congress, hopefully they will better listen to the people.