Local regulators can restrict pricing for the most basic cable offerings. But more extensive cable service is considered a discretionary good, and cable companies have wide latitude to price their offerings at whatever the market will bear, and offer whatever mix of channels they think best.

The downside is that it is easy to end up paying a few hundred dollars a month for cable service. The upside is that this state of affairs has a profusion of new channels and entertainment options. Whether your preference is for high-quality literary scripted television dramas, trashy-but-amusing reality shows or live sports from every corner of the world, you have more options available than ever before, both live and on demand. That is a genuine improvement over the state of Americans’ home entertainment options from just a generation ago.

All of which brings us to net neutrality and the Internet.

One theory of the case, and the one that the Obama administration embraced Monday, is that the Internet is like electricity. It is fundamental to the 21st century economy, as essential to functioning in modern society as electricity. It is a public utility. “We cannot allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas,” the president said in his written statement.

In the president’s logic, and that of the Internet content companies that are the most aggressive supporters of net neutrality, just as your electric utility has no say in how you use the electricity they sell you, the Internet should be a reliable way to access content produced by anyone, regardless of whether they have any special business arrangement with the utility.

Those arguing against net neutrality, most significantly the cable companies, say the Internet will be a richer experience if the profit motive applies, if they can negotiate deals with major content providers (the equivalent of cable channels) so that Netflix or Hulu or other streaming services that use huge bandwidth have to pay for the privilege.

The same kind of business model that has created a boom in content for cable television customers can create a more fertile environment for an explosion of creativity on the Internet, goes this logic.

It would also give your Internet provider considerably more economic leverage. It would, in the non-net-neutrality world, be free to throttle the speed with which you could access services that don’t pay up, or block sites entirely, as surely as you cannot watch a cable channel that your cable provider chooses not to offer (perhaps because of a dispute with the channel over fees).

Keep in mind, just because the Obama administration has weighed in doesn’t mean this debate is over. The decision, as the president’s own statement acknowledges, belongs to the Federal Communications Commission alone. Regardless of where it comes out, what is at play is a question that cuts to the core of what role the Internet will play in our daily lives.