What if there were a set of rules that all electrical utilities were required to follow that prevented them from treating your electricity usage differently based on the devices that you had plugged into the outlets within your home?

What if it were technically possible for the utility to know that you have an LG television rather than a Samsung and charge you differently for having one versus another?

Keurig Coffee Maker? That’ll be an extra $5 / month. WeMo switches — $2 / month each please. Electric car? Fugetaboutit!

What’s worse, what if they reduced the voltage/amps/watts of the electricity to some of those devices because they weren’t made by companies that partner with the utility? Ohhhh, you have a Nintendo Switch? Yeah sorry, Microsoft pays us a lot of money to have electricity distribution priority… try playing your Switch again in 12 hours when your Open & Free Electric credit allowance refreshes.

Sounds crazy right? Who in the hell would want to consume electricity this way? What type of person would want to implement such a model? But yet here we are watching that exact scenario unfold live in front of our eyes with the impending repeal of Net Neutrality rules next week.

On December 14th, led by Ajit Pai (former Verizon lawyer and recently crowned “Most Punchable Face” by EVERYONE), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will likely vote to repeal net neutrality rules — the protections in place that prevent Internet Service Providers (or ISPs — Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, et al.) from influencing how you use the internet.

For example, these protections prevent ISPs like Comcast from slowing down traffic to competing entertainment services like Netflix and Hulu in an effort to stop people from “cutting the cord”.

It also prevents a seriously fucked up, not too distant world, where web services are packaged up and sold to us like television stations. Allow me to illustrate the concept — I recently received the following in the mail from Comcast whom I use for my broadband internet access: