That's a very disingenuous way of putting things.

Let's get all the actors in play here:

Netflix - The website/service you're trying to access

Level3 - Netflix's ISP

Version - Your ISP

You

So to get to Netflix you'er going through 2 different entities.

If you consider Level3 and Verizon to be on the same level ( after all, they're both ISPs), then your argument works the same way the other way around : Netflix is paying Level 3 for the connection between it and you, so why shouldn't Level 3 be responsible for this? Why is only Verizon responsible?

The second way of seeing things is that Verizon is responsible for the connection between you and Level3 (i.e. Level3 is a Verizon customer). Level3 wants to just plug in more cables to get better speeds on Verizon.... well who wouldn't expect to have to pay more for that?

In no situation is Level3 entitled to the maximum speed technically available to it for no cost. The counterpart to this is that it's Verizon's responsibility to offer reasonable pricing for upgrades (and not have content discrimination and conflicts of interest).

If Verizon offers the same pricing structure for backbone infrastructure to everyone who asks, it's hard to fault them on this. Level3 is in a particular position given the size of the traffic served.

But if I were a mailer for something like Amazon and were responsible for 35% of packages sent during a day (fake number), it's not like I could just ask FedEx to let me use more of its trucks and get higher priority for free.