For a commercial, content producers, the model is "sender pays" which makes sense. That's why hosting companies buy transit from Level3, Cogent, etc. They're paying to send.

What's happened is that Netflix has already paid to send, and ISP customers have already paid to receive, and ISPs have said "yeah that's fine, but if you REALLY want to send, you're going to have to pay AGAIN"

That's the sticking point.

Nobody's arguing that anyone should get a free ability to send, or a free ability to receive. All traffic is generally double billed, once for the sender's connection and once for the receiver's connection.

The "innovation" here is that some ISPs have decided that SOME traffic should be TRIPLE billed. Once at the sender, once at the receiver, and a third time when it crosses from the sender's network to the receiver's network.

Why, if triple billing is OK, should only the consumer ISPs be allowed to do it? Why doesn't Cogent or Level3 charge consumer ISPs extra for receiving more than they're sending? Under the consumer ISPs model of "receiver pays" it would be entirely reasonable for Cogent or Level3 to charge extra, wouldn't it?

You're basically arguing that the way consumer ISPs handle this is acceptable. OK. Why isn't the exact opposite also acceptable? It's not as though most consumer ISPs have a global transit network! They're the ones that desperately need more download than upload to satisfy their highly asymmetrically provisioned customer connections, right?

Ultimately the problem here is that there are several analytical frameworks that one can use to decide who is the asshole here and who is the saint.

Given that I'm held captive by my consumer ISP and have a fair amount of choice over what content I subscribe to, I'm more inclined to believe that the consumer ISPs are abusing their power over the content providers. I don't have pleasant interactions with them basically ever so I can't see why I would extend them the benefit of the doubt.