<div dir="ltr"><div><div>requests to end discussion about the nature of democracy in the name of democracy (or some successor form of meaningfully representative and human-rights-preserving form of governance) are more than a little ironic, given the centrality of discussion and debate to the justification for "free speech" that is supposed to be one of the most important pillars of democratic governance. <br><br></div>"neoliberal" IS a distressing repurposing of the word liberal and all it stands for, but this repurposing was done by the architects of neoliberalism, on purpose. (it refers to "liberalism" in the utilitarian constructions of writers like JS Mill, and to a lesser extent Locke and some others). it is not meant to refer to "liberal" politics today (UK Labour party, US Democratic party), or to a generally "liberal" outlook as that has come to be understood. It has a thick, thorough, detailed body of research explaining its history and its ideas, in particular in the work of Philip Mirowski, Dieter Plehwe, Jedidiah Purdy, David Harvey, and others (to say nothing of the work of those who coined the term and its surrounding concepts, like FA Hayek, L. von Mises, M. Friedman, and quite a few others). The doctrine they describe in these works is of great concern when one looks at the rhetoric and policy suggestions surrounding many of the ideas of MSism. I will be happy to provide more detailed references off-list (or on-list, if anybody wants that). <br><br></div>Distinctions between those who "do something" and those who "just want to talk"--those who have a "stake" (when we are talking about governance that affects everyone, implicitly and explicitly) and those who don't--are themselves a troubling part of the kinds of politics people like Mirowski analyze at great length, and they have a deep and disturbing political history. They are also rampant in discussions of technology today, especially among those in the industry. I believe they are deeply pernicious. <br><div><br> <br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 10:46 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:suresh@hserus.net" target="_blank">suresh@hserus.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<p style="margin:0 0 1em 0;color:black">I am absolutely glad to not
continue a discussion on these lines. On the ground and reasoned policy
discussions on this list get increasingly rare when terms like neo liberal
are bandied around, a distressing repurposing of the word liberal and all
that it stands for, but I digress.. <br>
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<p style="color:black;font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;margin:10pt 0">On
24 October 2014 10:30:01 am <a href="mailto:chaals@yandex-team.ru" target="_blank">chaals@yandex-team.ru</a> wrote:</p>
<blockquote type="cite" class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 0.75ex;border-left:1px solid #808080;padding-left:0.75ex"><div>Hi,</div><div> </div><div>This
by now pretty unedifying discussion about the finer theoretical points of
different approaches to democracy seems to have outlived its usefulness to
this group.</div><div> </div><div>It takes a certain kind of stubbornness
not to recognise that there are extremely serious limitations to the
capacity of a "multi-stakeholder approach" to be guaranteed to represent
all the people. But then, that pretty much follows from Arrow's theorem,
along with the fact that there are equally problems any other
approach.</div><div> </div><div>We could argue about whether the model
chosen for this group is the right one, if there were some alternative
proposal. Otherwise, I'd love to see discussions related to some concrete
proposal related to ensuring or improving the way that Internet governance
supports improved Human Rights.</div><div> </div><div>(Yes, this is also
what a "neo-liberal" would reply if they wanted to shut down a discussion
they found uncomfortable. Unfortunately, there is no a priori way to
determine whether my motivation is to spend my time doing useful stuff, or
to use any rhetorical trick available to further my hidden agenda. So I'll
just go with calling it like I see
it).</div><div> </div><div>cheers</div><div> </div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div>--</div><div>Charles
McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex<br><a href="mailto:chaals@yandex-team.ru" target="_blank">chaals@yandex-team.ru</a> - - - Find more at <a href="http://yandex.com" target="_blank">http://yandex.com</a></div><div> </div></font></span></blockquote>
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