[bestbits] [governance] Now business wants to lead policy making

[parminder]

On Thursday 12 May 2016 01:30 PM, Nick Ashton-Hart wrote:
> Dear Parminder, FWIW, he’s been saying this for about a year, and he keeps suggesting new intergovernmental fora where he’s going to bring this up but so far, I’ve not noticed anyone else taking this idea up.

Dear Nick

You will note from the news coverage of his announcement that he is
*not* at all suggesting a 'new intergovernmental fora', as you put it,
instead, he is calling for a 'business led multistakeholder platform'
for framing rules for global e-commerce.... He, or ecom business in
general, is of course welcome to submit any new ecom rules related
proposal to the WTO, or even call for an entirely new intergov body to
separately deal with global ecom... But if your key point was that no
one is taking him up on the idea, well, still idea is still strongly
backed enough for it to be discussed in the public sphere and people
give their opinion on it -- also remember Ma is  co-chair of the Net
Mundial Initiative, in which many people here have enthusiastically
participated... They for instance need to tell us what they think of
this proposal of business led public policy making, that Ma wants to
propose to G 20 later this year...

Now, what Jack Ma is calling for is the exact reification of the
language of equal footing multistakeholderism, even for public policy
decision making, that many people have be touting here - though never
clearly telling what and how of it. (Ma only takes it a clear one step
forward, from equal footing to business leading it, which, we all know
is always the meaning and intention of the so called equal footing MS
model)...  This is just the right opportunity for multistakeholderist
ideologues to clearly tell what they want and support and what not......
They cannot remain silent even now. They should either support Ma's
proposal as just the kind of thing they want, or say, no, this is not
what they have always asked for, and it is different in this and this
manner.

parminder
>
>> On 12 May 2016, at 09:35, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:
>>
>> A recent announcement by Alibaba's founder Jack Ma exposes what the real
>> intent, and the problem, with business led multistakeholderism is,
>> something a lot of people/ groups have perhaps innocently got into
>> supporting.... He proposes a new business led initiative to frame global
>> e-commerce rules, which would rival the WTO, which can keep making them
>> for offline trade.  And he is entirely serious, with Alibaba already
>> working with a number of groups and intending to present the proposal to
>> G 20 later this year.. To me it is a political shocker, but that is
>> where much of multistakholderism ideology is headed.
>>
>> I wrote an op-ed on this issue in yesterday's The Hindu, which is at
>> http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/a-borderless-economy-that-will-be-controlled/article8581476.ece
>>
>> We must re-assess what does unhinging of the role of legitimate
>> political actors in key public policy areas means. It just transfers
>> power to a few global corporates to runs our societies as a
>> corporatocracy. Many of our discussions here on mulitistakeholderism as
>> a sovereign political form need to be seen in this context.
>>
>> parminder
>>
>>
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