AW: [governance] .xxx. igc and igf

[Karl Auerbach]

Lee McKnight wrote:

> Multi-stakeholder processes can be imperfect and can be captured, but
> I didn;t see the alternative you were preferring...

As for the alternative that I am suggesting:  Ultimately it comes down 
to natural, living, breathing people.

The "stakeholder" approach (which as you mention bears a rather strong 
semblance to the "corporatist" approach) measures power and authority in 
questions of governance on the basis of some arbitrary and highly 
subjective metric, usually the financial interest, of some aggregate body.

Virtually all of these bodies suffer from monomania - they focus upon 
and optimize one thing (usually their financial well being) to the 
exclusion of all other things.

Governance that admits such players, particularly to the exclusion of 
real people, tends to result in systems of governance that ultimately 
become nothing more than mutual trade protection pacts between the 
chosen players.

Now, all of those aggregate bodies are owned by natural people.  People 
are non (usually) monomaniacs.  Instead people make their own choices, 
balancing among all of their interests, many of which are non-economic 
in nature.

So I am suggesting that we return to the principles of governance that 
came about in the latter 1700's and that today form the basis of 
democratic (whether direct or representative) modern liberal, 
constitutional national governments.

By focusing on systems that make individual people the unit of authority 
we obtain a system of governance that is not only more stable but also 
more able to accommodate non-economic values.

Now I am not proposing a direct democracy for the internet.  And I 
recognize that people will aggregate.  I don't mind representative 
systems, or even recognizing that people often aggregate part of their 
interests for purposes of economic advantage into for-profit corporations.

What I am proposing is that when we discuss internet governance we 
carefully avoid presupposing what groups have what interests and, 
instead, recognize that the opinions and value of individual men and 
women will vary and that they will coalesce in different ways on 
different issues and that we should look to those individual men and 
women for the expression of opinion rather than presupposing that some 
aggregate entity speaks authoritatively and permanently on their behalf 
on all issues.

Thus, rather than recognizing, for example, a trademark body as a 
"stakeholder" that we construct systems of governance that look past the 
trademark body and measure the consensus or weight of opinion of the 
natural humans who stand behind that body - it may well be, for example, 
that when they come to weigh, for example, the privacy concerns of 
"whois" that some might value the safety of their children against 
predators above the protection of their trade and service marks.

If we look at ICANN we see the kind of disaster that has occurred, and 
continues to occur, because in its initial creation certain industrial 
segments were arbitrarily given preferred status as "stakeholders' and 
other segments, as well as the public at large, were left with a 
disadvantaged, indeed excluded, status.

		--karl--

____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance