[governance] A Wave of the Watch List, and Speech Disappears

[KovenRonald at aol.com]

Wolfgang, Milton Mueller spoke of a "jurisdiction." 

My dictionary defines that as 1. a legal power to hear and make 
determinations of cases, 2 . an authority or sovereign power to govern, control or 
legislate, 3. a sphere of authority.

And Milton speaks of a "global jurisdiction."

What could that possibly be but an international court, if not an authority 
to govern on a global scale?

There's no way any of that could be anything but governmental.

Civil society people have fallen into a kind of anarchists' mentality in 
which they imagine they can escape the authority of governments. It's playing with 
fire because it just won't happen. What will happen is governmental or 
intergovernmental assertions of authority -- jurisdiction, if you will. And Milton 
Mueller is willy-nilly helping to create a conceptual framework for such 
authority to be asserted.

I reckpon that a multi-stakeholder authority is bound to turn into a 
mechanism in which non-governmental elements are simpy coopted into legitimizing 
governmental authority. It's a little like all the self-regulatory bodies 
privatized executors of governmental functions. And then there's the the latest 
approach, less than a decade old, of co-regulation. That's when distinctions between 
private and public break down completely, and non-governmental elements join 
up with governments. That used to be called corporatism, the political theory 
of Italian-style fascism.

A little realism is called for. Messy disorderliness allows freedom in the 
interstices. Attempts to create order lead straight to assertions of authority. 
It's unlikely to be the authority of civil society colleagues who share one's 
values. It will more likely be the policeman's esthetic sense of what 
constitutes order -- nothing allowed out of line. I would   have thought that you, 
Wolfgang, would be amongst the first to understand how that is likely to work. 

The libertarian approach must include a fine sense of when to leave well 
enough alone. Probably the worst outcome for Milton would be that he actually gets 
what he says he wants.

Regards, Rony


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