[governance] IGF review

[Michael Gurstein]

Milton,

Basically your polemic comes down to -- only market based competition
"creates wealth" -- and only wealth (i.e. investment) created in this way
can provide the financial resources for infrastructure, enabling education
and social programs etc.etc.

Good question, but where exactly are the trillions of dollars coming from
that are being used to patch over the gaping chasms that an irresponsible
and ultimately totally irrational faith in the unfettered market has
subjected on the world...

One day there wasn't enough money to fill up a $100 mil deficit in the World
Food Program and the next day, hey presto, the Fed and the BIS and the IMF
or whoever can conjure up more money than has ever existed anywhere out of
nothing to respond to some significant shortfalls in the spreadsheets of
some totally utterly irresponsible bankers and other hangers on...

If we are learning anything from the current global crisis it is that
conventional i.e. free market/libertarian economics is a belief system like
a lot of other belief systems and probably one that has rather less
correspondence with reality than most.

Where the money would come from, to answer your question, it would/could be
created by policy fiat like all the rest only in this case it would serve
rather more of a productive purpose than for example tossing it into pots to
give million dollar bonues to "incentivize" folks to "solve" the problems
that they were responsible for creating in the first place.

MBG

-----Original Message-----
From: Milton L Mueller [mailto:mueller at syr.edu] 
Sent: Monday, May 25, 2009 1:06 PM
To: 'Michael Gurstein'; 'McTim'; governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: RE: [governance] IGF review



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Gurstein [mailto:gurstein at gmail.com]
> 
> Ah Milton, the blind faith in the "trickle down" canard...

Michael. I can caricature people with the best of them. So you may as well
try to engage with different viewpoints seriously, rather than dismissively,
if only for self-protection purposes. 

> Reality check--reducing the cost of Internet access from $50/mon. to 
> $30/mon. has little impact on those whose entire earnings are $30/mon.

Indeed. And this proves what, exactly? 

If I can make any sense of your position, all you are proposing is that
wealth be transferred to deliver service to people who can't afford its real
cost. I say, fine, as an ameliorative measure, and it will and should happen
insofar as a country can afford it. What you refuse to face is the issue of
what a country can afford. How does a society gain the wealth to help
people? Who will build the bulk of a society's infrastructure on a
long-term, self-sustaining basis? Ameliorative measures are no substitute
for the wealth-creating drivers of an entire economy. Government-sponsored
wealth transfers can't happen until there is wealth there to transfer.

Few government subsidy programs create wealth, they mostly redistribute it;
and even then they have a budget constraint. They can't give everyone the
benefits they want without taking the money to do it from someone else. To
spend money on telecom service subsidies they have to not fund something
else, and/or take more income away from people. (You do believe in budget
constraints don't you? or do you think that capitalists just made that all
up to prevent people from getting good things, out of the inherent meanness
in their hearts?) How high should taxes be raised, Michael, to fund your pet
projects at your desired level? (If you actually talk to the rural poor in
the same developing countries I have visited you will find them complaining
about the level of taxation.) What other do-gooder's pet projects won't get
funded if yours are funded? It's all well and good to appear deeply
committed to the eradication of poverty by asserting that all poor people
should have things regardless of cost (even as you live in upper class
conditions in a first-world country), but unless you can answer the hard
trade-off questions it's little more than posturing. 

Are you asserting that an entire country's infrastructure is going to be
built through static wealth transfers outside a market regime? If so, we
part company. I suggest you take a look at a simple statistical comparison
of penetration rates in countries with and without competition and
liberalization. The disparities you speak of have gotten much, much better
in the last 20 years, not worse as you assert. No, a liberalized market
doesn't instantly deliver 100 Mb broadband to every African village. But
it's gotten mobile service far, far deeper into those territories than the
state monopoly ever did. Plus, I just have trouble grokking the logic behind
an assertion that a policy is bad because it doesn't instantly rain down
benefits that cost $50 a month on people who can only pay $10 a month. A
policy that quadruples the level of access in a country in a decade is a
pretty damn good policy. Unless you believe that no one should get anything
unless everyone has it. 

Services and infrastructures COST MONEY to deliver, Michael, and unless you
have some new method of generating the financial, physical and human
resources to build them, you aren't helping much. 



> Providing an appropriate physical/social/economic (and stable profit) 
> environment so that those who have sufficient income to pay $30/mon. 
> for the Internet can have the opportunity to use their earnings and
> spend it in this
> way, in many instances takes a very very large proportion of 
> the "addiitonal
> revenues and economic benefits" that these investments 
> generate...hence the
> closing of the loop as can be seen in the accelerating 
> disparities between
> the impoverished areas both rural and urban and the enclaves 
> of high tech
> First World glitter in many bi-modal economies/societies 
> (such as South
> Africa) (and yes there is advance in income and well-being among the
> majority population in South Africa for example, but the 
> disparities -- to a
> considerable degree fueled by technology -- are growing even faster.
> 
> It's not the absence of competition among telecom providers
> that prevents
> people earning $30/mon from getting Internet access it is the 
> fact that they
> are earning $30/mon and they have little means to improve 
> their positions in
> the absence of directed public policy in support of those 
> developments.
> 
> My earlier point though which is rather different is that in
> the absence of
> a whole range of publicly supported (whether by funding or 
> policy or some
> combination of both) institutional mechanisms--training, 
> public access,
> appropriate content development, appropriate service design 
> and so on--a
> community informatics--the simple introduction of "competition" has no
> chance to "trickle down" since no useable "trickle path" 
> exists between the
> benefits "fountainhead" and the end user "stand pump"... 
> 
> MBG
> 
> Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
> Director: Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and 
> Training Vancouver, CANADA and Cape Town, SA 
> http://www.communityinformatics.net
> CA tel. +1-604-602-0624
> SA cell
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Milton L Mueller [mailto:mueller at syr.edu]
> Sent: Monday, May 25, 2009 7:47 AM
> To: 'McTim'; governance at lists.cpsr.org; Michael Gurstein
> Subject: RE: [governance] IGF review
> 
> When the costs of something -- anything -- are pushed down by
> competition
> and technical innovation, everyone benefits (except perhaps those who
> operated monopolies built around higher-cost system). So if 
> it once was too
> expensive to build facilities into poorer areas, then cost reductions
> obviously especially benefit those with less money or those whose
> geographical situation creates higher costs. So I reject absolutely
> Gurstein's assertion that liberalization creates a zero-sum game which
> benefits only the already-wealthy. Furthermore, I also challenge his
> assertion that liberalization and a thriving market reduces the
> opportunities for public intervention. Insofar as those 
> strategies succeed
> in generating additional revenues and economic benefit, there 
> is more wealth
> to be redistributed via public intervention, and if there is 
> no wealth,
> there is nothing to redistribute. Liberalization of telecom is often
> associated with the reform and restructuring of universal 
> service programs,
> making them more targeted and efficient, and generating more 
> revenues which
> can be used to ameliorate poverty. 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: McTim [mailto:dogwallah at gmail.com]
> > Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2009 4:10 PM
> > To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Michael Gurstein
> > Cc: Milton L Mueller
> > Subject: Re: [governance] IGF review
> > 
> > On 5/24/09, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >  Milton,
> > >
> > >  There is in many (most?) cases no direct (and arguably
> little or no
> > >  indirect) connection between the "most developed
> > infrastructure" or "the
> > >  strongest content industries" and "development"--certainly
> > among the poorest
> > >  and the least developed populations...
> > >
> > >  There are in many cases statistical associations because
> > infrastructure and
> > >  content industries support economic and social advance
> > among the alteady
> > >  developed sections of those societies, but the reality is
> > very different on
> > >  the ground as can be seen quite directly for example in
> > India where highly
> > >  sophisticated inftrastructure/content development has had
> > little or no
> > >  impact on the bulk of the rural population.
> > >
> > >  I'm now somewhat familiar with the situation for example
> > in South Africa
> > >  where further liberalization whether of infrastructure or
> > of content is
> > >  likely in fact to be an impediment to development by
> > restricting the
> > >  opportunities for public sector intervention precisely
> to support
> > > development among the 85% of the population which is currently not 
> > > effectively engaged with/enabled by the quite advanced
> > infrastructure and
> > >  content industries in that country.
> > >
> > >  Whether the State or not for profits would or could do any
> > better is not
> > >  something I want to argue in this context, but at least as
> > I see the SA
> > >  situation for example, further liberalization (i.e. more
> > competition) will
> > >  lead to a reduction in cost for the already connected and
> > have virtually no
> > >  effect on the not connected.
> > 
> > hmm,  this project (in SA, but supported by a variety of folk
> > worldwide) might prove you wrong.
> > 
> > http://www.villagetelco.org/2009/05/first-phone-call-on-mp-arc
> hitecture/
> > 
> > and an early implementation of it:
> > 
> > http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/our-work/blogs/yabba-dabba-do
> > 
> > and Telkom complained to the regulator that Dabba was "interfering"
> > with their service and had ICASA confiscate their kit.
> > 
> > I for one would applaud "restricting the opportunities for public
> > sector intervention", if by public sector you mean Telkom SA!
> > 
> > My original point in this thread was that African CS can
> actually DO
> > something instead of just talking about doing something (at
> the IGF).
> > 
> > --
> > Cheers,
> > 
> > McTim
> > =
> 
> 

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