[governance] Letter to Rod Beckstrom

[Milton L Mueller]

Lee:
Burst out laughing and the characterization of Carter as "left of center" and probably many Europeans did too. Yeah, and Obama's a commie, too.
OK, if you want to call the sort of economic and social liberalism that he (and I) represent left of center that's fine with me, but it sure isn't what I was dissing. 
More importantly, Carter's political initiatives followed 20 years of intellectual development by the law and economics school (Coase, Milton Friedman, etc.) and represents exactly the kind of "neoliberalism" that the real left loves to diss. 
________________________________________
From: Lee W McKnight
Sent: Sunday, September 20, 2009 8:54 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Milton L Mueller; Meryem Marzouki
Subject: RE: [governance] Letter to Rod Beckstrom

Hi,

First, to correct my colleague Milton's historical inaccuracy: deregulation in US got its start under Nobel Peace Prize-winning/global social activist President Jimmy Carter.

Who appointed an academic to dismantle a traditional regulatory regime. Carter in US politics is left of center.

Ok Carter got all the accolades long after his Presidency, point is a liberal democrat got late 21st Century capitalist reform ball rolling, initially through airlines, before it got to telecoms. If we went around the world we could find many other examples where left of center parties did the heavy lifting for regulatory reform, even if the poster children for many may be Reagan and Thatcher, who get too much credit- or blame -  for what Carter started. ; )

Second, re ICANN as an institution, there I do agree with Milton and Bertrand and others that it is (an institution); and that it is worth our collective effort in fixing it, bit by bit; even if I only periodically have time to wade into its murky waters myself.

At its TCP/IP protocol core, the Internet is public, and was enfused from day one with a -dare I say it - socialist, anti-private property view - of itself. It's all about network sharing after all.  On an explicitly non-proprietary basis. OK lots of cool things have been added on, from many individuals and companies. But still.

ICANN was created, essentially, as a global NGO to keep the Internet that way (non-proprietary, serving the global public interest) just as it says in its charter as Bertrand reminds us.  The fact that a high-minded institution has been a victim of regulatory capture from birth is, well, just a fact. It doesn't mean it can never do better, and in many ways it has incrementally improved.

Even if the public 'up yours' to civil society recently delivered from ICANN's staff and board to all of us in civil society reminds us that....we're not dealing with Jimmy Carter here.

I don't disagree with Meryem and Anja that states (and of course civil society) matter too, just that Milton, in spite of his dissing of Carter and everyone left of center, has a point re ICANN.

The institution of the Internet.

Lee




________________________________________
From: Milton L Mueller [mueller at syr.edu]
Sent: Sunday, September 20, 2009 5:08 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Meryem Marzouki
Subject: RE: [governance] Letter to Rod Beckstrom

> don't tell us that policies favoring social justice imply the
> soviets. True, they imply that a market economy shouldn't be a jungle
> of uncontrolled economic liberalism.

Ah, but you make the same mistake, only more so. You assume that economic liberalism means no social obligations and no nothing. And you're more stuck in this than I am. (And please don't lecture me about universal service obligations in a liberalized environment - I literally wrote the book on that.)

The point is that the dismantling of telephone monopolies was done to promote economic liberalism, and often it meant scaling back or even rejecting certain forms of social "justice" regulation or, at least, choosing to try to achieve the same ends through means that were more efficient and impinged less on economic freedom. And as a result we got a positive sum game in which there was far more growth and far lower prices and more diversity and many other benefits to the public, most of which were _not_ produced by regulatory obligations but some of which were. And it is a historical fact that the impetus to do this did not come from the left, and never would have come from the left; typically the left gets in the way of such changes because of its dedication to static social redistributive bargains and its endemic hostility to markets in any form.

But, if you are saying that you favor expanding and harnessing economic liberalism as long as some basic social obligations can be taken care of then we will have very little to argue about. Somehow, we keep arguing at a more fundamental level so I think that's not what you are saying. ;-)

--MM

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