[governance] 'search neutrality' to go with net neutrality

[Roland Perry]

In message <4B46D0F8.101 at itforchange.net>, at 12:00:16 on Fri, 8 Jan 
2010, Parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> writes

>there is another ideology  opposed to this one which believes that 
>there is at present large scale social injustice which has to be 
>corrected by strong positive measures for social justice - which often 
>involves redistributive measures which you call as 'magic financial 
>crutch'.

Just to be clear, I was describing what I believe to be Margaret 
Thatcher's views, when she made her much misquoted statements about 
"society". That was many years ago, and I don't necessarily agree with 
the philosophy either then, or now. But I do feel that if you are going 
to criticise someone, the least you can do first is properly understand 
what it is you are criticising.

Meanwhile, I spend quite a lot of my time working for various charitable 
ventures which are in a very real sense "society's" manifestation of the 
philanthropic "Fairy Godmother", or to use your words "a redistributive 
measure". However, the donors in this case are giving voluntary, and 
it's matter of plain fact that many redistributive measures are forced 
unwillingly upon the wider public.

That's what "politicians in power" (or what we call "Government") spends 
much of its time doing. For example, Margaret Thatcher is famous for a 
failed attempt to redistribute local property taxation from a basis of 
per-dollar-value of your property to a per-adult-resident in the 
property.

>  I wonder how many people on this list would wish that governments got 
>themselves organised, and [attempted to] sort out all the perceived 
>ills   on the Internet, on the grounds that they believe the current 
>mechanisms   were failing their collective citizens?

Of course, I posed that rhetorical question because the overwhelming 
feeling I get from most lists like this is that Government intervention 
is not welcome when it comes particularly to meddling with content on 
the Internet (although some people are happier for Governments to 
intervene to break up large monopolistic infrastructure providers).
-- 
Roland Perry
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