[governance] Parminder's exchange with Bertrand

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 03/03/2010, at 3:56 PM, Parminder wrote:

> (2) Perhaps even more importantly, it is a wrong belief that reps of big business represent interests of 'free markets'. Faster we disabuse ourselves of this notion the better. They represent shareholder value - simple and clear, and would be as happy to get it through non-free monopolistic markets, as most big business often do, more so in digital arena, as from free markets.
> 
> Therefore the notion that big business should be present, in the huge mass and force that they are present in MS bodies, because they represents the ideal of 'free markets' is patently untenable. 

This much is very true, and a good argument as to why civil society must be empowered to participate equally in multi-stakeholder processes.  WIPO is a case in point, where most of the NGOs in consultative status are not NGOs at all, but trade associations.

> To that pragmatism I too agree and subscribe. But that should not preclude engaged social analysis of what MS systems in their actual operation often do. Also, I am quite sure that MS-ism has often been  presented on this list with the presumptuousness of it being 'a fundamentally new paradigm of governance'.

I don't disagree with you at all Parminder.

-- 
Jeremy Malcolm
Project Coordinator
Consumers International
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