[governance] Aspen

[Norbert Bollow]

John Curran <jcurran at istaff.org> wrote:
> On Jul 20, 2012, at 3:23 PM, Norbert Bollow wrote:
>
>>> https://techpolicyinstitute.org/aspen2012/agenda
>>
>> Hmm somehow the point should be made that a government which
>> attends one-sided events like this with a strong overemphasis on
>> industry perspectives is doing something wrong.
>
>Norbert -
>
>  Could you elaborate some on your point above?

Well, looking at it from the perspective of the balance of interests
where on one side there are industry players and academics interested
in figuring out the degree and form of regulation that is best for
making industrial value creation (and profit creation) work as well as
possible, and on the other side there are advocates for what can be
described as "the public interest", or "consumer interests", or as
"protection of cultural, civil and privacy rights of individuals", I
don't see any representation of the latter set of perspectives.

I will freely admit I don't yet personally know any of the speakers on
the event's agenda, and I certainly don't want to claim that any of them
would personally lack a broader interest and appreciation of the
spiritual values of humanity. But on the whole, looking at this agenda,
I don't see how this event can fail to reinforce the very
/materialistic, industry interests focused, orientation of government
policy making/ which is still very strong in many governments including
the US government. (With the words "still very strong" I quite
intentionally imply that in my opinion this will have to change. In
today's world, this is simply not sustainable. In particular, I believe
that the civilization that we all value so much --which is based on
economic freedom constrained and supported by democratically decided
social principles-- will collapse before the end of this century if we
don't manage to get this bug fixed quickly enough, both with respect to
the financial system and with respect to Internet governance at the
application layer and the business monopolies layer.)

Now I don't want to suggest that the aspect of "spiritual values of
humanity" should be introduced into policy deliberations by inviting
representatives of organized religion. Quite on the contrary, I believe
that it is very good to have strong separation between church (and
other forms of organized religion) and the state. Lack of such
separation in my opinion does not lead to good public policy, but to
increased corruption of the church (or whatever other forms of organized
religion gain direct influence on public policy).

Rather I would suggest that the good path towards /public policy being
guided, to an appropriate extent, by values which are neither purely
materialistic nor ideological, but which can be appropriately referred
to as "spiritual values of humanity"/, is the following: To develop a
good set of general principles of action which are based on the
spiritual values, and to include in every public policy discussion
a strong emphasis on understanding how the principles relate to the
situation and policy questions at hand.

In fact there exists already a very broadly accepted, spiritual values
based, set of public policy principles: International human rights
law. I do not want to ideologically assert that this set of principles
is perfect (and I fact I would assert that any kind of ideology is a
hindrance to the kind of perspective that is needed), but I think that
public policy making for the Internet could be much improved by giving
this set of principles a very prominent role in all policy making
related discussions.

At the very least, I would say that government representatives should
avoid attending any and all policy deliberation events where the agenda
pretends that civil society advocacy for human rights and other
non-materialistic public interest concerns is simply not relevant.

>  I am sure that
>  there are countless one-sided meetings and conferences that
>  go on everyday (and very little that can be done to prevent
>  that without impact to the cherished principle of freedom of
>  association)

Of course everyone is free to organize one-sided meetings and
conferences.

What should be avoided is giving, through government participation,
such one-sided events a /de facto/ role in the public policy
development process. 

>  Isn't the defense against such influences to government and the
>  Internet found in: 1) Having processes for Internet governance
>  that are open, transparent, and inclusive, and

Yes, absolutely. What I'm criticizing is that some governments'
processes (for accepting information on which their public policy
development will be based) are open and inclusive only in a very
one-sided way!

> 2) Minimizing
>  the unilateral role of any one government in setting Internet
>  policy?

I think it cannot be avoided that every national government has a
strong unilateral role with respect to the respective country.

So I think that what is needed is to provide *every* government with
good, well-balanced information, that is appropriate as an input to the
national policy development processes. (That by the way is the goal
of the ECTF proposal.) 

Greetings,
Norbert


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