[governance] a reality check on economics

Sun May 20 05:45:39 EDT 2012

I would look at EC from a developing country angle and in that space,
I want domestic environment, local companies and local social services
to evolve, not the opposite where EC enables a handful to gain market
economy control and only gets the giants more cushion and more space
to play through enabling polices that take a hit on local
opportunities, that should originally be exploited by local citizenry.

And not to forget all the ranting when google was provoked to wind up
business in China due to whatever circumstances whereas the Chinese
market is dominated by a well regulated locally built search engine
Baidu. I would still want to see Baidu lead because its local and that
matters. I believe giving up all matters in the hands of unilateralism
and allowing it to define all possible regulation is no more possible.
The Internet cannot be left to free markets because free markets are
being dominated by a few.

In Pakistan, we can live without facebook and google but a large
number of knowledge workers would get affected (though mostly
spammers) but at the same time we would become locally viable, able
and develop a more localized and more Pakistani environment friendly
set of online services heavily populated by our citizenry, run by
them, giving the local economy a boost with more social confidence. We
would have more innovative opportunities, our own online technology
news services and less pinching and leeching by multinationals on our
governance mechanisms.

All the services mentioned like facebook, twitter etc (we do not have
ebay or paypal) hardly account for 4% of the total population of
Pakistan, what the heck. all those that mention these as if things are
coming to an end if we didn't have facebook or google ...I usually
refer to this as OMG Activism with the sky is gonna crash because of
abc or xyz!

What I as a citizen would be more concerned about is how DPI is being
carried out on my mobile and Internet communications and for what
purpose, who has access to this and why and what kind of privacy laws
and frameworks are in place? What does the illiterate and corrupt
police or investigator do with it and how do authorities without any
capacity building use it against the citizenry. Sometimes this OMG
Activism that just blurs out the real issues is a pain in the back and
causes many of our policy advocacy efforts to shoot off in all the
wrong directions.

I would even advise many to revisit the situations in their countries
and stick to them because some groups out there are trying to babysit
issues that are even not issues and only a handful few sitting on
virtually everything called critical internet resources know about it
and beat the drums chanting their OMG Activism slogans whereas are
always the major cashers of any event.

The very first issue in my country is that we are being denied high
speed Internet whereas we have both the capacity, resources and
networks to support it. We are missing IXPs. We do not have regulatory
frameworks in place for online activity. I really don't bother about
facebooks and googles and all the companies. We have over 5 brands in
the market for any kind of equipment, one or two us and the others
mostly China or Asia-Pacific based and I haven't bought a single us
based product except a shoe that was for medical reasons and
non-Internet-technology!

Who gives a hoot for something we in our countries and developing
world don't even bother about. Do you think we trust any of these
companies with any of our personal information, we don't and never
have and never will but i like to put online all the advocacy related
information so that they know they have 'real' concerns.

Just a small note, most of the OMG Activism is financially supported
by such companies ;oP because they do get in touch with many of us
here and on over policy issues and activism against govts and usually
fund and pump money for such activities through some interesting ways.

-- Foodafied!

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 9:10 AM, Guru गुरु <Guru at itforchange.net> wrote:
> Milton
>
> The first problem of your 'reality check on economics' is that it is
> basically extreme neo-liberal economic thinking-  let markets decide, least
> regulation is the best. The deregulation (repeal of glass-steagall for
> instance) as well as inadequate regulation of the financial markets is
> accepted as an important cause of the crash of the financial markets - and
> unfortunately while some sections of society made billions, the costs are
> being borne by others, most of who had no connection with the causes. In the
> case of the Internet, which is a global phenomenon, we have no meaningful /
> democratic global regulation structures/processes yet. Which given the huge
> concentration of power is a dangerous situation and one which is no longer
> tenable. American regulation should not take the place of global regulation
> (remember wikileaks and paypal etc etc which is one of the cases the joint
> civil society statement/ background note highlights). And here I am quite
> aware of your concerns about American domination as well... (one point of
> agreement!!).
>
> Your text book definition of monopoly is not useful or relevant in this
> debate - if you believe that the large transnational IT corporates do not
> have huge market power (and use it to their advantage) then your ideology is
> clouding your vision of reality. Can I seriously not use google search
> engine or facebook? have you bought a computer where the manufacturer agreed
> to debundle windows operating system? what is my negotiating power as a
> consumer vis-a-vis these companies. Most of us blindly click on the 'I
> accept' button to become users, what is the inference from this for the
> relative power of the corporate and consumer?  And where we dont have
> monopolies in many cases we have oligopolies, this makes your belief of
> perfect competition in free markets a myth.
>
> Neoliberal economics (aka market fundamentalism) is discredited and a
> failure and is no answer to our challenges in IG - it is infact the
> problem...
>
> This does not mean (and sometimes you are eager to make this conclusion)
> that IT for Change is for the other extreme - Socialism or complete
> government control over the markets. I don't think anyone is making that
> argument. So your point about the failure of publicly funded search engines
> is superfluous.
>
> As economists agree, we are all mixed economies and we need to find the
> truth somewhere in between.  The Internet itself gives us some new powerful
> methods for framing the processes for such regulation / policy making and
> while we debate the best way global democracy can be furthered, laissez
> faire is no option, and harmful as a governmental take-over of the Internet.
>
> regards,
> Guru
>
>
>
> On 17/05/12 20:35, Milton L Mueller wrote:
>
> The “geopolitical influence” of the US and Europe is quite different, since
> all major Internet corporations –in fact monopolies in their respective
> domain- are American : Google, Cisco, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, e-Bay …
>  Nowhere in the APC statement these monopolies are addressed despite the
> strong links they have with Internet governance.
>
> [Milton L Mueller] The dialogue on enhanced cooperation is becoming polluted
> with simplistic and inaccurate economic nostrums.
>
> May I request that the word “monopoly” be used with at least some attention
> paid to its actual meaning?
>
> From the MIT Dictionary of Economics: “a firm is a monopoly if it is the
> only supplier of a homogenous product for which there are no substitutes and
> many buyers.” This definition can be made less restrictive by relaxing the
> assumption that there are no substitutes, to include imperfect substitutes.
>
> But even so, none of the firms cited above are monopolies. None. Some have
> varying degrees of market power in specific sectors, but none are close to
> being _global_ monopolies. Apple, for example, does not even surpass Samsung
> in its share of smartphones.
>
> I am also curious to know what is going on when people group the regulation
> of equipment manufacturers (Apple, Cisco) under the rubric of “internet
> governance.” Same for computer operating systems.
>
> Moreover, I wonder whether the people who think UN-based institutions are an
> appropriate response to market power in the ICT sector have done their
> homework. There are powerful, well-resourced antitrust and economic
> regulatory agencies in the U.S., Europe, and various other countries in
> Latin America, Asia and elsewhere. The operate under specific laws, not
> under a theory of resentment (that’s a good thing), laws which have evolved
> for decades and which have established precedents and bodies of research
> behind them regarding the nature of market power, the impact of regulation
> and antitrust intervention on innovation and consumer welfare, etc.
>
> Moreover, it’s not like these firms are running amok. There have been in the
> recent past, or currently are underway, serious tangles with Microsoft,
> Intel, Google, Apple, and Facebook on various issues involving their market
> power* - by antitrust authorities, privacy regulators and consumer
> protection regulators. Have our agitators made a case that these entities
> are incapable of doing their jobs? If so, how would the political economy of
> regulating big business improve at the global level – or would it get worse?
>
> Is the absence of European companies in the list of globally competitive
> firms, Mssr. Fullsack, due to some cosmic injustice, or simply to the
> over-regulated, protectionist, nationalist structure of European Internet
> and ICT markets, which does not produce globally competitive firms? Why is
> it that tens of millions in subsidies for a European search engine haven’t
> produced anything? Might it be because consumers decide for themselves what
> is a better service and that people don’t care much whether a service
> provider is American, European or Chinese as long as they can use their own
> language?
>
> Could there be some serious engagement with these issues and, perhaps, a
> little more knowledge and a lot less populism? The idea that some vague
> notion of “governance” is going to save us from any and every problem in the
> internet economy sounds to me like the fulminations of wannabe politicians
> seeking power for themselves and not interested in actually solving
> problems.
>
> (*Note the absence of Cisco from that list – the equipment mfring biz is
> highly competitive and Cisco is declining in market share, flat in revenue,
> and considered “on the ropes” by stock investors for the past 2 years).
> Huawei, on the other hand…
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Regards.
--------------------------
Fouad Bajwa
ICT4D and Internet Governance Advisor
My Blog: Internet's Governance: http://internetsgovernance.blogspot.com/
Follow my Tweets: http://twitter.com/fouadbajwa

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