IETF WAS Re: [governance] Enhanced Cooperation (was Re: reality check on economics)

[Avri Doria]

On 25 May 2012, at 01:35, michael gurstein wrote:

> Governments have enough problems formulating and implementing policy so as to accomplish what they are attempting to accomplish without subjecting the public to half baked ideas as a matter of principle.

What?  Governments are forever subjecting us to half baked ideas and calling them policy/law.

I really am pleased that now a few offices in a few governments are deciding to vet their ideas with the public first.  I prefer that the first time I see a half baked idea it is not as a law or regualtion I have to obey.

> 
> Quite honestly I can`t imagine how what you are suggesting would work in the real (non-technical) world, which is the reason I was so interested in how you envisaged this being actually practically implemented in an existing world of governmental or more specifically inter-governmental (or inter-governmental/multistakeholder) policy making.

I think I was pretty clear about how it would work.  I think we are back to the same old problem.  You think that the social issues are so much more complex and that people have a a greater diversity of views in IG than they do in Internet technology.  And this is just not the case as every technical issue also has its social components, its impact analysis and a myriad of ways in which it can be approached (tradeoffs) beyond the simple bits, bytes and framework definition language.

A good, but curmudgeony, friend of mine has questioned (off-list) whether these constant recursions of the oversight versus self-governed  discussion on the IGC aren't a waste of time.  I obviously don't think they are.  But whenever one of my friends has such an opinion, I search for the thread that will give me the clue to how we can both be right.  And as so often happens, found the thread in Ostrom's Governing the Commons and her explanation of self-organized and self governed CPR (common pool resources):

"
But until a theoretical explanation - based on human choice - for self organized and self governed enterprises is fully developed and accepted, major policy decisions will continue to be undertaken with a presumption that individuals cannot organize themselves and always need to be organized by external authorities
" (location 452 in the ebook)

And this brings me back to what convinces people.  While I was trained as philosopher, i came out as one of the absolute relativists - most all of the philosophers made sense given their perspective and situation within a cultural-political time and place and the only thing I could be sure was the relative truth of what they had to say, most any philosopher is convincing if you put yourself in their shoes or sandals.  I ended up working as an engineer for most of career, because I found I could believe in what could be built*.  And after 20+ years of working with structures like the IETF, I beleive I have pragmatically seen them work.  I have also seen how the principles and structures that are used in one area successfully can also be used successfully, with variation, in other situations**.  I have seen how IETF organizational tools can be used elsewhere to solve other organizational problems.  For me that historical precedent is enough to tell me that these tools are worth considering and experimenting with in the current IG problem area.

Other people, as Ostrom says, need a theoretical framework that convinces them. Some others need to see a complete and probable narrative for how it might work work out (i.e. the thought experiment style of investigation).  So while I say lets just get to work, gather a number of adequately inclined stakeholders into an open WG with a charter from the IGF and start working on the problem, instead of jawboning about what might or might not be possible.  This would not preclude others from searching out other solutions with other techniques, or theoreticians from coming up with the theory on what the perfect organizational structure for IG might be or thought experimentalists from thinking hard.

BTW some the references for the US*** process on consumer rights can be found at:

Policy stmt: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/privacy-final.pdf  lots of stuff in there on how they are organizing it
Moving forward by ntia: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/blog/2012/moving-forward-consumer-privacy-bill-rights
The request for comments (closed):  http://www.ntia.doc.gov/federal-register-notice/2012/multistakeholder-process-develop-consumer-data-privacy-codes-conduct 

avri

*  (So I guess I am a pragmatic absolute relativist)
** (ok so maybe I am a pragmatic absolute relativist who tends towards structuralism, for some definition of these terms)
*** yeah, yeah, the US is ... and nothing they say is ...  I know all of that and for some definition of ... have said it myself at time.
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