[governance] Principles

[Karl Auerbach]

On 10/01/2012 12:52 AM, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:

> Multistakeholderism *IS* the highest form of participatory democracy

I rather take a rather different position, which is that stakeholderism
is oligarchy and not democratic at all.

I remind people of my paper of several years ago - "Stakeholderism - The
Wrong Road For Internet Governance" - at
http://www.cavebear.com/archive/rw/igf-democracy-in-internet-governance.pdf

Stakeholderism assigns one, and often more, voices to those who have
"stake", typically measured in financial terms.

That means that some speakers, those with "stake" get to speak louder
than others.  Indeed often those with "stake" exclude those without from
the fora and processes of decision-making.

Do we really want a system of internet governance based on the long
discarded notion that there is a hierarchy among people of "stake"; that
there is a kind of royal rank and nobility, that makes some people more
worthy than others to govern the internet?

The rule should be one person, one vote, no more, no less.

Each individual human should be the atomic unit of internet governance,
not how much money that person has, how he/she has invested that money,
which corporations he/she is affiliated with, or whether he/she owns
trademarks or intellectual property.

I have no problem with exercising democracy via representatives.  But I
do have a problem with systems that give different or additional tickets
of admission to some and smaller tickets, or no tickets at all, to others.

The list of bodies of governance that have sold their souls to those who
have "stake" and have thus become captives of those who they have so
designated is a list that runs from A to Z.  It is not a list of
successes; it is a list of failures.

Anyone who has a "stake" is free to express his/her views - as a person
- and cast his/her votes - as a person - along with everyone else, with
equality.  But to give that person an additional or louder voice - no.

	--karl--


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