[governance] who owns the new gTLDs?

[Riaz K Tayob]

CA

I rather like it because /it sounds like/ McTim is for specialisation in 
comparative advantage, as they use at the WTO - ACTA, NAFTA, etc - so it 
has the virtue of consistency. And also locates me, as a wannabe 
heterodox economist, in relation to what I discern as the market 
orientated McTim (I have to be careful because it seems like economic 
categorisations on this list are rather casually and oft inappropriately 
used, a matter I would like to avoid, since it is better to keep shut 
and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and leave no doubt).

The internet may be universal, but its institutional infrastructure, at 
CIR, is pretty much US based.

Now, if the US has the institutional framework, and the rest of the 
world must specialise in their comparative advantage, then it seems to 
operate much like the early British policy to the US - free trade in the 
name of comparative advantage was known by many USers as a policy so 
that the UK could continue to be the then workshop of the world, while 
the States would produce raw materials for the mother country.

It is no wonder there are often disagreements, as this relates to first 
principles. If one steps outside of the free markets pantheon, then it 
becomes clear that free trade type arguments have typically been 
deployed by those in the lead to prevent others from rising up. As the 
one US Congressman put it about free trade, the mantra they could not 
accept was, 'do as I say, not as I did'... and the British at the time 
were known to specialise in being rich while others specialised in being 
poor.

Now this argument may seem like a stretch, but theoretical felicity 
requires *intrasystemically* that the 'market' be characterised by large 
numbers of producers who are price takers, a case that is not the case 
in many levels of the CIR - which suffers from state 'interference'. And 
this is relevant because of the way the pragmatic (or ad hoc) deviations 
from the theoretical values basis, for instance inclusion of public 
interest clauses, are needed as comparators of the accomodation made. 
This is McTs pragmatism and realism. Which intimates he is more a 
neoliberal than a neoclassical; avoiding of course the entire point 
between philosophy and ideology and the relative merits of both which 
leave un-practical or un-technical people at a disadvantage. Of course 
one need not point out that too technical or natural science a view 
tends toward denying the fact that there is no objective Archimedean 
point in matters social.

In short, a market orientated approach is idealistic in its conception 
of the CIR and Internet as a market (confusing what is with what ought), 
and fails on its own terms. But as we see it has traction because these 
types of ideas are pragmatically mercantalist for those who currently 
hold the advantages.

What a tangled web we weave...

Riaz


On 2013/03/05 03:54 AM, Carlos A. Afonso wrote:
> Now this is a terrible comparison -- brie is French, the Internet the 
> last time I looked is universal... Calm down, McTim :)
>
> --c.a. 

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