[governance] China's next-generation internet is a world-beater - tech - 10 March 2013 - New Scientist

[Nick Ashton-Hart]

Dear Parminder, see below

-- 
Regards,

Nick

Sent from my one of my handheld thingies, please excuse typos. If you want
to schedule some time to talk, try this: http://meetme.so/nashton

On 13 Mar 2013, at 06:19, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:

I've snipped the rest to focus on this point, which seems (to me, clearly
others may see things differently) the most significant of your post.

Let's accept for the moment that what you say is a true statement. Why
would you see treaty-making as likely to counter these impacts, given the
scenario you posit? In fact, a treaty, in this case, would be likely to
cast in stone the very inequalities and dangers that you see.

Treaty-making, in my 20+ years of experience, is largely a codification of
existing practice, not an evolution to create a new global situation:
governments are simply unwilling to do much that changes their existing
legal system profoundly excepting very rarely and then only because of a
massive external threat or stress - which the negotiation is designed to
deal with.

What is happening at the larger social-structural level, and which I
consider as the greatest threat to democracy, is a clear move from public
governance, based on social contract, to private governance, based on
private, interest-based, contracts. And the shift is rather systemic. It is
obviously strongly supported, in fact instigated, by global capital which
finds the biggest challenge to its domination of all aspects of our lives
in the universal values of equity, fraternity and solidarity, that underlie
public governance systems.
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