[governance] The danger of blindly trusting the technocrats

[Riaz Tayob]

Glad you checked on this. No, to answer your question, quite the opposite.
As a democrat (not in the US party sense) I believe in the reality of
choice and in using the democratic means to accomplish these aims. A free
trade, laissez faire, libertarian or neoclassical view essentially is leave
things to the market, self interest will manage things. Taken to its own
logical end, it is passivity as a strategy. On the other hand there are
those that recognise that self interest is continengent, markets also are
political, and that where things "work" they should be left to the market
(as cell phone deployment in Africa attests - albeit not with the same
understandings that Milton has of this process, as it was oligopolistic
rather than pure competition as created by the state to manage destructive
competition). Activism coupled with idealism. Yes, this does go to first
principles and how it shapes the discourse, hence the frequent
disagreements because of initial starting points in the analysis. In short,
democrats believe in the reality of choice and the need to shape our
environment to ensure benefits and minimisation of social costs.

And on your specific reading of the Borg and futility and US activists
participation in civil society:

1. I frequently post matters by American civil society where there is
confluence of values, eg EFF, ACLU, etc. Hence I cannot understand how you
get to the "conclusions" you do... but it is an intimation of how you
approach issues and I will bear that in mind that this is the interpretive
framework applied, and here is where I need to be more sensitive so as to
preclude such interpretations. But like you, I also find this tedious.

2. The critical stance taken by me and imho is interpreted as
anti-corporate or anti-American is under a very peculiar definition of
anti-corporatism or anti-Americanism. As my history of posts will bear out,
in the interests of discussions and engagement, I was happy to be
anti-American based on the definition used by some on the list, a
definition that is at best platitudinous or valid from a particular
sensibility. But in these engagements the substance of the matter gets
lost, even if a counterargument is put forth. It has been repeatedly said
(and the record will bear me out) that corporate interests are valid, they
should participate, but it is contingent if private vested interest shares
the same interest as public interest (making money is reason enough, but
not always). The fact that we have to repeatedly deal with this accusation
is perhaps more akin to reasons in 1 above so I will not go into that.
Reason I can deal with, win or loose, but I am not going to look for
needles in the hay stack.

3. And it is hard to reconcile your penultimate sentence with the final
one, but happy to engage.


On 28 May 2013 09:28, Avri Doria <avri at acm.org> wrote:

>
> On 28 May 2013, at 07:22, Riaz K Tayob wrote:
>
> >  it seems like the Borg has it right as far as public interest in the US
> goes (of course from an outsider perspective looking in) - resistance is
> futile...
>
>
> Is it your point that if you are from the US you might as well forget
> participating in civil society because you are part of the corporate Borg
> and there is nothing you can do about it?  I have long suspected that that
> this belief was the underlying unspoken philosophy by many on this list,
> but this is the closest I think I have seen anyone actually say it
> outright.  So I figured I would check to make sure I understood correct, is
> that what you are saying?
>
> avri
>
>
>
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