[governance] stakeholder categories (was Re: NSA sabotage of Internet security standards...)

[Karl Auerbach]

On 09/17/2013 06:22 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
> Civil society is necessarily amorphous. Trying to force it into a
> definition will lead to its just not existing. 

I agree with this 100%.

Each person is a bundle of self interests and self conflicts.  Each
person works that out in his/her own way.

There is a tendency in internet governance (and it is a tendency that is
growing elsewhere) to try to structurally micro-manage interests into
nice pigeonholes.  But that is Procrustean - it stretches and cuts each
person to make him/her fit into the selected hole.

For example, I am an individual user of the net yet I own some small
for-profit corporations, I have trademarks and copyrights, I am trained
as an intellectual property lawyer, I have written Internet Standards in
the IETF, I am affiliated with a registry bidding for new top level
domains.  Which of my arms or legs must be lopped off for me to force
fit into any particular category?

Governance structures work better if they do not impose hard structures
but, rather, allow people to fluidly form and dissolve coalitions as
those people see fit.

This is why I greatly dislike the notion of "stakeholder" as a
foundation for systems of governance.  I cling tightly to the notion of
one-person-one-vote.

When there are hard structures - such as the assignment of people into
categories of "stakeholder" - there will be a reaction.  Some people,
particularly corporate people, will simply create legal replicants of
themselves, each joining a separate category, and thus amplifying the
loudness (but not the quality) that person's voice.

	--karl--





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