[governance] RE: [ciresearchers] NETmundial documents online for comment

[Karl Auerbach]

On 04/18/2014 08:05 AM, McTim wrote:
>>
>> Clearly there is an intent to replace democratic governance with
>> multistakeholder governance. But this issue is not addressed in a forthright
>> manner anywhere in the document.
> 
> I believer the opposite to be true.
> 
> You and a few other folk would like to replace the 40 year old
> existing governance model of the Internet with a version of
> Westphalianism.

My own view is that the atomic unit of governance ought to be the
living, breathing human.

And for any given question of governance each person, only only natural
persons, should get exactly one unit (vote) of decision making power.
In other words, one person, one vote.

I find "stakeholder" pernicious for several reasons:

  - It recognizes collections of people (such as trade groups or
technical bodies or governments) as having power in the making of
decisions.  It is useful and proper to draw upon the expertise of these
groups.  However, by giving them a role in the making of decisions the
power of the human participants is diluted, potentially to the point of
becoming irrelevant.)

 - Each individual person is a cauldron in which competing interests are
resolved.  As such, individual people are able to reconcile differences
with others and make compromises.  Stakeholder groups, on the other
hand, tend to be issue focused and are less able to be flexible and make
compromises.  This leads to situations in which possible compromises and
solutions that could be reached in a system of individuals are made
difficult, even impossible, because of the presence of stakeholder
interest groups.

 - A system based on "stakeholders" gives greater voice to those who
have been pre-designated as "stakeholders" and lesser voice to those who
have not been granted that status.  This creates a system of haves and
have nots that creates resentment, tensions, and a built-in bias for
certain courses of action and against others.

One person, one vote has its problems - there are a lot of people who
are ill informed and there are a lot of people who are now willing or
able to make good choices how to use their power in the making of
governance decisions.  But history has shown us that systems based on
financial interest, claimed expertise, beneficence, class, or the sword
are systems that have not resulted in better choices or demonstrated
more flexible or creative solutions.

As for replacing "the 40 year old existing governance model of the
Internet" - I have been a part of that model ever since I first met the
very nascent net in 1968.  It is an acceptable model for developing
technical standards where the conflict among points of view are of a
technical nature and the class of people with competing views tend to
arise from the same social contexts and are seeking similar goals.  That
kind of uniformity does not obtain in the larger context of internet
governance.

In other words, the models of technical governance as expressed via
bodies such as the IETF, do not scale.

	--karl--



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