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Governments shouldn’t have a monopoly on Internet governance

googleblog.blogspot.com

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Re: Governments shouldn’t have a monopoly on Internet governance

#41

Post by nazgulnarsil »

wtallis wrote: post #36
stretchwithme wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think rules made by coercive government and rules made by industry are the only two possible choices. If people voluntarily join organizations such as a community that has rules but that cannot be arbitrarily changed without consent and where individuals can leave, even taking their real estate out of the agreement, such an arrangement could still adopt all kinds of standards. This would not a coercive arrang…

What would such a group look like? I'd really like to know how you would go about starting such a group to ensure net neutrality, but even your food example seems far-fetched: How would you coerce manufacturers to give you enough detail about the contents of their products and the production methods? It seems that any boycott-based group with standards significantly higher than the status quo would starve before it c…

how do you think organic food started? people decided that the FDA's labels for what is and is not acceptable was too granular so they created their own certification based on their own values.

I would argue that government regulation lowers quality in general because it creates an overhead for any competing entity. Consider if the government created a "free milk" program and payed for it with taxes. Instead of suppliers competing for the many quality levels that consumers are interested in the vast majority now only cater to one quality level: that set by regulation. What is easier to game? one customer (the regulator) or millions of competing customers?

Re: Governments shouldn’t have a monopoly on Internet governance

#42

Post by dasil003 »

stretchwithme wrote: post #40
dasil003 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concentration of wealth is the reason.

And how does that negate people's ability to choose the products they will buy or keep companies from catering to specific portions of the market and thus caring very much how people vote with their dollars?

Geez, do I really have to spell it out for you? Politicians have to somehow get a majority vote. Voting with dollars would only requires one rich person to support a company, it doesn't matter if no one else pays them a dime. It's sort of the extreme inverse intention of most campaign finance laws.

Re: Governments shouldn’t have a monopoly on Internet governance

#43

Post by ra »

jayphelps wrote: post #18

I've said it before...I'm fairly confident the government will subsidize a nation-wide 5th generation wireless technology for free internet for all. It'll likely be restricted to just 80/8080 traffic, be throttled, and of course governed and monitored by the government. Since it's completely voluntary to use this network, it breaks no laws since by using it, you will grant them permission to snoop if they so choose.…

In Australia our government is rolling out a nationwide fibre to the home network called, National Broadband Network or NBN.

It isn't free but the capital expenditure is 100% subsidised by the NBN Corporation (A govt owned corporation that has a few very large corporate shareholders).

Re: Governments shouldn’t have a monopoly on Internet governance

#44

Post by est »

jellicle wrote: post #22

I disagree. Google is completely wrong and self-serving here. Even evil. It is important for people to realize the idea of "conservation of government". There are many areas of life that will be governed by rules, like it or not. If government does it, they will be rules set by government, and therefore having some accountability to the people, in democratic societies. If government declines to be the rule-setter, pr…

The problem with the idea of 'government' is that, every actual government of the world exists on a 'nation' basis. If US government takes over the Internet, there is not reason for Australia, France, China Russia governments not 'govern' the Internet

The result will be multiple national Intranets and political "internet borders".

Re: Governments shouldn’t have a monopoly on Internet governance

#45

Post by grn »

dasil003 wrote: post #42
stretchwithme wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how does that negate people's ability to choose the products they will buy or keep companies from catering to specific portions of the market and thus caring very much how people vote with their dollars?

Geez, do I really have to spell it out for you? Politicians have to somehow get a majority vote. Voting with dollars would only requires one rich person to support a company, it doesn't matter if no one else pays them a dime. It's sort of the extreme inverse intention of most campaign finance laws.

I still can't see a problem here. A business with a single customer exists in an almost complete vacuum and doesn't influence the market. What's more it's very risky as its revenues aren't diversified. It's completely dependent on its only customer.

Re: Governments shouldn’t have a monopoly on Internet governance

#46

Post by grn »

jellicle wrote: post #22

I disagree. Google is completely wrong and self-serving here. Even evil. It is important for people to realize the idea of "conservation of government". There are many areas of life that will be governed by rules, like it or not. If government does it, they will be rules set by government, and therefore having some accountability to the people, in democratic societies. If government declines to be the rule-setter, pr…

Government accountability is a myth. Governments run into enormous debt, change pension systems, wage wars ... Where's the responsibility? Loosing elections isn't a serious consequence.

Re: Governments shouldn’t have a monopoly on Internet governance

#47

Post by wtallis »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #41
wtallis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would such a group look like? I'd really like to know how you would go about starting such a group to ensure net neutrality, but even your food example seems far-fetched: How would you coerce manufacturers to give you enough detail about the contents of their products and the production methods? It seems that any boycott-based group with standards significantly higher than the status quo would starve before it c…

how do you think organic food started? people decided that the FDA's labels for what is and is not acceptable was too granular so they created their own certification based on their own values. I would argue that government regulation lowers quality in general because it creates an overhead for any competing entity. Consider if the government created a "free milk" program and payed for it with taxes. Instead of suppl…

Organic food production is regulated by the US government in part due to lobbying from commercial certifying agencies. Organic food's benefits to the consumer are also mostly imaginary. How does that make it a good example of successful non-governmental regulation?

Your "free milk program" example is far more than government regulation, so I'm not really sure why it belongs in this discussion. It seems to be a badly-executed straw-man argument.

Re: Governments shouldn’t have a monopoly on Internet governance

#48

Post by wtallis »

stretchwithme wrote: post #39
wtallis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would such a group look like? I'd really like to know how you would go about starting such a group to ensure net neutrality, but even your food example seems far-fetched: How would you coerce manufacturers to give you enough detail about the contents of their products and the production methods? It seems that any boycott-based group with standards significantly higher than the status quo would starve before it c…

Any such group is simply a niche market and one that would be more clearly defined and quantified than most, assuming its ever allowed to exist at all. All kinds of companies target niches all the time. You say this idea assumes markets are free enough to be called capitalist? How does it do that exactly?

If the regulation from below imposes standards that are actually restricting for the big players in the market, they can simply ignore the consumers' wishes unless the barriers to entry and scaling up in that market are sufficiently low that the interested consumers are able to organize their own supplier to meet their demand. Clearly, this is not going to be a feasible method for regulating internet backbones, because it's far, far too expensive to set up your own tier 2 network with only grassroots funding.

Re: Governments shouldn’t have a monopoly on Internet governance

#49

Post by jellicle »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #41
wtallis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would such a group look like? I'd really like to know how you would go about starting such a group to ensure net neutrality, but even your food example seems far-fetched: How would you coerce manufacturers to give you enough detail about the contents of their products and the production methods? It seems that any boycott-based group with standards significantly higher than the status quo would starve before it c…

how do you think organic food started? people decided that the FDA's labels for what is and is not acceptable was too granular so they created their own certification based on their own values. I would argue that government regulation lowers quality in general because it creates an overhead for any competing entity. Consider if the government created a "free milk" program and payed for it with taxes. Instead of suppl…

And until the government came and regulated the word, anyone could describe anything, no matter how produced, as "organic".

And now that there is in fact a government regulation, one cannot.

http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/nop

> What is easier to game? one customer (the regulator) or millions of competing customers?

I'm not sure what you're asking here. It's quite clear to me that one regulatory body, which can hire inspectors and food-testers and use economies of scale to regulate an entire industry, is much less easy to fool than individuals purchasing milk, who cannot cost-effectively hire inspectors and food-testers and thus cannot evaluate the quality of the product AT ALL.

Re: Governments shouldn’t have a monopoly on Internet governance

#50

Post by nazgulnarsil »

jellicle wrote: post #49
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you think organic food started? people decided that the FDA's labels for what is and is not acceptable was too granular so they created their own certification based on their own values. I would argue that government regulation lowers quality in general because it creates an overhead for any competing entity. Consider if the government created a "free milk" program and payed for it with taxes. Instead of suppl…

And until the government came and regulated the word, anyone could describe anything, no matter how produced, as "organic". And now that there is in fact a government regulation, one cannot. http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/nop > What is easier to game? one customer (the regulator) or millions of competing customers? I'm not sure what you're asking here. It's quite clear to me that one regulatory body, which can hire…

and another standard will soon arise because the same people who wanted to pay a premium for higher quality food are complaining that now that organic has been regulated the quality has decreased drastically. producers are gaming the rules.
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