Governments shouldn’t have a monopoly on Internet governance • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by nazgulnarsil » Sun, Dec 19, 2010, 3:41 AM UTC

wtallis wrote: post #47

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…

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-…

so you get to dictate whether people spend their money on organic food. nice.

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

#52

Post by foljs » Sun, Dec 19, 2010, 7:30 AM UTC

Translated from corporate speak: "Entities voted for by the people, and representing the people's interests shouldn't have a monopoly on Internet governance. I.e, the people, shouldn't have a monopoly on Internet governance".

Now, you could argue that the some/all governments represent the people badly. But this is an argument/call to arms to demand BETTER representation, not for giving up control to other, opaque, entities.

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

#53

Post by shadowfox » Sun, Dec 19, 2010, 3:14 PM UTC

jdp23 wrote: post #15

Wikileaks highlights how governments' interest can differ from the "citizens of the Internet" (for lack of a better term). Of course governments do act as an important counterweight to keep corporations from abusing their monopolies on internet governments .... From a governance perspective, who speaks for "Google users"?

Google themselves most likely

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

#54

Post by stretchwithme » Mon, Dec 20, 2010, 4:51 AM UTC

grn wrote: post #45

dasil003 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that's right. consumers can have a monopoly over a business too. in fact, I seem to recall there are a whole bunch of companies struggling to figure out how to please the customers of a single niche and that live or die depending on how well they do that.