[liberationtech] Privacy, Moglen, @ioerror, #rp12

[Andre Rebentisch]

Am 10.05.2012 17:07, schrieb Pavol Luptak:
> This may be work in Norway where are highly ethical/moral politicians, 
> but it does not work at all in my country (Slovakia) or other 
> Central/Eastern European countries where are massively corrupted 
> governments. 


Who "corrupts" government? Commercial interests. What do dominant 
commercial interests want? Government to not get in their way, lower 
taxes and/or state aid/contracts. In other words you advocate for 
suicide in fear of death.

Norway may be governed by good standards but when it comes to oil or 
whales the situation is different. Still, standards raise when 
expectations grow.

> In Slovakia open standards are mainly violated by our government :-) 
> (and it is because strong lobby of Microsoft and other corporations). 

Indeed, because there is no sufficient expectation of your government 
officials to act on principled grounds and set regulation. But even when 
they your government officals sell out they get paid. Corruption usually 
trickles down.

>> Net Neutrality - ISPs may prefer to build cartels with the media industry
>> Privacy - Cloud companies would sell your data to the highest bidder
>> including foreign governments
> Building cartels/monopolies is extremely difficult in really non-regulated
> markets (see the video I've already sent). If such cartels are created,
> there will be still a strong commercial demand for free/unfiltered Internet,
> so new ISPs start to offer unfiltered and free Internet....

So here we are, two sides of the market model purchasing power and 
supply power. Even in an all-corrupt scenario there may be opposing 
commercial interests.

Generally speaking you believe that without market intervention cartels 
get winded up by market forces. That is often true. The ordoliberal view 
is that we know that in a perfect market no cartels exist, so we 
intervene and then let the silent hand do the rest to approximate that 
market allocation.

Government procurement is a powerful leverage on the demand side. I 
would also like to suggest that certain companies are more powerful than 
your small state, and your state is defined by what it could do for 
citizens. If it doesn't do that, then that is an indication of the 
powers of the high seas.

Best,
Andre