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Why is this relevant today? ICANN removes price caps on .org domains despite thousands of comments (98.1%) against https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/c7hx

Why is this relevant today? ICANN removes price caps on .org domains despite thousands of comments (98.1%) against https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/c7hxy1/icann_removes_price_caps_on_org_domains_despite/.compact https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/c7hxy1/icann_remove... This bizarre fantasy that privatizing things increases the public's oversight and control and makes the institution more accountable really needs to stop: "Public revokes its own authority over something in effort to increase its authority over it" It's positively kafkasque in the logic; just astounding people feel this way.

Kinnard 7y ago
Could it be that privatization works as desired in some cases and not in others?
- shadowoflight 7y ago
  An even better phrasing is that privatization works as desired until it becomes more profitable for it to work differently.
  - nerdponx 7y ago
    To be fair, you could say the same about good/honest government.
    - wallace_f 7y ago
      I mean, if we're being fair, compare the domain of ICANN to the most-regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, drugs, education and housing... There is no question where prosperity and liberty are winning, and where corruption, inequity and insufficient supply/quality are dominating.
      - AstralStorm 7y ago
        Give it time. Pharma had some time to practice stinkers. Education is mostly private in the US above basic level and causes misery all around due to loans. Housing? Collusion between private and public governance. Mostly private, good luck finding public housing. Even military in the US is mostly private. Show me anything that is public. The only thing that comes to mind is roads (even there construction is private) and to lesser extent, municipal services like water and waste (also private contractors but controlled).
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        wallace_f 7y ago
        Ok... Education is not remotely resembling of what economists mean when they say Perfect Competition, or a free market, empowers consumers. How in the world do you believe it is not heavily interfered with?
        xg15 7y ago
        "Perfect competition" would also require all consumers to be perfectly rational and to have full knowledge about the market. Where apart from fully automated algorithmic trading is this the case? (And even there you have market failures)
- kristopolous 7y ago
  If you remove a core civic function from the public's control, they are no longer sovereign over it. The argument given is this process empowers the public and gives them choices. But it's usually instrumented through monopolies: cartels, m&a, patent protection, natural & geographic monopolies or some mechanism where the choice remains merely theoretical. For example, the organization discussed here. So the public gives up control, never gets the choice, and usually weirdly enough still pays for it - the profits just get funneled out of the system. For instance, in high speed internet, the infrastructure is usually built by tax dollars and those same consumers pay a second time for service on the platform they just paid to build. This is usually justified by the fact that it's expensive to build the infrastructure conveniently ignoring the source of the funds. The public usually isn't careful enough to deconstruct this rationale.. Really. It's wacky when you think about it. Fluffy marketing words like "small government" and "free market" which seems to always strangely lead to the most expensive option with the least public control and oversight. It's a giant hustle, like back when taxpayers built sports stadiums for tax revenue from tax-exempt NFL teams. Without exception all it did was blow huge holes in the city books with the phantom returns never coming. It's a hoodwink operation. Nothing more. Instead, let the government own some for-profits and cut taxes that way. Like the public bank of North Dakota, municipal internet or the collectors editions from the US mint. If taxpayers build the stadium, taxpayers own the team, simple. There's no logical reason the public has to be left just with the stinkers that lose money while the winners get privatized away. We'll be paying someone to run the stuff we paid to build, might at well be ourselves
jstewartmobile 7y ago
The fact of the matter is, in the US, we're screwed either way. So many "public" services are ultimately contracted through private providers, and rarely are these providers the best in any way other than pure political clout. When everyone is divided into a CNN/FOX pissing contest of race, gender, occupation, sexual preference, age, income, region, etc, etc, they are distracted, and it is so easy to give everyone the shaft. Divide and conquer.
- xg15 7y ago
  Well, if you're "screwed either way", you could just as well choose the system that at least has a theoretical process for oversight in place (the public one) and not the system that does not even pretend to have oversight.
username444 7y ago
Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20263561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20263561

Kinnard 7y ago

Could it be that privatization works as desired in some cases and not in others?

shadowoflight 7y ago
An even better phrasing is that privatization works as desired until it becomes more profitable for it to work differently.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  To be fair, you could say the same about good/honest government.
  - wallace_f 7y ago
    I mean, if we're being fair, compare the domain of ICANN to the most-regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, drugs, education and housing... There is no question where prosperity and liberty are winning, and where corruption, inequity and insufficient supply/quality are dominating.
    - AstralStorm 7y ago
      Give it time. Pharma had some time to practice stinkers. Education is mostly private in the US above basic level and causes misery all around due to loans. Housing? Collusion between private and public governance. Mostly private, good luck finding public housing. Even military in the US is mostly private. Show me anything that is public. The only thing that comes to mind is roads (even there construction is private) and to lesser extent, municipal services like water and waste (also private contractors but controlled).
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - wallace_f 7y ago
        Ok... Education is not remotely resembling of what economists mean when they say Perfect Competition, or a free market, empowers consumers. How in the world do you believe it is not heavily interfered with?
        xg15 7y ago
        "Perfect competition" would also require all consumers to be perfectly rational and to have full knowledge about the market. Where apart from fully automated algorithmic trading is this the case? (And even there you have market failures)
kristopolous 7y ago
If you remove a core civic function from the public's control, they are no longer sovereign over it. The argument given is this process empowers the public and gives them choices. But it's usually instrumented through monopolies: cartels, m&a, patent protection, natural & geographic monopolies or some mechanism where the choice remains merely theoretical. For example, the organization discussed here. So the public gives up control, never gets the choice, and usually weirdly enough still pays for it - the profits just get funneled out of the system. For instance, in high speed internet, the infrastructure is usually built by tax dollars and those same consumers pay a second time for service on the platform they just paid to build. This is usually justified by the fact that it's expensive to build the infrastructure conveniently ignoring the source of the funds. The public usually isn't careful enough to deconstruct this rationale.. Really. It's wacky when you think about it. Fluffy marketing words like "small government" and "free market" which seems to always strangely lead to the most expensive option with the least public control and oversight. It's a giant hustle, like back when taxpayers built sports stadiums for tax revenue from tax-exempt NFL teams. Without exception all it did was blow huge holes in the city books with the phantom returns never coming. It's a hoodwink operation. Nothing more. Instead, let the government own some for-profits and cut taxes that way. Like the public bank of North Dakota, municipal internet or the collectors editions from the US mint. If taxpayers build the stadium, taxpayers own the team, simple. There's no logical reason the public has to be left just with the stinkers that lose money while the winners get privatized away. We'll be paying someone to run the stuff we paid to build, might at well be ourselves

jstewartmobile 7y ago

The fact of the matter is, in the US, we're screwed either way. So many "public" services are ultimately contracted through private providers, and rarely are these providers the best in any way other than pure political clout. When everyone is divided into a CNN/FOX pissing contest of race, gender, occupation, sexual preference, age, income, region, etc, etc, they are distracted, and it is so easy to give everyone the shaft. Divide and conquer.

xg15 7y ago
Well, if you're "screwed either way", you could just as well choose the system that at least has a theoretical process for oversight in place (the public one) and not the system that does not even pretend to have oversight.

username444 7y ago

Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20263561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20263561