[Dialogue] Save the Internet

Mon May 1 19:35:19 EDT 2006

And to top it off, the very thing they are NOW trying to do (seriously) re
controlling the internet has gone around for a number of years as a hoax.
Back then it was a hoax. Now it's a heist!

Sunny Walker

Institute of Cultural Affairs, Denver

303-671-0704

swalker at ica-usa.org 

Releasing the capacity to create positive, sustainable futures in every
individual, organization, & community

  _____  

From: dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
[mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of george
Sent: Monday, May 01, 2006 5:19 PM
To: Colleague Dialogue
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] Save the Internet

Dear John and colleagues, 

Perhaps I need more education on this.  My observation of corporations is
that their value is money and that they go in the direction of either long
term or short term profits, and that the present trend is that the CEO and
those around "him" (very few have women at the helm) are raking in the dough
and share holders are getting unhappy.  I also have noticed that as several
authors have written when Corporations rule the world that their aim is not
competition or free market, but predatory practices and markets they
control.  A recent author outlines how corporations are following the Roman
Empire model and headed toward trouble.

I've also noticed that corporate agriculture is now producing vegetables and
fruits that have only a third of the vitamins and minerals of less that a
century ago and cost more, and that GM produced foods hold the promise of
controlling food production, since their plants do not produce seeds and you
will have to buy next years seeds from the companies that genetically
produce them.

This week Economic growth in the US was pegged at an unprecedented 5% while
wages for workers were below the rate of inflation, adding to the story that
corporations are in a race to the bottom so far as wages are concerned.  The
scandals of Haliburton, Becktel, Enron and many more do not inspire
confidence in the model of international corporations, nor does their
ability to buy the political give much assurance, especially when they team
up with the Religious Right.

Having some knowledge of at least one international corporation in the 3rd
World that used banned insecticides to spray their fields resulting in the
sterilization of males working and living in the fields among other health
problems, and a decade latter their conviction in U.S. courts, which
resulted in little more than a slap on the wrist, and their continued use of
the insecticide in different areas. Bad people may be at fault but the
institution and organization of corporations appear to have a large amount
of bad activities, including the expenditure of 150 million dollars last
year to discredit scientists in the U.S. who were publishing their findings
on Global Warming.

But back to my original post, to inform and hopefully get some of us to
write our congress people to keep the internet neutral.  Right now Big
Telecoms has prevented advances in the internet driving the U.S. from 1st to
16th place in internet access across the world.  While many Asian and
European nations have broader wireless reach and much faster rates of
transmission (and lower costs).  We think 5mps on broadband is fast here.
Not only are the large telecom companies trying to prevent cities from
setting up broadband connections and wireless applications in markets that
these companies won't serve, they are also trying to position themselves so
they can determine the content of the internet and the speed at which
various content is delivered and would like to put a "postage" charge per
email. We were able to forestall some of these measures in the Texas
legislature, which had those bills passed would have crippled business and
economic development in small and medium size cities.  So please, if you are
so disposed contact your congress person.

And if I be wrong, please correct me.

-george holcombe

On May 1, 2006, at 5:49 PM, John Epps wrote:

Hello George and other colleagues who are welcome in on this dialogue.

It's a real treat to be able to clarify some thinking with you. So here
goes:

For some time, I've been working with "big businesses." It has come to gall
me when I hear people whom I respect and whose values I share speaking as if
"big business" were the demonic force causing all the pain we all
experience. I'd be the last to claim that business organizations are
blame-free, and, to be sure, some are indeed demonic. They are, however, the
clear minority. Most are well-intentioned, honest endeavors to make life
more liveable. 

A clear misunderstanding, which I am opposing in the graduate business
course I'm teaching, is that the purpose of business is to make money. That
is not true.  Despite the opinions of Milton Friedman, that view is a
definite minority among business scholars (yes, there are some). The purpose
of business is to create value (i.e.,to provide goods or services that
people value enough to pay for), and the measure of its success is profit.
As Peter Drucker, Charles Handy, and others say, claiming the purpose of
business is to make money is like saying the purpose of life is to eat. We
must eat to live, but eating is not the purpose of life. It enables us to
pursue a more valuable purpose. We find that helping people clarify the real
purpose of their business is very motivating, and touches the desire most of
us have to make a difference with our work. 

Business organizations, just like religious organizations, are finite,
fallible, and clearly imperfect -- just like the best of us. They're neither
more nor less to blame for social ills than anyone else. It's just that
waiting for the perfect organization to come along would entail a VERY long
wait. We make do with what we have, and, as H. R. Neibuhr suggests, we
attempt to be the sensitive and responsive part of that organization,
working for its continual transformation.

The comment about the institution of slavery is absolutely correct: it was
evil. But calling it an institution is pretty abstract, sort of like calling
Christianity an institution. It is, in some way of talking, but that doesn't
provide anything concrete enough to get a handle on. Anyway, I was talking
about organizations, not institutions in that sense. There is a difference.

I totally share your views on the Religious Right and their perversions of
morality. I'm not suggesting that morality is simply an individual matter.
In fact, business ethics (not quite a contradiction in terms) is an
important topic coming more to the forefront after Enron, etc. 

So I hope we can put some energy into making good use of "big business" as
an ally rather than as an enemy. A useful metaphor comes from the Chinese,
"Lure the tiger out of the mountains" as a stratagem. It's built on the
insight that when you go tiger hunting, you don't do it in the turf of the
tiger. That's the way to get eaten. You "lure the tiger out of the
mountains" so that you have a fair chance. In an abstract sense, that means
for strategy, if you don't have the advantage, your only agenda is to get
the advantage. Anything else is a prescription for failure.

We translate that to mean getting the opponent to become an ally. A silly
example is the department staff that wanted to buy an expensive piece of
equipment, but were opposed by the finance officer. They had the
demonstrator model installed in the office of the opponent, who experienced
the benefit and quickly became an advocate. What do you suppose it would
take for "big business" to perceive the value of continuing the free
Internet? Maybe it would not be the telecom companies that would be the
ally, but they could certainly be "outvoted" by other industries that
routinely use the Internet for normal everyday operations. 

These are just some ruminations, and I'd welcome response.

Thanks

John Epps 

At 08:34 AM 4/29/2006 -0500, you wrote:

Perhaps you are right, however I have noticed that small people, of which I
am one, can act very immorally in mobs, something they would not do on their
own, and that in 1884 a Federal District judge in the U.S. made corporations
individuals in law.  Also, there appears to me to be evil conveyed in and
through institutions, e.g. the institution of slavery, which speaking
ethically, goes far beyond what a small person can contribute and the
practices, images, understandings can be perpetuated far beyond that small
person for generations.  The right wing religious in the U.S. have tried to
put the whole of morality on individual responsibility, which is aptly
applied in specific instances, but they readily ignore these principles as a
group when it comes to issues of poverty and the distribution of wealth and
taxes.

Having attempted to work through the political process at the state level,
it occurs to me that all the people I meet are good and decent folks as
people, but when vote time comes their decisions are made on the basis of
corporate interests, which they even admit sometimes in private not the best
thing to do.

-george

On Apr 29, 2006, at 4:55 PM, John Epps wrote:

George:

The villains aren't large companies, but small people.

At 07:17 AM 4/28/2006 -0500, you wrote:

The following article highlights an upcoming threat to our communication
abilities and the first in a series of moves by the large companies to use
congress to control the flow of information and make much more money off the
internet.  We've had extensive battles in the Texas legislature to prevent
the major telecom and cable companies from inserting laws on the books
forbidding cities from putting up wireless networks, which have become
necessary for small towns to retain their assembly plants and warehouses,
since the majors won't serve them.
-george holcombe

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LENS International (M) Sdn Bhd
5th Fl, Tower 1 Wisma MCIS
Jalan Barat
46200 Petaling Jaya, Selangor
Malaysia
on the web at <www.lensinternational.com <http://www.lensinternational.com/>
> 
email: <jlepps at pc.jaring.my> 

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