Couldn't agree more. Not sure why the task of operating DNS' isn't the domain of governments the world over. It's kind of like operating a post office. Post office's are the ones who have the routing information and capability to route physical messages and packages. They are still operated on a for profit model, but they are also generally very well regulated. Same thing should apply with registrars
Almost no one believes governments are inherently evil, but that doesn’t mean many, or most, aren’t corrupt. How many anarchists are there in your neighborhood?
It seems to be that if you lean Republican, governments are corrupt and private firms virtuous because freedom and the magic of the Invisible Hand of free markets make private firms virtuous (individual choice) and governments corrupt (coercive force).
If you lean Democrat, then governments are virtuous and private firms corrupt because the free market doesn't solve all the problems, and for those you need regulation (government: coercive force). In fact, the regulated free market leads huge wealth disparities, which leads to social problems, and since private firms that are seeking to maximize their wealth disparity, obviously they must be corrupt.
Naturally, neither of these pictures is right, or rather, they are both partly right.
I don’t think that’s accurate. Companies and individuals benefit from outsourcing government work, that creates a huge incentive to paint government as incompetent.
The US military which hands crazy money to private firms is viewed very highly by the Republican’s and less so by Democrats.
because private firms make money by making things people want and every consumer is by choice.
government makes money by threatening you with violence (pay tax or go to jail) and its subjects are so rarely by choice, and if by choice, it's between one government and another.
That's why people suggest to let the government run the nuclear power plants. Unlike a for-profit corporation, governmental organizations have little incentive to save money for maintenance by cutting corners.
Private firms aren't inherently "virtuous," but their motivations are at least clear. A business seeking to maximize financial returns for its owners isn't "corrupt," it's "working as expected."
The corruption of governments and labor unions often results in unexpected financial and non-financial returns for various people in ways that are more difficult to detect and measure.
Mainly because most governments around the globe have the monopoly of public force, creating the perfect ground for arbitrary decisions. Its not black and white, by those defaults seems accurate.
I thought about this in the wake of the BP Deepwater oil spill. How exactly can I choose to avoid interacting with any company that produces a fungible commodity (e.g BP, Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto)?
I can stop visiting BP branded gas stations but that has nothing to do with where the oil/gasoline actually comes from.
I agree, that's an issue. Or if you wanted to stop funding exploitative mining but still wanted to own electronics, you might have a hard time. But I prefer the "you can often avoid interacting with them" option of private companies, to the "you cannot avoid them and are entirely at the mercy of their whims" option of government.
Not to say government isn't necessary - it is. But I don't understand why people treat it as virtuous, especially when those same people will express distrust in politicians. I suppose it's because government is the only way to legitimately force one's will on others.
Not to undermine your point, but you have used the worst possible example. In the top 1000 of worst prisons around the world, most if not all of them are not private. Just take a look a Brazil prison system as en example.
Does Brazil have private prisons that are much better than their public ones?
If not, I don't think you have contradicted his point at all.
There are not too many places that we can look at public vs private institutions for direct comparisons (in the contexts that they operate). Prisons are one, I can think of FedEx/UPS/DHL vs the Post Office as another, and it's difficult for me to come up with much after that.
I can have a vote, but government will still force me to pay tributes at gunpoint. On the other hand, im not forced to buy most of private goods. At the end, the evil organizations are those that became monopolies, no matter if it is public or private.
And then if you don’t leave your house you get put in the last socially acceptable debtors prison. And if you try leave that they will kill you. Ultimately the threat of murder and kidnapping are there
I believe that is how the country code TLDs do work, but most nations (who are given ownership of them) they just hire a corporation to sell domains and make rent seeking gross revenue off a few characters of a URL.
But those are eclipsed by the generic TLDs where its just a happy accident registrars and rent seekers are making fortunes off of words with com or net at the end of them.
The responses below are kind of funny. The government already runs key infrastructure. I'm not sure if the argument is government vs. Corp. Frankly governments are more likely to consider public interest than corps are. That's not to say that they always do, but corps almost never do. This is why government sells things like spectrum or land for railways if they don't own the rail themselves. They also own things like roads. It's important to realise that there is no incorruptible institution in the world. Maybe domain name management is actually a great use case for blockchain or some other truly democratic distributed accounting/ledger system.
The reason that there is a namespace problem in the first place is that most people don't want the kind of domain name that post office numbering would give them.
When the internet was newer, my school email address was @schooldistrict.k12.state.ca.us, by the time I graduated highschool it was @schoolname.org.
I am against privatisation of key infrastructure and I would certainly count the internet as key infrastructure. However I am not sure the government would be entirely benevolent. So I agree that some good regulations are probably a good start.
