David Weinberger posts on the net neutrality discussion at this progressive gathering, and Kevin Marks attempts to confuse matters with a pointer in the comments to the biased discussion of Public Goods as documented in Wikipedia.
Kevin and his ilk have a decidedly upper class/privileged class perspective. They seldom point to the inclosure acts as an informative example. If government had been at the time of the acts separable from the oligarchy, then government could have protected the usurpation of the commons by the privileged few. Had that happened, labor might have been lured to the cities based on improved conditions available there. Instead, the acts forced people off their land and into the Dickensian urban hell and the increased concentration of wealth in the hands of the few that represented industrializing 18th and 19th century Britain.
Without government intervention, the oligarchs of 21st century corporatism will surely enclose the internet commons, but government intervention to save our common spaces will only be meaningful if we have truly wrested control from the oligarchy.
Libertarian go home.
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