Reject the NAIPR

[Kent Crispin]

Randy Bush allegedly said:
>
> > Please -- enough with the conspiracy theories.
[...]
> It would help everybody, and make a better end result for the internet, if
> we kind of assumed that the people busting their buns trying to get this
> out of the old NSF/NSI cradle have good intent and are somewhat competent.
[...]

I agree with this.

However.  Technical competence is largely irrelevant
here.  The main issues in play are economic, political, and
psychological (guessing how people will react to the change.) As far
as I can see there is very little technical content to the ARIN
proposal -- it is a matter of *social* engineering, not *network*
engineering.  And competence in network engineering is simply not
equivalent to competence in social engineering.  The original
questionable composition of the BoT demonstrates this.

And while I agree that there is no evidence for a conscious
conspiracy, a good case could be made for an unconscious one --
clearly there are a set of economic beliefs and other assumptions
shared among the proponents.  For example, there are shared
assumptions about how price structure will affect behavior, and of
the effectiveness and fairness of using that kind of control.

Ultimately these kinds of issues get to the value structure of the
individuals involved.  These values are not likely to be swayed by
technical arguments.  There will be strident disagreement, and
whatever the outcome it will represent the tyranny of the majority as
much as anything else.

Therefore, I think it would not be too much to ask of those
well-intentioned people in that tyrannical majority to have a little
sympathy for those in the minority -- they may very well not be
clue-challenged, but rather just not able to articulate different
fundamental values.

--
Kent Crispin                            "No reason to get excited",
kent at songbird.com,kc at llnl.gov           the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   5A 16 DA 04 31 33 40 1E  87 DA 29 02 97 A3 46 2F