Consumerium Governance Organization

    From Consumerium development wiki R&D Wiki

    The Consumerium Governance Organization is a formal entity to do Consumerium governance. Ultimately it has only three responsibilities:

    1. Publish:governance for a reliable Consumerium buying signal and low liability
    2. Research:governance to ensure all factions and individual buying criteria are fully represented
    3. institutional buying criteria for a healthy signal infrastructure - not just Consumerium Services - to regulate the Consumerium Service Mark - see below

    The Develop Wiki can more or less operate on its own with a Lowest Troll in charge, no need for any more structure than that, at least according to the trolls.

    ultimate transparency[edit | edit source]

    When these are perfected, they create a totally Transparent Consumerium based on a object use protocol applied to real objects. This would make it easy to use infrastructure that you didn't own, as long as the network retained infrastructure owners trust and was running... so a user could pick up at point of purchase the device required to swipe the barcode, and it would not necessarily be "his" or belong to the "store":

    It might for instance come out of a vending machine and be returned to it. The potential of it not being returned, requires an organization to insure it. The potential of it not performing, requires an organization to pull licenses from those who vend the junk. What licenses? Patent, trademark and copyrights that vendors need in order to get anyone to use that junk. So:

    ultimately, only sets standards[edit | edit source]

    Rather than own or sell junk or even set standards for those who own or sell junk, e.g. set hardware requirements, the CGO only exists to ensure that no matter whose vending machine you got no matter whose hardware from, or what junk shop you bought your device to swipe the barcode in, if it has a Consumerium Service Mark, it actually gets you the fairly-gathered data - no substitutions. You can imagine the chaos if the network was subverted. We can't stop parallel networks, although we can try with patent methods and constantly reintegrated improvements, eventually, they will exist. When they do, it is only trademarks and copyrights on the fairly-gathered data that will hold back the bad copy problem, and a tide of cheap and biased imitations.

    will ultimately fail[edit | edit source]

    This is inevitable. But it's also inevitable that our own CGO be corrupted.

    There is no such thing as an organization or institution that doesn't fail. Nor is there any such thing as a technology that doesn't require some sort of organizational supervision. Even GNU has to update its licenses when new legal problems are discovered. The IETF has to update technical standards.

    holds itself open to competition[edit | edit source]

    Structurally, the CGO might resemble these, more so than the W3 or X/Open, but more like W3 or X/Open, it may need for instance to hold some patent or trademark rights to function, and ensure improvements that the Consumerium community comes up with, continue to "belong" to Consumerium:Itself and can be leveraged to keep competing networks from developing. This does NOT however mean keeping competitors from taking over THIS network. That must be possible, indeed, encouraged. This is the only way to make a standard work and spread and be trusted. It must be open competition to implement and manage it better. This means constantly obsoleting its own organization, and looking for ways to subvert itself.

    when unity and groupthink make it useless[edit | edit source]

    When CGO fails and falls victim to groupthink, as all institutions and organizations do, it should be easy for another organization to take the next steps. Effectively the only role of the CGO is to retain infrastructure owners trust for long enough to make it impossible to contain the network. After which point, new server boxes can so easily be deployed, that, it doesn't matter, and, anyone can make the service function.

    two party system[edit | edit source]

    An interim step towards this would be a two party system where the Consumerium community itself chooses the Consumerium board, using an adversarial process. So politically, the CGO looks like a government in a multi-party democracy. Just like the United States Government, it includes the various founding figures in a competing architecture of running for the offices under a common Consumerium Constitution that prevents interference with any more Transparent Consumerium. No matter who actually comes to "invent" it.