Jake's 2nd last pull

contents/english/7-0-policy.md

@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ On the one hand, ARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) led by J
 3. The development around these universities of the leading regional digital innovation hubs in the world, including Silicon Valley and the Boston Route 128 corridor.
  Yet while these technology hubs have become the envy and aspiration of (typically unsuccessful) regional development and industrial policy around the world, it is critical to remember how fundamentally different the aspirations underpinning Lick's vision were from those of his imitators. 
 
-      Where the standard goal of industrial policy is directly to achieve outcomes like the development of a Silicon Valley, this was no part of Lick's aims.  These instead focused on developing a vision of the future of computing, one grounded in human-computer symbiosis, attack-resilient networking, communication through machines, a very much unfinished vision on which ⿻ builds closely.  Lick selected participating universities not on the basis of an interest in regional economic development, but to rather to maximize the chances of achieving this goal.
+      Where the standard goal of industrial policy is directly to achieve outcomes like the development of a Silicon Valley, this was not part of Lick's aims.  These instead focused on developing a vision of the future of computing, one grounded in human-computer symbiosis, attack-resilient networking, communication through machines, a very much unfinished vision on which ⿻ builds closely.  Lick selected participating universities not on the basis of an interest in regional economic development, but to rather to maximize the chances of achieving this goal.
 
        Industrial policy often aims at creating large-scale, industrial "nation champions" and is often viewed in contrast to antitrust and competition policies, which typically aim to constrain the excessively concentrated industrial power.  In contrast to both of these traditions and as Lick described in his 1979 "Computers and Government", the IPTO effort took the rough goals of antitrust (ensuring the possibility of open and decentralized marketplace) but applied the tools of industrial policy (active public investment) to achieve them.  Rather than constraining the winners of predigital market competition, IPTO aimed to create a network infrastructure on which the digital world would play out in such a way as to avoid undue concentrations of power.  It was the failure to sustain this investment through the 1970s and beyond that Lick predicted would lead to the monopolization of the critical functions of digital life by what he at the time described as "IBM" but turned out to be the dominant technology platforms of today: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, etc.   Furthermore and complementing this approach, rather than directly fostering the development of private, for-profit industry as most industrial policy does, Lick primarily supported the civil society-based (primarily university-driven) development of basic infrastructure that would support the defense, government and private sectors.  
 
@@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ Lick and the ARPANET collaborators shaped an extraordinary vision that laid the
 
 Digital ministries, emerging worldwide, are proving to be a more natural forum for setting visionary goals in a participatory way, surpassing the traditional military avenues. A well-known example is Ukraine's Mykhailo Fedorov, the Minister of Digital Transformation since 2019. Taiwan was a forerunner in this domain as well, appointing a digital minister in 2016 and further establishing a formal Ministry of Digital Affairs in 2022. Japan, recognizing the urgency of digitalization during the pandemic, founded its Digital Agency at the cabinet level in 2021, inspired by discussions with Taiwan.
 
-These ministries, inherently collaborative, work closely with other government sectors and international bodies. In 2023, the G20 digital ministers identified Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) as a key focus for worldwide cooperation, aligning with the UN global goals. In contrast to institutions like ARPA, digital ministries offer a more fitting platform for initiating international missions that involves the public and civil society. As digital challenges become central to global security, it's anticipated that more nations will appoint digital ministers, fostering an open, connected digital community.[^Planning]
+These ministries, ideally inherently collaborative, work closely with other government sectors and international bodies. In 2023, the G20 digital ministers identified Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) as a key focus for worldwide cooperation, aligning with the UN global goals. The United Nations has long emphasized digitization, digital transformation and digital adoption including ongoing and substantial UNDP and UNESCO research and investment. In contrast to institutions like ARPA, digital ministries offer a more fitting platform for initiating international missions that involve the public and civil society. As digital challenges become central to global security, it's anticipated that more nations will appoint digital ministers, ideally fostering an open, connected digital community.[^Planning]
 
 Yet national homes for ⿻ infrastructure are only a few of the poles holding up its tent.  There is no country today that can or should be alone the primary locus for such efforts.  They must be built as at least international and probably transnational networks, just as the internet itself is.  Digital ministers, as they come to exist, must form a network that can provide international support to this work and connect nation-based nodes just as ARPANET did for university-based nodes.  Many of the open source projects participating, furthermore, will not themselves have a single primary national presence, spanning many jurisdictions and participating as a transnational community, to be respected on terms that will in some cases be roughly equal to those of national digital ministries; consider, for example, the relationship of roughly equality between the Ethereum community and the Taiwanese Ministry of Digital Affairs.  
 
@@ -118,22 +118,22 @@ Furthermore, if properly concerted with such a vision, antitrust laws, competiti
 Mandating interoperability, in cooperation with standard setting processes that develop the meaning and shape of these standards, is a critical lever to make such standards workable and avoid dominance by an illegitimate private monopoly.  Financial regulations help define what kinds of governance are acceptable in various jurisdictions and have unfortunately, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, weighed heavily towards damaging and monpolistic one-share-one-vote rules.  Financial regulatory reform should encourage experimentation with more inclusive governance systems such as Quadratic and other ⿻ voting forms that account for and address concentrations of power continuously, rather than offsetting the tendencies of one-share-one-vote to raiding with bespoke provisions like "poison pills".  They should also accommodate and support worker, supplier, environmental counterparty and customer voice and steer concentrated asset holders who might otherwise have systemic monopolistic effects towards employing similar tools.
 
 
-However, rules, laws and regulations can only offer support to positive frameworks that arise from investment, innovation and development.  Without those to complement, they will always be on the defense, playing catch up to a world defined by private innovation.  Thus public  and multisectoral investment is the core they must complement and making such investments obviously requires revenue, thus naturally raising the question of how it can be raised to make ⿻ infrastructure self-sustaining.  While directly charging for services largely reverts to the traps of the private sector, relying primarily on "general revenue" is unlikely to be sustainable or legitimate.  Furthermore, there are many cases where taxes can themselves help encourage ⿻.  It is to taxes of this sort that we now turn our attention.
+However, rules, laws and regulations can only offer support to positive frameworks that arise from investment, innovation and development.  Without the social and proactive carrots to complement legal sticks, government will always be on the defense, playing catch up to a world defined by private innovation.  Thus public and multisectoral investment is the core of ⿻. Such investments obviously require revenue, thus naturally raising the question of how to make ⿻ infrastructure self-sustaining.  While directly charging for services largely reverts to the pitfalls of the private sector, relying primarily on "general revenue" is unlikely to be sustainable or legitimate.  Furthermore, there are many cases where taxes can themselves help encourage ⿻.  It is to taxes of this sort that we now turn our attention.
 
-The digital sector has proven one of the most challenging to tax, because many of the relevant sources of value are created in a geographically ambiguous way or are otherwise intangible.  For example, data and networks of collaboration and knowhow among employees at companies, often spanning national borders, can often be booked in countries with low corporate tax rates even if they mostly occur in jurisdictions with higher rates.  Many free services come with an implicit bargain of surveillance, leading neither the service nor the implicit labor to be taxed as it would be if this price were explicit.  While recent reforms to create a minimum corporate tax rate agreed by the G20 and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are likely to help, they are not tightly adaptive to the digital environment and thus will likely only partly address the challenge.
+The digital sector has proven one of the most challenging to tax, because many of the relevant sources of value are created in a geographically ambiguous way or are otherwise intangible.  For example, data and networks of collaboration and knowhow among employees at companies, often spanning national borders, can often be booked in countries with low corporate tax rates even if most activities occur in jurisdictions with higher rates.  Many free services come with an implicit bargain of surveillance, leading neither the service nor the implicit labor to be taxed as it would be if this price were explicit.  While recent reforms to create a minimum corporate tax rate agreed by the G20 and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are likely to help, they are not tightly adaptive to the digital environment and thus will likely only partly address the challenge.
 
-Yet while from one side these present a challenge, on the other hand they offer an opportunity: for taxes to be raised in an explicitly transnational way that can accrue to supporting ⿻ infrastructure rather than, in a fairly arbitrary way, to wherever the corporation may chose to domicile. Ideally such taxes should aim to satisfy as fully as possible several criteria:
+Yet while from one side these present a challenge, on the other hand they offer an opportunity: for taxes to be raised in an explicitly transnational way that can accrue to supporting ⿻ infrastructure rather than based on the more arbitrary location a corporation choses to domicile. Ideally such taxes should aim to satisfy as fully as possible several criteria:
 1. Directly ⿻ (DP): Digital taxes should ideally not merely raise revenue, but directly encourage or enact ⿻ aims themselves.[^Ext] This ensures that the taxes are not a drag on the system, but actually part of the solution.
 2. Jurisdictional alignment (JA): The jurisdictional network in which taxes are and can naturally be raised should correspond to the jurisdiction that disposes of these taxes.  This ensures that the coalition required to enact the taxes is similar to that required to establish the cooperation that disposes of the revenue.
 3. Revenue alignment (RA): The sources of revenue should correspond to the value generated by the shared value created by the use of the revenue, ensuring that those disposing of the revenue have a natural interest in the success of their mission. It also ensures that those who pay for the tax generally benefit from the goods created with it, lessening political opposition to the tax.
 4.  Financial adequacy (FA): The tax should be sufficient to fund the required investment.
-The principle of "circular investment" that we described in our Markets chapter suggests that eventually they can all be generally jointly satisfied. The value created by supermodular shared goods eventually must accrue somewhere with submodular returns, which can and should be recycled back to support those values sources.  Extracting this value can generally be done in a way that reduces market power and thus actually encourages assets to be more fully used.
+The principle of "circular investment" that we described in our Markets chapter suggests that eventually they can all be  jointly satisfied. The value created by supermodular shared goods eventually must accrue somewhere with submodular returns, which can and should be recycled back to support those values sources.  Extracting this value can generally be done in a way that reduces market power and thus actually encourages assets to be more fully used.
 
-Despite this theoretical ideal, in practice identifying ideal taxes to achieve it is likely to be as much a process of technological trial and error as any of the technological challenges we discuss in the Democracy section.  Yet there are a number of promising recent proposals that seem plausibly close to fulfilling many of these objectives as we iterate further:
+Despite this theoretical ideal, in practice identifying ideal taxes to achieve it is likely to be as much a process of social, political and technological trial and error as any of the technological challenges we discuss in the Democracy section.  Yet there are a number of promising recent proposals that seem plausibly close to fulfilling many of these objectives as we iterate further:
 1. Concentrated computational asset tax: Application of a progressive (either in rate or by giving a generous exemption) common ownership tax to digital assets such as computation, storage and some kinds of data. 
 2. Digital land tax: Taxing the commercialization or holding of scarce of digital space, including taxes on online advertising, holding of spectrum licenses and web address space in a more competitive way and, eventually, taxing exclusive spaces in virtual worlds.
 3. Implicit data/attention exchange tax: Taxes on implicit data or attention exchanges involved in "free" services online, which would otherwise typically accrue labor and value added taxes.
-4. Digital asset taxes: Common ownership taxes on pure-digital assets, such as digital currencies, utility tokens and non-fungible token.
+4. Digital asset taxes: Common ownership taxes on pure-digital assets, such as digital currencies, utility tokens and non-fungible tokens.
 5. Commons-derived data tax: Profits earned from models trained on unlicensed, commons-derived data could be taxed.
 6. Flexible/gig work taxes: Profits of companies that primarily employ "gig workers" and thus avoid many of the burdens of traditional labor law could be taxed.