- public means the people as a whole
- it's a collective noun, so a general/universal, which are relations
- the fundament* of the relation "public" is the concept "people", and its terminus** is each individual person
Conversation
- an institution is rules/processes/operations between people, not people themselves, so its fundament is the shared idea of how people are coordinated, and its terminus is people.
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- so institutions are identified with the relating process/rule/operation, while the public is identified with the terminus of a relation, even though both "institution" and "public" terminate at people.
- hence, institutions aren't public
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- and so there's no basis for inter-institutional relations to be public.
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Here's one litmus test question for a simpler case. Coasean economics posits a 3-element ontology: firm, market, and law. The market is roughly the "public" for the economy. Does it exist outside of specific trade-enabling institutions like stock exchanges?
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Nice question.
Yes it does: the market also exists in decentralized exchanges with no mediating entity. C.f. Block DX.
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But decentralization does not imply de-institutionalization. The blockchain or whatever construct is replicated across the network, lending it identity and internal intelligibility, renders it an institution. But yeah, that's definitely as close to an edge case as possible.
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Decentralization of power/control does. A self-sovereign design, for example, can't be an institution.
I think you've hit on a major societal ill: the the public has been emptied of function and meaning, and overshadowed - nearly totalised - by institutions. Time to reverse that
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I don't think I agree that it's an ill. I think it's fine to head towards a new regime where the intra-institutional reality is all there is. An "indoor" civilizational condition.
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Hmm... this is a broad area, so I won't die on this hill, but it seems to me good engineering practice is to make social processes work regardless of people's intentions (and then to leave personal virtue to be pursued personally), rather than to depend on people's virtue.
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My view admits promiscuous forking as a fine outcome... so garden of forking paths as the new public... that's essentially my multitemporality thesis

