Fred Gohlke wrote:
Good Morning, Kristofer
Thank you very much for the link to the Mother Jones article describing
efforts to curtail the utter domination corporations exert over our
existence. Perhaps, in time, reason will triumph.
[snip]
Again, I don't have much to comment on, but I will on the few things I
think I should.
Do we have the stomach for such a solution? We sequester juries in
important cases. Should the conduct of our government be deemed less
worthy of objectivity?
Do the people? I don't know. If they do, and you can get this working,
that is good, but I'm not sure if they would accept such... immediate
difference. I'll reiterate that I'm not saying it can't work, just that
I'm unsure if it would be accepted.
re: "... what we really need is radical transparency ..."
In this section, you note the shortcomings of this approach. In
addition to those you mentioned, there is the problem that, with the
proper incentive, one may justify taking almost any position. It's
called obfuscation and the most corrupt people are the most adept at the
practice. Demanding transparency from a partisan politician is like
holding back the tide with a pencil.
What I mean by radical transparency is not transparency of the
candidates' thoughts, but rather an as extensive disclosure of the
information that is part of the process. For instance, if a politician
says he supports issue X (which can be anything), yet legislative
records show that he votes against X, then the disclosure or
transparency granted by the legislative records has served a purpose in
informing the people that the politician is not being truthful.
Since legislative records are commonplace (both actions and
deliberations, e.g the Hansard), this example may be obvious; but it
shows that going by the idea of keeping everything related to a decision
public unless the opposite is required (rather than private unless the
opposite is required) can help the people find out if the
politicians/councilmembers/etc. are acting for different reasons than
what they claim. See also the Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_transparency
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