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Meanwhile, if you want to avoid disaster, you have to build a system with feedback loops that make disaster less likely.
Promoting idiots who are out of their depth but are "a safe pair of hands" and "won't rock the boat" is a good way not to do that.
Public recordings - not just minutes, but actual video and audio - of all significant ministerial and financial meetings would go a long way to restoring real accountability.
Do you really think it would work, even if desirable (I don't think it is)? Don't you think that, the minute after they start recording these meetings, participant will stop saying anything significant and shift to backroom deals for the real stuff and decision-making? Unless you implant microphones and micro-cameras on all the politicians and civil servants (and CEOs while we are at it), you won't be able to monitor them properly... "People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them." - Jean Monnet
All discussions, all personal, departmental, and relevant corporate financial records, all decisions and positions should be public.
Backroom deals should be banned.
What would be the problem with this?
Of course everyone would be nervous with the public looking over their shoulder. But that's exactly the point.
Pols with something to hide would naturally excuse themselves from power and surveillance - which doesn't seem like a loss to me.
It's nice to see you still hold on some idealism.
All discussions, all personal, departmental, and relevant corporate financial records, all decisions and positions should be public. Backroom deals should be banned.
And how would you enforce this? It would require a lot of people dedicated to watching these politicians/civil servants/decision-makers and a lot of sophisticated equipment to monitor them all the time. Oh, and at what level would you start?
And saying that a measure only harms those who "have something to hide" is an old authoritarian argument... "People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them." - Jean Monnet
There's already plenty of discussion and debate about policy and politicians. It wouldn't need a Separate Public Oversight Committee with people in scary robes and fascist black leather - debate would happen naturally, just as it does already, but more so.
Why would that be a bad thing?
As for "having something to hide", the point is that pols notoriously do have things to hide - many, many things, which they would rather the public never found out about. The things they hide suck out democracy and public involvement from politics like the legislative equivalent of a black hole.
Do you think the FOIA legislation is authoritarian too? Or Finland's public financial disclosure laws? Is Wikileaks authoritarian for making diplomatic cables public?
If a cabinet meeting decides X, but Y becomes policy instead then it's not hard to see that something has gone astray somewhere.
But, usually, backroom deals take place before meetings where decisions are made. So there would be no discrepancy between a decision made during the meeting and the policy implemented...
I am all in favour of FOIA, but you must notice that there is a period of time during which you cannot access the information/data. And Finland's law is limited to a certain type of information, whereas you would like to make public in real time "all the discussions and meetings".
What I am saying is this would require a STASI-like organisation. And who would monitor this organisation? How long would it take before this organisation become the real power? "People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them." - Jean Monnet
You set up live feeds, and you put the media recordings up on a server. The public and the press can do the rest.
I'll say again - there is no Bureau of Transgression in this idea. It's purely to put policy debate on the record.
As for backroom deals - a meeting that rubber stamps a decision without debating it is just as suspicious as a meeting which doesn't lead to consistent policy.
Financial records provide a literal paper trail for anyone who wants to check who benefits from decisions.
I don't understand why there's a problem with any of this. Parliamentary debates are already televised in the UK, Hansard keeps a record of all parliamentary statements in paper form, and MPs are supposed to make their expense claims and business connections public.
This is just extending the same established principle to other government contexts.
Like the meetings of the general assembly of shareholders in a large industrial corporation.
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
What I am saying is this would require a STASI-like organisation. And who would monitor this organisation?
Make it the law that acceptance of governmental employment constitutes permission to have your activities recorded by sound and video, and, except as specifically excluded, it is legal to make any of these recordings public. Make the legal presumption in favor of release of recordings and make claims to the contrary continuously subject to judicial review, with both the party that made the recording and the party that was recorded entitled to bring claims to a judge of their choice. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
And you're complaining my suggestion would make government unworkable?
In particular, I learned something about the European secret police: They are either blind, dumb and deaf-mute for not already having those cables in their archives (with three million people having access to them, any serious intelligence agency should be able to get a data dump now and then); or that they are completely on board with politicians collaborating with the Americans. Considering how much time they spent chasing DFHs suspected of taking funding from the KGB, this reveals something of a double standard (either between the treatment of spies from different countries, or between hippies and politicians being spies).
So anyone who isn't completely dull in their private life would opt out? Of all the ways of organizing banking, the worst is the one we have today — Mervyn King, 25 October 2010
But people who can't keep it zipped tend to come to a sticky end in politics anyway - it just takes the press longer to catch on, once they make a few enemies who can afford private detectives.
If the only place they are allowed privacy is the restroom, that's where the backroom deals will be made. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
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