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This is corruption. The selling of public office is always corruption. There is no way to argue otherwise. Of course we have heard this or things like it befor

This is corruption. The selling of public office is always corruption. There is no way to argue otherwise. Of course we have heard this or things like it before, so the shock value has long since faded, but it is important to see properly and not take the new normal as the benchmark. It is clear that a new system of government must be created which solves the oldest governance problem, namely; who watches the watchmen? Wikileaks was theoretically a preliminary stab at answering the question but relies heavily on the public having a sense of responsibility and morality itself, something I don't believe can be counted on. Increasingly I have become convinced that the solution does not lie in transparency, but in obfuscation. Perhaps the deep state points to a possible solution, a public government and a private government. Who can control the controllers if nobody knows who they are, perhaps even themselves. There are a bunch of pesky problems like funding, legitimacy and shutdown protocol to prevent what I feel forced to call the Jason Bourne scenario. There's an interesting and very creative history of this sort of thing going back thousands of years. Containing corruption by using secret languages, using eunuchs, using specially trained aristocratic classes, using random selection from the population.

vannevar 10y ago
The sale of a public office is corruption. But nothing in the article provides any evidence of such a sale, at least nothing that wasn't already public. In every administration we see donors getting appointments. But correlation isn't causation---it's plausible that well-connected, politically active people would both be likely to donate and likely to be appointed to important positions.
- MR4D 10y ago
  For corruption on this scale, we don't need causation. We want people to not only be above board, but we also want the appearances of being above board (so if something even looks bad, our public figures should avoid it). For this, correlation is a much better standard because it forces office holders to stay away from the smoke too. If we had them say, well sure there's smoke but no fire, we'd have Nixon's missing 18 minutes all over the place.
- internaut 10y ago
  > It's plausible that well-connected, politically active people would both be likely to donate and likely to be appointed to important positions. Legality here is not my concern. It is like nepotism. Sometimes the son should replace the father on merit. He is, after all, more likely to be active in the field and have connections without trading on his DNA. We still recognize that this cannot be a general rule if we care about outcomes.
undersuit 10y ago
>Increasingly I have become convinced that the solution does not lie in transparency, but in obfuscation. Don't give up on transparency just yet. Our brief flirtation with transparency that was hindered at every step by the government we were trying to make more transparent should not be considered a failure of transparency, but a victory for the people who profit from a closed government.

vannevar 10y ago

The sale of a public office is corruption. But nothing in the article provides any evidence of such a sale, at least nothing that wasn't already public. In every administration we see donors getting appointments. But correlation isn't causation---it's plausible that well-connected, politically active people would both be likely to donate and likely to be appointed to important positions.

MR4D 10y ago
For corruption on this scale, we don't need causation. We want people to not only be above board, but we also want the appearances of being above board (so if something even looks bad, our public figures should avoid it). For this, correlation is a much better standard because it forces office holders to stay away from the smoke too. If we had them say, well sure there's smoke but no fire, we'd have Nixon's missing 18 minutes all over the place.
internaut 10y ago
> It's plausible that well-connected, politically active people would both be likely to donate and likely to be appointed to important positions. Legality here is not my concern. It is like nepotism. Sometimes the son should replace the father on merit. He is, after all, more likely to be active in the field and have connections without trading on his DNA. We still recognize that this cannot be a general rule if we care about outcomes.

undersuit 10y ago

>Increasingly I have become convinced that the solution does not lie in transparency, but in obfuscation. Don't give up on transparency just yet. Our brief flirtation with transparency that was hindered at every step by the government we were trying to make more transparent should not be considered a failure of transparency, but a victory for the people who profit from a closed government.