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> Bad for whom? Those benefiting from the negotiation results? Bad for everyone involved. Not every deal is bad, and deals often can happen only because good g

> Bad for whom? Those benefiting from the negotiation results? Bad for everyone involved. Not every deal is bad, and deals often can happen only because good gets packaged with the bad. If every negotiation happened in public, no nations would ever be able to sign agreements with one another. That's a recipe for paralysis and disaster.

enraged_camel 10y ago
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public." - Adam Smith
dmix 10y ago
> only because good gets packaged with the bad. Particularly when the packaging is done without scrutiny. Or waiting for scrutiny until after the fact where it becomes a black or white proposal... past the negotiation stage where details are debated. The public is left to mearly accept or deny it. Just look at CETA, a particularly harmful clause was dropped only after they were called out for lacking transparency and decided to respond to the public uproar. Even with that minor revision the whole deal is at risk of totally failing because it contains too many controversial sections to pass each EU legislatior. Had they considered and included the public years earlier, rather than focusing just on the vested parties in backroom negotiation, this could have been avoided. The public shouldnt have to fight tooth and nail be listened to. If they were capable of making good deals in secret in a way that maintained the public trust then I'd otherwise completely agree with you. Because it's inefficient otherwise. But given the string of policies that came out recently, trust clearly has eroded and these types of deals are a good example of why.
dingaling 10y ago
> If every negotiation happened in public, no nations would ever be able to sign agreements with one another. I don't see that as a definite conclusion. At present, the status quo for most nations is that they secretly negotiate an agreement and then either (1) put it to public plebiscite or (2) pass it into law through legislative assembly. Both cases usually result in the details of the agreement being made public before they become law, including the "bad bits", so for what reason would moving that public visibility back in time scupper all negotiations? There would be media interest in and hype around the negotiations, naturally, but if the existing systems already prevent public intervention in those stages then it's just making them "read-only" instead of "encrypted".
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  In practice, small interest groups mobilize much more quickly and effectively than larger groups. Imagine there's a that would weakly benefit 95% of society, but negatively impact 5%, but the net tradeoff is positive. It's already somewhat difficult to pass these sorts of agreements, because if that 5% is an organized interest group with broad public sympathy, they will blast the media with negative media coverage. Now imagine that a negative provision for that group was being considered while the agreement hadn't even been finalized. Then everyone only sees the downside for that group, without seeing that the final agreement is generally positive. Public negotiations will effectively magnify the veto power of small interest groups, making agreements much more difficult to pass. Note that this also applies to laws in general, since they're often a negotiating between parties or within parties. Do you think it would be beneficial if every private communication between legislators was made public?
rlucas 10y ago
The Assange thesis isn't a binary option, secrets or no secrets. It's raising the cost of pervasive and wide ranging secrecy. A wikileaks world doesn't mean you can't keep your nuclear launch codes safe, something for which you are presumably ready to spend major resources with tight control in a small circle. It just means that you now have to spend more effort keeping all your petty graft secret at the low end, and it reduces toward zero the probability that a large manpower intensive conspiracy can work, in the more important democidal case. So, the thesis holds, the powers inclined toward malfeasance will have a little nudge at every choice point, toward the option they won't mind being discovered. Like a surveillance camera pointed at the minimum wage cashier's hands, except at the people who control nation-states.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  > It just means that you now have to spend more effort keeping all your petty graft secret at the low end The problem is that secrecy doesn't purely serve 'petty graft', but also allows politicians to actually make deals and get things done. The thesis that 'raising the cost of secrecy' is always a good thing is unproven. Plus, Assange et al are less a neutral information source, but rather an active participant in politics with their own, hidden motivations. Over the last 30 years, we've repeatedly seen the reform of politics in the US aimed at eliminating graft and taking power away from politicians and putting it in the hands of voters. Over the same period of time, politics here as gotten more and more dysfunctional. Relevant: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-amer... I submit that voters are often unable to effectively make compromises and form voting blocs with others. It used to fall to politicians to negotiate behind closed doors to hash out a deal. In Assange's secret-less world, that won't be possible.
  - rlucas 10y ago
    Agreed, of course that even relatively mundane secrecy can serve a public interest; nuclear codes are not the only legitimate secrets. And it's very fair to say that it's unknown if the Wikileaks cost-of-secrecy effect is a net good one, especially when you're starting with reasonably good institutions, civil society, and rule of law. But it's a straw man argument to wrap up with reference to "Assange's secret-less world". My original point holds, this isn't a binary switch that flips, it's an incremental effect.

enraged_camel 10y ago

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public." - Adam Smith

dmix 10y ago

> only because good gets packaged with the bad. Particularly when the packaging is done without scrutiny. Or waiting for scrutiny until after the fact where it becomes a black or white proposal... past the negotiation stage where details are debated. The public is left to mearly accept or deny it. Just look at CETA, a particularly harmful clause was dropped only after they were called out for lacking transparency and decided to respond to the public uproar. Even with that minor revision the whole deal is at risk of totally failing because it contains too many controversial sections to pass each EU legislatior. Had they considered and included the public years earlier, rather than focusing just on the vested parties in backroom negotiation, this could have been avoided. The public shouldnt have to fight tooth and nail be listened to. If they were capable of making good deals in secret in a way that maintained the public trust then I'd otherwise completely agree with you. Because it's inefficient otherwise. But given the string of policies that came out recently, trust clearly has eroded and these types of deals are a good example of why.

dingaling 10y ago

> If every negotiation happened in public, no nations would ever be able to sign agreements with one another. I don't see that as a definite conclusion. At present, the status quo for most nations is that they secretly negotiate an agreement and then either (1) put it to public plebiscite or (2) pass it into law through legislative assembly. Both cases usually result in the details of the agreement being made public before they become law, including the "bad bits", so for what reason would moving that public visibility back in time scupper all negotiations? There would be media interest in and hype around the negotiations, naturally, but if the existing systems already prevent public intervention in those stages then it's just making them "read-only" instead of "encrypted".

smallnamespace 10y ago
In practice, small interest groups mobilize much more quickly and effectively than larger groups. Imagine there's a that would weakly benefit 95% of society, but negatively impact 5%, but the net tradeoff is positive. It's already somewhat difficult to pass these sorts of agreements, because if that 5% is an organized interest group with broad public sympathy, they will blast the media with negative media coverage. Now imagine that a negative provision for that group was being considered while the agreement hadn't even been finalized. Then everyone only sees the downside for that group, without seeing that the final agreement is generally positive. Public negotiations will effectively magnify the veto power of small interest groups, making agreements much more difficult to pass. Note that this also applies to laws in general, since they're often a negotiating between parties or within parties. Do you think it would be beneficial if every private communication between legislators was made public?

rlucas 10y ago

The Assange thesis isn't a binary option, secrets or no secrets. It's raising the cost of pervasive and wide ranging secrecy. A wikileaks world doesn't mean you can't keep your nuclear launch codes safe, something for which you are presumably ready to spend major resources with tight control in a small circle. It just means that you now have to spend more effort keeping all your petty graft secret at the low end, and it reduces toward zero the probability that a large manpower intensive conspiracy can work, in the more important democidal case. So, the thesis holds, the powers inclined toward malfeasance will have a little nudge at every choice point, toward the option they won't mind being discovered. Like a surveillance camera pointed at the minimum wage cashier's hands, except at the people who control nation-states.

smallnamespace 10y ago
> It just means that you now have to spend more effort keeping all your petty graft secret at the low end The problem is that secrecy doesn't purely serve 'petty graft', but also allows politicians to actually make deals and get things done. The thesis that 'raising the cost of secrecy' is always a good thing is unproven. Plus, Assange et al are less a neutral information source, but rather an active participant in politics with their own, hidden motivations. Over the last 30 years, we've repeatedly seen the reform of politics in the US aimed at eliminating graft and taking power away from politicians and putting it in the hands of voters. Over the same period of time, politics here as gotten more and more dysfunctional. Relevant: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-amer... I submit that voters are often unable to effectively make compromises and form voting blocs with others. It used to fall to politicians to negotiate behind closed doors to hash out a deal. In Assange's secret-less world, that won't be possible.
- rlucas 10y ago
  Agreed, of course that even relatively mundane secrecy can serve a public interest; nuclear codes are not the only legitimate secrets. And it's very fair to say that it's unknown if the Wikileaks cost-of-secrecy effect is a net good one, especially when you're starting with reasonably good institutions, civil society, and rule of law. But it's a straw man argument to wrap up with reference to "Assange's secret-less world". My original point holds, this isn't a binary switch that flips, it's an incremental effect.