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> 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 pr

> 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?

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?