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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 yo

by 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.

by rlucas 10y ago

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.