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> if they were they'd never get that far. Too many interests. "That's a feature, not a bug. Whence this argument that trade negotiations are somehow different

> if they were they'd never get that far. Too many interests. "That's a feature, not a bug. Whence this argument that trade negotiations are somehow different from every single other aspect of good governance? For all other mechanisms of government, everyone agrees that transparency is a vital mechanism for preventing corruption, and that whatever inefficiencies it introduces into the system are a necessary evil. Yet somehow free trade agreements operate on a different set of rules; even though time after time it's been shown that this invites boatloads of the exact corruption that government transparency is meant to combat." (This argument gets trotted out with such reliability in TPP threads that I can just copy-paste my response from a previous one)

jimbokun 10y ago
There have been serious arguments made that too much transparency is crippling the US government's ability to function. Used to be a lot more compromises made in private, to come up with trade offs both sides could live with but the partisan core supporters would shoot down immediately if they knew. Which leads to our current government, where compromise with the other side of any kind is political suicide.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  The partisanship in the US traces primarily to the voting system. Replace it with something like range voting or approval voting and you would have twelve parties instead of two, at which point passing anything would require a coalition government and cooperation with other parties would be a mandatory prerequisite for government action.
  - PhantomGremlin 10y ago
    passing anything would require a coalition government Yeah, because "coalition governments" have worked so well in countries like Italy. Have they hit the 100 mark yet for number of "coalition governments" formed since WWII? And the Liberal Democrats made out really well in the "coalition government" that was formed in the UK after the 2010 elections. They went from 57 MPs after 2010 to 8 MPs after 2015. Even Charlie Sheen wouldn't call that "winning".
  - sixothree 10y ago
    I feel like we can trace the hyper-partisanship in America directly to the rise of Fox News.
Ericson2314 10y ago
There's a lot of anti-transparency arguments coming from a mainstream, "woe, the lost bipartisanship", outlook. I'm not sure whether to think this is a nuanced look at tradeoffs or a sickening slippery slope.

jimbokun 10y ago

There have been serious arguments made that too much transparency is crippling the US government's ability to function. Used to be a lot more compromises made in private, to come up with trade offs both sides could live with but the partisan core supporters would shoot down immediately if they knew. Which leads to our current government, where compromise with the other side of any kind is political suicide.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago
The partisanship in the US traces primarily to the voting system. Replace it with something like range voting or approval voting and you would have twelve parties instead of two, at which point passing anything would require a coalition government and cooperation with other parties would be a mandatory prerequisite for government action.
- PhantomGremlin 10y ago
  passing anything would require a coalition government Yeah, because "coalition governments" have worked so well in countries like Italy. Have they hit the 100 mark yet for number of "coalition governments" formed since WWII? And the Liberal Democrats made out really well in the "coalition government" that was formed in the UK after the 2010 elections. They went from 57 MPs after 2010 to 8 MPs after 2015. Even Charlie Sheen wouldn't call that "winning".
- sixothree 10y ago
  I feel like we can trace the hyper-partisanship in America directly to the rise of Fox News.

Ericson2314 10y ago

There's a lot of anti-transparency arguments coming from a mainstream, "woe, the lost bipartisanship", outlook. I'm not sure whether to think this is a nuanced look at tradeoffs or a sickening slippery slope.