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One of the ideas that I cherish is radical transparency. It would be better to see exactly what each company wants to donate to and how money is being spent. M

One of the ideas that I cherish is radical transparency. It would be better to see exactly what each company wants to donate to and how money is being spent. Money is a form of voting.

aetherson 7y ago
You basically do get that, but it's hard to work around indirections. If I'm in company A and I give money to an industry lobbying group X (and so do companies B, C, D, and E), and then industry lobbying group X gives money to super-PAC alpha, and then super-PAC alpha donates to politicians Bob and Fred, then... how does that become digestible to the public? Some amount of "Company A's" money went to Fred, but it's gone through several fungible buckets since then, and you can't necessarily draw a clean link. Informally, it may (or may not!) be that Fred was told by someone that his continuing to get these kinds of checks was dependent on him doing a specific favor for company A, but probably not everyone who receives some money that was originally sourced at company A did.
- foobar_ 7y ago
  Makes sense. How about git log for money?
  - setzer22 7y ago
    This looks like a perfect use case for blockchain... oh wait
- munk-a 7y ago
  I'd be fine[1] if every time this money changed hands it was fully taxed at the pre-trump corporation book rates... so somewhere upwards of 30%. 1. Well, finer - it'd be nice just to not have lobbying and switch over to public funding.
cwyers 7y ago
There is such a thing as too much transparency in government. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/the-case-for-corruption/357568/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/the-cas... TL;DR: It's hard to build consensus out in the open. Consensus requires the ability to apply positive and negative pressure to get followers to agree to things that are in the general interest but aren't in their interests. Radical transparency cuts down on the levers to build that consensus and makes it harder to pass budgets and other necessary laws.
- chii 7y ago
  > followers to agree to things that are in the general interest but aren't in their interests. if your vote is open & transparent, you'd be less likely to vote for something socially less acceptable imho.

One of the ideas that I cherish is radical transparency. It would be better to see exactly what each company wants to donate to and how money is being spent. Money is a form of voting.

aetherson 7y ago

You basically do get that, but it's hard to work around indirections. If I'm in company A and I give money to an industry lobbying group X (and so do companies B, C, D, and E), and then industry lobbying group X gives money to super-PAC alpha, and then super-PAC alpha donates to politicians Bob and Fred, then... how does that become digestible to the public? Some amount of "Company A's" money went to Fred, but it's gone through several fungible buckets since then, and you can't necessarily draw a clean link. Informally, it may (or may not!) be that Fred was told by someone that his continuing to get these kinds of checks was dependent on him doing a specific favor for company A, but probably not everyone who receives some money that was originally sourced at company A did.

foobar_ 7y ago
Makes sense. How about git log for money?
- setzer22 7y ago
  This looks like a perfect use case for blockchain... oh wait
munk-a 7y ago
I'd be fine[1] if every time this money changed hands it was fully taxed at the pre-trump corporation book rates... so somewhere upwards of 30%. 1. Well, finer - it'd be nice just to not have lobbying and switch over to public funding.

cwyers 7y ago

There is such a thing as too much transparency in government. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/the-case-for-corruption/357568/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/the-cas... TL;DR: It's hard to build consensus out in the open. Consensus requires the ability to apply positive and negative pressure to get followers to agree to things that are in the general interest but aren't in their interests. Radical transparency cuts down on the levers to build that consensus and makes it harder to pass budgets and other necessary laws.

chii 7y ago
> followers to agree to things that are in the general interest but aren't in their interests. if your vote is open & transparent, you'd be less likely to vote for something socially less acceptable imho.