3 ms·

No. Not in the way that this article discusses. The government is perfectly capable of being open. It doesn't want to be. "I want to be X" "Here's a tool t

No. Not in the way that this article discusses. The government is perfectly capable of being open. It doesn't want to be. "I want to be X" "Here's a tool that lets you be Y" "But I still want to be X!" When you see a convoluted, complex, or "bad" law passed, for whatever your definition of "bad" is, it's not because the legislators were somehow unable to write a better one. There are plenty of smart staffers and smart lobbyists who write laws, and they write exactly what they mean to write. They passed what they wanted to pass. This approach solves a problem that doesn't exist ("government unable to write good laws") and fails to solve the real problem that actually exists ("government doesn't want to write good laws"). The real problem is being addressed by, e.g., http://www.rootstrikers.org/ http://www.rootstrikers.org/ . This is a fundamental misapprehension of how government works. I thought Clay Shirky was smarter than this.

kijin 14y ago
I don't think the distinction is that clear-cut. One of the reasons that governments don't want to write good laws is because there is too little incentive to write good laws, and too much incentive to write bad laws. One solution might be to replace those irresponsible lawmakers, or at least augment them, with those who actually do have an incentive to write good laws. Participatory democracy is not simply the idea that more people can write better laws. The number of participants, by itself, is meaningless. Part of the idea is that if you invite a diverse range of individuals and groups to participate in the process, at least some of them will have enough motivation, passion, and intellectual prowess to outmatch the ones who don't. Open-source software might not have any performance advantages over proprietary alternatives, but at least it will be easier for somebody to spot a backdoor. I have a lot of respect for people who are trying their best to curb the influence of money on politics. But if the idea is that politicians will want to write good laws once the influence of money is gone, I think that's just as naive as the idea that you're criticizing. No matter how we tweak our campaign financing regulations, there will always be people who don't want to write good laws, and those kinds of people have an unfortunate tendency to want to become politicians. To ignore this crooked aspect of humanity is a fundamental misapprehension of how government works. So, electing the right sort of people is only half the solution. The only way to ensure that those who are elected keep wanting to write good laws is to force them to write good laws or else face severe repercussions (e.g. being recalled or thrown in jail). But in order for the rest of us to detect deviations from good lawmaking and inflict appropriate repercussions on responsible parties, first we need to know what the hell is going on. So even if having more eyes does not automatically lead to better laws, at least it will make it a bit more difficult for those who write bad laws to get away with it. It's a lot more difficult to get away with a backdoor if the relevant commit was signed with your key and the whole world knows it. "Our elected 'representatives' don't represent us in any literal sense, as if we were doing the ruling 'through them'. That is nonsense. They rule and we don't. But because we can easily deprive them of power at certain intervals, they have (at least theoretically) the incentive to rule in a way responsive to our interests." - Jean Hampton, Political Philosophy

kijin 14y ago

I don't think the distinction is that clear-cut. One of the reasons that governments don't want to write good laws is because there is too little incentive to write good laws, and too much incentive to write bad laws. One solution might be to replace those irresponsible lawmakers, or at least augment them, with those who actually do have an incentive to write good laws. Participatory democracy is not simply the idea that more people can write better laws. The number of participants, by itself, is meaningless. Part of the idea is that if you invite a diverse range of individuals and groups to participate in the process, at least some of them will have enough motivation, passion, and intellectual prowess to outmatch the ones who don't. Open-source software might not have any performance advantages over proprietary alternatives, but at least it will be easier for somebody to spot a backdoor. I have a lot of respect for people who are trying their best to curb the influence of money on politics. But if the idea is that politicians will want to write good laws once the influence of money is gone, I think that's just as naive as the idea that you're criticizing. No matter how we tweak our campaign financing regulations, there will always be people who don't want to write good laws, and those kinds of people have an unfortunate tendency to want to become politicians. To ignore this crooked aspect of humanity is a fundamental misapprehension of how government works. So, electing the right sort of people is only half the solution. The only way to ensure that those who are elected keep wanting to write good laws is to force them to write good laws or else face severe repercussions (e.g. being recalled or thrown in jail). But in order for the rest of us to detect deviations from good lawmaking and inflict appropriate repercussions on responsible parties, first we need to know what the hell is going on. So even if having more eyes does not automatically lead to better laws, at least it will make it a bit more difficult for those who write bad laws to get away with it. It's a lot more difficult to get away with a backdoor if the relevant commit was signed with your key and the whole world knows it. "Our elected 'representatives' don't represent us in any literal sense, as if we were doing the ruling 'through them'. That is nonsense. They rule and we don't. But because we can easily deprive them of power at certain intervals, they have (at least theoretically) the incentive to rule in a way responsive to our interests." - Jean Hampton, Political Philosophy