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If we assume people, even good people, will generally discard morals at the first sight of money and power what can we do to make the system work anyway? Would

If we assume people, even good people, will generally discard morals at the first sight of money and power what can we do to make the system work anyway? Would some way of forcing transparency fix this underlying problem?

Omniusaspirer 12y ago
It's not a question of transparency, it's a question of how you can most remove the human element from government. There ought to be quantifiable measures of success that you can use to say "this is a good government" and "this is a bad government". We've demonstrated pretty well throughout history that humans when aggregated into large groups are basically incompetent- especially when power and money are involved.
socceroos 12y ago
Transparency is one of the keys - a very effective key. However, even transparency requires all actors to behave honourably in their transparency (not skewing the truth with white noise, not misdirecting the public to slip through unwanted policy, not manipulating or deleting data, etc). Also, there always comes a point in government where a certain level of information must remain secret (such as spy activity between states and within criminal organisations). If we were to force government transparency, I think we would see a marked rise in stonewalling due to 'national security' - the phrase itself is so general that anything could be under it's wing.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  A big part of transparency where there are legitimate purposes for secrecy is protection of whistle-blowers.
  - socceroos 12y ago
    Good point. Funnily enough, we see these basic protections being eroded systematically.
rvn1045 12y ago
People respond to inventives. We should set the incentives such that we get the desired behavior.
- socceroos 12y ago
  This is true. However, I'm not sure we can possibly offer a great enough incentive that competes with the notion of complete power, control and money.

Omniusaspirer 12y ago

It's not a question of transparency, it's a question of how you can most remove the human element from government. There ought to be quantifiable measures of success that you can use to say "this is a good government" and "this is a bad government". We've demonstrated pretty well throughout history that humans when aggregated into large groups are basically incompetent- especially when power and money are involved.

socceroos 12y ago

Transparency is one of the keys - a very effective key. However, even transparency requires all actors to behave honourably in their transparency (not skewing the truth with white noise, not misdirecting the public to slip through unwanted policy, not manipulating or deleting data, etc). Also, there always comes a point in government where a certain level of information must remain secret (such as spy activity between states and within criminal organisations). If we were to force government transparency, I think we would see a marked rise in stonewalling due to 'national security' - the phrase itself is so general that anything could be under it's wing.

dllthomas 12y ago
A big part of transparency where there are legitimate purposes for secrecy is protection of whistle-blowers.
- socceroos 12y ago
  Good point. Funnily enough, we see these basic protections being eroded systematically.

rvn1045 12y ago

People respond to inventives. We should set the incentives such that we get the desired behavior.

socceroos 12y ago
This is true. However, I'm not sure we can possibly offer a great enough incentive that competes with the notion of complete power, control and money.