
What Would Always-On-The-Record Government Look Like? - genieyclo
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/12/what-would-always-on-the-recor.html
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mnemonicsloth
Elected legislators have simple incentives. Loudly claim responsibility for
anything good that happens to their constituents. Deny responsibility for
anything bad. If at all possible, deny the existence of anything really bad.

Avoiding blame is the primary reason law codes are so complex and hard to
read. The average spending increase is passed to great fanfare and acclaim.
The average tax increase is mentioned briefly in an amendment to an amendment
to a sub-section of a codicil to a rider on resolution to honor the US Winter
Olympics team for their fine performance in... wherever.

Ultimately, this works because of _attention shortage_. There are people (with
various political agendas) who read the text of every bill, cross-reference
things, and try to connect the dots. They probably issue press releases every
day. They only get the public's attention a few times a year, usually when
they discover flagrant abuse of an elected office, a sex scandal, or similar.

In other words, we could already have this, but we don't. Knowing something is
very important -- that you _should_ want it -- is completely different from
actually wanting it.

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anamax
> Elected legislators have simple incentives. Loudly claim responsibility for
> anything good that happens to their constituents. Deny responsibility for
> anything bad. If at all possible, deny the existence of anything really bad.

Yes!

> Avoiding blame is the primary reason law codes are so complex and hard to
> read.

There's another important trick - delegate the actual regulation writing to an
agency. That way, the legislator's fingerprints are not anywhere near the
actual rules. And, said legislators can also take credit for intervening with
the regulators.

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cjoh
The possibility of an always-on-the-record government lies not in chasing
around members of congress with flip cameras but capturing their inputs,
outputs and making that data accessible to ordinary citizens.

You're not going to create any good by looking over someone's shoulder and
watching them constantly. You don't do it at work, neither does your boss and
neither should your congressman. But what _should_ be happening is we should
be measuring their data, their outputs and coming up with systemic, non-
politically-charged ways to measure performance and tracking them.

Synopsis: I'm far more interested in supplying the Nate Silver's of the world
with more concrete data about Congress than I am having 24 hour video
surveillance on Harry Reid.

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danielrhodes
I'm not sure what the point of this would be. In the United States, the
accountability that is important during elections has very little relation to
the results of the legislation that a congressmen voted on. In other
countries, like the UK for example, the only accountability that most MPs need
is that they voted consistently with the party line.

It's sort of a flaw in democracy that voters will be fully informed about
their elected leaders and within one election cycle will be able to judge how
effective a leader or congressman turned out to be. An always on-the-record
congressman wouldn't make any of that better.

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pyre
Elected officials that were 'always on the record' would be constantly
'playing to the camera' to try and 'look good' or make the other guy 'look
bad.'

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Calamitous
They "might also" overuse "scare quotes."

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gruseom
Sounds like you might appreciate _The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks_
:

<http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com>

