Hacker News Reader

Comment by klbarry | Hacker News Reader

Counterpoint: There are some strong arguments that a senate operating behind closed doors would be more effective at ignoring special interests and working together than otherwise. The writers of the constitution did just this (they swore secrecy of anything they talked about in the convention to avoid voter backlash) [1]

This is why they initially wanted health care debates behind closed doors - the lobbyists can make much more use of transparency than the uninterested voter can. Fareed Zakaria wrote a lot about this in The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad.

{1} [A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution by Carol Berkin]

View on HN

The problem with that argument is that it requires voters to trust their representatives' competence and motivations to represent their best interests behind closed doors. That trust is in really short supply right now.

I could make an argument that it is transparency itself that is helping to erode that distrust, as each side seizes on (and/or misrepresents) details to portray the other side as corrupt. When in fact most legislative fights are simply translations of differences of opinion into the legislative realm.

Accusations of corruption are a common framing argument; if I can get you to believe that my opponent is corrupting the system, I can make you believe almost anything about the issue or their point of view. This is much harder to do if both sides negotiate privately and then jointly present a compromise.

Up voted for a strong argument even though I'm not sure I agree...

One thing to consider is that while secrecy might a way for congress to create consensus free of outside influences, modern technology has somewhat foreclosed the possibility - so we may as well have the best openness we can get instead.

Another point is the atmosphere of each congressman constantly campaigning has forced them effectively outside of Washington and so barely know each and thus have a hard time finding consensus.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/01/03/no-more-was...

While I understand the value of secrecy for a dozen or so people to work things out free from the outside influence of special interests, I think this argument severely discounts the benefits of having lots of interested people discuss the issue in a forum.

In Brazil, we've have a lot a of success drafting some documents in a public space. The beauty of doing things in the public is that ideas cannot be presented separately from the person responsible. Every idea is traceable to its author. TBH, I can't think of one idea that I would want to become law where the author shouldn't be held accountable.

Accountability breeds civility.

Let them work however they want.

I don't care how law comes to be. Be it invoking satanic rituals, getting it written by the lobbyists or just copied off 4chan.

Just use the goddamn source control. And write the freaking commit messages.

If even programmers write crappy commit messages, there's not much to be optimistic about legislators' commit messages.

This is very true... however, I think that the solutions addressed above would be most beneficial to the bill markup periods where amendments are made and things re-written.

There could very easily be a closed door aspect to the initial drafting of a bill. So that the entire committee would get the "blame" for the initial draft.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com