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Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

Suggested alternative: The "End Political Corruption Proposal"

"Given that political corruption is rife in European countries, with great detriments to the healthy function of government, all politicians in positions where they may be engaging in corrupt behavior must submit to 24-7 audio and video surveillance, which will be piped over public platforms for crowdsourcing of corruption detection. All personal communications of politicians and of government bureaucrats will become matters of public record for the same reason. Since we cannot trust a corrupt head of government to investigate their own corruption, or one of their underlings, this kind of public exposure of all politicians and bureaucrats is the only reasonable, rational solution to the problem of endemic government corruption in the EU."

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I have thought for some years now that any country wanting to implement some kind of restrictions or surveillance should start with politicians and authorities first. With some select authorities being exempt from this due to national security.

For example, if a country wants to implement the installation of state-owned anti-harassment "spyware" on their citizens phones, then this would first apply to politicians and those who work for the government, like anyone employed in a city hall or the traffic authority (normal citizens working there) or the like. This would run for 5 years, while citizens have the right to attempt to hack these systems without repercussions, in order to ensure that the security is up to the highest standards.

If after those 5 years the politicians and government employees are ok with it, if no major security concerns exist and the benefit has shown to be an obvious one, then it could be up for debate to implement this new technology.

> With some select authorities being exempt from this due to national security.

I fear your carveout would quickly become an "Inner Party" situation, with those with real power declaring themselves exempt due to "national security" reasons. Imagine then that anyone in any position of authority but not real power would be subject to the surveillance as an "Outer Party" member.

I get that the intent is to show the people in charge the negative consequences of such policies, but I don't think that's the worst that could come of this.

You understand that there is already an inner party, not in a conspiracy sense, but in a privacy sense. Yo have to actually argue why partial transparency is way worse than full obscurity.

That’s exactly the kind of fallacy these politicians would use to argue against this kind of thing ;)

The idea that the powerful would find a way to circumvent or corrupt such a rule is a significant problem; it isn’t a fallacy.

Fallacy =/= thing I don’t like.

If thought of something similar but comprehensive and far reaching, as follows:

Any law voted yes by a politician would have:

A 6mo cool off period, and in that interim periodthe following would apply: the law in question would be Tripled (3x) and both ways (I.e. retroactive and future) to the elected officials, his immediate parents, sons, and siblings, as soon as the law is passed.

So if they pass a tax increase, the entire tax applies immediately to their family before it applies to the public.

Same would be surveillance. Same for healthcare changes. OR draft etc. They would eat their kill.

Its about time no?

Any regulatory body unelected chief + deputy should be subject to the same rules with a tidy bonus: agency rules would also impact the portfolio (materiality can be set at say FV in excess of 300% poverty line), or business relationships past + present for the "czars" and family members.

So If you want to run FDIC and want to make rules for banks, thats swell, but those rules will apply to bank X where your brother works, AND to bank Y where you were CEO. The new rule would apply to those banks first, the changes would be tripled, AND that would be applied retroactively.

Have fun with that revolving door!

This feels just like punishing governments and their families for doing their jobs. We already have elections and law enforcement, thats all we need to "punish" corrupt officials. What we lack to make elections effective is more information available to the public about what they do and why they do it. More accountability and transparency, not punishment for their children if they want to tax big corps. The threat of punishment is never the best incentive to get stuff done.

We should also start to judge them based on outcomes rather than pointless metrics like GDP. How much did poverty decrease during your governments? How about crime? Life expectancy? And so on.

That's what they want you to believe.

Government is NOT a job. Government is Public Service. Emphasis on 'service'

If you are not ready to do your service or duty, you are not fit to work in government.

The honor and duty of being a king came with the downside of the risks (beheading) to you and to your royal family, if you did a particularly bad job.

Current government officials have all the upside (revolving door) with almost zero downside. Some plebs break into congress and they get their pants in a jiffy.

We need to make them accountable. Them, and their families.

> We need to make them accountable

Yes that's exactly what I said. How about we forbid them from ever trading in stocks or participate in any investment where they might even have a remote conflict of interest?

I feel that would be the best way to keep crooks like Pelosi out of politics.

> Them, and their families.

This is nonsense but you must hate politicians apparently. I don't, I hate corruption.

I dont hate politicians.

I hate the kind of people it attracts.

We dont need politicians. We do need statemen.

I think you live fantayland if you think restricting their investment options will result in less politicians. Whats simply going to happen is that they will shift their activities to other income avenues. Less stock trading. More board jobs and speaking fees. The river of corruption keeps flowing even if in a different direction.

Instead, id like less incentives to corruption. That means eat what you kill. Id like more lincolns that take tremendous personal risk to themselves and their families, and declare wars against global superpowers, to then "close shop" and go back to their farm to retire.

Instead we have pelosis, mccains advancing the war lobby, or obamas making bank on "speaking fees"

Stock prohibition wont do a thing. You need to cut the incentive to sell favors. You need to re-introduce risk.

We never did find out who leaked the security camera footage from inside a "secure area" of Matt Hancock, UK health secretary, kissing his aide: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/matt-hancock-...

A horrifyingly large amount of UK political decision-making that should be minuted is instead carried out secretly on whatsapp.

Your two statements seem to be a contradiction - decision meetings should be public, but the meeting where you are getting a blowie from your assistant on the sofa in your office should be private?

What does the second act have to do with corruption or information that is useful for the public?

When a government official doesn't abide by his own lockdown rules, that's corruption.

why?

If a politician votes for a law that reduces the speed limit to 50mph then is caught speeding is that corruption?

I think corruption is when someone abuses their position of power. This isn't abuse they just violated their own rules.

It's corruption because they know they won't be punished.

If more laws were objective (like speeding) and politicians were as surveilled as everyone else it wouldn't be an issue.

You're misusing the word objective and corruption is an abuse of power not hypocrisy.

Also speeding is a bad example since the cops let people off all the time

It is an abuse of power when they support laws they know they won't be charged with even if caught. The hypocrisy is also annoying, but not the main problem.

> Also speeding is a bad example since the cops let people off all the time

That's why I said "and surveilled".

If a lawmaker creates a law to make something illegal, sends police to prosecute the population doing said thing, affirms that arresting people for having a cup of coffee is absolutely the intention of writing the law - that is perfectly reasonable.

If at the same time they are breaking the law they created - that is corruption. For the people prosecuted for said crime with trials pending, it is information that is useful for them to know that the lawmaker conducted themselves in this manner.

how is that corruption?

There's a third outcome between "fully public" and "fully private" that's actually worse, which is "known to blackmailers".

That is, who's collecting kompromat on UK ministers, and for what purpose, and in exchange for what? (It's the press, isn't it)

> (It's the press, isn't it)

Yes. Once one meets a journalist or two, you become aware that every scandal that comes to light was known by everyone for a long time.

There is someone else, however, the Whip. While the end recipient would ultimatley be the press, the power they hold is by collecting up little secrets like which Prime Minister was having an affair with their Chancellor ...

https://www.politicalite.com/exclusive/dirty-dossier-full-li...

I'm totally fine with raising their paychecks by a factor of 10 for their loss of privacy if we implement this... the amount of money we'd save elswhere dur to less corruption would be a few orders of magnitude higher.

You don't even need to raise it that much. One can implement onlyfans.com business model when their electorate pays to them for access to their cam feeds.

The richer would be the ones that do things on their livefeed that attract people. Do you want politicians orgies? Because that's how you get politicians orgies. The poorer politicians would be the perfectly honest and completely boring ones, not a great way to encourage honesty.

Do you want politicians orgies?

Now wait, let not be too hasty here. We should whiteboard this out. There are a lot of moving parts, and shutting down an idea too soon, would be wrong.

So to start, uh, just wondering, which politicians? Also, what would they be wearing?

Again, only asking for an accurate framing here.

Lauren Boebert is secretly a total hottie. But I really wanna see Mitch McConnell shake what he got.

I know that HN isn't supposed to be for jokes, but legit, I assume that a naked Mitch McConnell looks like the nudist alien scammers from futurama.

https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Sprunjer?file=Srunger.png

Or Dana Carvey trying to get into the Turtle Club.

We've already had some experiments about "what if we select politicians based on their love for being on TV and their lack of concern about concealing their corruption" and the results aren't good...

Public figures kinda need to be narcissistic just to be able to face seeing themselves so much each day. And that includes the good ones.

I'm more worried about the fact that humans are, collectively at least, so hypocritical.

For the following examples, bare in mind that neither I nor the general public understand the actual laws, so any nits you pick need to be the kind that even a non-lawyer will accept:

I'm old enough to remember Clinton being impeached for lying about his affairs, and yet Republicans (collectively) are defending Trump for lying about affairs.

Or vice versa, Trump's classified documents at home vs. Biden's.

Probably the same elsewhere, but I don't trust that I'm not part of the problem with regard to UK politics (where I'm from), and my German isn't good enough to pay attention to what's happening where I now live.

>I'm more worried about the fact that humans are, collectively at least, so hypocritical.

Humans are violent too. If we tried as hard to train it out of people we'd make good progress.

Violence serves a purpose - although it doesn't serve this purppose well, it stands in place as a last resort. Removing that resort, what do you propose replaces it for the purposes which must be served?

I meant that we could train out hypocrisy the same way we train out most of the violence.

For example, how many showers a day can a person take and "forget" to get dressed?

> and "forget" to get dressed?

The old Ted Kennedy maneuver

You mean Zelensky?

If you mean Trump, a lot of people think the results were great.

A lot of people are brainwashed.

>A lot of people are brainwashed.

On both sides. It's all theater like WWE. You have the good guy and you have the heel. Each side has their own story with this format.

Much earlier than Trump, politicians discovered that they could further advance their own interests by virtue signaling during Congressional sessions instead of actually make progress on legislation. Now, all meaningful negotiation happens behinds closed doors. If that also gets broadcast, then I'd be surprised if they get anything done at all.

> now, all meaningful negotiation happens behinds closed doors

This is fundamental to loss aversion and compromise. There was never a "before." Open "negotiations" reward posturing, not compromise.

The Singapore System - their ministers are the highest paid in the world and it (apparently) makes a difference.

Singapore remains an authoritarian state, not a democracy. It allowed for massive progress in a difficult political climate but it does so at the cost of a good amount of political freedoms. That might be fine, but not in all cultures.

I also challenge the notion that higher pay leads to less corruption. If so, then why are Denmark, Finland, New Zealand and Norway ranked higher in the corruption perception index[1], when they are paid much, much less annually (especially Finland)[2]?

[1] https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022 (https://archive.ph/fabjP)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_salaries_of_heads_of_s... (https://archive.ph/XGbpO)

But that is a perceptions index. People are going to answer based on what they heard about the previous year's index.

Of course it's hard to find the "actual corruption" figures, but that doesn't mean the perceptions index is of any value.

This is the best authoritative source that I could find. The few assertions I've seen that Singapore is less corrupt than most european and north american countries quote Transparency International as a source, so I assume it might be an acceptable one. They also supplement their findings with a "GCB" survey[1] (which is less recent), and given enough time I guess there are other sources one could find.

These are surveys, so there's a limit to how reliable their results can be. However, I find surveys are a pretty good start when you need to get a general idea on how something does and you can't just measure it. How you value that is up to you, that's why I quote it in my comment.

[1] https://www.transparency.org/en/gcb

Yeah it's not entirely crazy when you are talking about something to quote whatever you can find.

But on this particular index, I strongly suspect it is simply continuing existing biases. It's the thing people quote and by quoting it you get reinforce next year's rankings. Plus it's the kind of thing nobody can ever verify due to its nature.

Assuming what you say here is true (which in my opinion is a pretty high leap), one could then ask why those biases exist in the first place. I expect authoritarian states to enable corruption but it's the contrary in the case of Singapore. Why? Because I doubt it boils down to the salary of the ministers.

On a side note, it might be interesting to see the evolution of this index over the years for any given country; that might lead to interesting conclusions on the bias confirmation you're talking about!

Crazy that you've been downvoted for this. The single ruling party of Singapore for the past 70 years, the People's Action Party, is overtly fascist. But I guess people are eager to overlook that because they like the results? Seems like a barely warmed over reformulation of 'they make the trains run on time.'

I don't think we should impose loss of personal privacy.. even in this scenario a politician acting impeccably could fall to one one signalling for part of the public's irrational approval, like two gladiators in the colosseum. The decisions of the politician's themselves need to somehow be opened up for scrutiny as they are, artifacts independent of their origin. Like code being submitted for review, and being subjected to human + automated checks. I know people will decry this as naive / impractical to implement but I still think it has got a better shot then 'create dystopian state where politicians are monitored 24 / 7, and trust the ever rational cooler heads of the public mob to (a) properly reward the good and punish the bad, (b) advocate for the best policies'. Not to mention that if such a system were invented then politicians were just get corrupted in advance of their career, in secret.

This would be delightful. Being a politician should be a curse that the dedicated bear for the good of humanity, not cushy job and badge of pride.

Be careful what you ask for. There's no good reason that public service should be a "curse".

Humans are not angels, and we should not build systems that hold out some unrealistic expectation that they are.

Too often politicians are viewed as "saviors of the people" only shortly before they become "corrupt villains".

If we want to attract competent public minded people, we need to do a lot of deep thinking and system design to get there.

One good place to start is to get rid of this idea that every citizen's input is equally informed, sane, reasonable, actionable, legal, or thoughtful.

In a democracy, every person hopefully is afforded certain rights, such as due process and free speech, but this does not mean what you say is "free from consequences". The corollary is that not all ideas have to be given equal consideration. Some people say batshit crazy things sometimes, and frankly, these kinds of comments make life hell for many public servants. School boards come to mind.

Speaking, personally, I would like to be a public servant, in some regard (again), but I don't think we have realistic processes in place to really gather thoughtful feedback from the public. Until we do, public servants have to deal with a lot of informed nonsense.

I think software developers and UX people might not realize how skilled and motivated we are at building systems that actually work. I'm not saying that we build the right thing all the time. But so many government processes are fundamentally broken in terms of information processing. I'm not saying that they are broken by e.g. the tropes like "lazy people in government". I'm saying that the systems are (anti) designed (or evolved) in such a way that they're so painful that driven people get driven out.

If you think of a government as a way of processing citizen input in a way that is consistent with budget constraints and laws, it seems that many government agencies are not built using the principles that so many of us take for granted: system design, failure analysis, testing. This isn't just government problem, of course ... it is characteristic of large organizations of all kinds.

Democracy does not function well when too many people are simultaneously uninformed and yelling. This crowds out informed people trying to have a discussion.

</personal pain point>

> being a politician should be a curse that the dedicated bear for the good of humanity, not cushy job and badge of pride

Nobody I know would run for state office. They pay poorly. You have to work in the state capitol, which in most state's is awful. You lose your privacy. And for what, a marginal legislative role?

The historic benefit was pride. But with nihilism in vogue and trust in government low, that reward is non-existent. Our intelligent and ambitious don't aim for public office. (It even feels trite to call it public service.) That's a problem.

I don't know you but I'd say no one you know is a committed public steward. However plenty of those exist outside of your bubble.

> no one you know is a committed public steward

I have friends who ran for and won local and federal offices. I specifically called out state because it min-maxes the power-honor trade-off.

That said, I’ll stand by my broader point. Normalised derision has made public service more taxing than it ever was. This is true globally, and has been called out by high-profile resignations in e.g. New Zealand and Scotland.

Local and federal offices are also, if not more, lucratively profitable. Maybe it's not about some Platonic notion of power-seeking behavior but rather small people pursuing their own small monopolies.

>Our intelligent and ambitious don't aim for public office. (It even feels trite to call it public service.)

No, they become lobbyists instead. They have more power as they are the ones controlling the elected officials.

>That's a problem.

Then perhaps the job shouldn’t be done by individuals, but by groups developing systems.

my boss knows one of the former US press secretaries. At a dinner a while back my boss went on and on (for like 30min) how she couldn't believe her acquaintance was picked and how she should have been press secretary and would have been oh so much better. I asked her why in the world would you ever want that job, the pay sucks and you're just getting yelled at all day by reporters. She couldn't believe someone would turn down a chance to work in a presidential admin. We both had a little bit too much to drink and argued for like an hour. I had a tshirt made for her with a headshot of her, apparent, nemesis haha

It is incredibly lucrative to take one of these jobs. The last three white house press secretaries went on to become commentators and/or high ranking politicians. It's really not that hard to understand why people want the job.

The more unpleasant you make public service, the more you filter and select for people who want to use that power for evil ends and self-dealing. This is the same backwards thinking that causes people to want to cut legislative salaries, not understanding that this just makes it so the only people who can run for office are millionaires who can live off their accumulated wealth.

As it was in pre-agricultural tribal chiefdoms, where the most esteemed and high-ranking individuals were those who contributed the most hard work to the tribe. Although chieftains enjoyed certain privileges, it pales in comparison to the opulence in modern politics. And at least their status was genuinely earned.

You say this in jest, but it's a good idea. The more power you have, the less privacy you should have. This would be an appealing catch-up mechanic in society.

I would vote yes.

If reality TV and US politics are any indication, then today it's the reverse: the less privacy you have, the more power you have.

Beware the peculiar human creature who craves attention from strangers.

Media exposure is not the same as loss of privacy. Fox "News" hosts have a ton of exposure. But they also have a ton of privacy. We know this because it was noticable when they lost their privacy in the Dominion lawsuit discovery. Their (previously private) texts to each other admitting openly lying to their viewers, that they themselves saw through Trump's obvious and destructive lies. And it was, is, a fantastic look behind the curtain, even if their primary victims won't/can't ever see it. (Just like none of them watched the 1/6 hearings.) But it's still a very good thing that we need more of.

I understand the difference.

If we required politicians to stream their lives 24/7, then the unintended consequence would be a government run exclusively by Instagram influencers who already stream their lives 24/7. I get your point about sunlight on secrets. But limiting our governance to the pool of people I see on TikTok seems like a high price to pay.

(This is just a 2023 rephrasing of the age-old concern of electing someone willing to be a politician.)

While you're at it there should be a 1 year look back. So if you want to run for election you have to start recording a year earlier so we can compare your actions to that of the other Big Brother^d^d^d^d^d^d^d^d^d^d^d candidates.

I do suspect that having a hot spouse and active sex life would become a significant advantage when running.

A lot more of this kind of tongue kissing going on I suspect https://i.imgur.com/w85Pwzb.gifv

I know he was American and not European, but "When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself public property." ~Thomas Jefferson

That's a start. Governments need to be 100% transparent in all things. Government officials should have nothing to hide. All meetings are open, all documents are accessible to all, all communications are recorded and open. Convert the NSA into an agency which watches government 24x7. Any government official that is found to hide/obscure information from the public gets three strike after which they are out. For life.

Workers who actually deal with confidential/personal information on citizens are the ones with the privilege to work without such monitoring.

All of this would be fixed, and more, if we brought back Athenian style ostracism by public vote!

It would also make banishing political enemies far more effective.

If all meeting by public officials on duty were recorded (as police officer bodycams now are) then we would avoid tons of wars and geopolitical conflicts. We’d realize these guys are bozos who didn’t actually even understand each other and should be replaced by diligent teams who have to develop better frameworks. THESE POLITICIANS OWE US THE PEOPLE to do this IN ALL COUNTRIES. Instead of shaming us into supporting their “unprovoked and unjustified” wars.

Saying that if we start scanning all chats for illegal activity then we should also require all communications of politicians to be part of public record is not exactly the strongest argument.

I mean those systems are already in place, at a minimum you'd have to argue they're ineffective or not as intrusive. And your hyperbole is not doing you any favours on that front.

> Suggested alternative: The "End Political Corruption Proposal"

I'm probably in the minority on HN, but I think this is a good thing. It should be a matter of course, in a democratic society. Free speech doesn't live solely in digital communication (universally owned by some company) any more than it does in the classified ads in a newspaper.

It would be world changing, the complete abolition of all privacy.

Little drones that followed everybody around, everywhere, broadcasting and storing every thing everybody does, or says, everywhere they go, and what they do.

No. I do not recommend it. But the thought experiment is interesting.

> It would be world changing, the complete abolition of all privacy.

> Little drones that followed everybody around, everywhere, broadcasting and storing every thing everybody does, or says, everywhere they go, and what they do.

That's an interesting 0-100% (eclipse all possible free speech possibilities!) imaginary scenario. I don't subscribe to it.

It's an opt-in scenario. People aren't forced to be politicians.

Politics already suffers heavily from not getting the best-of-the-best. Making it even less attractive to become a politician is unlikely to improve upon that.

In the totality of all politicians out there that you have an opinion about, which fraction of them do you like, in terms of thinking they are the right person for the job? Do you think this fraction would improve with that opt-in scenario implemented?

"Politics already suffers heavily from not getting the best-of-the-best"

It is repeated often, but is this really true?

Number 1 trait of a politician should be honesty and integrity in my opinion - and I don't think that you can increase that factor, just with throwing more money on them. Then you maybe just get more smart people, who are in it for the money and use their smarts and cunning to extract even more money. I think politicians should want that job, because they primarily feel the call to achieve something bigger.

So a adequate payrise is alright in my opinion, but I don't want the top managers who run a big compony for profit to also run states. As states are (or should not be) profit orientated, but to serve the greater good of its people.

If H. Clinton vs D. Trump or D. Trump vs J. Biden are the only choice for the most powerful politic job in the world .. I think they are really not the-best-of-the-best

This is a better argument for the American public making in general poor choices and political parties giving them the kind of people they are apt to vote for rather than paying insufficient salaries.

"Tail wagging the dog" argument.

There is no reason to believe that the factor dragging political quality into the gutter is insufficient salaries. The fact that the Republican party turned down higher caliber more capable candidates in favor of trump suggests that candidate quality is limited by voter choice not insufficient compensation.

These folks really are in fact deplorable and you need to appeal to at least a substantial minority of awful idiots to be elected president or if on team red most of them.

This is why every Republican president in half a century has been an embarrassment and every democratic relatively conservative because nothing else flies here and upping the ante won't help.

> It is repeated often, but is this really true?

If I look around at (a) politicians and (b) people I respect for traits needed in politicians, then those sets are not fully but largely disjoint.

> Number 1 trait of a politician should be honesty and integrity in my opinion

There are other necessary traits though. Empathy. Diplomacy. The ability to compromise. Keeping an eye on the big picture. Current processes don't always select for those traits and there are tons of BS-ers and populists out there while I see people with the desirable traits outside politics and not having any desire to get involved. Putting a camera over their head 24/7 is not going to improve that.

If we're not getting the best of the best, then this 'opt-in politicians must submit to the record so their paymasters can vet them' idea would protect us from the one's who take the job for the 'side perks'.

we are FAR AWAY from that being a problem. An average Joe that isn't corrupted by money/lobbyists/... will make dramatically better decisions than any smartass that also tries to hide the corruption under the rug of meritocracy ("you don't understand, I am the expert!!11").

Decisions that are made in good faith from average people would be so much better than anything we experience today, its almost comically absurd. The decision-making process including all talks being recorded and publically available would also be a massive factor to restore trust in politics.

> we are FAR AWAY from that being a problem. An average Joe that isn't corrupted by money/lobbyists/... will make dramatically better decisions than any smartass that also tries to hide the corruption under the rug of meritocracy

Citation needed. Actually, a lot of citations needed.

When's the last time you spoke to an "average Joe" ? The average joe can't even make the right decisions regarding their own life and health, and is probably struggling to keep their family together and make ends meet.

What in the world makes you think they are qualified to make decisions on behalf of millions of constituents? I would drop dead before I let someone like that be my voice in politics.

> Decisions that are made in good faith from average people would be so much better than anything we experience today, its almost comically absurd.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So far, none is provided.

Politicians aren't isolated: the people they interact with would be impacted, too.

That is the premise of TV Show Omniscient, I found it interesting. They dont broadcast everything, but data is shared with appropriate authorities

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt11542920/

I'm not sure privacy as a concept should be off limits. It wasn't always a thing, in fact it's fairly recent. However there's a fairly big leap from "you can't always expect privacy" to "drones recording your whole life".

The thought experiment has been done at novel length by Stephen Baxter: The Light of Other Days, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_of_Other_Days

In the novel it is extremely disruptive, but perhaps that is what is needed.

I'm with you. For the duration of you holding public office there should be no expectation of privacy.

This could be labeled "sousveillance", watchful vigilance from underneath:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance

It would be a start to do away with diplomatic immunity.

This is a complicated one, because it runs the risk of both harassment of diplomats under fake crimes and also the elevation of real petty crimes to diplomatic incidents. The Okinawa business is difficult enough _without_ real diplomatic immunity. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-42048473?ocid=socialfl...

You have my vote.

This is whataboutism and derails the conversation. These two things are unrelated.

1. Why do you think 'whataboutism' is a bad thing? It is comparison. Comparison is a fine tool for reasoning about policy. Not the end of the conversation, but something to consider.

2. The corruption of EU politicians is a major concern. If they think so little of privacy that they are willing to vote for laws like this, then they should certainly have to defend why they get any privacy at all. Corruption in government is one of the most damaging things happening in our society, and total surveillance would make it easier to detect & prove when they are lying.

> The corruption of EU politicians is a major concern

Yes. I never said otherwise.

> then they should certainly have to defend why they get any privacy at all

That's the funny bit: they won't. They - and their family - will have the same if they use the same platforms. Which is why I firmly believe this isn't about corruption, this is about false beliefs and zealots who genuinely believe the internet and open communication is bad.

Except that these platforms often have 'government' specific offerings that are not the same as everyone else.

In the US whataboutism is used to justify current crimes because in the past someone else did not get charged. It is a way to dismiss current crimes made by 'my side' because 'whatabout' that time 'your side' got off. It ends up reducing what can be criticized to the lowest common denominator, because you can't criticize anybody if anybody had every done it before.

Accusations of whataboutism are basically used to stop conversations because the accuser does not like where the conversation is going.

That's false. Whataboutism, in its traditional and non-negative sense, is the long-standing assurance of equal-enough application of the law as a defense against Bananaism.

See, I can make up truly stupid neologisms as well. But at least mine isn't an effort to subvert foundational democratic norms.

Because unequal application of the law isn't law.

Whataboutism's necessity increases as the parties and potential charges under scrutiny are ever more alike.

In Whataboutism's novel sense, it is a brain-dead effort to try to get away using the law as a politicized cudgel.

You can tell by the need to invent a new word in order to describe an old concept.

Insofar as their is not any legal jeopardy involved, my explanation still applies however adjusted.

"Precedent" is actually pretty fundamental to tons of legal systems. Because yes, it is important to call out hypocrisy. The people most concerned about whataboutisms nowadays are usually just using it as a way to completely avoid self retrospection and shield themself from what they are accusing others of. Yes, sometimes it is a non sensical argument (when you bring up something completely unrelated), but it is a very very overused online buzzword now.

Public position = gate to corruption, license and regulation = gate to corruption. Do not expect the ones who make the laws to make them against themselves. That is idealist thinking.

If history teqches something is that the more of those, the more corruption and handing of favors and "legal corruption" pops up.

It is not by chance. It is just bc of how incentives are aligned. Those incentives, IMHO, can only be destroyed by strong deregulation and privatization. I dnt know how much of it but certainly a country should not be 45-50% or more GDP going public. Besides that centralized planning (we r going towards that) is usually super inefficient. So it is also a technical problem.

More when the peoople to arrange budgets do not pay a penalty even for their corruption in many cases, let alone for their management mistakes. Lagarde is still there and she gets 400.000 eur per year and took the decisios that made us go to these levels of inflation...on top of that she was involved in a corruption case that prescribed (not sure is the appropriate term in english, translated from spanish) I am no economist but I knew what would happen very likely... do they really pull our leg? I think so honestly.

problem is deregulation and privatisation doesn't work either, because then instead of corrupt politicians who make decisions based on greed despite being told not to, you get CEOs and big corporations who make decisions based on profit (essentially greed) because that is their entire purpose

If you look a bit deeper though; you'll find that greed can lead to good and bad outcomes. People make decisions because in some sense they feel like they will profit personally. That is basically the same as saying they do things for reasons. We know that most people aren't especially principled because they are regularly tested and don't make principle-based decisions. Nevertheless there is a great deal of good in the world.

Corporations are greedy, but they operate in a world where it is hard for them to enrich themselves without enriching others too.

how is this different/better for corporations than for politicians? Also how do corporations, that focus their efforts on using the cheapest possible production methods regardless of effects on the environments or peoples' health, paying their workers the absolute minimum for them to continue living, and paying their shareholders the absolute maximum amount 'enrich others' by accident?

Not that I am defending corrupt politicians, I just really don't know what to do about this, and looking at all the bad things corporations do i can't comprehend how they would suddenly become good when even less regulated than they already are

Corporations in a free market offer products and services. Politicians coercion.

They do not improve your life objetively, usually they do not pay for the price of them when there is a mistake but get benefits from trafficking favors.

> you get CEOs and big corporations who make decisions based on profit (essentially greed) because that is their entire purpose

That would be fine if you had hundreds of CEOs competing in a market. Unfortunately they tend to merge and create monopolies. And some people salute this because of the growth at all costs mindset.

What else in nature grows at all costs? Oh right, cancer.

Profit is not greed when you serve people with products and services. Or if it is greed, regulation and corruption is not another kind of greed even worse? No service, no product, no benefit for anyone.

If there is benefit in a regulation, the person imposing it is not the person paying the negative outcomes of it. Never. So no, CEOs competing cannot get more than what they generate unless they distort the market in some way.

Splitting power. That's the key.

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