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Comment by Eumenes | Hacker News Reader

I want elected officials to wear body cameras too

"Transparency" in Congress has lead to grandstanding and posturing to cameras, at the expense of the necessary compromises and deals that could otherwise happen.

Sounds like something a Corporation would say. You can have compromise and transparency, it doesn't have to be one or the other.

Transparency would be transcripts of every communication the politician has. At the golf courses, at the bar, on vacation, etc. See Clarence Thomas for example.

Internet/bandwidth creating cost free video channels for politicians to advertise themselves is not transparency.

If that is true, the issue is in the egos of people making deals

The don't grandstand because of "egos" but because they have things to win from that (like press coverage, voter sympathies, money and deals from opponents of the issues they grandstand against, and so on).

You are either being disingenuous or incredibly oblivious. People want to know what our elected officials are saying in private with lobbyists and campaign contributors.

> "Transparency" in Congress has lead to grandstanding and posturing to cameras, at the expense of the necessary compromises and deals that could otherwise happen.

What transparency in Congress? Congress lacks even the transparency requirements many state legislatures have and is essentially completely opaque, with virtually everything substantive happening out of the public eye. The absence of compromise has to do with certain factions preferring to scheme for achieving total government control and preferring to making things worse in the short term if it can be leveraged to help advance that cause, not to transparency.

How many hours of C-Span have you watched in your life? Detailed minutes of Congress proceedings from like 1800 are available for you to peruse if you'd like. Transparency isn't the problem – everything is happening fully out in the open.

There are literally closed door legislative sessions that are not transparent. Plus the adage “business is done on the golf course”.

So you want all elected officials to wear a camera 24x7? Because hey, they could be doing business while taking a shit? Better keep it on at night as well, because we want to see the face of whoever they're screwing.

Here's a better idea – elect people who can be trusted.

No matter how trustworthy someone is when they get elected, there is always a chance for them to become corrupt once in office. After all, before they've actually held public office, there's little to no incentive or opportunity to be corrupt—and the higher the office, the higher both become.

We need effective rules of ethics (with teeth) and oversight procedures. I don't think that forcing every politician to wear a camera 24/7 is really the best solution, but it's hopelessly naïve to think that some of them aren't literally going to bed with the people who are trying to get favorable legislation passed.

A society like the US is just too diverse—not so much in heritage, but in cultural values (or at least subcultural values) to be able to "just elect people who can be trusted."

How about we just go back to expanding the House based on population instead of keeping it static at 435 forever? We're approaching a million constituents per representative. Corruption seems a mathematical certainty.

That would genuinely make a huge positive difference (though it would not, of course, fix the whole system, since the House is not the only place with problems). There's no need, in this day and age, to have the entire House of Representatives meet physically in one building.

Agreed.

Let's go fully remote, sell off most federal property in DC, and retrocede Washington back to Maryland (like Alexandria County back in 1846), dissolving DC and draining the swamp for good.

Then we can take proposals for creating a District of Lincoln or Roosevelt for meetings and events closer to the center of population, e.g. Kansas City (near mean center) or the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio (near median center).

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/zoom-congr...

Reps in the U.S. are very much trusted, by their donors. The problem is House elections are too expensive, because representation is so bad, so only those who take considerable corporate bribes have a shot.

While "virtual," American colonists had better representation in the British Parliament on paper than we do today.

We're an extreme outlier among OECD countries:

https://www.amacad.org/ourcommonpurpose/enlarging-the-house/...

We need to repeal the Apportionment Act of 1929 and expand the House to an appropriate size.

>So you want all elected officials to wear a camera 24x7?

Yes.

>Because hey, they could be doing business while taking a shit?

Sucks to be them. If they're shy about it, they could always not get elected.

Though, joking aside, you don't have to bring in the "slippery slope" argument. As long as they don't talk to anyone while taking a shit, they could be allowed to close the camera.

It's enough that they have to have it open whenever they make any political discussion and anything that relates to their position and role.

Not when they shit or order a latte. And if they do have such a discussion while ordering a latte, and not have it recorded, then it should be grounds for them being ejected.

>Here's a better idea – elect people who can be trusted.

And how's that been working out?

Those are the parts of the process that matter absolutely less.

Many hours actually. BookTV is great for author interviews, and listening to politician's speeches directly has less spin then watching the CNN or Fox interpretation.

That was a plot point in ‘The Circle’ by Dave Eggers. Elected officials were encouraged and then shamed/forced into wearing cameras and livestreaming all their activities. The idea was they they wouldn’t take bribes or submit to lobbyist demands if they were being watched online 24/7. The end result of this sort of transparency, though, was rather dystopian, a lot of unintended consequences.

I wanted to wear a body camera in the form on Mediated Reality glasses but the public shamed/cancelled the early adaptors and manufacturers so much so that the product/concept was withdrawn from market place.

Everyone should be a glasshole

I don't want to see that footage. Ever.

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