Thanks for your comment.

I have often thought along the same lines myself. We, the people are the bosses of all who work for the government so we have a right to know exactly what they do on our time with our money, yet at the same time they are people and have a right to privacy. Just as I would not like a camera recording me as I work I could not expect another to do it. However that does not mean we cannot make certain parts of the process public, such as the meetings between commercial groups and politicians. I think there is a line we could draw that we are nowhere close to. The government watches us with far less oversight.

In thinking about this post after writing it I can see I have not made my point very well (I have a four week old daughter and could do with a little more sleep). I think that the way in which government is organised takes very little consideration for the psychology involved, especially when dealing with conflicts of interest. It seems obvious to me that when you have two systems interacting that have conflicting interests and both are incentivised essentially with greed (be it for power, money or both) then that is perfect recipe for corruption. We need to somehow change the way in which the system is organised so that these conflicts are worked around. There are many other ways in which we could do it. We could for example change the way government works so that those who make the real decisions are more strongly incentivised by co-operation rather than personal success. I am not sure how this could be done in a democracy.

I agree, a completely open financial system would be great, but I don

The trouble comes from families.

Just because the wife or father or niece is a politician (and therefore has to have all of their financial dealings open for public scrutiny) doesn’t mean that all the persons loved or related to or deeply trusted by that person will adhere to such otherwise reasonable limitations.

Other than that, I don’t see the advantage of having a separate layer of persons between us and lawmakers; only that the lawmakers themselves need to be owning the economy. To provide them financial incentive seems to be a problem too; if that were really important to them, they could make a lot more of it easier by catering to rich special interests, as they do now.

My idea for complete financial openness may not be practical. But I fear it is the only way to ensure that the kind of malfeasance we’ve been experiencing is replaced by something -hopefully- better.

I have no answers, only critisisms. :o)