[extropy-chat] Extropy and libertarianism - a search formeaning...

[Brett Paatsch]

The Avantguardian wrote:

> --- Brett Paatsch <bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au> wrote:
>>
>> > A good first step might be to make politicians
>> personally
>> > accountable for their errors...
>>
>> That's not a bad idea. But you can't have a first
>> step that is not
>> operationalisable.  Holding all politicians as a
>> class accountable for
>> their collective errors isn't operationalisable for
>> you or me or indeed
>> any one person. Because they don't operate as a
>> class. They take
>> individual oaths of office and to the extent that
>> they can individually
>> avoid being held to account for breaking their oath,
>> then of course
>> they will (on average) try to do just that.
>
> How would one keep politicians accountable?

To answer your question. I think you can only keep them
accountable one at a time. I think we have to make things
personal.  This is the same way we keep each other
accountable. We don't take issue with the whole class
of politicians we take issue with particular politicians
one at a time.  This is hard work. This costs us something
personal because it takes personal time away form things
we'd probably rather do.

I would like to see impeachment proceedings brought
against George W Bush. I would like to see them brought
even if ultimately they fail because I would like to see the
principle of accountability return to world politics.  I don't
think citizens are holding their elected leaders to personal
account enough.

Why are not George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard
struggling to fight off legal challenges from outraged citizens
in the courts?  I don't think it is because there are not a
very large number of people who think they have legal
cases to answer. I think it is because hardly anyone is willing
to take the personal trouble and risk to try to make their
legal cases and to make charges that are valid and will stick.

I think politicians are learning something new in the west and
that is that for some of them they can expect to escape
accountability for doing and saying almost anything because
they can use wedge politics to defray any opposition and
rely on party political flunkies to support them regardless of
whether they personally deserve support.

I don't argue that this is greatly different to what has happened
in recent world history but I do think the trend is perhaps more
dangerous now with power consolidated so much in one place.

Bush got reelected. So far as I can see he got reelected
fair and square. But the avenue of bringing him to account
for breaking his presidential oath is theoretically open to each
and every US citizen and isn't being pursued. I ask myself why.

And the answer has two parts. Only a relatively few understand
the systems they live in well enough to use those systems
well. And of those few most are capable enough to have
plenty of other things to do with their time and savvy enough
to prefer that others do the heavy lifting when it comes to
grandiose notions like standing up for civilization.

>California
> has recall elections as a provision and there is
> impeachment. As far as impeachment goes, I was amazed
> during the Clinton fiasco as to how time-consuming and
> expensive it is. It seems much more straight forward
> as it is described in the Constitution. It doesn't
> seem all that efficient a way to hold politicians
> accountable, at least in the manner it is practiced.

It would have to be done right. Most of those in the US
with even my level of understanding, I suspect, are waiting
to see if the political weight shifts enough to allow the
legal stuff to get a run.  Perhaps they are positioning
themselves to jump on the bandwagon of impeachment if
they think it has a good chance of being successful.

Impeachment is about law but it is also inevitably about
politics as well. Bush is getting more and more unpopular.

And I suspect a lot of people are content to just wait for
him to go rather than take the trouble of help him leave
early.

> The constitution does not mention expensive armies of
> lawyers on both sides. Most politicans ARE lawyers so
> they should not need lawyers, at least not more than
> one, to defend themselves against accusations.

Obviously not all lawyers are equal.

> I wonder if a case could be made for politicans to be
> held accountable for broken campaign promises under
> contract law.

That would be silly. Contract law (as understood by the
courts, I am not taliking about the social contract) is
subordinate to constitutional law.  One cannot contract
outside the law and the constitution is the foundation of
civil law.

If Bush isn't impeached I think all politicians downstream
will be harder to impeach in future.

>Under commonlaw oral contracts are
> binding are they not?

They are if they can shown to in fact BE contracts.

The reason they are problematic is that undocumented
contracts have unclear terms.

I say to a judge, Stu breached a promise, he broke a contract
with me. The judge says what promise, show me. I say he said
blah. You say you didn't I misunderstood you. The judge can't
decide without looking at the facts. The rules of evidence come
in and them documents are better facts than hearsay.

Chances are if you are I are not a lawyer we are going to need
one to push our claim or to defend our case. Lawyers are people
whose time matters to them.

What lawyer has so little regard for their own time that they
want to get involved in a contract dispute where the parties
weren't savvy enough to have laid down a trail of checkable
facts?

> their false promises do so on the record of the media,
> so there is ample evidence of the "oral contract". If
> a politician promises to do something for me on TV in
> exchange for my vote, but then fails to fulfill his
> end of the bargain, is that not breach of contract?
> Could someone file a civil lawsuit against a former
> holder of high office for breach of contract?
>
>> If you want to hold any one politician accountable
>> and set an example
>> of holding accountable to the others you have to go
>> after the highest
>> profile one. You have to make sure the US President,
>> the highest
>> profile politician in the world is held accountable.
>
> Well he WAS, if you are talking about Clinton.

Clinton as President is history. I don't care about Clinton
one way or the other.

> Apparently duplicitous warmongering is acceptable but
> duplicitous oral sex is not.

There is a social psychology phenomenon called bystander
calculus which basically shows that the more people watching
something wrong (and aware that others too are watching) the
less any one of them is likely to intervene personally to stop
or correct it.

If you are going to have a stroke in a subway you are probably
better off doing it with only one other person around. That
person knows that your only chance of getting help is them
and they won't be able to rationalise that someone more
capable then them can intervene. Its obvious there isn't anyone
more capable.

As an individual if you don't like a politician you have three
choices. Do nothing. Act lawfully. Act unlawfully.

If you do the first nothing will happen. If you do either of the
next two you have entered the realm of politics yourself. If
you act unlawfully and I (or any third party) see you doing it
you are likely, in this climate, to be labelled a terrorist (perhaps
accurately) and likely be opposed as a terrorist or lawbreaker
especially if you are less politically powerful and/or savvy than
the person you are acting against. But if you act lawfully, you
look like a person of principle and people may support you.

I'm not really aiming this at you though. I'm largely verbalising
internal dialogue ;-)

I know that if the world goes to shit on my watch it will be *in
part* because of what I don't bother to do. I'll also know it wasn't
entirely my fault. Perhaps its not just not bothering its about prioritising
other things higher. And I think the same is true for a lot of people.

We are living in a world where Bush is President rather than Donald
Duck or some other republican or democrat because, in part, we didn't
do enough to actively create a better alternative.

If oathbreaking gets worse it will because the penalties for doing it
are discovered to be negligible.

Whether we didn't do enough because we couldn't or because
we made other things a priority is a matter that will vary for
each of us.

But doing something effective involves learning how and what to
do. That too is a choice or a priority we each make or fail to
make.

I'm still conflicted about posting *this*.  It represents far from the
best work I could do, (I hope).  Yet I want to reply to you and I
don't feel like I have the time to do the best I could do unless I cut
back on other things like studying biotech.

Then I remember the political problems I have seen in biotech, and
I notice some of your recent concerns about HIV etc and I wonder
if I'm being a dill by going back into science and leaving politics
alone.   We have to work with uncertainty, including uncertainty
about whether we are spending our time intelligently.

Maybe one day I'll find myself in a situation like that described
in the posts by Damien and Robin in relation to the people suffering
in New Orleans and then I'll wonder why I didn't push harder on
the political stuff.  When, if, the system blatantly fails me, will I look
to others to blame or will I wonder if I priorised my own time
poorly and learnt the wrong things and spoke with and cooperated
with the wrong people?

Brett Paatsch