[pp.int.general] 'Liquid Democrazy': Pirate Party Sinks amid Chaos and Bickering

[carlo von lynX]

On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 10:39:46PM +0100, Dario wrote:
> IMHO, PP-DE failed by publicly broadcasting their own national assemblies'
> debates. There is nothing relate to transparency on broadcasting people
> debating, because non-pirates have a very different idea on how parties
> work and they don't understand the bickering and assume that PP is a weak
> political party.

yes, and the irony on top of it is, the greens made the same stupid
mistake 30 years earlier so they could have learned from that.

> So here I want to define a difference between transparency in parties and
> transparency in government. Transparency in parties must be for its
> members, except for "non-human" information like financial data or anything
> else that are facts (no third party opinions involved).
> 
> Transparency in government must be for all citizens, because being citizen
> is, bridging gaps, like being a company's shareholder. You "invest" (pay
> taxes) on a common project (your country) and you must be able to demand
> information and answers about what they are doing with your "investment".
> 
> We must not apply the same kind of "golden hammer" for everything.
> Transparency in PP-DE is a good example of "golden hammer" went wrong.

yes, and concerning inner-party transparency you need a finer knife
and slice even further...

say you're discussing the fitness of a person to do a job. you can't
do that transparently as you wouldn't be able to discuss some personal
issues about this person. if you try to enforce it, then people will
start holding secret meetings beforehand and agree on who to elect.

or consider a parliamentary group where deals have to be worked out.
sometimes it's necessary to do some "you give me this so i give you that,"
but these kind of negotiations cannot be public because it would appear
as being weak or corruptible, so instead people start holding talks
and showing their feathers while the cameras are on and all the actual
political negotiations happen on the toilet or at the dinner.

pirates need to require transparency where there is a danger of corruption
but stay cool when there's actually a risk of killing a productive debate.
it's a damn difficult fine line to walk.