Transparency and liberty
Analysis, 11/14/2007

When it comes to the essence of what makes a good government, I have long argued that transparency is a critical component in developing an optimum system of governance.

The argument is often made that "democracy" and "Rule Of Law" are the needed component for good government, while I have argued that "Rule Of Law" is meaningless without "transparency", where transparency must be the flip side of the "Rule Of Law", and should be the more important component of this equation.

Transparency is more important than the "Rule Of Law" because it leaves no place for misinterpretation and misrepresentation, while the "Rule Of Law" can mean just about anything you want it to be, a democratic Rule Of Law, a totalitarian Rule Of Law, a communist Rule Of Law etc. They are all rule of law forms.

More importantly, transparency generates the needed underlying forces that would most likely lead to a good government with a "good" "Rule Of Law" system, where as starting from the "Rule Of Law" generates no inherent incentives in the system for it to develop into a good system and a transparent one. Totalitarian and communist regimes all think their "Rule Of Law" system were or are good systems.

Similarly, I have argued that democracy as practiced today with its simple majority voting system, is a severely flawed system, and is a form of totalitarianism that is very hostile to liberty. When one percent of the population, or even one person, can flip the balance in a 51% to 49% vote on adopting a law in congress or parliament, to be imposed on the opposing 49 percent of the population, that is a form of tyranny that I have struggled to explain to people, in the face of long held tradition and inability to grab the concept, or once they grab it, they remain uncomfortable with it. There is so much tradition, habituation, and education to overcome. I am optimistic that this revolutionary idea will catch on sooner or later, despite people's best effort to stay comfortable with the systems they know, rather than adopt a system that is new and different, even when the new system is far superior.

With transparency, those who dare adopt it as the foundation of their system, are setting in motion forces that induces optimum intelligence in the system, in a very open and adaptive manner. When faced with such a system initially, the government will feel enormous pressure and discomfort in learning to deal with such a system, but will reap great rewards afterwards.

Transparency should not only be the foundation of political systems, but the foundation of economic systems, and other systems of governance. Countries, and especially developing or undeveloped countries shy away from these principles, like they shy away from the plague. Yet, international aid organizations also seem to go about business as usual or play at the margin of these issues, when they try to aid other nations, poor or otherwise. The problem with these governments, poor and the more advanced, is not a deficit of money, for the main part, it is a deficit of understanding. They lack the understanding that the most important factor to consider in developing a healthy society and economy is to respect and promote liberty of the individual.

Supporting liberty can only be done by having the ability of the individual to make choices about the kind of products to buy, government to have, religious believes to adopt, or social life to lead. But when the government, thru the simple majority systems, takes away rights of citizens so easily, imposing laws on them that restrict their choices, or imposes choices on them, then clearly, the talk about liberty is meaningless unless there are systems in place that supports and protects liberty. Therefore, the simple majority voting systems of today are most harmful to liberty, and talk of "liberty" under such a system can for the most part be dismissed as uninformed talk, in light of the arguments I had presented (read referenced articles and my books for details). Liberty and simple majority voting systems adopted worldwide are contradictory by allowing easily the imposition of laws on fellow citizens, and are contradictory with promoting freedom of choice. The fact that western democracies offer more freedom than eastern and other government models means very little other than they are a better system than a bad system. This is like saying "my system is better because it is less bad than the other system." Also, this is like comparing the use of the horse for transportation, with the horse being western democracies with their simple majority voting, as being better than walking on foot, with the walking on foot for transportation as the eastern government models. This argument is no way means that the horse is the most advanced form of transportation. There are more advanced methods than that for transportation, such as the car, plane, etc.

To make a choice, transparency must be present to allow the individual open access to the best data available to know about the available choices. Once the person has access to such information, then liberty provides him the ability to act on his choices without fear or interference from others.

Therefore, the two most important foundations of politics, and economics and healthy social development are liberty and transparency.

But even liberty and transparency, need help to develop and maintain. What underlies their development is a needed understanding of the public, or those in charge, of the importance of liberty and transparency. Therefore, education about liberty and transparency and how they work in a system and why they need to be nurtured and developed should be promoted strongly.

These two most fundamental factors in developing healthy societies can be very simple explain, but very hard to practice. People in general seem to say that they like transparency and liberty, until it interferes with their desires for quick solutions or to impose their own views and will on others in times of crisis or otherwise. Then doing away with liberty and transparency becomes justified as needed for "practical reasons" to deal with a problem. This is a very flawed thinking, and this is the real test of whether a person or society truly understands the importance of preserving these two ideas.

For a governance system to adopt and restrict itself to not violate these principles, even under the most difficult problem situations, is a sign of understanding that: you should not work against the equations of physics to solve a problem, but you use the equations themselves to solve the problem. These two ideas are the very physics equation of healthy politics and economics. Engineering is the art and practice of taking equations from physics and turning them into useful systems that society can use and consume. Such was the equations of Newton on motion and of Maxwell's equations on electrical theory. It took a long time before Maxwell's equations became useful electric and electronic products we consume, and computers we use. The same for others and for Newton's equation of motion of translating these equations into cars and planes and other devises.

Turning equations into useful systems can be easy, and can also be extremely hard, but that is what government officials and lawmakers should be doing as part of their job, as it relates to the method they need to use to solve problems. Those that govern need to learn to use transparency and liberty as powerful instruments for devising solutions to problems, without needing to impose restrictive or costly solutions that are inferior.

I have presented and argued for years on the need to recognize transparency as the foundation of good governance. And in the last two year, I presented a far superior system of governance for the promotion of liberty than that of the simple majority system of current democratic governments. I have argued logically and mathematically as to the soundness of these systems.

If these two ideas, transparency and liberty, as presented in my new form of government proposal, are not being recognized and promoted by the educated, informed, and so-called think tanks, than this leaves me puzzled as to why this is the case. Are these two ideas so advanced for an understanding of them and their implementation, or is there too much vested interests and biases against these ideas, name of the author or publication, poor marketing and promoting, or something else. I don't know.

By,
Jamil Kazoun


Author of the book: A Second American Revolution: Creating Rational Government
and the book: A Third American Revolution: A New World Government . A Plan for Liberty, Justice and Peace"

Previous Stories:
  Money for Peace, Not War: A Plan for Immediate World Peace and Prosperity   (9/19/2007)
  The Attack on Free Speech Worldwide   (8/15/2007)
  A New Form Of Government: Rational Government   (2/10/2006)
  A constitution for Iraq   (7/2/2005)
  Transparency: foundation for proper government   (5/17/2003)
  The foundation of good development: rule of law and transparancy   (9/16/1999)

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