Loyalty Blocks Accountability

We moderns tell ourselves that while the ancients were transparently and strongly dominated by elites, we hold our leaders far more accountable, such as via law, media, and democracy. But we allow our elites many easy ways to use money or political connections to gain far more favorable treatment from media and law. And we use democracy much more to fight each other via coalition politics than to hold leaders accountable. That is, we much more submit to the leaders we vote for, than we defy the leaders we don’t.Consider 18 ways we now block holding our leaders accountable:We make blackmail illegal, so they are less penalized for misbehavior.We don’t arrange to try to secretly and randomly bribe officials.We don’t expect leaders to post bonds they forfeit if not keep promises.We mostly pick leaders on recommendation of other leaders.We rarely collect track records re their performance outcomes, or predictions.We rarely use prediction/decision markets to check leader…

Commenting on Bubbles has been removed. Why? If you want to talk about this post, write to the author, use the comments on their blog if it has them, or reply with a "RE:" post on your own blog. Suggestions? feedback@bubbles.town