> better: mandatory transparency into what politicians spend how much time with whom, where money streams come from and go out of organizations, etc, etc. All transparent in a public ledger

The only downside of transparency is that it often has the net effect of increasing partisanship, as quietly making deals and compromises isn't possible.

While I agree this is the only sustainable way of ensuring transparency, I'd want gerrymandering handled and some version of ranked choice voting passed before implementing it. Otherwise, you're going to get even more dysfunctional candidates.

Public service should not be any different from a regular job. You should be paid no less or more than a regular job. And the consequences of your performance and your ethics should be the same as a regular job.

I can’t trade my company stock outside of a few days in the year even though I’m a lowly IC with access to no additional non public information. Same should be true for politicians. I can’t take money from other companies to influence the way I do my work. I cannot influence my ex colleagues to work a certain way after I leave my company based on what another company pays me. I get fired for poor performance at any time and I have to consistently show that I’m working. I can’t take a “recess” and not work a third of the days I’m supposed to work. And I can’t take paid indefinite medical leave. The list goes on.

Once you align the public and private sector, you’ll see improvements on both fronts.

You have come up against a fundamental problem with capitalist private property, to which there is no solution no matter how clever. In this case they would just point the lobbyists towards their family members.

You cannot solve the problem in this way unless you're willing to restrict people's property right to "give away" money; and even then it's likely the ultra-rich will find a loop hole given they can pay teams of lawyers indefinite full time salaries to do so.

You need to attack the source of elite power, not play the game it designed. You need to tax wealth itself, regardless of who holds it. You can't "keep money out of politics" in a system premised on money's right to do whatever it wants. People act like we can just post about repeal Citizens United and it will happen, like they don't live in a world that went from no Citizens United to Citizens United because of a powerful force called capital, to which they have no answer.

That's an absurd proposition. It would be easier just to ban stock trading altogether.

Perception is reality especially online, you get people vehemently pushing their broad generalizations on topics they learned about through memes, comments, and maybe a handful of snips from dubious online articles.

This tells you all you need to know about politics and who elected people work for, it's a cancer that you can "hire" people to go and "talk" to another people in congress, what an infinite level of corruption.

That guy saw Digger.

Jon "look at me and my lack of fingers!" Tester

Anyone who uses folks is suspect. No folk use folks in regular conversation.

They are the exact same sort of people who do not care about us.

Imagine thinking that politicians are any different to what they say publicly.

All of them are liars and are grifting in front of you.

Help them meet and target campaign donations to people he knows in Congress.

No strings attached, of course.

QA

Question Avoidance.

Its not just the US either. Meta hired a former British deputy Prime Minister and leader (Nick Clegg) and it happens everywhere.

I think what is needed is restrictions on jobs people can do after leaving public office.

>Congress is full of these people. Forget party affiliation, this is as broad as it is systemic.

I wish more people understood this. Forget party allegiances, vote for those who have your best interests in mind. I bet if the people stopped focusing on their differences, and instead focused on the struggles we all have in common, we would get so much done.

> > Tester said Palantir is different and that the company doesn't build "big databases" or trade in private data.

> That is literally what Palantir does.

I don't know where this perception of Palantir comes from. Why do people believe things like this that are utterly divorced from reality. I'd ask you to point to a single instance where Palantir has "traded in" private data.

As for building "big databases", it is technically true that Palantir helps organizations organize and operationalize their data. But it brings no data to the table and stores no data for the organizations. It originates no data. It does not have access to any of this data.

> This is an organization that believes in privacy.

Like a doctor believes in disease

Like a preacher believes in sin

Like a teacher believes in ignorance

The structure incentivizes it.

General annoyance: Not having a specific patriot act-like privacy violation ready to not let politicos weasel out like this is journalistic malpractice. Is it just laziness? Just look up some examples before the interview!

What is and isn't "Big databases" isn't up for debate, point to the exact example and ask them about it.

I genuinely think we need some kind of restrictions on free speech for representatives in/formerly in government, because the fact that our politicians can lie this blatantly is as disgusting as it is anti-democracy. It's no wonder 1/3 of our electorate is completely fucking detached from reality.

And the complicity of the media here is also fucking disgusting. A former senator getting a job at Violating Privacy Inc. after opposing the Violating Your Privacy law, Jesus fuck.

“They (palantir) have a story to tell”, what a shameless sleezeball.

They are politicians and they are not your friends nor do they care about us.

It's just political hatred and jealousy from what I can tell. They make a lot of different software, it's not like it's just a custom type of database. They don't have any sort of information that didn't exist before, it's just new ways of presenting that information. Instead of $$$$$ tax dollars being spent in secret, it's $$ and the company is in the spotlight. Anyone against transparency and cost-savings naturally hates them, but I don't know where the other hatred comes from.

It's the combination of capability and clients.

Way back in the day, when Twitter was a thing and the API feeds were reasonably accessible, people were using tweets to build network graphs of terrorist cells and drawing maps of territories gangs controlled in major cities. It's amazing what people would put on twitter, and assuming that a micro blogging platform open to the public wouldn't be an incredibly fertile ground for the people looking for them.

This was all done in excel spreadsheets at first, then custom built tools later on. Palantir was one of the early tools, though not the most capable at the time, just the one with the most red-tape-cutting backing.

That might be true but it's not implied by this, given that this is a former senator.

The more leftwing ones are much less likely to fall for this. But they have had to fight some of the "democrat blob" along the way (e.g. the Hayley Stevens meltdown).

The bar is on the floor. To be less hawkish than every Republican this decade/century/millenium, Democrats just have to avoid starting a forever war. That's it.

They love for public office holders to know that if they behave during their term, a cushy gig might be waiting for them after.

Those two points are completely orthogonal though, what's the invisible bridge between:

1. mass surveillance on the American public

2. Palantir's tech is used to kill people

Mark Rowley's already said how much they 'need' Palantir too. It's all very, very fishy.

These are the companies most closely integrated with the government. If USA went socialist, much more of our production capacity would be allocated to this work, not less. The most likely scenario is that instead of choosing to work for a company and being able to step away from the job when you felt it crossed your moral line, you'd just be forced to continue working there. I think threatening families is the most often used tactic in socialist societies.