What I want from the government:

- more transparency

- more data

From the article these don't actually seem to be the _focus_ of the initiative, but it seems that they will be marginally improved as a result.

hooray

The problem I have with this attitude is that transparency only helps if people are paying attention.

Americans aren't paying attention.

Most Americans simply don't have the time or expertise to puzzle out educated positions on various specialized topics. [1]

The vast majority must inevitably defer to trusted intermediaries to summarize, weigh arguments and state positions. Historically, these would be the press and popular community and national public figures.

The problem today is that those intermediaries are busy leveraging that trust for personal financial gain, feeling no obligation to perform the actual duty being entrusted to them. [2]

To remotely "pay attention" to the breadth of political discourse absent trustworthy filters and intermediaries is beyond a full time job.

Not to mention that it's generally a first-class ticket to becoming disaffected, as one discovers that the issues worth talking about are largely ignored and in many cases there are simply no alternative positions being offered by our political parties.

[1] A person with no training in economics simply cannot make an educated position on any but trivial economic policy short of actually studying economics. And Dunning-Kruger doesn't paint an optimistic picture of anyones ability to fairly weight the various arguments while they're still coming up to speed on these topics in a highly polarized, highly politicized environment.

And to 'pay attention' one must not only do this with economics, but criminal justice, property rights, the health care industry, international politics, business operation, lobbying rules and restrictions, etc.

I see what you did there. Your second footnote is missing.

Whoops.

I forget what exactly I was going to insert there. Likely a brief condemnation of what has become overwhelming and universal tabloid journalism, not to mention the almost comically partisan books being pushed by news organizations to justify the media 'personalities' they populate talking-head shows with.

Transparency is a first step. When the data is available, people (and robots) can analyze it. The FOIA has revealed some interesting stuff, but it is a slow process.

600 out of the 12.5 million unemployed people in the US who haven't given up looking for a job doesn't seem like a flood. It seems like a failure to get the word out. Ping me when they reach google levels of applicants.