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They should send someone in who has a photographic memory. In two hours he/she can browse those 600 pages, and later someone else can type them out. And this may all be done for a good hourly fee.



They should pass an emergency law that requires all documents containing suggested content for national legislation be published in full, made available to the public via government websites (or national equivalents). Wording not published could not be included in any legislation.

Anything short of that makes a mockery of the idea that we have any sort of democracy. A democracy where the demos aren't allowed to read the treaties before they are ratified, what a ridiculous perversion of a notion that is.

Of course the politicians involved could instead come out and say "this is how it is, we don't care about democracy; we're in charge and you can all put up with what we say". At least then you could respect their honesty.

Having to spy on people to discover details of legislation proposed for your own country, that's a dictatorship.


They should also be in a public revision control system.

I don’t just want to see the material, I want to see who added/removed what and when.


That would be very neat.


> A democracy where the demos aren't allowed to read the treaties before they are ratified, what a ridiculous perversion of a notion that is.

That would be ridiculous, but TTIP will be published when people agree on what it should be, then it'll be voted on. See here: http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/ttip/about-ttip/pr...

When you think "X is ridiculous" consider that maybe X is not actually true.


As an American, I am very familiar with the feeling of disenfranchisement I get every elections cycle. The two major parties field a wide variety of candidates, and methodically weed out all of the ones for which I have even an inkling of affinity. In the end, I am left with a choice between the stupid douche and the turd sandwich. I still technically have a choice, but my options have been severely curtailed, down to the point where the best selection criterion is which one makes me less nauseous.

In this case, the electorate is left with a choice between getting all of the multiparty treaty or none of it.

The bread is nice and springy, sliced to just the right thickness. The lettuce, tomato, and onion are all delicious and salubrious. The sauce is tangy, and a tiny bit sweet. But the turd inside is vile, odorous, and steaming. And you get the bill, and find that you already paid $100 for that sandwich, whether you eat it or not.

Now, had the public been given a chance to participate in the negotiations and debate, someone might have suggested, "Hey, how about we make a sandwich that doesn't have a giant, steaming turd in it?" And the designated negotiators look up, twitch their clubbed antennae, flex their mouth-parts in astonishment and horror, and brush down their shiny black carapaces with the knobby combs on their foremost pair of legs. Then they respond, "But the ball of dung is the only essential part of the whole sandwich!"

And that's when you realize that the world is run by dung beetles 1.8m long, who have absolutely zero understanding about why we humans don't just squeal with delight and scarf down the poop, with gusto, whenever it is handed to us.


That was a glorious post :)

> dung beetles 1.8m long, who have absolutely zero understanding about why we humans don't just squeal with delight and scarf down the poop

You know how they say "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", right?

The next level of understanding is that the aphorism has it backwards.

Instead, it should say something like: "Do attribute to malice that which looks like stupidity and is harmful to the people's interests". That would be accurate.

It's not that they don't understand what they're doing. You don't get to be a high-ranking politician by being stupid, let alone one of the people telling Congressmen how many minutes they're graciously allowed to look at TTIP..


>That would be ridiculous, but TTIP will be published when people agree on what it should be, then it'll be voted on.

And as usual with treaties in the EU system, the people will be told, "vote for this treaty, or you're a fascist."


I'm skeptical about the existence of that kind of photographic memory.


It's rare but it does exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek


You'd have to find an MP with that same ability.


While it is unlikely that a natural eidetic currently serves in parliament, memory is something that can be trained and improved.

So you take a willing MP, teach them about mnemonics, memory palaces, chunking, and list-ordering narratives, and you could likely smuggle out a few dozen pages every week.


I've had two students in six years who could perfectly reproduce the information on a textbook page after one look at it, even if they had no understanding of the material.


Why don't they just send someone with X-Ray vision to stand outside the building and read the documents and type them out? Problem solved.




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