This is really just a passing thought but when I look around at the broader trends in our lives today I can’t help but wonder over how the enormous increase in informatoin will affect government. Consider this recent statement by head Eurozone Finance Minister Jean-Claude Juncker:
On March 29, when speculation swirled that Portugal needed a bailout, Prime Minister Jose Socrates denied — again — that that would happen despite clearly unsustainable market pressures.
“I’m sick of saying we won’t” be requesting help, he told journalists.
Just eight days later, in a chastened appearance on national television, Socrates did just that.
For Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, the threat of immediate market turbulence means the usual norms of transparency don’t apply.
“When it becomes serious, you have to lie,” Juncker, who as the chairman of the regular meetings of eurozone finance ministers is one of the currency union’s key spokesmen, said in recent remarks.
The emphasis is mine. Politicians lying is nothing new. What is new is that institutions are not as capable of controlling information as they once were, the truth will out, and as we have learned repeatedly over the last couple of decades the cover-up is worse than the crime.
This loss of control in information isn’t restricted to the loss of the gatekeeper function on the part of major media outlets, undermined by blogs and social media. It extends to information mischief-makers like WikiLeaks and Anonymous but none of those are the most subversive of the forces that are driving information out into the open.
Consider projects like the Consumer Metrics Institute’s indices of economic activity and the Billion Prices Project’s tracking of prices. Real-time metrics that conflict with the official statements on economic activity and inflation over time will inevitably undermine the ability of governments to control the message about these things and manage public opinion.
We do not yet have good real time measurements of employment and unemployment. We may well have—the information is out there and will inevitably be harnessed. When we do the survey- and model-based measurements will become decreasingly credible.
