State power must be supervised. And non-state ownership must be transparent

I've repeated: 2013 was the best year for U.S. Civil Liberties in decades... and almost no one in the media would report on it.  That was the year when the Obama Administration and several federal courts declared it to be "settled law" that citizens have a near-universal right to record their interactions with police in public spaces. 

Some did comment on how this phenomenon was forecast in The Transparent Society (e.g. p.160). Including my predictions that (1)  this would empower minority rights activists to finally be believed, and (2) the fight over details would go on for years.

Sure enough, the battle renewed when U.S. District Judge Mark Kearney ruled against two Philadelphia residents suing city police for using excessive force against them. According to Kearney’s February 19 ruling: "We find there is no First Amendment right under our governing law to observe and record police officers absent some other expressive conduct. …We have not found... citizens have a First Amendment right to record police conduct without any stated purpose of being critical of the government."

In other words, if you openly declare that your intent is to use the footage to publicly denounce cops, then filming them is fine and protected under the First Amendment.  But if you are merely observing and witnessing, or taping in order to have a record, in case you wind up being abused... then that camera can be seized and recording stopped. "This means that only photos and videos of police taken in the spirt of protest or meant to express some other message of disapproval are protected."

And yes, that is as stupid as it sounds.  Especially since the First Amendment is not the only basis for this essential citizen right.  

To my mind, the Sixth Amendment is vastly more pertinent! That is where the Constitution plainly gives any accused citizen a clear right to confront his or her accusers, to demand access to exculpatory evidence, and to compel witnesses on her own behalf. 

The Sixth makes it clear: state interventions must not reduce a citizen's access to exculpatory evidence that might refute state allegations of wrongdoing.  At-minimum any such state efforts bear a steep burden of proof.

Fundamental: Amid the huge imbalance in coercive power, between citizen and state, what other recourse has a citizen, than the truth?  Denying citizens the right and power to collect validating information, to back up their own accounts, is not just a violation of rights in some arcane sense, it is a direct assault upon the fundamental logic and power of citizenry, itself. 

This is an issue about which we have no choice but to be utterly militant.  I have a reputation for proposing many pragmatic compromises, and for having some sympathy for our professional protector caste.  But this is the core issue of our time. Forget encryption wars and/or "right to be forgotten" and any of that other stuff.

This is the citizenship test of our time.

== Tell us what you own ==

Having assailed one kind of governmental power creep, let me turn and blare a warning about the potentially disastrous consolidation of secretive economic power in a few, private hands.

The U.S. Treasury Department says it wants to know if some of the current crop of luxury buyers are laundering money through their purchases. They seek to pierce the confidentiality often sought by luxury buyers who rely on shell companies or limited liability companies to shield their identity.  

For example, the incoming flood of foreign real estate purchasers has many causes, e.g. rich folks in the developing world seeking to safeguard assets and to establish residency, as insurance in case citizens back home get fed-up, or in case even higher homeland muckities decide suddenly to change the rules. This flood has severely affected the ability of Americans to buy property. Cash purchases of real estate hit a peak of 33 percent in late 2013. Think about that. Many of them masked by shell agents and companies. And even larger fractions in New York and Miami (as well as Seattle, Vancouver, Toronto, London...)

Indeed, according to economics guru John Mauldin: “a Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst noted that if the top 3% of wealth holders in China moved just 7% of their money out of the country, it would add up to $1.5 trillion. 

I am so rooting for Treasury on this, hoping it will set a precedent for going after all shell masking of ownership, everywhere in the world. 

See my posting where I propose a Transparent Ownership Treaty: If you own something, you must openly avow and say that you own it.  That is only logical and reasonable. So many problems in the world can be attributed to murky title. Indeed, the Peruvian reforms of the great economist Hernando de Soto Polar won overwhelming plaudits from both socialists and libertarians, by giving poor farmers clear title to the land they had farmed for generations. 

No act could ever more spectacularly benefit stockholders and true market capitalism, than for shell corporations to be banned if they are more then two layers deep, forcing hidden puppeteers to come into the open. 

= The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and NAFTA =  

And yes, transparency of ownership applies to issues before us, today. Such as "globalization" - a phenomenon hated-on by the far-left and far-right, but whose flaws never came close to the benefits - raising several billion people out of poverty.

Two international trade treaties are deemed top enemies by populists of both left and right – one of the few areas where rhetoric overlaps. But what I've seen makes me lean toward support for TPP! Especially since it sets several important precedents toward transparency of ownership.

Oh, to be clear, I dislike many things about globalization as-implemented, even in the TPP, like giving corporations levels of "standing" in international courts on a par with nations. See where I offer an almost science fictional take on this trend, weaving it together with Seasteading and other things you never imagined going together. 

But there are much bigger positive portions to the TPP. It welds the nations of SE and East Asia together with the U.S.  It sets new rules on labor and ecology that they must obey, bringing them all much closer to responsible standards. It protects intellectual property better. Above all, TPP sets a new plateau that China knows will become the standard of lawful behavior, before independent judiciary under rule of law, and if they don't start living by these rules, they will not be invited to the party.

Those who decry TPP point to NAFTA, claiming it responsible for losing some American jobs. And I will surprise you by avowing that's possible, even likely. Still they are shortsighted persons who miss a key point --

That it was and remains stunningly, staggeringly, spectacularly in our interest for Mexico to become a prosperous, middle class country. 

In fact, no single foreign policy objective is more in the long term interest of the U.S. No goal is more important to pursue.

Moreover, NAFTA is the biggest thing doing that. It is happening! Rapidly, as we speak. (The plummet in Mexican immigration to the U.S. came not just because of recession, but because jobs are increasingly available at home.) And when a middle class Mexico comes to fruition it will bring a myriad transitions.  For one thing, it is intrinsically easier for a prosperous North America to defend a short border with - say Guatemala - than for the U.S. to build a giant wall against a poverty-stricken Mexico.

The latter ridiculous fantasm is the current limbaugh-dancer fixation... and let me reiterate - the whole illegal immigration red herring is obsolete! Immigration from Mexico is now negative. Mexico is on the rise and we helped do that and they know it. We are helping make another Canada and boy will that be a happier soft landing than any alternative.

Failure to recognize that aspect of NAFTA -- one that's simultaneously beneficent and pragmatically self-interested -- is a stupidity shared across the spectrum, from right to left.  Already Mexico is importing vastly more from the U.S. than it did before NAFTA and that will rise as this investment pays off.

Come on, lads and lasses. You are sci fi folks. Try taking a big picture, for a change.

== But lest we forget ==

Still, keep an eye on the prize.

There is no other action that would better ensure an enlightenment-based, flat-open-fair-creative 21st Century than a firm international treaty on transparency of ownership.  

There are zero legitimate reasons to oppose it, unless you are a frothing Randian who actively wants a return to feudalism.