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Who watches the watchmen? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 weeks ago by CraigOhMyEggo@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

30 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, no, I'm not talking about the movie/show The Watchmen. I'm referring to the ancient philosophical question "quis custodiet ipsos custodes" or "who watches the watchmen". Go read up on that elsewhere.

For those of you who don't know and need a summary here, it's a question often posed in reference to the fact that the person or people in charge of making sure the rules are honored have nothing preventing them from disobeying the rules. There's never anything preventing the person guarding your treasure from stealing some of the treasure, for example.

What's the best remedy to this that you can think of?

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[–] mayo_cider@hexbear.net 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

We can all be watchmen

The amount of political parties doesn't mean there's any actual checks and balances, having a direct effect on the system does

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The discussion is about checks and balances. So what kind of checks and balances would be there?

[–] mayo_cider@hexbear.net 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

A more direct democracy would do wonders, but we could start off with "the watchmen should know and follow the law"

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah, but the question is on who verifies that they follow the law.

[–] courier8377@hexbear.net 4 points 2 weeks ago

Transparency of their operation and some kind of term limit