Home › Topics › Government › Government ethics › Public office and private gain › Public office should not be usable for priv… › Barring members of Congress and the preside… › Linkage: If it were true that: “Members regularly trade in the indus…
Linkage
If it were true that: “Members regularly trade in the industries their own committees oversee, which puts a private financial stake on both sides of decisions they control”, it would significantly strengthen the conclusion that: “Barring members of Congress and the president from owning or trading individual stocks would reduce the use of public office for private gain” 0.50
| Argument X | Members regularly trade in the industries their own committees oversee, which puts a private financial stake on both sides of decisions they control. | Truth 0.50 |
| Conclusion Y (or the interest, when Type is Interest) | Barring members of Congress and the president from owning or trading individual stocks would reduce the use of public office for private gain. | Truth 0.50 |
Linkage ArgumentsLinkage scores →
Reasons to agree that X bears on Y
| # | Reason (pattern) | Truth | Conf | Link | Imp | Uniq | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MechanismA holding in an industry a member regulates is the conflict the belief proposes to remove, so the argument is about the belief's own subject matter. | 0.50 | 0.00 | 1.00 | 0.50 | 1.00 | +0.00 |
| 2 | Scope fitSame people, same decisions, same period. | 0.50 | 0.00 | 1.00 | 0.50 | 1.00 | +0.00 |
Reasons to disagree that X bears on Y
| # | Reason (pattern) | Truth | Conf | Link | Imp | Uniq | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Missing stepOwning stock in a regulated industry and being influenced by it are different claims, and only the first is established. | 0.50 | 0.00 | 1.00 | 0.50 | 1.00 | -0.00 |
Total agree 0.00 · total disagree 0.00 · linkage score 0.50
Every reason here is about whether X bears on Y, never about whether X or Y is true (each has its own page for that). The Pattern column names the shape of the reason; the four per side are starters, not fixed content.
Check table
| 1 | Exact wording of Y, read from its page | Barring members of Congress and the president from owning or trading individual stocks would reduce the use of public office for private gain. |
| 2 | Exact wording of X, read from its page | Members regularly trade in the industries their own committees oversee, which puts a private financial stake on both sides of decisions they control. |
| 3 | How X bears on Y, in one sentence | The overlap is the conflict the ban targets, so if it exists the ban has something to remove. |
| 4 | Computed linkage score | 0.50 from 2 reason(s) to agree and 1 to disagree |
| 5 | Flag if below 0.7 (a working rule of thumb) | Flagged: the action is to find better evidence for Y, not to reach with X. |
| 6 | Bottom line, typed by the author after the tables above | High linkage: the row and the belief are about the same thing. |
The five steps, answered from the pages above. Only the one-sentence bridge and the bottom line are typed.
DefinitionsThe full explanation →
- Linkage score: this page's truth score, the agree share of the scored weight here. Y's page reads it as the Link multiplier on X's row. The wiki's (A - D) / (A + D) form is 2 x this score - 1.
- The Type field changes the question. Prediction asks "if it were observed" (diagnosticity: a result both sides expect scores low). Interest makes this a bearing page: whether the row really speaks to an interest listed on its importance page. Media asks whether a work supports the conclusion at all.
- A relevance fallacy (straw man, whataboutism, ad hominem) is a reason to disagree on this page, scored like any other row. An accusation with no support changes nothing.
Where This Page Is Used
| Page | Table | As | Its truth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barring members of Congress and the president from owning or trading individual stocks would reduce the use of public office for private gain. | reasons | the linkage of a row | 0.50 |
Every page that reads this one. One claim, one home, every use visible.
Scoring EngineTruth scores →
| Quantity | Value | How |
|---|---|---|
| Reasons to agree, total | 0.00 | sum of the agree side |
| Reasons to disagree, total | 0.00 | sum of the disagree side |
| Linkage score | 0.50 | (agree + weight x starting point) / (agree + disagree + weight), starting point 0.50, weight 1.00 |
| ReasonRank | 0.0000 | how much of the site depends on this page: rank 1907 of 2173. The share of a walk that starts at the 162 beliefs and steps to the pages they read, with a 0.85 chance of stepping on each time |
| Work value | 0.0000 | ReasonRank x (1 - confidence): how much settling this page would be worth to everything above it |
| Completeness | yes | at least one scored reason on each side (an importance page: at least one interest; an interest page: both readings filled) |
Cite this page If it were true that: “Members regularly trade in the industries their own committees oversee, which puts a private financial stake on both sides of decisions they control”, it would significantly strengthen the conclusion that: “Barring members of Congress and the president from owning or trading individual stocks would reduce the use of public office for private gain”. Idea Stock Exchange, linkage page argu-members-regularly-trade-barring-members, truth 0.50, confidence 28%, revision 42c8344 of 2026-10-04. The revision is what makes this quotable: these numbers move as the argument is worked on, and rebuilding that revision reproduces them exactly.
Every number on this page as data: argu-members-regularly-trade-barring-members.json. Constants: K = 1 · UNARG = 0.5 · DEFLINK = 1 · DEFIMP = 0.5 · DEFUNIQ = 1. A reason placed under a conclusion is presumed relevant until a linkage page says otherwise; the burden is on the challenger. The neutral start for importance, the wiki's own rule.
Every value here is computed from the tables above at build time. Nothing is typed.