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 Agree Disagree 1 agree, 0 disagree; votes, not a score · 100% agree, the analysis reads 0.50, gap +0.50

Argument TreesHow arguments are scored →

Weight for 0.00 · weight against 0.00 · net +0.00

Each reason is a claim with its own page. Score = sign x (2 x Truth - 1) x Conf x Link x Imp x Uniq, and every column is here so the row can be multiplied out and checked. A reason argued false scores negative and counts against the side it is filed on; a reason nobody has argued yet scores exactly 0, and so does one whose own page has no work behind it.

What Would Change the AnswerTruth scores →

Not shown: 77 further inputs, each moving it less than any row shown

Every claim beneath this page held at false and then at true, one at a time, with the whole graph recomputed each time. "If false" and "if true" are where this page’s truth score lands; "Move" is how far apart they are. "If settled" is that same distance with the input’s confidence held at 1, which is what it would be worth once the work behind it is finished, so the gap between Move and If settled is the value of doing that work. This is one input at a time and finds single points of failure; it does not test several inputs moving together, which is how correlated assumptions actually fail.

Evidence LedgerHow evidence is scored →

Weight for 0.42 · weight against 0.10 · net +0.32

Evidence Verification Score 2.85 · supporting 2.10 · weakening 0.75. 5 have no replication count recorded, so each counts as one study.

Findings that can fail empirically. Each has its own page where its accuracy is argued; the source is shown under it. Bears on says which claim the finding is filed under: this belief, or one of its reasons, in which case it reaches this page through that reason's truth score and is counted there. “Starts at” is where a finding's page begins before anyone argues with it, set by what kind of source it is, how many independent replications exist and how many of them agreed. A finding nobody has classified starts at 0.50, and at 0.50 it contributes nothing however often it is listed.

Falsifiability TestEvidence and predictions →

Evidence rarely proves or disproves anything outright; it strengthens or weakens. These are the strongest realistic score-movers in each direction, stated like a bet: what result, from what kind of source, by when. Where a row has its own page, Score is that page's truth: if this evidence appeared, would it actually move this belief?

Testable PredictionsEvidence and predictions →

Prediction contribution +0.00 · points at stake 0.40 · 100% of predictions are diagnostic and dated

If this belief is true, what should the world show that it would not show otherwise; if false, what instead? Result so far is the prediction's own page: pending at 0.50, and moving as it comes true or fails. A pending prediction contributes nothing yet; At stake is what it would contribute once settled.

Objective Criteria

Pick the yardstick before you look at the reading. Each criterion is itself a claim with its own page, and a good one is one where supporters and opponents predict different readings; a criterion both sides expect to come out the same way tests nothing. Validity: does it measure what is claimed? Reliability: would two observers get the same reading? Linkage: how directly does the reading bear on this belief? Importance: how much does the conclusion move once the reading is in? The Latest Reading column is the open invitation: it stays blank until somebody fills it with a sourced number.

What Acting On This Would Cost and GainCost-benefit analysis →

Net by category

Who gains, who pays (by interest)

Short-term against long-term

Not the cost of the belief being true, but of doing what it implies: who gains, who pays, in what units, and how likely. Every cost and benefit is a claim with its own page, so Likelihood is that page's truth score. The estimate and its range are the only typed numbers in the system, in the row's own units; a row that states one figure and no range is marked, because a single number is not an estimate a decision can be checked against.

Logical AnatomyAssumptions →

Logical form (Officials' holdings currently influence official decisions) AND (removing the holdings removes the influence rather than relocating it) AND (a ban can be enacted and enforced). The normative component, that reducing conflicts is worth a narrower candidate pool, is separable.

Weakest load-bearing component 0.50 · product of load-bearing truths 0.12 · argued truth 0.61 · truth score 0.50

One sentence is usually several claims. The truth score other pages read cannot exceed the weakest load-bearing component that has its own page.

Interests, Not PositionsConflict resolution framework →

Shared values, different rankings

Interests of each side

Primary conflict pair (computed: the interest with the highest Validity x Drives on each side) Citizens need government decisions made on the merits rather than on what enriches the decider. (0.50 x 0.50) against Officials and their families need the same property rights and privacy as other citizens. (0.50 x 0.50). 50% of the paired weight sits on the supporting side. This is the one disagreement actually driving the debate: the product uses validity on purpose, so a cover story cannot lead a side and neither can a worthy need nobody is moved by. Validity is whether the need should be honored, argued on its own page and never by the power of who holds it; Drives is whether the need is really why this side holds its position, settled by what the side does. They are different numbers.

Shared interests

Best compromise

Advertised versus actual motivations

Dispute types

Obstacles to resolution

Cognitive biases

Positions are what people say they want; interests are why. Each interest is a need with a subject (who needs what), and that one sentence is argued two ways that never borrow from each other. Validity asks whether the need should be honored, and is settled on the interest's own page by the mirror test: would the side accept the same need honored for its opponents, and what happens if everyone pursues it? Who holds the need, how many of them there are and how much power they have never count. Drives asks whether this need is really why the side holds its position, and is settled by the side's record, not its rhetoric (the scoring methodology calls it Linkage Accuracy). Score = Validity x Drives. A motive that is real and illegitimate stays in the table with its low validity: it is scored, not deleted, and the same suspicion applies to both sides.

Media ResourcesHow media is scored →

Each work has its own page where quality and impact are argued separately; whether it bears on this belief is a linkage page. Score = (2 x Quality - 1) x Bears x Impact x Imp, signed like every other row, so a work nobody has argued scores exactly 0. These rows are shown, not counted: the belief score above is arguments, evidence and predictions only, because a book is a container for reasons rather than a reason.

Legal FrameworkLaws that agree →

Laws and rulings that assume the belief, and those that complicate it. Institutional agreement is a datum, not proof.

General to SpecificGeneral to specific →

Upstream

Downstream

Upstream: the broader principles this belief inherits from. Downstream: the narrower beliefs that inherit from it.

Similar BeliefsOne page per belief →

Equiv is the truth score of an equivalence page. Near 1 means a merge candidate, not a new page.

Definitions

Terms the debate turns on, defined operationally.

People on the Record

Who holds a belief never changes its score. These names carry history, not weight.

Ways of Saying the Same ThingOne page per belief →

No equivalent scores 0.90 yet, so this page's own wording is used wherever space is short. Argue an equivalence page up to that line and the shortest wording that clears it takes over.

Each row is a claim with its own page; Equiv is the truth score of the equivalence page that says it makes the same claim as this one. Shorter is better only once the equivalence holds.

Where This Page Is Used

Every page that reads this one. One claim, one home, every use visible.

Related Beliefs

1. Barring the president and members of Congress from giving any official government function to a family member would reduce the use of public office for private gain. 0.50
2. Requiring the president and members of Congress to publish their tax returns would reduce the use of public office for private gain. 0.50
3. Letting Congress overturn a presidential pardon by a two-thirds vote of both chambers would reduce the use of the pardon power for private gain. 0.50
4. Public office should not be usable for private gain. 0.50
5. Barring members of Congress and the president from owning or trading individual stocks would reduce the use of public office for private gain. (this page)

The other beliefs filed under Public office and private gain; this one is listed unlinked.

What this page needs right now

Named gaps, read off the tables above, so a newcomer can see exactly where a contribution goes. None of them requires agreeing with the page, and each one links to the form it goes in.

What the numbers are made of

Share on the agree side

81% Argues to 0.61, held at 0.50 by 3 load-bearing components tied at that level, any one of which caps it: Officials' financial holdings currently influence how they vote and what they say; Removing the holding removes the influence rather than relocating it to a spouse, a partnership or a post-office job; A holdings ban can be enacted and enforced against sitting members.

Confidence

67%. Weakest parts: depth 25% · grounding 36%

Depended on

ReasonRank 0.0033, 1 of 2173

Strongest reason for

Members regularly trade in the industries their own committees oversee, which puts a private financial stake on both sides of decisions they control. +0.00

Strongest reason against

The best-identified studies of actual returns find congressional portfolios underperform the market, which is hard to square with a systematic insider advantage. -0.00

What would move this most

Settling Officials' financial holdings currently influence how they vote and w…: 0.00 if false, 0.50 if true

Prediction with the most at stake

If true: Public trust in Congress five years after a ban is higher than the pre-ban trend predicted. (0.07 points at stake)

Net expected value

mixed units, no single net: percentage-point reduction in votes cast by a member holding stock in the affected industry +15.00; percent reduction in officials' trades placed before government announcements +25.00; percentage points of public trust in Congress +2.00; hours per official per year of compliance time saved +7.50; dollars of transaction and tax cost per official per term -10,000; percent of potential candidates deterred -2.50; dollars of forgone trading income per member per term -25,000 · 7 of the 7 priced rows state a single figure with no range

Kind of fight

Values conflict · evidence two-sidedness 23% · linkage leaning against relevance 0% · value-ranking gap 1.33 · ease of resolution 0.25

Coverage

Of 24 scored rows, 2 have no linkage page, 1 has no importance page, 22 have no uniqueness page. This page reads 139 other pages. 7 of them are one-sided or empty: The share of recorded votes cast by members of Congress who hold stock in a company or industry directly affected by the vote is a fair measure of how often officials decide matters in which they have a personal financial stake.; How well members of Congress do on stock trades placed shortly before committee actions or closed briefings, compared with their trades placed at other times, is a fair measure of whether officials profit from information they get in office.; Trading in spouse and dependent-child accounts, measured before and after a member of Congress stops trading personally, is a fair measure of whether a ban on the official removes the conflict or moves it to the family.; A study matching members' stock holdings to their votes finds that members of Congress vote in the direction that benefits companies they own more often than similar members who do not own those companies.; A study finds that members of Congress who own stock in an industry vote no differently on bills affecting that industry than members who own none.; A study finds that members' stock trades placed just before closed briefings or committee actions earn no more than the same members' trades placed at other times.; A qualified blind trust already removes an official's knowledge of and control over individual holdings, so a ban adds enforcement cost without removing a conflict the trust has not already removed..

Bottom line

The conflict is documented and the disclosure regime demonstrably fails. Whether a ban removes the conflict or relocates it into spouses, partnerships and the revolving door is the open question. It is one of three load-bearing components all sitting at the neutral start, and while they sit there any one of them caps what this page can read, however far the evidence carries the argument.

Structural Checks

Faults the shape of the argument can show without reading a word of it: a claim used to support itself, a conclusion listed among its own premises, the same page counted twice. None of these changes a score. The wiki also specifies pattern-matching the prose for ten named fallacies; that is deliberately not done here, because a matcher looking for “attacking the person rather than the argument” would fire on the central legitimate argument on this whole site, and a score moved by a regular expression has no page to appeal to.

Scoring EngineTruth scores →

Cite this page 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, belief page barring-members-congress-president, truth 0.50, confidence 67%, 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: barring-members-congress-president.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.