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: “Forced divestiture imposes real cost…

Linkage

If it were true that: “Forced divestiture imposes real costs on officials of ordinary means and narrows who can afford to serve”, it would matter to the interest: “The country needs capable people of ordinary means willing to serve, not only the wealthy and the indifferent” 0.50

Type: Interest · Direction: Supports · Used on: Barring members of Congress and the president from owning or trading individual stocks would reduce the use of public office for private gain.

Argument XForced divestiture imposes real costs on officials of ordinary means and narrows who can afford to serve.Truth 0.50
Conclusion Y (or the interest, when Type is Interest)The country needs capable people of ordinary means willing to serve, not only the wealthy and the indifferent.Truth 0.50

Linkage ArgumentsLinkage scores →

Reasons to agree that X bears on Y

#Reason (pattern)TruthConfLinkImpUniqScore
1MechanismDivestiture cost falling on officials of ordinary means is exactly the need this interest states.0.500.001.000.501.00+0.00

Reasons to disagree that X bears on Y

#Reason (pattern)TruthConfLinkImpUniqScore
1Scope mismatchThe interest is about who can afford to run; the argument is about a one-time cost to people already in office.0.500.001.000.501.00-0.00

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

1Exact wording of Y, read from its pageThe country needs capable people of ordinary means willing to serve, not only the wealthy and the indifferent.
2Exact wording of X, read from its pageForced divestiture imposes real costs on officials of ordinary means and narrows who can afford to serve.
3How X bears on Y, in one sentenceCost to sitting officials and deterrence of future candidates are related but not the same quantity.
4Computed linkage score0.50 from 1 reason(s) to agree and 1 to disagree
5Flag if below 0.7 (a working rule of thumb)Flagged: the action is to find better evidence for Y, not to reach with X.
6Bottom line, typed by the author after the tables aboveBearing: how far the row is really about this interest.

The five steps, answered from the pages above. Only the one-sentence bridge and the bottom line are typed.

DefinitionsThe full explanation →

Where This Page Is Used

PageTableAsIts truth
This reason to disagree: “Forced divestiture imposes real costs on officials of ordinary means and narrows who can afford to serve” addresses the most important interest at stake in the belief: “Barring members of Congress and the president from owning or trading individual stocks would reduce the use of public office for private gain”interests listeda bearing0.50

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

Scoring EngineTruth scores →

QuantityValueHow
Reasons to agree, total0.00sum of the agree side
Reasons to disagree, total0.00sum of the disagree side
Linkage score0.50(agree + weight x starting point) / (agree + disagree + weight), starting point 0.50, weight 1.00
ReasonRank0.0000how much of the site depends on this page: rank 1981 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 value0.0000ReasonRank x (1 - confidence): how much settling this page would be worth to everything above it
Completenessyesat 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: “Forced divestiture imposes real costs on officials of ordinary means and narrows who can afford to serve”, it would matter to the interest: “The country needs capable people of ordinary means willing to serve, not only the wealthy and the indifferent”. Idea Stock Exchange, linkage page inte-forced-divestiture-imposes-country-needs, truth 0.50, confidence 26%, 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: inte-forced-divestiture-imposes-country-needs.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.