Officials and their families need the same property rights and privacy as other citizens. 0.50

Value: Liberty · Used on: Public office should not be usable for private gain.

Measured by	Whether a restriction reaches only the official or also family members who hold no office
Belief Y	Public office should not be usable for private gain.	Truth 0.50

Validity ArgumentsInterest scoring →

Reasons to agree that this need is real and legitimate

#	Reason (pattern)	Truth	Link	Imp	Uniq	Score
1	Basic needProperty and privacy are not privileges of private life that public service is expected to purchase.	0.50	1.00	0.50	1.00	+0.00
2	Widely heldTwo thirds of households hold the kind of assets these rules restrict.	0.50	1.00	0.50	1.00	+0.00
3	Recognized in lawNo court has held that taking office forfeits ordinary property rights.	0.50	1.00	0.50	1.00	+0.00

Reasons to disagree

#	Reason (pattern)	Truth	Conf	Link	Imp	Uniq	Score
1	Already metNobody is compelled to take the office, and the restriction attaches to a job that is voluntary and temporary.	0.50	0.00	1.00	0.50	1.00	-0.00
2	Pretext for another aimThe right is invoked to protect one specific income stream and not the many other restrictions officials accept without complaint.	0.50	0.00	1.00	0.50	1.00	-0.00

Total agree 0.00 · total disagree 0.00 · interest score 0.50

An interest is a need, stated so it can be argued: "[who] need [what]". Reasons here are about whether the need is real and legitimate, never about whether the belief is true and never about how many people hold it.

Check table

1	If the belief is true, the measure should show	Restrictions stay narrow and are compensated
2	If the belief is false, the measure should show	Restrictions extend to family and are not
3	Latest reading (with source)	Proposals vary: most reach the spouse and dependent children, and the Federal Reserve rule reaches immediate family
4	Basic test: do the two sides expect different readings?	Yes: the readings differ, so this interest is at stake in the belief.
5	Computed validity	0.50 from 3 reason(s) to agree and 2 to disagree
6	Bottom line, typed by the author after the tables above	Valid in general, weakest exactly where it is invoked most: a voluntary office with known conditions.

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

DefinitionsThe full explanation →

Validity: this page's truth score. It says how legitimate the need is in general, on its own. How much it drives a position is a different number (the Driver page), and how negotiable it is belongs on the feasibility track. Power never weights validity.
Measured by (row 4) is what a reading of this interest looks like; the readings in the check table say what each side expects to see if the belief is true or false. Content, not scores.

Where This Page Is Used

Top 5 of 13 rows shown. Show all

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.	costs and benefits	who gains or pays	0.50
Barring members of Congress and the president from owning or trading individual stocks would reduce the use of public office for private gain.	interests	a row	0.50
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.	costs and benefits	who gains or pays	0.50
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.	interests	a row	0.50
Requiring the president and members of Congress to publish their tax returns would reduce the use of public office for private gain.	costs and benefits	who gains or pays	0.50
Requiring the president and members of Congress to publish their tax returns would reduce the use of public office for private gain.	interests	a row	0.50
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.	costs and benefits	who gains or pays	0.50
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.	interests	a row	0.50
Public office should not be usable for private gain.	interests	a row	0.50
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 listed	a row	0.50
This reason to disagree: “Members keep the property rights of other citizens, and a ban restricts a lawful activity because of the job someone holds” 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 listed	a row	0.50
This reason to disagree: “A president is entitled to advisers he trusts, and Congress's power to tell him whom he may consult is constitutionally contested” addresses the most important interest at stake in the belief: “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”	interests listed	a row	0.50
This reason to disagree: “Publication exposes spouses, children and business partners who never ran for office” addresses the most important interest at stake in the belief: “Requiring the president and members of Congress to publish their tax returns would reduce the use of public office for private gain”	interests listed	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
Interest score	0.50	(agree + weight x starting point) / (agree + disagree + weight), starting point 0.50, weight 1.00
ReasonRank	0.0007	how much of the site depends on this page: rank 165 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	0.0005	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 Officials and their families need the same property rights and privacy as other citizens. Idea Stock Exchange, interest page officials-families-need-same, truth 0.50, confidence 30%, 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: officials-families-need-same.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.