Voters need enough information to judge whether an official is compromised. 0.50

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

Measured by	Share of an official's income sources, debts and foreign ties visible in public filings
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 needSelf-government requires knowing whether the person deciding has been bought, and no other mechanism supplies it.	0.50	1.00	0.50	1.00	+0.00
2	Recognized in lawThe Ethics in Government Act of 1978 was passed for this interest and has never been seriously challenged.	0.50	1.00	0.50	1.00	+0.00
3	Widely heldIt is the shared premise of every disclosure rule in federal, state and local government.	0.50	1.00	0.50	1.00	+0.00

Reasons to disagree

#	Reason (pattern)	Truth	Conf	Link	Imp	Uniq	Score
1	Claim on others' property or choicesSatisfying it fully means publishing the finances of spouses, children and business partners who hold no office.	0.50	0.00	1.00	0.50	1.00	-0.00
2	Already metOfficials already file annual public disclosures listing assets, income sources, liabilities and positions.	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	Rises to near complete
2	If the belief is false, the measure should show	Unchanged
3	Latest reading (with source)	Assets and income are disclosed in broad ranges; foreign income, lender identity and effective tax rate are not (OGE Public Financial Disclosure Guide, 2024)
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	Strong as a need, contested in how far into a family it reaches.

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 23 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.	interests	a row	0.50
Public office should not be usable for private gain.	interests	a row	0.50
This reason to agree: “Disclosure has failed as a check: 78 members of one Congress filed late under the STOCK Act, the standard penalty is a $200 fee that is routinely waived, and no member has faced a serious sanction” 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 ban on the official leaves the conflict in place through spouses, dependent children, private partnerships, real estate and crypto, none of which most proposals reach” 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 supporting finding: “131 federal judges heard 685 cases involving companies in which they or their families held stock, over 2010 to 2018” 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 prediction if the belief is true: “Public trust in Congress five years after a ban is higher than the pre-ban trend predicted” 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 prediction if the belief is false: “Reported conflicts migrate to spouse accounts and private partnerships, leaving the total number of conflict complaints unchanged” 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 agree: “The anti-nepotism statute stops at the White House door, so the rule does not reach the place where the stakes are highest” 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 agree: “An official role gives a family member a channel that foreign governments and business partners can use, with the family's private interests attached to it” 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: “Formal appointment is what brings a relative inside the ethics rules; a bar pushes the same influence outside them, where nothing applies” 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 agree: “A return shows what the financial disclosure form does not: exact income and its character, foreign income and foreign tax credits, business losses carried forward, charitable giving, and the rate actually paid” 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
This reason to agree: “The internal check failed in the one case that tested it: the mandatory presidential audit was dormant, and the audit of the first two years opened the day Congress asked for the returns” 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
This reason to agree: “Every president from Carter through Obama released returns voluntarily, so a requirement restores a forty-year norm rather than inventing an obligation” 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
This reason to agree: “A published return can be checked by anyone, which is the only enforcement that does not depend on an agency the official appoints” 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
This reason to disagree: “A return shows tax positions, not conflicts, and the disclosure form already lists assets, income sources, liabilities and positions in categories built for conflict screening” 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
This reason to disagree: “Sophisticated wealth sits in pass-through entities and trusts that file their own returns, so a personal return can be published and show very little” 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
This work: “Insider, Conflicted Congress (2021 to 2023)” 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

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	0.0009	how much of the site depends on this page: rank 163 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	0.0006	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 Voters need enough information to judge whether an official is compromised. Idea Stock Exchange, interest page voters-need-enough-information, 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: voters-need-enough-information.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.