Lying for the greater good is still on my mind

So after doing a lot of thinking on both of the readings and the discussions with my fellow classmates on the idea of lying for the good of the public, I am coming down more absolutist side that I originally thought.

I guess I agree a lot with Bok. I think that She quite a few good points. I think she is completely right in pointing out that deceiving people for the sake of the people is totally contradictory to democracy.

Honestly, I think that the only way for democracy to work fairly and successfully is for the goal to be transparency. Allowing government officials to lie is not only damaging to transparency but is like Bok pointed out contradictory to democracy. By allowing officials to lie, we are submitting ourselves to ignorance, which should not be okay when we are supposed to be the ones checking the system and making sure that it is running like we want it to.

Yes, it may seem really unrealistic to say that there shouldn't be lying within the government because that's a pretty high bar to set but the government should be a moral leader. We should hold them to higher standards. Therefore if someone lies it is defeating true democracy and who can we really look to to help us decide what is moral or not? If the government lies, why shouldn't we lie then to the government?

I don't see a case in which lying to the masses could be beneficial to "the greater good" because of the implications residing within the idea of allowing the government to lie. If the government is allowed to lie then we are saying that they know better then us when it is us who should have a say!

Any little situation that one may see fit for a lie for the greater good is a symptom of part of another problem and I don't see how keeping that back from the people is beneficial. By holding back some information, we are distorting the real problems and how can we expect people to deal with the real problems and help come up with solutions if they aren't seeing reality. I mean if the government doesn't even let us know that we for example are getting our oil in really unjust ways, then how are we supposed to be able to speak up against the injustice and tell them we want something different. By allowing the government to lie in some cases, you are still allowing it to lie to us! and by saying that that is okay then you are furthering the separation between the people "in charge" and the masses. Saying that they know better then us, when often times the issues may not even affect them as personally as it may affect one of us.

I was almost persuaded the economy example but the Angie pointed out the obvious point that I was totally missing. A crash in the market is not something that even a lie could repair. The economy is something that we are all apart of, we would find out somehow anyways, whether it is our neighbor who lost his job or your mother who lost her stocks.

Another point I've been thinking about is, if we truly had an active democracy, then people would be involved and would know what the government was involved in. So therefore even if the government tried to lie, like the economy example, the people would find out because of other influences in their lives. Therefore if we truly had successful transparent democracy, would it be possible to lie without ever being caught?