[atmosx]

> What really bothers me, as citizen of an european country, why is it possible to have secret deals?

Indeed. That alone, makes me not want to even take a look at the text and dismiss it right away as negative for the vast amounts of the population.

[TeMPOraL]

Imagine building a website for a client, and having them hover around you all the time, 24/7, looking at your screen and going:

- Oh, why did you put that button in here? What do you mean "temporary"?

- Why are you wasting time browsing that "documentation" site instead of writing code?

- What is this "class" thing? We're egalitarian company!

- Is this Ruby? Everyone knows websites are best done in PHP!

Usually you'd like to have a chance to at least finish a basic prototype in peace, before gathering customer feedback.

[mickronome]

But this is not about a basic prototype, as the deal was/is only supposed to be made public in it's final form - and then voted upon.

It's more like the heads of two partially rival companies decide they need to develop a new product, one ostensibly important enough that the companies future depend on it, or the rivals would not have a reason to do it. Enormous resources are poured into the project while stock owners, employees and nost of the board are kept in the dark. After a long time which have much contributed to the sense of urgency being much higher the board and stock owners get to vote.

There will likely be a strong tendency to ratify such a plan no matter the quality, not only because of sunk cost fallacy, but also in the sense of urgency and importance the construction of the process conveys.

No stock owners - or board - in their right minds should ever allow such a project to start, if they had the power to do so.

If producing a prototype is not possible, then if something is important enough to be negotiated for years, the decision to ratify it must be prescribed to take at least as long time as the negotiations themselves took. Otherwise the negotiators clearly are expecting to manipulate the ratification by construction.

[Silhouette]

Have you ever met a client who would let you build the entire site for them, over an extended period during which you're charging for your time, and only on the final day of project present it to them for the first time, offering them only the choices to accept or turn down the site with no options for review or rework?

[witty_username]

> you're charging for your time

This is why this analogy is wrong. If a country doesn't accept the TTIP it'll be fine. There's no cost incurred.

[Silhouette]

If a country doesn't accept the TTIP it'll be fine. There's no cost incurred.

What about all of the time, money and resources invested in futile negotiations?

There's also the opportunity cost. It takes a lot of time to conduct these kinds of negotiations, and during that time trade is still happening. If the pursuit of a bad deal wastes a lot of time while a better deal, even on a smaller scale or with more limited scope, would have been possible, then all of the trade that could have happened under that better deal has been undermined.

[witty_username]

You're right.

[RodericDay]

These are really bad arguments man. It's like you heard someone defend secrecy once, agreed with them, and are trying to repeat their arguments but in a very confused and unappealing way.

How can you possibly compare the outcome of 10 years of negotiations that get amended a little and then voted Y/N with "a basic prototype"?

[enraged_camel]

Yeah but your client also knows that the features you develop won't actively fuck them over.

Besides, the public didn't find out the TTIP details as it was a "prototype", but more like a "release candidate."