Economic transparency
Systems that govern economic transactions can be inherently opaque. While there is an expectation of transparency, the reality can be quite different, and the consequences of a lack of transparency can be significant. There is a cultural tendency to preserve the lack of transparency in economic transactions, and this is something that appears to be an inheritance of the pre-21st century political economy. For example, there is a tendency in the language of contractual laws to allow opportunities for the contravention of transparency obligations. This language is ingrained in the discourse of the professionals who manage these systems. The values attached to secrecy around economic transactions pervade the systems and create a culture where transparency is deemed to be something that needs to be 'managed'. For novices - people who have not properly interacted with these systems before - the sudden realisation that there are so many hitherto unknown nuances to transactions, which...