When a group (whether it's citizens with a hobby, a union, a corporation, or a church) sees that government is throwing it's $3 Trillion/year bulk around in their neighborhood, they - rationally - try to buy off the government so that it does not destroy them or do them harm.
The solution is not to restrict speech - the solution is to get politics out of so many questions by getting the government out of those issues.
Once upon a time doctors did not feel the need to lobby the government ... because the government did not feel the need to regulate the prices and conditions under which doctors did their work.
Once upon a time target shooters did not feel the need to lobby the government ... because government did not feel the need to regulate every aspect of the hobby of shooting.
Lessig is way off base here. He's a big government statist, but he doesn't want folks who disagree with him to have the power to influence the government.
Lobbying the government is fine; lobbying is just asking the government to consider your point of view. This is what Lessig says in his essay; he never asks for restriction of speech.
Lessig isn't talking about speech, but money. Money paid directly to campaigns. Money paid to congressmen and their staff as soon as they leave congress, providing an incentive to support those interests that are most likely to hire them afterwards. This is not an issue of free speech; this is an issue of buying laws. Whether you believe in a large or a small government, if established interests can buy laws, they can control congress, and those laws that they buy aren't going to do do anything about making the government that they've paid for smaller and less effective.
How are you going to reduce the size of the government without getting rid of the influence of those who benefit directly from government largesse, or from government regulations increasing the cost of mounting effective competition?
Money isn't speech. The issue is to what extent your right to free speech is infringed by laws regulating how (or with whom) you use your money.
Perhaps an analogy will help. You have a right to travel freely. Imagine Congress passes a law banning the use of money to travel between the states. Money is not travel; yet, the law banning the use of money to travel certainly makes it difficult for you to exercise your travel rights.
Now substitute travel with abortion (for abortion rights supporters). Are abortion rights curtailed by this hypothetical law? Substitute travel with the purchase of firearms (for the NRA members out there). Is the right to bear arms infringed?
My examples are admittedly simplistic; yet, the point is that there can be a logical connection between the use of money and the exercise of a right -- including the right to free speech. The extent to which a restriction on the use of money infringes a right, and whether such an infringement is (a) allowed by the Constitution (b) wise as a matter of policy, is open to debate between reasonable people. However, simply stating that "Money IS speech" or "Money ISN'T speech" doesn't advance the conversation much, as your question rightly suggests.
It allows you to pay for pamphlets or tv advertisements so that others can here your message. It actually favors the unknown, those whose opinion won't be covered in the newspaper.
I don't see a problem with individuals or corporations sending out pamphlets or putting out ads (because trying to draw the line would be too hard), as long as the source is clearly indicated as not from the candidate. The problem is when a corporation or individual gives so much money to one candidate that he or she is disproportionately responsible for that candidate's victory. This is the reason why we have 1 vote/person. As it is, the wealthy are able to vote with their money, while the poor can only vote at the polls (with limited choices and high risk of disenfranchisement).
There is a limit on how much people can donate to campaigns, all of the recent hubub has been about corporations acting on their own without coordinate with a campaign.
How do the wealthy vote with their money? They are not buying votes, they are merely trying to influence other voters -- hence it's a free speech issue.
Should an unemployed person have more influence on the government than an employed person? They have more time go and talk up their candidate, can an employed person pay to have people hired to spread their message?
Should a celebrity have more influence over our electoral process because their statements get covered in the press than a successful businessman who isn't well known but works hard to earn money?
This is a band aid solution and does not address they systemic problems.
1. Too much is controlled at the federal level.
2. The government has significantly overreached in its authority.
Some people will always have an easier time of being heard than others. This is just about making sure that people can't directly buy their way to an easier time of being heard, buy buying off people in the government directly. They will instead have to be heard in a public forum, where public debate can occur.
1. Too much is controlled at the federal level. 2. The government has significantly overreached in its authority.
So what's your solution? When was the last time a president or congress made the government smaller? Is it possible for this to happen when monied interests can buy the ear of a congressman and get a great return on their investment because the government is so large and powerful?
The natural counterforce to corrupting influences, all of them rather than just campaign finance, is robust citizen accountability. Clearly this accountability has left something to be desired to date. I would argue this has largely to do with rational ignorance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_ignorance) on behalf of voters, that they, having so much to do, aren't willing to wade through the maze of political discourse in order to really know who is worth voting for.
But what if it was dead-simple to know where your rep stood, on every issue, not just the obvious ones, and on every level, not just congress?
I'd argue that you could convert a substantial number who currently don't vote, or else default to simple heuristics in deciding who to vote for: e.g. party or incumbency.
To that end, I've started a site: http://votereports.org which aims to be something like the github of political accountability. A simple, decentralized group of folks generating, exchanging and refining politician report cards based on objective criteria such as votes.
The project is just 2 months old, and there's plenty to do, but it should be ready well before November.
For better governance, I'd stake my bet on this before I would on a constitutional amendment or change of heart for politicians. After all:
> "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." - Thomas Jefferson
Why can't people buy their way to be being hear, if I own a newspaper can I write editorials about the candidates and issues? If so, why do we only allow the extremely wealthy to do that? You're disenfranchising people who have some money, but not enough to own media from being able to be heard. How is buying advertising not a public forum?
Do you have problems with PACs?
If we can't trust our politicians to make small changes to reduce their power, how the hell can you trust them to make fundamental changes to the system?
Your argument was simply that money is speech, as if it's a tautology. I didn't feel like going through a long, detailed refutation if that's the level of effort you were going to put in.
The whole thing about money being speech is not because money actually is speech. The issue is that putting restrictions on how people spend their money can unconstitutionally limit their freedom of speech, or of the press. For instance, if you say that they can speak all they want, but can't spend more than $10 on printing costs, then you've limited their freedom of the press. So, the court can strike down laws about spending money in elections if it unduly restricts people's freedom of speech and of the press.
That doesn't mean that all money is speech. Money is trade, commerce; and the Constitution explicitly allows Congress to pass laws relating to interstate commerce (which the court has since broadened to pretty much all commerce or economic activity, even within a single state, as it can affect interstate prices, which I think is somewhat dubious, but that's the precedent we've got).
So, it's the tension between these two issues is where we have the debate. Money isn't speech, but because money can be used to buy almost anything, including a forum for your speech, it's hard to block money without also blocking speech.
I think that we can do considerably better than what we are doing, however. Paying money directly to a candidate or campaign goes beyond simple speech; that could be construed as bribery. With appropriate limits on campaign contributions, you can reduce the disparity, and make it so that everyone (or almost everyone) can afford the same impact on the campaign, though I still find it a little bit dubious.
But beyond campaign contributions, it's hard to determine where to draw the line. It's very easy to write laws which do unjustly forbid certain kinds of political speech. It's also very easy to turn from a democracy into a plutocracy by simply allowing money to buy everything that actually matters in government. I don't know what the right solution is, but I suspect that reducing the financial incentives for congressional staffers and congressmen to act in the interests of those with money will help to get changes in the government that the public actually wants.
I agree about the problem of bribing politicians and agree that direct donation/payments should be reported and controlled. This is a restriction on the candidate not on the individual or corporation, the candidates campaign cannot accept the funds.
I believe a person or a corporation should be able to spend their money in anyway they see fit and advertise anything they want to.
I've stated before in other comments that they way to remove corruption is to remove the incentive for corruption -- reduce the amount of money controlled by congress and the scope of it's control (to prevent regulatory capture). The easiest way to do this is to support action at the state level and only at the federal level for truly national/interstate things. For instance, federal pollution controls only apply to pollution that crosses state lines. This way lobbying is less effective since the amount of effort vs payoff is reduced.
We also need to stop trying ram through legislation whenever a given party is in power. Instead they should seek consensus and if none can be found do nothing.
That is a patently ridiculous argument. Allowing unlimited money to be spent by corporations produces a distortion orders of magnitude larger than that of unemployment. Perhaps an unemployed person can have several times the impact of someone with a job (I don't really buy that, but even so). A large corporation, meanwhile, can buy national advertising and have millions of times the impact of an ordinary person.
If this is about fairness and equal representation, your position is untenable.
Once upon a time people felt the need to lobby their government because they were being killed by their medicine.
It's easy to paint a rosy picture of our past. Do government regulations go too far some of the time? Definitely. But they do serve an important purpose in others.
Your analysis is spot on until your last sentence. Not only do you misuse the word statist in a structural sense (government statist is redundant in this context), you incorrectly apply it to Lessig's politics. You're points are valid without your last sentence and I hope you'll get rid of it.
I'd like you to explain how these political positions of Lessig are statist please:
* Reduced legal restrictions of copyright and patents
* Citizen funded campaign finance
* Increased government transparency and accountability
Clearly he believes the sovereignty of a nation lies with the people, not the government. So again I ask you, without agreeing or disagreeing with Lessig's politics, can you clearly explain why you believe politically Lessig is a statist.
People spend money on politics because they want government to act in a certain way. The spending can be to support or defeat a particular candidate or to insure that existing politicians attach importance to the spenders' interests. In either way, spending is an attempt to exercise some control over government.
When a lot of money is spent on politics, a statist sees a restricted government. The statist wants to free government from spenders' influence. The statist wants to give the government more freedom to act.
When a lot of money is spent on politics, an anti-statist sees an oppressed people. The anti-statist wants to free the people from government power by decreasing the importance of government. The anti-statist wants to restrict government's freedom and power.
Under this framework Lessig is a statist. He sees political spending not as a sign that government is too powerful, but rather that government is not powerful enough to act against the big spenders' interests. Lessig advocates more restrictions on the spenders. He thinks that Citizens United (rebuffing government's attempt to silence corporations) was wrongly decided.
Massive political spending is of concern to both statists and anti-statists. For statists, it is a sign that government is not acting independently and disinterestedly in the people's interests. Money is corrupting government. For anti-statists, it is a sign that government is seen by the people as a large threat or a large opportunitiy, neither of which is good because it implies that government is important, which it shouldn't be.
Little political spending is viewed favorably by both statists and anti-statists. For statists, it is a sign that special interests see political spending as futile to stop a government from acting in the common interest. For anti-statists, it is a sign that government is too weak to matter very much or is acting so neutrally that no one is complaining.
When a lot of money is spent on politics, a statist sees a restricted government. The statist wants to free government from spenders' influence. The statist wants to give the government more freedom to act... Under this framework Lessig is a statist.
The framework you outline is far too general to term someone a statist. Statists are in this subset of people yes, but so is anyone left of center.
If you want to claim Lessig leans more towards a statist school of thought than an anti-statist school of thought I will agree with you. But ultimately a statist believes the sovereignty of a nation lies with the government and not with the people. I don't think Lessig believes this. To label Lessig a statist you'll have to make a far stronger case than what you've presented here.
What do you mean by "a statist believes the sovereignty of a nation lies with the government and not with the people"?
It seems to me that the word "statist" implies a context/framework in which the state, as a coercive institution, is separated from the rest of society which is non-coercive. In this context, a statist is one who favors the state or equivalently, a statist prefers to solve social problems by relying on force rather than cooperation.
It seems to me that most people don't think in these terms. They don't distinguish between the state and everything else. Rather they think pragmatically: "How can I have a better life?" or "What's good for my country?" Lessig seems to fall in this group. So for example, he sees that copyright law is not encouraging an innovative society, and therefore he wants to change the law. Or he sees that government is acting in the best interest of corporations rather than "ordinary" folks and so he tries to change that. He's not thinking in terms of strengthening or weakening the "coercive institution of the state."
Analogous situations: Most web developers think in terms of solving technical problems, "how can I get this page to look a certain way?", rather than being standards compliant. Most general consumers think in terms of comfort, convenience, value, etc, rather than "green" (what's good for the environment) or patriotically (buy American).
So when Lessig is called a statist, he is being characterized in the framework implied by the term, which is not the framework in which he thinks.
Yes and the brilliance of the founders was creating a very limited federal government. The aristocratic senate and the house 'of the people' had to agree. The bill would get vetoed by default. One senator could stop any bill by filibustering. The bill of rights prevented state governments from gettting out of control...
The abuse of the filibuster for one senator to stop a bill is actually a recent parliamentary invention. There's no constitutional mechanism for the filibuster, it's based on senate rules which are adopted every 2 years.
Historically, 40 senators could prevent debate from being cut off but they would need to all occupy the chamber and actually be debating the whole time. See Strom Thurmond reading the phone book on the senate floor during the civil rights filibusters, for example.
But that took a bunch of time, time you could be at fundraisers or hanging out at home or whatever. So they made it easier over recent years, with the result that the current Senate filibusters more than twice as much as the last one, which itself filibustered more than historically, etc.
The tradition of unrestricted Senate debate has been a part of the Senate since the inception of the republic. In fact, prior to 1917, there was no mechanism for ending debate so long as any single senator desired to speak. And given that Congress used to meet much less frequently than it does at present, it was commonplace for bills to be "filibustered" simply because a single senator didn't like the bill, and other more pressing bills (read: supply bills) needed to be taken up before the end of the session. The idea of making someone speak in order to stop debate from ending was even more ludicrous than the idea of waiting out a filibuster (which in itself was ludicrous); it just wasn't even considered as a rational tactic. (For more on the circumstances of this, I would recommend reading Caro's excellent biography of Lyndon Johnson: specifically the third volume "Master of the Senate," where he discusses in depth the South's effectiveness at stopping bills from coming to a vote circa 1957).
As for cloture, in its original incarnation (remember, this was only quite recently: 1917) it required 16 senators to file a petition for cloture, at which point 2/3 of those present and voting needed to vote in favor to lead to a vote. However, presiding officers consistently interpreted this Rule as NOT applying to "motions to proceed to consideration of a bill," which are necessary by Senate Rule (from I don't know when, probably since Jefferson's Manual) for making a piece of legislation the main motion. As a result, if you didn't like a bill, you could still always just filibuster the motion to proceed until the late 50s/early 60s when this loophole was closed. Since there were 3-4 votes between the motion to proceed and the final vote on the issue, a group of 10-20 senators (say, the Southern bloc) refusing to allow a bill to come to the floor was more than enough to kil lit.
My point is this: the notion that the filibuster is a recently parliamentary invention ignores the 80-some-year period from 187X to 1957 when not a single bill related to racial injustice was passed into law at the federal level. To my knowledge, "the South" was never even in control of 1/3 + 1 of the seats in the Senate chamber, but they still managed to effectively use Senate Rules and precedents to restrict these bills from coming to a vote, and I can't think of a single congressional session during this period that was extended to try to outlast opponents of a bill. It just didn't happen.
Today, at least, you can a) get to cloture vote, since the motion to proceed loophole has been closed and b) stand a reasonable chance of succeeding at the cloture vote, since you only need to convince 3/5 of the Senate that something is worth voting on. If there is more technical filibustering right now (by which I suppose one means defeat of cloture motions), then at least there is a public denouement, rather than a policy of simply giving up when a handful of senators express opposition.
===
Also, two asides:
1. Thurmond's 1957 filibuster only occurred because he wasn't backed by the rest of the Southern Caucus. They chose to allow the bill to come to a vote, presumably because they knew that Lyndon Johnson (majority leader) needed a civil rights bill in order to be a plausible presidential candidate, and they really really wanted a Southern president.
2. The idea that the Senate Rules are readopted every session has never really been accepted by the Senate. Nixon was the first presiding officer to rule as such in 1953 (it may have been 1955) as part of civil rights strategy, but it was overruled on that occasion and on most later occasions. In general, I would say that the prevailing sentiment among Senate parliamentarians is that the Senate is more of a continuous body, and I would expect a real struggle if a majority ever attempted to pass a new set of Senate Rules under the supposed "normal parliamentary rules" under which the Senate debates at the beginning of each session.
Far from being ludicrous, the original rules served a valid purpose: weighing the conviction of those participating in the debate. By forcing a speaker to hold the floor, the original rules allowed someone with deep conviction to stand against a majority in a test of will. Even if the speaker ultimately failed on the floor, he would have drawn public attention to his point of view and ensured that it was considered.
The Bill of Rights did not apply to the state governments until the 14th Amendment was interpreted to so apply them. Thus you had established churches in several states during the early years of the republic.
The way you casually talk about this as if it were some sort of unanimous opinion at the time of the Constitution's drafting suggests that you should do a bit more actual research into the history. And, possibly, into the document itself, which was drafted as a reaction to the failures of a deliberately-crippled central government.
Once upon a time, charlatans killed people right and left because no one regulated who could claim to be a doctor. Once upon a time, a mob could ransack your house and steal your belongings because there was no law. That's why we invented government. Government starts regulating behavior whenever enough people are adversely affected by that behavior that they demand the regulation.
Rather than simply giving in to anarchy as you suggest, let's try to improve democracy.
Don't be Naive!
Laws and regulation have never _not_ been up for sale to the highest bidder. So your fictional doctor is only lobbying to reverse the result of previous lobbying.
Your fictional "once upon a time" must have been the time when people rode unicorns to work, and nobody ever hungered because elves in trees fed everybody. In the real world money is what makes laws, and Lessig is the closest thing we have to a super-her.
Something of a broader response from Reason.com - "Stop the Car, Larry. I Want to Get Out", excerpt: "While the folks at Cato would respond to special-interest lobbying by reducing the size and scope of government so less of life is politicized and there is less to lobby about, Lessig would respond by amending the Constitution to restrict freedom of speech."
Although I agree that amending the constitution takes things too far, I also think that corporations already have too much influence on American lives and I disagree with the recent SCOTUS decision because it validates that influence to a degree.
I think the real solution (to corporate and government overreach) is to consume less, buy local, invest local, use community banks, etc (and also, to think about who we vote for, for a change). I think Lessig's ideals would be better served if he focused on the small but growing movement around these things. But, alas, as Lawyer, he's part of the system in many ways and, as such, a bit of a top-down problem solver.
From a historical context, I do find it a bit odd this fear of "corporations". It's really difficult to argue that they function in any way as a cohesive group. Sure it can be argued that they're all profit seeking (some more than others) but the search of profits is done in such radically different ways.
If anything, the power of corporations has been lessening simply because of the nature of the net/web (just think how difficult it's been for even politically authoritarian societies like China to maintain a control over what people hear/see/think). Fortune Magazine tracks the life of the average Fortune 500 company and it's been in steady decline. The dominance of any individual company is far from permanent and made even less so with continually falling barriers to entry.
The perverse irony is that larger firms like regulation because they're the most able to adapt to them and can use them to keep upstarts out.
"If anything, the power of witches has been lessening simply because of the nature of the net/web (just think how difficult it's been for even politically authoritarian societies like China to maintain a control over what people hear/see/think). Fortune Magazine tracks the life of the average Fortune 500 witch and it's been in steady decline. The dominance of any individual witch is far from permanent and made even less so with continually falling barriers to entry." ;)
Of course, you meant the grandparent post. That means that you're saying that because witchcraft was seen as a threat to society in the Early Modern period (but _not_ the Medieval period, when the Papal Inquisition regarded witchcraft as a superstition, and referred anyone who brought them a witchcraft charge to Ye Olde Psychyatryste), and the witches were not a threat (although there were real witches -- Kieckhefer, Richard, _Magic in the Middle Ages_ (200)) -- again, because the witches (and the enormous number of innocents who were falsely killed as witches) were not a threat in the 17th Century, anything that anyone sees as a threat at the present day is similarly not a threat.
The right thing to do is to ask whether this particular possible threat is in fact a threat. I agree with your conclusion -- I think that the parent post is right, corporations are no longer the cohesive bloc that they were as late as the 1980s -- but I think you're doing it a disservice by using such a weak argument for it.
I know you're trying to be incendiary, and I don't think corporations are evil, but I will give you an example of corporations acting like witches. Look up redlining (implicates the government as well).
in a market the search for profit is the search for more efficiently serving aggregate preferences of consumers. allowing corporations to assume disproportionate control of the political process is almost assuredly a net improvement.
That's clearly false. A really simple example is antitrust legislation - if MS (or any other monopolistic organisation) were able to remove regulation on monopolies, you can be assured that they would, and that the effect on our society would be dramatically negative.
I don't know if it's "clearly false". Anti-trust/anti-competitive business practices are an area that personally make me uncomfortable but again, here too, companies are having increasingly difficult control over maintaining dominance if they don't provide the best products/services and focus instead on trying to suppress competitors (e.g. browser wars, high end computers - apple v pcs). I'd also be pretty uncomfortable with governments making the determination of what's "good" and "bad" as there have been some bizarre anti-trust rulings over the past few decades.
Even the Economist has clearly argued that being "pro-business' is not the same thing as being "pro-market".
Besides, I don't agree with you, because it doesn't take into account externalities. When "efficiency" takes the form of polluting the river because someone else will clean it up, it most assuredly is not a net improvement.
What with the whole "buy local" and "invest local" idea?
Have you ever the of the word "trade" and "merchants"? Do you "buy"? There's a reason for "specialization" and "division of labor". It's why we're so wealthy, because of our economy's vast ability to make stuff and transport stuff. Utilize people's comparative advantage, we can produce more unit of goods than we would otherwise if we do not specialize and trade.
Trade is the stuff of civilization. We should encourage more of it.
can never be overstated. TRADE IS CIVILIZATION! voluntary exchange for mutual benefit is the most powerful incentive against violent conflict. preventing powers from externalizing the costs of conflict onto others is the most important issue facing the world. it is holding back all other progress.
When you invest and buy local, you support your community and the people around you which often improves your community. It's easier to see or find out how the thing is made or how the money gets used. So, it's less likely you'll find lead in your toys or find a 14 year old picking your fruit. You are also closer to where whatever it is you bought is made and the people/company in which you are investing, which can mean fewer transactions, less taxes, less regulation, and overall less government and corporate involvement.
Locally produced food is the most obvious, practical thing to buy because it is fresher an tastes better which should be compelling enough on it's own.
I'm not saying don't trade, I just think we should think about what we're buying a bit more. As Fugazi said, "Never mind what they're selling, it's what you're buying!" Heh.
The two aren't mutually exclusive (specialization/trade and buying/investing local). Buying local food from farmers is still specialization and division of labor.
if "Trade is the stuff of civilization" as you say, is it not critical that our trade reflects our personal beliefs?
If you don't like what certain large corporations are doing, don't give them your money. In many cases, as with food, an easy way to do this is to buy from local farmers directly or through local coops.
I'm not a lawyer, but this is my understanding (I'm in the USA):
On bail - suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The idea is that someone accused of a crime can free themselves until trial, with the bond money used as an incentive to get them to return to face trial. Well, there's also the incentive that they will be hunted down by bounty hunters if they flee.
This has two benefits. The accused can mount their best defense, fee from the confines of jail. The other, which is probably most important, is that the government can't just jail someone for a long period by accusing them of a crime.
The use of money for bond is imperfect, but it seems to work. Bail is set with the amount varying with the severity of the crime. Severe crimes (such as murder) can be refused bond, forcing the accused to stay locked up.
For those who lack the means to post the full bond, there are people who sell bail bonds -- in other words, they will post the full bail, if you pay them a percentage and a fee. The understanding is that you show up for court, or they will use civil suits and bounty hunters to get the money from you and put you in front of a judge forcibly should you flee.
The "accepting money to mould policy" part? Wow. Our lobbying system in general in the US is a mess. I honestly have no defense for it. If I was in charge, I'd place much stricter limits on lobbyists.
This isn't just about a person who misses a court date because they're lazy; it's also about people who may flee to a different country, or start working under an assumed name, or anything of the sort.
If they've already paid, they have some incentive to come back and be able to reclaim their bail money.
If they do skip town, sending cops after them to track them down and arrest them again is expensive. That's where the bounty hunter part comes in; if they skip their court date, their own bail money is used as incentive to encourage police officers, sheriffs, or private investigators to capture them.
In many cases, this isn't the romantic image of a western cowboy hunting down dangerous criminals in caves, but just the equivalent of a debt-collection agency, that calls them, mails them, files information with credit agencies preventing them from receiving credit, and so on.
Fair enough about tracking down people who flee. Wouldn't that be some evidence towards a conviction though?
There's one thought that applies to smaller population. If someone disappears you can just stop worrying about them? Hiding from public and going to jail has close to the same net benefit for society. Just thinking.
more, smaller governments (competition forces better customer service) is an easy win for liberty. unfortunately smaller governments can't resist black swans as effectively (napolean running through the italian city states like butter).
I like Lessig and I like this article but does this really belong on Hacker News? Articles about technology are fine; articles about technology and business are okay; articles about technology and politics are okay, but this story ...?
A republic is a kind of democracy; it is a form of representative democracy, as opposed to a direct democracy. "Democracy. n. 1. government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system." http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/democracy
A republic is not necessarily a democracy, and the two terms are not strictly interchangable. A republic may take many forms, including but not limited to democratic, mercantile, classical, and religious republics.
Constitutionally the USA is a representative democracy defined as republican in modern political argot. If you have the time a reading of Federalist No. 10 is quite enlightening (although a little tough).
I think the most disturbing part of the SCOTUS ruling on corporations' donating to campaigns is being missed.
Let's say I work a normal 9-5 job for a large company, like Ford. Let's further say I'm a Democrat, but Ford decides to donate a large sum of money to a Republican candidate. (Or, if you'd rather not consider party affiliation, just assume I disgree with the candidate's platform.) Essentially, my work is now directly going to fund policies that I disagree with. Does that mean I should quit my job and go work for a corporation that supports Democrats?
This can happen in a way without corporations being able to directly contribute, but at least the money is funneled through the compensation of the executives and it's their own personal decision. Although I might think the executive is overpaid, I have no right to tell anyone else how to spend their own money.
Similarly, what if I'm an average American and I have some of my IRA/401(k) invested in Ford, who then backs a political candidate I don't agree with. In a less direct way, my money (used to purchase stock in the company) is being used to fund political decisions I disagree with. Should I sell my stock?
The missing element that it seems no one is talking about is that the ruling essentially politicizes both the employer-employee relationship and the corporation-stockholder relationship.
the founding fathers are often criticized for their preference for having only landowners (which meant wealthy white males in general) vote. painting the picture in such a simple way (it's undemocratic! sexist! racist!) is dangerous. all democracies restrict suffrage to varying degrees (we do not allow children, felons, or the mentally unstable to vote). the purpose of this is to concentrate power int he hands of the responsible. it is my belief that restricting suffrage to landowners was actually a rather clever hack. who has an interest in being well informed on issues that affect a community? its permanent citizens. the people who own land in an area have the most to lose from policies that are detrimental to that area's long term prosperity.
one of the major issues of democratic systems is that it is always in the interest of whomever is in the minority position to dilute suffrage.
It's related to the arguments by Hans Herman Hoppe that monarchies throughout history have on net demonstrated better long term decision making and planning than democracies. A hereditary monarch has some level of incentive to optimize tax revenue over generations. An eight year politician has only incentive to ensure reelection.
Remember, there will always be thugs, and thieves, and swindlers out there. There will be hostile nations. And there will be freeloaders; people who try to take advantage of any sort of public or semi-public works or institutions, such as roads, schools, hospitals, and the like without paying.
Do you have a (realistic, please no Ayn Rand power fantasies) proposal for dealing with all of these problems without a government? Or do you have a proposal for selecting that government fairly, justly, and well without democratic elections?
While it is presumptuous to think that I would support a government, public roads, public hospital, of any kind, but alas, I have no real "plan" to speak of.
However, I could describe in details how might an anarchistic free market society would work.
If there are any plans, it would be mostly be about trying seasteading, counter-economic black market activities, among other things.
Liberty to me, can only occurs on an individual level, not through social engineering by a carefully selected technocract.
Indeed, I don't have anything to answer for a "plan" nor do I know if it is realistic at all.
Did I presume anything? I asked how you would solve these problems without a government, or provide a fair government without democracy.
And I said public or semi-public. It's pretty hard to prevent anyone unauthorized from getting onto a road; by definition they are big, and need easy access to be valuable. That's what I mean by "semi-public." If you have private roads, how do you prevent freeloaders without some sort of de-facto government? Likewise with hospitals; you can't distinguish between someone covered by your insurance and someone not when they come in from an automobile wreck, nor can you negotiate prices with them.
Liberty to me, can only occurs on an individual level, not through social engineering by a carefully selected technocract.
So you would prefer to be a lone hunter-gather than take advantage of the benefits that modern society has to offer you? Because beyond the lone, solitary hunter-gatherer, someone else's needs are always going to affect what options are available to you.
Maybe all these "small government", "liberty" people responding can explain how it fits with their world view that the northern European countries, who are not known for the smallness of their governments, consistently manage to have the highest standard of living and the most well-functioning and democratic governments in the world?
> who are not known for the smallness of their governments, consistently manage to have the highest standard of living and the most well-functioning and democratic governments in the world?
Their standard of living is not the highest.
Moreover, they're basically monocultural. Minnesota works about as well as the Scandanavian countries.
And how do you intend to do objective comparison on standard of living? How do you weight the unemployment figure above, for example, in such a measure?
Unemployment rates are counted differently in other countries. In the United States, you have to be looking for a job to be counted as unemployed, so our numbers tend to look lower than they actually are.
Also, an American friend of mine who lives in France tells me that, because of French social programs, unemployment is not as scary or devastating there as it is in the states.
On the other hand, I have a French friend who lives in the States and enjoys the American sense of innovation and competitive spirit which he feels is lacking in France.
You're right, standard of living is hard to be objective about. One common measure is the Human Development Index. The US does pretty well in this compared to the rest of the world, but not compared to our more socialist sisters in Europe like France. I think one of the reasons for America's HDI lagging behind European countries is our lack of universal health care, but that's another topic.
The solution is not to restrict speech - the solution is to get politics out of so many questions by getting the government out of those issues.
Once upon a time doctors did not feel the need to lobby the government ... because the government did not feel the need to regulate the prices and conditions under which doctors did their work.
Once upon a time target shooters did not feel the need to lobby the government ... because government did not feel the need to regulate every aspect of the hobby of shooting.
Lessig is way off base here. He's a big government statist, but he doesn't want folks who disagree with him to have the power to influence the government.