From a nearby foreigner's perspective, the strangest thing about US politics to me is the prominence of elections. It's a never-ending media spectacle that candidates have to participate in. The problem isn't the way campaigns are funded, it's how much funding a campaign actually needs. It is obscene that it is even possible to spend so much money campaigning.
I look back to the last federal election here in Canada - it was triggered by a vote of no-confidence over the budget, and 5 weeks later the whole process was done. the candidates only had 5 weeks to spend money. no matter how much money you are legally allowed to donate to a campaign, the candidate can only spend so much in such a small time frame. It doesn't matter if you're a billionaire or not, it's impossible to garner much influence when the campaign period is so short.
of course, our voter turnout is miserable and the guy we managed to elect is pretty terrible, i'm not trying to say our system is perfect. but the year-and-a-half long campaign with elections every two years just seems so ridiculous.
The campaigns do have that much to spend, and the available advertising dollars makes incentives for media companies to fulfill that demand. Profit is made by getting more eyeballs watching, just like a sport.
This past election had nearly $2b between the two of them. Toyota spends less than $2b a year on advertising in total.
It just seems that the voices of a very, very small group of people who want to keep everything stalemated are drowning out the voices of reason that can push our society forward.
The US problem is actually a perfect storm formed by the collision of at least two smaller storms that each forms its own problems. Combined together they self-reinforce and make the system worse.
The first storm is what Lessig mentioned: simply getting the money or in-party approval to be on the ballot and run the necessary ads. If your first promises have to be directed towards any group of "Lesters", e.g. the exceedingly wealthy, then you're starting off on a bad foot.
The second storm is that the Framers of the Constitution set up our system to vote for individual politicians in individual seats by first-past-the-post voting. This has been elegantly covered by C.G.P. Grey in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo . The problem here is that we have a two-party system in the first place, because that is a fixed point of the voting process and the system converges to its fixed point over iterated voting.
Just to see why this is one of The Big Problems, a fillibuster rule would actually make sense if we had, say, 4-5 parties occupying the Senate. It would say that you need a 60% majority if some of the minority parties were so strongly opposed to the idea they'd filibuster it; in effect you can force the status quo with only a 40% vote, which allows a sort of "minority coalition" to come together on really hot-topic matters. This really gives a great deal more voice to minority parties than is seen in normal coalition governments.
> The second storm is that the Framers of the Constitution set up our system to vote for individual politicians in individual seats by first-past-the-post voting.
> The problem here is that we have a two-party system in the first place, because that is a fixed point of the voting process and the system converges to its fixed point over iterated voting.
"plurality rule elections structured within single-member districts tends to favor a two-party system"
We could fix so many problems with a sane voting system, but it remains one of the most difficult things to change. Between the current system having elected everyone in a position to change it, the public perception of "one person one vote" as the most fair rather than one of the worst systems in common use, and the most popular alternative system being one of the only worse ones, I don't know if we'll ever manage to move to a better system on any large scale.
One system that I've been pondering lately (maybe it has an official name), is that you directly choose where a portion of your tax dollars go. So on your tax return, 50% (just pulling a random number here) automatically goes to the government as it does now, to spend as they see fit. The other 50% is yours to spend, so to speak, within the constraints of maybe a few dozen pre-selected options. If you want it all to go to the military, then that's your call. Some to infrastructure, and some to healthcare, then, boom, done. In an ideal system, you'd have 100% control, but you can only trust the public so far.
Which brings up the point of whether one of the basic theories of "pure" democracy is sound: that the public can rationally govern itself. I don't think current democracies really prove it one way or another, but if the theory doesn't hold water, then my idea would probably be a disaster. Fine-tuning the percentages could yield some interesting results though, effectively reducing the importance of who gets elected in the first place.
What you're proposing is a specific implementation of direct democracy. It sounds nice, but it's fraught with the very same problems that representative elections face; every tax option would have its own campaigns with distortion-filled ads, people would likely vote to funnel vast amounts of money toward things that actually don't need it based on emotionally manipulative ads they saw... I'd rather try to fix representative democracy than experiment with direct democracy.
I don't see it as necessarily replacing representative democracy, but complimenting it, giving people more of a say in how things are done on top of traditional voting. If I could explicitly choose how even 5% of my taxes were spent, that would give me a very tangible feeling of influence that I just don't get from voting, at least at the higher levels of government (as an american). It would also push me to do my homework about issues a lot more, but that might not translate to the public at large.
Agreed about the potential for the system to be hacked by powerful entities though, perhaps even worse than it is now...tough to get around that one.
The closest you have to that is making charity donations and offsetting that against tax. In that case you are diverting money away from central government and putting it elsewhere.
Many government projects require a certain level of investment over a number of years or even decades. It wouldn't be efficient to start say a fighter jet development program if you might have to ditch it half way through because public opinion changed.
True, it wouldn't apply well in all situations, but if you tweak the percentages correctly, only giving the people X% of control over their taxes (maybe relative to some metric like income or education), then maybe the government could have enough of a buffer to protect against swings in public opinion for sensitive or critical projects.
But your point about the fighter jet program could actually be an argument for this type of direct democracy. Let's say the public found out that the program was causing, or somehow will cause, the deaths of thousands of innocent people in a third world country. The military could then face spending cuts, directly dictated by the people, that would threaten the program, and rightly so.
That would last until the first terrorist attack or economic crisis and then tend towards 0, because "we really need this money".
Besides you would probably be able to work around this with creative accounting. Let's say everyone wants to defund the military and put more funds into education; military training establishments now show up on the budget as "defence studies schools" because they are issuing general educational certificates to soldiers.
I think fundamentally if you think some particular government is going to just waste large amounts of tax money you should really just not vote for them. You vote in a government because you want them to make sensible choices in how to allocate resources for public projects so you can concentrate on your startup or whatever.
Sometimes this stuff can work on a local level. For example schools can have governing bodies of volunteers (usually parents) who get some say over how the school budget is used.
You might be interested to know that there's a voting system for politicians which works similarly, called "Mixed-member proportional representation." 50% of the politicians are directly voted and then 50% are appointed in order to make the party distribution look more like the voters should have expected it to look. In the analogy you're proposing, "parties" become the "bureaus" of the bureaucracy. You can also imagine their "programs" becoming a sort of "party list", I suppose, and you could even do a party-list proportional election in that sense. (Imagine if the 50% was instead 100%.)
The problem is that "fixed seats" are the wrong way to look at this; the fixed quantity is actually the budget money made available by the government. So, the last budget was a $3.54 trillion budget, and we might be able to "chunkify" the budget into $20 billion "awards" and thus "elect" 177 programs in the various departments and agencies to be allocated those awards. The US has 15 executive departments which is about the limit which democratic elections on this sort of scale usually take, so that would probably be the limit. Each department would put several large "programs" in order and you could choose some programs and some departments, or so; we then fund the most popular programs, followed by the top programs in the funded departments, until the department allocation matches the national average.
The problem here is: with political parties, anybody can start one. But the executive branch starts new executive departments and presumably builds those prioritized lists. Suppose the executive branch decides that there is only one department, they could more or less set the entire budget as they pleased.
Instant runoff voting. Ask everyone for a ranked list of preferences, then completely ignore those preferences and only look at everyone's top choice unless their top choice has been eliminated. Numerous inherent problems, notably non-monotonicity, where voting a candidate higher can cause them to lose.
The biggest practical problem with IRV: it encourages people to vote for their preferred third-party or independent candidate first followed by their lesser-of-two-evils choice (common examples using US political parties: Green>Democrat>Republican or Libertarian>Republican>Democrat), but IRV then ignores the preference for the second choice over the third, which means voting for a third-party candidate still risks "throwing your vote away" and having your greater-of-two-evils win. So, IRV not only breaks fundamental properties that any sane voting system should have, it still doesn't actually address the single biggest problem we have with voting systems, and worse yet it pretends that it does.
I'd advocate approval voting if you need a system that's simple to use with existing infrastructure and doesn't require much explanation, or Condorcet if you have no infrastructural or political concerns blocking you from choosing the best option.
The problem is that if your candidate preference is A > B >> C and you vote for A and B (and not C), you might cause B to win, even though you preferred A. The tactic for just voting for candidate A is called "bullet voting", according to [1]. An interesting analysis [2] of the 2007 French presidential election claims that Approval Voting was the voting system that was second least vulnerable to strategic voters (behind the authors' own voting system, of course :)
If you want to fix the second storm, the thing to push on is PL 90-196, which prohibits states from anything other than single member districts for congressional elections, and was passed in 1967 http://archive.fairvote.org/?page=1724
If that gets repealed then we can start working state by state to switch to some form of proportional representation.
Wow, I didn't know there was a federal law about this. Do you know if the constitutionality of PL 90-196 has ever been challenged? I'm surprised that the federal government is allowed to tell the states how to allocate their representatives.
I think the filibuster would be fine if politicians actually had to hold the floor, Mr. Smith goes to washington style. These guys are lazy, entitled and have to make a lot of fundraising calls -- being on the floor that long would actually hurt their bankroll.
As it is, they just file a procedural motion and bang, nothing gets done.
And as someone who supports primarily insurgent candidates from outside the mainstream, the Citizens United decision was a godsend. There is no better way to enshrine the status quo for eternity than limiting outside fundraising.
Lessig keeps pounding this drum, but Washington corruption goes a lot deeper than campaigns. Who do your representatives talk to every month? Who does their research for them? Who is a big fish in their home communities?
I don't know what the right policy is to address Washington inside dealing. But lets not pretend that limiting campaign money (thereby gutting independent campaigns) is the answer.
But when you say "independent campaigns," what you're really talking about is "independent campaigns that happen to attract the attention of very rich people." Most would-be independent candidates don't get that, and are consequently unable to compete against the candidates (independent or otherwise) who do attract high-dollar donors. There's an undeniable bias in which candidates ultimately get selected as a consequence.
If that bias favors the kinds of insurgent candidates you tend to favor, lucky for you I guess, but I'm not sure how that supports the argument that this is good for democratic processes generally.
I'm talking about Ron Paul, Rand Paul, and Justin Amash, really. Along with a dozen or so other guys that didn't win.
It has always been legal for very rich people like Mitt Romney to spend their own money on campaigns. McCain-Feingold didn't hurt them, it hurt guys like Ron Paul in 2007. We had tens of thousands of people ready to chip in $10k or more, but they were limited to $3k by the law.
It cracks me up that people believe that money is the only way to influence legislators.
How many congressmen have kids, siblings, spouses, mistresses who work for companies in their districts? How many Senators have golden parachutes into the private sector after leaving? How many politicians, advisors, etc have book deals, speaking tours, etc.. which happen to be announced right after (days) their retirement?
> It cracks me up that people believe that money is the only way to influence legislators.
Not only that, but there's an overemphasis on the idea that donations are an implicit quid pro quo exchange for policy.
Let's say we could somehow ban any kind of "exchange" -- not just donations, but these other soft influence deals where money doesn't change hands directly.
We'd still have a fundamental problem: people who have lots of money can hire other people to represent their interests to congress.
Conversely, how many citizens spend time trying to influence their congressional offices? Not just via vote, not just via the occasional phone call or letter, but by actually meeting with congressional staff.
I don't mean to suggest that at all -- I think there are a variety of things we could try to mitigate some of the problems associated with campaign finance.
What I'm trying to communicate is mostly that when it comes to "buying influence", the problem is a lot deeper than any access/influence purchased via donor-driven fundraising. It's actually inherent in any arrangement where money can be used to hire people to lobby on an employer's behalf. And it's particularly unbalanced when most people don't lobby on a volunteer basis.
I would recommend reading Lessig's book Republic Lost [1], it's very short and is very quick to discuss that "getting money out" is not the only thing that matters.
To your point, you're right that restricting money is often worse for challengers than incumbents. This is because the challengers need to spend money to get their name out and prove they're "serious" as opposed to the incumbents who already have name recognition and can get attention without spending money. However, the issue that he's talking about is different (though related). The problem is that both incumbents and challengers require some small subset of people to support them and fund them.
> There is no better way to enshrine the status quo for eternity than limiting outside fundraising.
You state this as if it's obvious. It really isn't.
The conventional campaign finance reform thinking, which a lot of us agree with, is that campaign money subverts the normal democratic process wherein people make their voices heard, their representative does what they want, and if they don't the people vote in someone who seems more likely to do the job.
You seem to be saying that in the absence of campaign money, nothing will happen at all. That can't be what you actually mean?
The fundamental problem in running a challenger's campaign is that the incumbent is a lawmaker whose every action is covered by the news media. Incumbents have a HUGE built-in publicity advantage; the only way a challenger can counter that is by spending money on ads and events.
The secondary problem in today's U.S. election system is that the 2 largest political parties have baked all sorts of advantages for themselves into the law--for example, for a long time party committees were allowed to collect and spend a lot more money than independent committees. Citizens United did away with this distorting advantage, making it easier for people to organize support for challenger candidates outside of political parties.
> Incumbents have a HUGE built-in publicity advantage
This isn't true 100% of the time. In recent years people have been pretty eager to vote out incumbents, in some cases in favor of people who can barely speak in complete sentences...
> the only way a challenger can counter that is by spending money on ads and events.
There's also the press.
That last bit is interesting, thanks.
edit: I remain amused at what people will downvote
I think you need to explain this. Two considerations:
1. In other countries, independent campaigns with little financial backing have had success. The need for very large amounts of money to win elections seems to be distinctive of the US.
2. The independents with such money are "independent" Lesters, in Lessig's terminology (i.e., they are people with enough money to influence elections). So you are using the word independent in a way that seems to show that you are not talking about the same problem.
An incumbent is already well known. People are willing to give them money and put them on TV because they are already a congressman. A challenger has to have enough money to be taken seriously or pay to get attention via ads etc.
I would search for some citations if I wasn't about to get noprocrasted out.
The free speech issues here should not be underestimated. It's true that money and speech are not identical. But we must consider the right to spend money broadcasting one's speech. For example, what if I'm allowed to speak about patent reform, but I'm forbidden to make a documentary about, simply because that documentary will cost a certain amount of money? We need to consider these kinds of scenarios when we talk about any restrictions on money in politics. I do think there's a proper balance to be struck. My point is just that it's not as easy as saying "money is not speech."
But what if I, an individual, do not want one of the candidates to win. I should be able to do anything in my power to cause them to lose - write books, op-eds, documentaries, commercials etc. Additionally, what limits do we put on newspapers, famous people, unions, employees, news programs?
"In the final week of the 2012 election, MSNBC ran no negative stories about President Barack Obama and no positive stories about Republican nominee Mitt Romney, according to a study released Monday by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. "[1]
It seems that any restriction starts to favor certain groups. For instance, unions organizing volunteers
"The A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s president, Richard Trumka, said on Thursday that the nation’s labor unions would have 128,000 volunteers working on the “final four days” of the 2012 campaign, saying these volunteers would knock on 5.5 million doors and make 5.2 million phone calls." [2]
It should be noted, of course, that Citizens United itself was a hit-piece on Hilary Clinton. Is that really the kind of thing everyone wants to suppress?
But imagine this scenario: I'm running for office, and I opt in to the matching funds program. All well and good. But then, some extremely well-funded organization, which is totally separate from me and my campaign, spends lots of money glorifying me or denigrating my opponent.
You might argue that there's no corruption here, because I never had direct dealings with that organization, or the people funding it. But the potential for corruption is still there. Once these organizations exist, it will be clear to every candidate what he or she must do to win their favor. Politicians will have an incentive to advance these organizations' agendas, even if the politicians and the organizations never talk to each other. Further, it is quite possible (and indeed probable) that some politicians would cheat and deal directly with such organizations, even if doing so violated campaign finance laws.
If Larry really wanted to fight government corruption, he would be campaigning to reverse the centralization of government decision-making power in Washington bureaucrats, returning it to as close as possible to the people who are governed. The people have the most influence over decisions they make for themselves, and less and less as the decision-making power moves to the local community, then to the state, then the elected feds, and by the time you reach the unelected federal bureaucrats, the people have essentially no influence at all. The farther from the people you go, the less individual people get to decide for themselves and the more things are decided by whoever gets the most political favoritism.
Since he shows no interest in moving decision-making power back toward the people themselves, I conclude that he's not unhappy that people (as individuals) don't have enough power over their own lives; he's unhappy that the system he and his Harvard friends have built for the elite to rule The People (as a mass) doesn't yet have as much unrestrained power to do so as they would like.
The problem with this theory is that it is entirely not borne out in practice. Local governments are generally far more corrupt and dysfunctional than the federal government. See, e.g., San Francisco.
Or LA or NYC. American municipalities offer you the full dystopian spectrum. From overburdened socialist welfare state (San Francisco), to repressive authoritarian dictatorships (New York), to banana republics (Wilmington, DE), to post-apocalyptic free-fire zones (Camden). Take your pick!
I agree completely. There are also some great small communities that aren't socialist dystopias. So, yes, I would like to be able to take my pick.
As long as the power of Chicago's socialists is limited to Chicago, you can escape the dystopia that emerges from their absurd policies by escaping their jurisdiction. But if all (US) power can be centralized in Washington, then the same people who produced socialist dystopias in Detroit, Chicago, or San Francisco, will impose them on everyone in the country. I will no longer be able to take my pick by leaving their jurisdiction, and that's what they define as "progress."
No, they are not generally more corrupt; they are very often more corrupt. They are also very often less corrupt. There are far more of them with the consequent variety and---best of all---the smaller the corrupt locale, the easier it is to leave it for a better one. Nobody forces you to put up with San Francisco's government, but if Washington government becomes just like San Francisco, that's a MUCH bigger problem.
In which case you've completely devalued citizenship in a community/place entirely. <sarcasm>Obviously if my favored candidate for Mayor of Haifa loses the election, I should quit my job, sell/rerent my apartment, and move to Yerushalayyim!</sarcasm>
Except that, no, wait, my job, my dwelling, my friends, my family (if I had one), and my community are all tied down to the place I already live.
Implementing a "free market in local governments" has the massive negative externality of entirely destroying people's capacity to build roots and communities by staying in one place, and effectively turns the population into permanent ideological/lifestyle/economic migrants.
The ability to vote with your feet is one of the most valuable checks and balances on government. Few people leave after one lost election, but if the government gradually becomes toxic, it's better to have alternatives nearby than to have to leave the country. And the more easily you can leave a bad government's jurisdiction for a better one, the harder it is for it to just do whatever it feels like doing to you, and the more likely you are to be able to stay where you are.
I find your example ironic, given how many Israelis are in Israel because they made a choice to leave their jobs, dwellings, friends, etc., in one society to join another. Few did so after one lost election, but most Israelis I've talked to have been very glad that they had alternatives. Many would have been happier if they had had a good alternative closer to home, but those back home who preferred large-scale governments deliberately eliminated the possibility of local alternatives.
I find your example ironic, given how many Israelis are in Israel because they made a choice to leave their jobs, dwellings, friends, etc., in one society to join another. Few did so after one lost election, but most Israelis I've talked to have been very glad that they had alternatives. Many would have been happier if they had had a good alternative closer to home, but those back home who preferred large-scale governments deliberately eliminated the possibility of local alternatives.
More right-wing nonsense! Because a government large enough to provide health-care is automatically LARGE ENOUGH TO COMMIT MAJOR GENOCIDE AND DRIVE YOUR WHOLE ETHNICITY OUT OF THE COUNTRY!
We had better implement a system of permanent migration in the American style to make sure nobody suffers genocide by letting everyone flee to everywhere as soon as someone passes an income tax!
Or, you know, we could, unlike you, decide to base our politics on something other than childish, paranoid anarchist hysteria and actually implement an effective democracy that lets us run our lives without having to hoard guns and gold bullion in the family caravan.
The problem is that you're making an ideological statement. You may well be totally correct, but it's also possible for someone to disagree that decentralisation is good, while still supporting the same end-goals as you.
As a small example, I actually think that USA would be better off if you had a much stronger federal government and reduced the states to minor importance. However, my opinion doesn't count much because I live in New Zealand!
"Off Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."
Lessig's geek-relevant copyright background does not magically make his every political opinion relevant. There's nothing in the article or the comments about technology or intellectual property (or anything else that would make this relevant).
The way we fund campaigns in this country is definitely a big, big problem, but I don't think it's the only one. Many big donors are not driven so much by self-interest as the are by ideology, and in the "second" election, many voters vote based on prejudice rather than their own self-interest. I'm sure this situation has always been true, but it's much more extreme than it used to be. As a supporting point, I'd argue that the current impasse over the budget doesn't actually serve anyone's financial interests (wealthy or otherwise), although it may serve some people's ideological interests.
The impasse of the budget doesn't necessarily need to server anyone's interests. It just has to be enough better than the opposition's proposal to lead to a stalemate. If there's no policy that both the Senate and House prefer to the status quo, we get the status quo, even if both sides oppose the status quo.
The current impasse on the budget actually serves quite a few peoples interest. Sadly, it is seen as a conflict that both sides think will help them in the next election. Neither side actually wants to make hard cuts (Ryan's budget actually increases federal spending).
I'd disagree, I'd say these are not the underlying problem, they're symptoms.
The underlying problem is the disengagement of the electorate and the horrible process of running a campaign. There are lots of reasons for those things but if you want one big villain to point a finger at, then it should be the media. The media have turned elections into a scandal-driven celebrity-driven mess, almost completely divorced from the issues. Sane people avoid running for office partly because of the horrible negative impact the media will have on their lives.
And then you get a process where good candidates are actively driven away early and where nothing of substance is seriously discussed in the media. And we wonder why the system is full of narcissistic glory seekers who think they can get away with anything.
Hardly. What I'm describing is a dynamics problem. Right now we are at one equilibrium point due to various factors, many of them related to the particular nature of the popular media today. However, there are other equilibrium points (many of them more desirable) which are within our reach if certain changes happen.
The media reflects human desire. Elections are a scandal-driven celebrity-driven mess because that's what people watch. This is not unique to our time in human history either. But, like all things these days, media so much more efficient, centralized, and responsive.
That's a simplistic way of looking at it, and it's not entirely untrue, but it's also not the whole truth. The media represents a reflection of human desire filtered and lensed through the particular business models and technological limitations that reign. And the distortion that has been caused by those things, especially ad driven broadcast media, has had a huge impact. I don't excuse the electorate their responsibility in this either but the impact that the media has had on the process has been enormous and in most ways largely negative, especially over the last half century or so. As technology changes, as business models change, as expectations change we may see some big differences in the interface between candidate campgaigns and the electorate but it's too soon to tell how all that will shake out and whether it will lead to an improvement or worsening in matters.
The huge amounts spent on campaigns are merely the result of the ruling class having optimized the equation of how to get your guys in office. If you somehow totally eliminated the role of money in campaigns, the next most efficient solution would be found - be it control of the media, procedural changes, slash and burn smear campaigns, whatever.
Voting via net worth is just the easy equilibrium we found.
I have a couple of reactions to this, none of them positive:
1) Calling Washington corrupt devalues the word "corrupt." Dhaka is corrupt. Moscow is corrupt. Washington is dysfunctional, but not corrupt. Americans couldn't even process what an actually corrupt government would look like. They have no frame of reference. There is an important reason to not throw the word "corrupt" around willy nilly. If you convince Americans that this is as bad as it gets, they will become apathetic. After all, what's the point of doing anything if the government is already in such a huge hole there is no climbing out? Overplaying the "corruptness" of Washington draws eyeballs, but it ultimately undermines your overall goal.
2) Blaming money is a diversion. Talking about how "money corrupts the political system" ignores the problem. And the problem is this: the people agree with the corporations. On nearly any substantial political issue you'd like to name, there is not just money but votes on the pro-corporate side. If you want to shut down heavily-polluting and destructive coal power in this country, you have to fight not just the corporations, but all of the people for whom coal is a way of life. When Obama and Romney got on stage during the last debate to see who could get the coal industry's dick the deepest down their throat, they didn't do it because of the money the coal industry donated to their campaigns.[1] They did it because ordinary Pennsylvanians,[2] treat attacks on the coal industry as an attack on their livelihoods and their way of life. If you want to break up or regulate big corporations, you can find plenty of ordinary people to say: "the government shouldn't be messing with those businesses."
The only things that attract broad political opposition are things that don't matter (e.g. "earmarks" which account for approximately 0% of the budget). The only things that attract universal condemnation are wiggle-words like "corruption" and "pork" and "wasteful spending" on which everyone can project their own viewpoint and still act like they are in agreement with everyone else.
Lessig goes wrong from the very first sentence of this article: "We Americans are disgusted with our government." The basic issue is that people aren't discontent with our government. Sure they have a general distaste for it in the same way they have a general distaste for going to the dentist, but if you sit down and really look at the issues, the big questions of governance, there is no collective consensus about doing anything important differently. Bigger military or smaller military? Tougher on crime or more protective of individual rights? Less religion in the public sphere or more? More taxes or less taxes? More privatization or less privatization? More regulation or less regulation? If you get out of Boston or San Francisco, you can find tons of ordinary people around you to take either side of each of these debates.
What you can't find much if any of are substantial, meaningful issues that everyone agrees should be changed, in a specific way, but which are nonetheless held to the status quo by our "corrupt" government. That is real corruption.
[1] People dramatically overestimate how much money corporations actually give out. First, it's illegal for corporations to donate directly to candidates. Second, both Obama and Romney raised more direct contributions than the amount of money spent on their behalf by PAC's and non-profit organizations. And direct contributions can and are limited and not affected by Citizens United.
[2] And Pennsylvanians are really important! There is a joke: why did God put all of our oil under Saudi Arabia? Well, god put all of our swing votes in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, etc.
1) I think Lessig makes a fair case that we should broaden our notion of corruption. Congress folk spend 30-70% of their time raising money. Roughly half of congress goes in to lobbying after their terms end, with an average pay hike of about 14x. You think that doesn't "corrupt" their loyalties? Okay, it's not Dhaka. But I don't live in Bangladesh, I live in America, and I have different expectations for one than the other. I don't buy your claim that calling grossly perverse incentives corruption somehow lumps Washington in with Moscow.
2) Most of what the government does is not big issues, it's small ones that actually have the biggest effect on our lives. How should airlines, financial firms, telecommunications, etc., be regulated? Most people have very vague ideas about what they want, and are strongly swayed by poll wording. Organizations being regulated, however, have very strong ideas about what should and shouldn't happen. In theory, they should be one voice of many; in practice, we get regulatory capture.
> I think Lessig makes a fair case that we should broaden our notion of corruption.
Broadening can also imply diluting.
> Roughly half of congress goes in to lobbying after their terms end, with an average pay hike of about 14x. You think that doesn't "corrupt" their loyalties?
So let's make their salaries $2.5 million per year. It'd be a drop in the bucket.
> How should airlines, financial firms, telecommunications, etc., be regulated?
I bet you couldn't even get people on Hacker News to agree to answers to those questions.
> Organizations being regulated, however, have very strong ideas about what should and shouldn't happen.
The organizations being regulated are also the only ones who have any idea what is going on. Regulatory capture is the inescapable result of a basic problem: people who aren't in, e.g. the finance industry don't understand how it works, so the only people who can regulate it are the people who go through the revolving door. No amount of "taking money out of elections" is going to change that. (Isn't the battle cry here that people who don't understand the tech sector shouldn't be legislating on it?")
If you're opposed to regulatory capture, then you need to get rid of regulatory agencies. But even here on Hacker News I don't imagine you'd get overwhelming consensus in favor of that sort of action (it'd devolve into some fundamentally philosophical debate).
> If you're opposed to regulatory capture, then you need to get rid of regulatory agencies.
This presumes that the unregulated results will be better. This may be the case, but doesn't automatically follow. An alternative is to watch carefully and object loudly when you see problems, ideally with structural supports to check agendas and realign incentives. Of course there will still be failures; they may or may not be worse or more frequent than in the deregulated case - I would expect this to vary substantially by field and particular systems involved.
> This presumes that the unregulated results will be better.
I'm not saying it would be better, I'm saying that if the goal is to get rid of regulatory capture (and that's your only goal), you need to get rid of the regulatory apparatus.
If you do have regulation, you need to accept that capture is a characteristic of it and design around that. It's engineering. If you use a particular type of metal for a pipe, it has advantages and disadvantages and you have to design around them. Just wishing for the perfect pipe doesn't get you anywhere.
Well said -- as you imply, it's much scarier to contemplate we have the government we more or less want than to think it's being imposed on us by shadowy forces.
To add on a few additional points of evidence:
1) In the most recent set of national elections, there was not much correlation between money spent and probability of victory [1]. While second-order effects may still be problematic, I think it's worth reemphasizing.
2)Congressmen doing things that are against the will of their constituents leaves them massively open to primary challenges. See what's happening with Chambliss or other republicans in the recent budgetary crisis.
3)I do think there is a particularly pernicious form of corruption in Washington, stemming from the fact that lobbyists and other non-governmental entities often draft a large number of bills. This doesn't manifest as a specific national policy goal not being achieved, but rather causes subtle aims to be achieved in quiet fashions. This is not a problem of money, though -- it's simply a function of availability, and the convenience factor of who sees whom on a daily basis. Perhaps this could be fixed by empower congressmen and senators to carry larger staffs (staves?) than they do today?
I agree with those, and I'd add another point: if the government has a mandate from the American people, it's one thing: give us jobs. Look at the distribution of entities that have the jobs in this country: http://economics.about.com/od/smallbigbusiness/a/us_business...
"Some 19.6 million Americans work for companies employing fewer than 20 workers, 18.4 million work for firms employing between 20 and 99 workers, and 14.6 million work for firms with 100 to 499 workers. By contrast, 47.7 million Americans work for firms with 500 or more employees."
The line between 'small business' and 'big business' is arguable, but in any case small businesses are generally politically aligned with big businesses.
Is it any surprise than that our government supports pro-corporate policies?
My wife was a lobbyist and she once gave me an interesting hypothetical: Excelon (big power company in Illinois) doesn't have to donate any money to get the ear of any politician in the state. All they have to do is look at their records and call up and say "we've got 7,000 employees in your district..."
Whatever shortcomings the US political system may have are exacerbated by citizen apathy. By constantly asserting that the system is irretrievably broken, Lessig is contributing to that apathy more than he is fighting it.
To the extent this is true, it's because the consent is effectively manufactured by the media.
A big part of the trick is, when presenting the choice of Shit Sandwich or Turd Burger at the election, focus on which offering has sesame seeds instead of the fact the primary ingredient of both offerings is shit.
I know this is just a one line part of your thoughtful post, but it irks me when I read this because it's such a "one move ahead in chess" way of thinking.
e.g. "earmarks" which account for approximately 0% of the budget
Great, then completely eliminating pork barrel spending shouldn't hurt anyone.
Really, earmarks are bad because they're a corrupting influence that encourages legislators to vote for bills for reasons other than the bills' individual merits.
Earmarks are like catalysts in a chemical reaction. They may not appear on the balance sheet for chemicals consumed in a reaction, but without them the reaction wouldn't happen at all or at the same speed.
So for being such a small percentage of the budget, earmarks were hugely influential to congress members in getting them to vote. Even though earmarks haven't completely disappeared, their reduction is forcing Congress to rework motivation for getting votes for bills. We need to move beyond the "earmarks is a small percentage of the budget so they don't matter" meme. Think about why and how they're there and you quickly realize that they're bad even if they directly consume 0.00% of the budget.
I'm not saying earmarks aren't bad and we shouldn't get rid of them. I'm saying that the only reason we can universally get behind getting rid of them is because they don't add up to much money and nobody is really invested. Let's try the same for social security or the defense budget.
1. The issue here is not broadening or weakening or diluting the term corrupt. US government corruption is concentrated at the top. The other examples you gave have low level and high level corruption, but they are different things. Washington corruption is structural, but no less real. Where I live (oz) the state gov. as one of it's first acts was to restructure the crime and corruption commission (effectively taking it out of action for 18 months). Then they promptly rezoned a bunch of land owned by people who donated to the party coffers. Would you regard that as corrupt?
2. People agree with corporations because corporations frame the question, the debate and the answer. Same thing happens here in oz, where murdoch owns 70% of the papers. People are so content with their gov in the US that they vote in ever increasing numbers?
People don't care and are not engaged by politics because they are taught from a very young age to accept that they can have no effect on the system. You can choose between tweedledum or tweedledee (or kang and kodos, if you prefer). This was lessig's point. Money has corrupted the process before you even get to a choice.
"More regulation or less regulation?"
People are always going to disagree over process. Especially if you frame it in such oversimplified terms. Regulation on disallowing a company to pump cyanide* into the water supply? Find someone who disagrees with this!
> Blaming money is a diversion. Talking about how "money corrupts the political system" ignores the problem. And the problem is this: the people agree with the corporations.
Don't you think that's a false dichotomy? People can often agree with corporations and it can still be a bad idea to allow corporations (or even individuals) to finance campaigns.
The question is: what impact does that financing have a sizable portion of the public already supports those views? Conversely, how much impact can corporate financing have when a clear majority of people disagree with those views?
The $1 billion in PAC money in 2012 seems to have had very little impact on the election, other than to pump up the people who already agreed with the messages in the ads.
> The $1 billion in PAC money in 2012 seems to have had very little impact on the election, other than to pump up the people who already agreed with the messages in the ads.
There are at least three ways that money can have an effect that come to mind. The first is determining who wins; this is the kind you're talking about. The second is determining who can run; the winners of the primaries in both parties have as far as I can remember also been the top fundraisers going in to the primaries. Is it sticky which is the cause and which is the effect? Of course. But I have no doubt it's an amplification.
The third way is, I think, the most perverse. Only a very narrow range of political perspectives are capable of making it to the mainstream, since they first have to win the money election in order to make it anywhere.
Frankly we have no idea what the political landscape would look like with citizen funded elections. Maybe it would look exactly the same, in which case your hypothesis that the government we have is already representative would be proven correct. Right now we have no idea, and that's why I support citizen funded elections.
> Both Obama and Romney raised more direct contributions than the amount of money spent on their behalf by PAC's and non-profit organizations.
True for Obama, but from the numbers I can find [1], not true for Romney. Obama raised $750m in direct contributions, and pro-Obama PACs spent another $300m. Romney raised $450m in direct contributions, and pro-Romney PACs spent another $725m.
Looking at the NYT data, the candidates together raised $1.2 billion on direct contributions (which are capped at $2,500). Even going by the Open Secrets number, the fact is that Obama and Romney raised more money directly (with a relatively small contribution cap), than PAC's spent on the entire election for all candidates.
Now, there is something troubling about the information in the NYT article: $1 billion raised by PAC's, the vast majority of it coming from donations of more than $100k. Is it going to spiral out of control from there? Or is the dismal failure of PAC-backed campaigns going to cause 2012 to be the high watermark? Who knows.
But what we do know is that 2012 was unprecedented, and Citizens United only happened a few years ago. Was Washington broken 5, 10, 20, 30 years ago? It's hard to argue that the government is appreciably more corrupt or pro-corporation than it was in they heyday of Ronald Reagan. But all of that was before Citizens United and before the rise of Super PACs. I would assert this: if the government is broken, it has been that way for awhile. But total outside spending was $50m or less through 2000: http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/cycle_tots.php
Really, if you tally the wealth extracted from the economy by taxes and monetary expansion, follow its path through defense spending and astronomical bank subsidies, and see whose pockets much of it ultimately ends up in, you can't claim Washington isn't corrupt. It's just a professionalized corruption, baked carefully and discreetly into the system. The sums involved dwarf anything that's happening in Dhaka or Moscow.
There is actually very little differences between Republicans and Democrats. Politicians on both sides push wedge issues you listed in front in order to get elected. But majority of legalizations are not related to these wedge issues: corporations make decisions.
It would be great if somebody can "hack" the entire political process and be elected without "big money".
Now, the next step would be to realize that the underlying problem here is the existence of Government itself.
It's an arrangement where a small group of people:
- Is in a position to accept bribes in exchange for influence.
- Decides everything for 300 million *individuals*.
- Uses other people's money (or conjures more out of thin air).
- Is not responsible for their actions.
You seem confused. Arguing against a strawman involves describing an opponent's argument falsely and then attacking it.
In this case you, who are apparently an extreme idiot, have written a diatribe saying that the "underlying problem here is the existence of Government itself."
It is not, in fact, a strawman to describe your argument as being for the dissolution of the U.S. Government entirely, and currently Somalia is well-known for the absence of any effective government.
Somalia is often trotted out as some kind of pseudo-argument against anarchism, as if it were an example of what would happen without a government. I can see at least a couple of problems with that:
- Somalia has a government, regadless of how "effective" it is, and that alone makes it an invalid comparison.
- The absence of government means the absence of coercion, and that everything would be based on voluntary trade. It does not automatically follow that every place without a government would be a hellish shithole. That soup requires other ingredients besides "no government-controlled police force".
> You seem confused. Arguing against a strawman involves describing an opponent's argument falsely and then attacking it.
- I pointed out that the existence of Government is a problem.
- You implied I was advocating emulating Somalia (originally calling it "governmentless", but now covering your ass by adding "effective").
"Strawman" seems appropriate. Who was the idiot again?
The real underlying problem, though, is that pretty much the only people who are going to change who they vote for in an election based on copyright reform are the people who feel their livelihoods depend on the current system.
I adore, that's right Adore Lessig for his work against this corrupt thing we call a government. I suggest many more folks get behind this man. The thing that turned me on to him was his Google Talk about political finance.
Lessig will be considered one of the greats when we look back on this generation and ask our selves what they did. He in fact will be known as the man who struck at the very Root of our so called Republic. If your not following him, or know nothing about him, I would extremely and utterly suggest you take the hour and watch his Google Talk. He knows corruption and he has my dedication.
From the start it seems Lessig is attacking the symptom rather than the cause.
The problem with the US government is a tragedy of the commons (ie the district-by-district and state-by-state pork barrelling).
The original intent of the Founding Fathers and the view held by libertarians and traditional conservatives (rather than the neoconservatives and religious conservatives that dominate today) is one of limited Federal government for specifically this reason. A minimal government is one not worth buying. A big and intrusive government is one totally worth buying.
Representatives and Senators raise so much money to get elected because the payoff is huge. Both in terms of direct power and the indirect financial reward (many become lobbyists for huge incomes). Lobbying isn't the problem; it's a symptom (of government being worth buying).
Davy Crockett [1] is oft-quoted on this subject.
This is why I found the "living document" "ideology" so subversive. I say "ideology" because I find myself agreeing with Justice Scalia that it is no ideology at all. The Constitution doesn't say whatever you want it to say. It says what it says. If you want pass laws or amendments otherwise well there are processes for that and it's the job of the legislative not the judicial branch to create new law.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I think the bigger problem in US politics is that the country itself is divided and so many people think the means justify the ends.
Take how elections are organized. It's clear that some states seek to suppress traditionally Democratic votes in the names of striking convicted felons off the electoral rolls. Other states try and manipulate the vote by the density of polling places and the hours they are open.
I compare this to Australia, which holds elections on a Saturday, and those elections are organized by the AEC (Australian Electoral Commission). Voting is mandatory not optional and the duty of the AEC is to ensure that everyone has ample opportunity to vote. It seems that some combination of cultural factors, the smaller size of the Australian population and mandatory voting has made this a largely nonpartisan endeavour and voting has only ever taken me 10 minutes. On Saturdays they just set up in schools and other public spaces.
Redistricting too is a hugely political issue but the big problem here is that voting patterns are so predictable that you can buy maps telling you how specific city blocks vote.
Half the country votes. Of that half, 40% always vote Republican. 40% always vote Democrat. The remaining 20% (meaning 10% of the population) actually determinate the outcome of the election. The largest electoral victories in US history (Nixon in '72 and Reagan in '84) each only captured ~60% of the populate vote.
You see the effects of this on Congress with reelection rates [2]. Being a Representative is now a career and that (IMHO) is a problem.
"Winning" on issues for many has trumped the rule of law and the Republic itself (again, IMHO) and that more than anything is the most dangerous thing.
> A minimal government is one not worth buying. A big and intrusive government is one totally worth buying.
I get what you're saying. If a government barely has any powers, they yes, it's not worth corrupting, but I really don't think we're headed in that direction any time soon. Surely even a medium sized-government would still be worth corrupting?
Moreover, why can't we have both? A government with smaller influence, but still freer of money-influence than today's.
It seems to me that the current political reality is that Lesig's proposals would be much easier to achieve than bringing our government's influence to a level more agreeable to a libertarian.
I would speculate that democracies like our own broadly tend coverage to the middle of extreme views. If that's the case, then we won't achieve a libertarain-sized government, unless you convince a good majority of voters. Hence, it seems clear that we should focus more on the quality of government, right now.
> Moreover, why can't we have both? A government with smaller influence, but still freer of money-influence than today's.
That feels like asking, "why can't we have both a simpler software codebase, with less abstraction and code, while adding all this code & logic over here to try to squash the symptoms of having too much abstraction?"
Maybe I misunderstood you, but I feel like you're asking us to get to simplicity by adding more rules, which isn't really how simplicity works.
I see your idea, that going after money-influence in politics might always end up consisting of simply adding more rules, and thus complicating and expanding government further.
I would take the idea more seriously if its something that can be rigorously demonstrated; i.e. there is no way to amend the US government without adding so many rules as to frustrate the situation even further.
That being said, any government that consists of human beings is going to have an emergent agenda of some sort or the other. It seems to me that job number one of any government would be to police it self so that that agenda is generally in the people's favor, first. I would have thought that that's really what democracy means, maybe I'm wrong.
Surely even a more libertarian government would have policies in place to fight its corruption?
> I would take the idea more seriously if its something that can be rigorously demonstrated; i.e. there is no way to amend the US government without adding so many rules as to frustrate the situation even further.
I cannot scientifically prove this hypothesis, as I am not dictator of the world, or even of a small island. (Technically, I'd have to be dictator of multiple worlds to prove my hypothesis, as I understand the scientific method.) Most political debates have this problem, so I'm not inclined to lose sleep over it. Of course, I don't expect you to accept the idea wholesale, either. I just threw it out there for discussion.
> That being said, any government that consists of human beings is going to have an emergent agenda of some sort or the other. It seems to me that job number one of any government would be to police it self so that that agenda is generally in the people's favor, first.
It's my understanding this is why we have 3 branches of government, yes. Even a relatively simple system can still verify results with other parts of the system (for example, setting up a Pingdom account to verify that yes, the website is returning HTTP 200)
> Surely even a more libertarian government would have policies in place to fight its corruption?
(a) I extrapolate my experience with architecting complex software systems to political systems. Perhaps what applies to the one is entirely different from what applies to another. Software is what I know, politics is an interesting mind game for me, and it seems like some lessons may carry over. Also, applying software architecture disciplines to business procedures has brought me continued success over the past few years, so I'm inclined to think that some/most of these principles may apply across all complicated systems, including political ones. But again, I can't prove it.
(b) I think there is a difference between letting multiple systems "battle it out" (e.g. Pingdom verifying an HTTP 200 response and perhaps even rebooting the server automatically if it is down), and a multitude of automatic failover rules within a system. For example, how many times have we seen recap blog posts from AWS or other large, abstract cloud systems which identify the root cause as "a system we wrote to automatically heal our main system screwed everything up?"
All that said, I agree with your original post's main point: sometimes you've just gotta throw duct tape on stuff yesterday, or in this case, add rules to limit political corruption. I think my point is simply that planning for both long-term seems conflicting: you throw the duct tape on today, but you don't plan to leave it there forever.
The eventual plan is to refactor to a simpler system and get rid of the duct tape.
> The eventual plan is to refactor to a simpler system and get rid of the duct tape.
Yeah, we're on the same page.
I think the critical thing with the software/systems-analogy is that it's far easier for us to understand these technologies, and more over, the technologies generally lend them selves to reproducible experiments. You can collect 'lessons learned' and do experiments, and based on that knowledge, refactor. It's much harder in politics for the reasons you mentioned.
The whole reason we have 'free' markets is that we lack the knowledge that would be required to efficiently run a command-economy, so we let the market decide, and apply duck-tape where appropriate. Same goes with democracy: we lack the knowledge to build a benevolent dictator which maximizes its people's happiness.
So I guess democracy + duck-tape is the best we can do, for now.
> From the start it seems Lessig is attacking the symptom rather than the cause.
You are, how shall I say this, late to the party.
You should probably read some of Lessig's works - I suggest Republic, Lost - which very directly and at great length address this.
Also you should probably not read works of fiction about historical personages such as Davey Crockett and then believe that they represent, well, anything.
Really good point about symptoms / causes (I do not entirely agree that it is automatically follows to make the gov not worth buying.. a bit like smashing up your car so no-one steals it). And I do not disagree with your comments about the US voting.
WRT Australian voting, in 2010 the voter turnout was around 92/93%, with a further 5.5% informal (donkey). Around 20% of the electorate voted for the minor parties / independents.
All this translated to.. 90% of the seats to the two major parties. Nope, no corruption here. In a very real sense the system is designed by the parties that run it. I mean, we all remember what happened in Tassie in the late 90's?
a bit like smashing up your car so no-one steals it
More like not putting all your server room and home entertainment system equipment (televisions, ipads, etc.) in your car, sitting on the front seat with the doors unlocked.
Your car needs to get you places. If you make it the central storage location for all the cool/expensive stuff in your life - don't be surprised when people open your doors or break your windows to take it. If in the process of storing all your junk and having it broken into - don't be too surprised when your car is no longer functioning as simple transport.
The US Government spends more money than any entity in history. You think that isn't valuable to all those who wish to obtain some of that money for themselves?
The point of my analogy was that government has some specific functions spelled out by the Constitution. If we stuck to government's main functions rather than trying to have it do everything for everyone - we would make it less of a target for corruption.
The problem with the US government is a tragedy of the commons (ie the district-by-district and state-by-state pork barrelling).
The original intent of the Founding Fathers and the view held by libertarians and traditional conservatives (rather than the neoconservatives and religious conservatives that dominate today) is one of limited Federal government for specifically this reason. A minimal government is one not worth buying. A big and intrusive government is one totally worth buying.
You were doing so well until you veered off into right-wing proprietarian ideology!
If the US government is subject to a Tragedy of the Commons due to its mode of subdivision, then eliminate the subdivision. Amend the Constitution to shift to a Mixed-Member Proportional parliamentary system.
I see no reason not to solve the engineering problem rather than declaring that having the government do more than enforce private-property titles is immoral.
The U.S. federal government is strong because it was designed to be strong. It was designed to be strong because the nation had already tried a weak national government under the Articles of Confederation, and it was an abject failure.
Not even Scalia would object to the notion that the federal government is strong. In fact he regularly rules in favor of a strong federal government, including against Larry Lessig in Eldred v Ashcroft.
I wonder if the educational system is responsible for this idea that the Constitution was designed to have a "weak government" that wouldn't be "worth taking over." Growing up in Virginia, I definitely had a "states are so amazing" slant to my education (this is the same state that has a giant statute of a traitor in its capital). I don't know what people who grew up outside the south were told.
The fact is that the Founders didn't really agree on how strong the Federal government should be, but they all agreed it should be stronger than the weak national government that existed under the Articles of Confederation. And the Federalists wanted a very robust national government indeed (and remember, the reference point of the British Parliament, which has nearly unlimited power, was the framing in this situation), while others wanted to preserve the nearly unlimited power of the states. Nobody wanted a "weak" government--it was a battle about who should hold the power.
And it was a battle that the Federalists won in the first several Congresses and during the Marshall era, and finally consolidated at the point of a sword during the civil war.
You are confused by the smoke. A law was recently passed with little discussion that protects Monsanto. This law has nothing to do with district-by-district, Davy Crockett, ideology, good intentions, Australia or any of the other issues you have raised. It simply has to do with lawmakers passing laws for those who provide money to them to be re-elected - as Lessig pointed out.
There's a sentence in the 3rd paragraph talking about what people are calling, "money in politics". He says, "They therefore don't point us to a plausible solution to the problem of our political system today.".
I figured I'd read through the article to get the solution. This is how it ends, "We need to find a way back to Madison's original design, so that we can find a way to restore again a government that works. Leaving Lesterland is the critical first step." Thanks Mr. Lessig.
Watch the video. He endorses many different plans which tackle the same issue. This is not a new idea - he is just ratcheting up the urgency and quite successfully so:
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." - Henry David Thoreau
Lessig endorses the idea that this is the root issue of modern (US) times.
1 Switching to having proper parties with members and using OMOV one member one vote and doing away totally with the primary system and saving all that money would be a better start.
2 Have strict limits on campaign costs and have public service party political broadcasts carried on the major tv channels.
3 Remove all patronage civil service jobs from the president no nice jollies as ambassador for your buddies.
4 Implement better rules of debate no more slipping pork in as an unrelated rider.
5 Have independent speakers of house and congress.
Rather than some half assed version of what you have now.
It would be fun to gather metrics about fund-raising quotas, funds raised, time spent, etc, per elected official. But, that information belongs to parties, not to the people.
Unfortunately, although that is a quite obvious to those who pay attention, it is also just the tip of the iceberg in the events that led to the sinking of the titanic. The point is that, obviously the visible tip of the iceberg is the most obvious danger, the real, immediate danger is the portion of the iceberg just below the surface of the water. But that is also just the most shallow consideration of all the factors and events that ended up with the sinking of the titanic. Events and circumstances that were in place before the impact, and those revealed and as a consequence of the impact.
For example, a huge part of the corruption of our government comes from Congress' micro-management of the economy, which should not be happening. The legislature is supposed to put broad, systemic foundations into place that work universally, not this inept and incompetent meddling in the smallest details of how a dime is spent or not spent. That body of our government lacks universal principles that can be tested against to validate their actions.
That manifests itself in the blatant, overt corruption of bribery and favoritism; not to even touch on the subtle forms of corruption which make up the forest we can't see for all the trees.
addendum:
Something else that is a rather touchy subject but also a relevant one is that we are operating with a hobbled-together framework that was meant for a whole different era of humanity. Universal suffrage in its current state is corrosive and inadequate. There really need to be qualifications for voting and the power and influence through access of the legislative and executive should solely rest in those who qualify.
Now, before you get all upset; it should be a qualification that is universally accessible, e.g., spending time rather than money. Everyone has a more equitable amount of time available for themselves. Some poor will find it difficult to find the time to spend, but so will the wealthy who, e.g., have no interest in putting in time spent with the poor in community forums and colloquium, i.e., the more time you spend attending and participating in public discussions across all economic and political spectrum the more access you have to legislators and the executive.
It's fair, its universal, and it's equitable; which is why the wealthy and those who have perverted the current system in their overwhelming favor will vilify and fight dirty to the death to preserve the current con job they have going.
Bribery is free speech too. Yet bribery is illegal. So where do we draw the line? Consider the special interest groups today that take this approach: "I'm not coordinating with the Senator, but I did start spending millions of dollars of attack ads on her opponent as soon as she voted against Cap and Trade on carbon emissions, and after she left Congress I hired her as a 'consultant' paying her a multi-million dollar salary." Currently that's on one side of the line. I think it needs to be on the other side of the line.
You didn't address my point. Where do you draw the line? At one point does one's choice of how one allocates one's money go from "free speech" to "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors"?
Downvoters, this is something to consider. I'm no fan of money in politics, but I have a real difficult time trying to figure out how to get money out of elections without stifling the ability of folks (rich or otherwise) to advocate for their issues.
If you don't see any difference between advocacy (on your own dime) and literally handing a check to a person with regulatory power over your commercial interests, then you are well and truly lost to reason.
The Constitution guarantees the right to petition the government. It says nothing about the "freedom" to deliver those petitions in briefcases full of cash (slight hyperbole, but you get the idea).
Personally, I'd be willing to live with Citizens United if (a) the less debatable parts of election rigging were struck (i.e. gerrymandering, closed primaries, and private campaign finance) and (b) the rule against direct coordination between "independent" producers and campaigns they assist were extended to a ban on hiring anyone who had worked on a campaign for at least five years.
As it stands, people who have been deeply enmeshed with a campaign, who know all the players, and who know the strategy cold, can "quit", go to work for an "unrelated" PAC, and proceed to produce media that "happens" to mesh with the "unrelated" campaign.
It's bullshit, floor to ceiling. Truly independent political speech is one thing. The current reality is something else.
If you don't see any difference between advocacy (on your own dime) and literally handing a check to a person with regulatory power over your commercial interests, then you are well and truly lost to reason.
So I guess we're not going to discuss this like adults?
Like I wrote, I am no fan of money in politics, but if there is money in politics, there is always going to be a way to use that money to the advantage of someone else, by means other than "literally handing a check to a person with regulatory power over your commercial interests" - the only way to prevent that is take money entirely out of politics, but that does affect free speech.
Truly independent political speech is one thing. The current reality is something else.
Agreed. Now, how to you get one without the other without impacting one's right to free expression?
> If you don't see any difference between advocacy (on your own dime) and literally handing a check to a person with regulatory power over your commercial interests, then you are well and truly lost to reason.
The law is that you can't hand a candidate a check bigger than $2,500, nor can a corporation hand the candidate any such check. Citizens United does nothing to change that (because the Congress derives its power to ban that from its control over the candidate, not the donor).
What was at issue in Citizens United was precisely the question of advocacy on your own dime.
I have a real difficult time trying to figure out how to get money out of elections without stifling the ability of folks (rich or otherwise) to advocate for their issues.
That is the _entire point_ of this whole movement (i.e., the one Lessig is helping push).
It's not that hard. We need a better internet, and a more engaged public.
Money is a big deal in politics because money means advertisements and advertisements mean mindshare and mindshare means votes. All you have to do is bypass that.
It's not that hard. We need a better internet, and a more engaged public.
Those two statements are contradictory. Even if they weren't, "a better internet, and a more engaged public" doesn't automatically mean that people get to hear your message.
I'm not seeing an attack on free speech here. Unlike some campaign-finance proposals, he's not advocating any restrictions on anyone's ability to say whatever they want (and spend however much money they'd like in doing so). Instead he's proposing a public campaign-funding scheme which would be opt-in for candidates.
All rights must be balanced against each other when they come into conflict. Free Speech Laws vs. Election Campaigning Laws. Can't have both. How/Where does one draw the line?
I don't think there is any right that is unbreakable. A person can choose to not have medical treatment even if it kills them, meaning the state is willing to allow someone's right to life to be infringed (by that person). A person's right to a medical treatment can come up against someone else's right to life (in the case of abortion). Right to free speech is balanced against immediate public panic (the "fire in a crowded theatre" thought experiment), and is also balanced against someone's right to a good name (i.e. libel and slander law). The right to own property is balanced against the state's right to tax you. The right to privacy is balanaced against your child's right to not be abused (meaning the state can look at what you're doing). etc. etc.
Can you succinctly name a right that never needs balancing against another?
It could be worse, I do think that if people spent a bit more of their time thinking about they would like to change locally rather then nationally (which is also important) they would feel much less disenfranchised .. but that plays less into various ideological world views and such which people tend to fixate on
I look back to the last federal election here in Canada - it was triggered by a vote of no-confidence over the budget, and 5 weeks later the whole process was done. the candidates only had 5 weeks to spend money. no matter how much money you are legally allowed to donate to a campaign, the candidate can only spend so much in such a small time frame. It doesn't matter if you're a billionaire or not, it's impossible to garner much influence when the campaign period is so short.
of course, our voter turnout is miserable and the guy we managed to elect is pretty terrible, i'm not trying to say our system is perfect. but the year-and-a-half long campaign with elections every two years just seems so ridiculous.