Comment by dschobel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dschobel | Hacker News Reader

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I think your analysis is right on and I think this case is very much a matter of principles vs pragmatics.

The symptom is plainly that people and groups of people (corporations) with very deep pockets have vast access to and influence on all levels of government, and influence is a zero sum game so that comes at the expense of the mythical "average" citizen.

The Fair Elections Now Act is the most direct and obvious way to mitigate that corporate influence.

I think that it also undermines the freedom of speech of those who have influence.

So, the extent of my understanding/analysis at this point is that essentially what we are looking at is a decision between the welfare of American democracy vs the principles upon which it was founded.

I know the hard-line libertarians will decry me for that sentiment claiming that the two never diverge, but I don't see how anyone can deny a) that the corporate influence is disproportionate to the numbers it represents b) rarely aligned with the interests of the population.

The major public choice critique of popular democracies is that they have the incentive to pass legislation with concentrated benefits and diffuse costs. This will be true as long as the people receiving concentrated benefits from legislation (corporations, unions, other interest groups) can come up with any way to influence decision makers.

The Fair Elections Now Act may make a little change at the margin, but something tells me it still won't produce 51 senators that will vote against billion dollar farm subsidies or more money for the public education monopoly. The big agricorps and unions have billions of dollars on the line. Greed will find a way.

As I've said elsewhere, there's a third way, and it's perhaps the most general and closest to realization:

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. 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 with ease, you could convert a substantial number who currently don't case votes, 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

Really, can we expect to do very much better, in a world where we collect, analyze, and share more data on baseball than on our own government? (http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/12/government-20-five-predicti...)

The most direct and obvious way is to cut the amount of money the government is spending.

I was going to ask whether annual expenditure has ever decreased year over year but I found the answer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

Looks like it's not unprecedented but debt over GDP hasn't decreased year-over-year since before Reagan, so it just hasn't happened in most of HN's visitors' lifetimes.

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