Hackerly proposals for fixing U.S. politics (compiled by Lessig)
bostonreview.net
bostonreview.net
What I find most amazing about any analysis piece on the problems of democracy and what to do about it is that they are almost always self-defeating. By this, I mean the very proposal to solve the problem prevents the problem from being solved.
The article is correct about what (one of) the problem is. Institutional corruption is analogous to the principal-agent problem except the issue is the asymmetry influence, not information.
But suggesting that the existing 'system' recognise the problem and then take action against itself is pure naivety. If politicians, those empowered by us to represent us, are being corrupted by special interest enough not to represent our interests, then those same special interests are going to ensure that measures to restrict their influence are thwarted. The system can't be changed from the outside without revolution, and revolution won't happen until things get really bad (and then generally turn out just as bad later)
The problem of special interest can only occur when the net benefits (expected outcome - cost of lobbying) for special interest groups exceed the net costs for individuals to fight it. Sadly, the benefit to the few is great and despite a net social cost, spread amongst the population the cost to the many is little.
The only way to solve the problem is to do so in a way that doesn't change the system. One way of doing this (and the only viable option I can think of) is to form a non-partisan political party who's only policy is to do what the electorate tells it. The candidate signs a legally binding contract to vote according to the will of their electorate and some kind of public/electronic forum allows issues to be discussed and voted. As long as everything is sailing along nicely, you wouldn't have to have any involvement if you didn't want. But, if a bad law is proposed (SOPA comes to mind), then there is no way it could pass if the majority was against it.
I'm sure that there will be opposition to this - it is devolving power to the populous and making politicians simple spokespeople, not deciders of the public will - but isn't this what #occupy needs? A way to use the existing system to devolve power to the 99% (well actually to the 100%).
In these tragedy-of-the-commons types of scenarios, all can be willing to agree to a change of the rules, so long as no actor gains immediate "unfair" advantage.
It's my personal opinion that most people in D.C. are fundamentally smart and good-hearted. Unfortunately, the euphemisms of spin constitute their thought processes. This, organized by the corrupting influence of money, has led in aggregate to delusion and dependency.
Rules-changing legislation is, hopefully, possible -- though perhaps only after beltway-types can be freed from self-deception.
That, sadly, is why I am so pessimistic about political change via the current advocacy model. Tragedy of the common's type situations can often be avoided if enough players can agree to a some convention or code of behaviour. The problem with special interest in politics is that even if every politician could agree that the current way the game is played is destructive, special interest would actively work against reform.
Change under the current system is reliant on the altruism of those in power to limit that power.
I would also like all public money pulled. We have a budget crisis and need to stop all non-essential spending. If you cannot convince people to give you money then you are not going to convince anyone to vote for you either.
If that statement is true and the company would really go out of business than it isn't coercion. But the end result is the same as you have now.
The same is true for Unions just substitute "You have to elect this person or they'll gut your social security and take away your pension" in place of drilling.
A couple of years back (90's) the majority of money collected by the Republican party where from donations in the amount of $50 or less (counter-intuitive but that why I remember it). So the small amounts matter.
Youtube and social media will probably gain in importances, so even no donors will have a bigger say than they did 20 or 30 years ago.
How does permanent resident (married?) work and is there a path to citizenship?
Although the logistics are hairy to work out, I think that the most important reform that could be made would be banning private contributions to campaigns entirely, and making every candidate equally funded through tax funds.
Every candidate should have an equal voice, and should not have to sell their souls or pander to large donors in order to be competitive in their campaign.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with private contributions to campaigns, as long as those contributions can never end up in the candidate's pocket (rather than spent on campaigning), and as long as they have no influence on the candidate's decisions (past or future). The logistics of that remain hairy to work out as well, but complete and total transparency seems like the right approach.
Personally, if I ran a campaign, I'd accept all contributions anonymously, to avoid any inadvertent bias or even the appearance of bias.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the_...
It seems like a smart, simple system.
?
Implementing such a system today would have the net effect of funneling piles of money towards the two well-known parties, making them even more unassailable. For candidates other than those of the two well-known parties, it seems unlikely to produce any useful effect beyond that attainable today through voluntary donations.
How about I keep my $50 and spend it as I see fit, on political candidates or otherwise, and you do the same? That seems like a far smarter, simpler system than the one you linked to, and than almost any other system I've seen proposed.
Aren't 3rd parties more likely to get attention if they are gunning for money that people need to spend anyway?
As for the system you're proposing, that's pretty much the one we have now. And it sucks.
As for your other question: why would third parties get any more money than they get votes? Look at the abysmal number of votes that go to third parties; why would they get money from people who don't vote for them?
I won't claim the system we have doesn't suck. I will claim that most potential replacements suck more.
"why would they get money from people who don't vote for them?"
Please, think about this statement a little more deeply.
Elections are, usually, winner-take-all. Donations assuredly are not. A vote for the Bloomberg party might definitely be a vote thrown away. A donation to this party does not suffer the same fate.
Donating to a party has the effect of donating to one or more of their campaigns, so the same problem applies.
Imagine three candidates A, B, and C. A and B are from major political parties that almost always win. C is is a new third party candidate who is very viable, but for all the reasons Duverger's law is true is (all else equal) never going to win.
Vouchers, however, make all else not equal, especially over multiple election cycles. If some significant proportion of the population supports C, they might know their votes will be wasted on C, but voucher money allocated to C will not be allocated to A or B, and will serve to increase C's prominence for the next election.
When something big about a system changes, there is some burden of proof on those claiming it will have no effect (there is also a burden of proof on those claiming it will have a particular effect, but we've not really gotten there yet).
In that case it seems even less likely that this proposal will work. The major political parties will receive such a large proportion of the funds that they need only spend a fraction of those funds to get elected, and can accumulate much of those funds for future elections. Meanwhile, the third parties need all the money they can get just to get anyone to remember their name.
> When something big about a system changes, there is some burden of proof on those claiming it will have no effect (there is also a burden of proof on those claiming it will have a particular effect, but we've not really gotten there yet).
I'd argue that as in any other instance of a proposed solution to a problem, the default assumption remains "this will have no effect", and it falls to the proposers of the solution to argue convincingly why it will work.
How is this different from donation-funded campaigns? Visibility always increases your shot at future visibility.
Public funding prevents the visibility from compounding. If you manage to get enough endorsements to be funded at all (for example), your voice is just as well funded as the incumbent who, under the private funding model, is in a position to attract all the funding.
Many people participate in Kickstarter to fund ideas they want to support; imagine if all projects on Kickstarter received mandatory funding, regardless of usefulness, viability, or the number of people who want the result. The whole thing falls apart.
Donation funded campaigns make it extremely difficult for new candidates from being judged on their merits.
> imagine if all projects on Kickstarter received mandatory funding
Bad analogy. Imagine if they all got equal opportunity advertising in order for people to decide their viability for themselves. Imagine if I had a way of hearing about all the great, viable, useful kickstarter projects that would get swept under the rug because they didn't have the right connections to promotion. Imagine if the old, established kickstarter projects didn't have the ability to browbeat me because they have more money for ads.
New candidates will fundamentally always have a problem drawing attention, and in fairness they ought to have to work at drawing attention. An awesome candidate shouldn't have any trouble building up grassroots support at a reasonable pace.
What happens if every random person who has ever said "if I were President" could run without putting much effort into it? We already get a barrage of advertisements around election time with just the candidates we have right now; how exactly do you expect to provide an equal footing for a thousand, or ten thousand? Running should require a lot of work. I want to remove the biases against new, independent, and third-party candidates, but that doesn't mean it needs to become trivial to get a pile of "free money" and run.
> Imagine if they all got equal opportunity advertising in order for people to decide their viability for themselves. Imagine if I had a way of hearing about all the great, viable, useful kickstarter projects that would get swept under the rug because they didn't have the right connections to promotion.
No sensible system exists for that to happen. Too many Kickstarter projects exist for equal advertising to have any useful impact. If you want to get noticed, get yourself noticed. Yes, that makes Kickstarter as much about publicity as about awesome tech; the same problem happens with startups to an even greater degree. Great ideas will always generate noise, but they still need help from people who know more than just how to have great ideas.
Kickstarter, to me, seems as fair as anyone could hope for. No entrenched candidates, no political parties, no free funding, just a pile of projects trying to look the most awesome and draw the most attention.
If money were speech, then the government forcing me to pay taxes would be a violation of the first amendment.
If money were speech, the government telling me not to give money to terrorists would be a violation of the first amendment.
The supreme court justices are idiots. Plain and simple.
To give just one flaw in your logic. Protesting is speech. If I work I can't protest. But I do get money for my work. If I were to pay someone to protest for me I would be using my money to exercise my right of free speech. So in that case money is speech.
The issue is in money inequality. If I'm paid $1,000 an hour than my money can buy more speech than the person who goes out and protests. If our society values every person's free speech equally then we need to find a way to deal with that inequality.
THAT is the issue and that's a lot more complicated issue.
Okay, what if I were to take several blog posts and put them together, have them published, and pay for the publishing myself. Is that speech?
What if I were to make a video and pay for the production myself and give it away on the Internet? Is that speech?
What if I took that same video and bought air time on the national networks? Is that speech?
My point is, while speech isn't money, speech and money are inseparable. It's impossible to regulate money in politics without infringing in some way on freedom of speech.
Money is speech because the fact that the government is forcing me to pay taxes is a violation of the first amendment.
Money is speech because the government telling me not to give money to terrorists is a violation of the first amendment.
I find it a little difficult to think seriously about "fixing democracy" when on the same day I see something like this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/opinion/free-the-fda.html
"The precedent risks placing the real power for drug approval not just with a cabinet secretary, but with the White House itself. The only solution, then, is to make the F.D.A. truly independent."
In other words, it's an essential aspect of American democracy that your elected officials have no actual power at all. Presumably Prof. Lessig reads the NYT?
Because frankly, if elected politicians have no actual authority, and this is a feature rather than a bug - I'm struggling to figure out why we should care so much whether or not they're on all on the take.
I'm not disputing that they're all on the take. The worst part is that if you make a political office symbolic in reality, its professional occupants rapidly grow entirely incapable of exercising actual power and become, basically, actors - worthless celebrities. You're selecting for Rick Perry and you'll get Rick Perry.