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What Lawrence Lessig is proposing is not enough. As long as the government has the power to block new technologies and other legitimate new business ideas, ther

What Lawrence Lessig is proposing is not enough. As long as the government has the power to block new technologies and other legitimate new business ideas, there will be incumbents there to bribe them into doing so. Even if you make laws that totally forbid campaign financing. Look at what happened in Germany, the chancellor didn't get any money but when he retired, he got a great mysterious job at a Russian oil company: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/dec/13/russia.germany http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/dec/13/russia.germany Give the government unlimited/huge power to regulate the market and money will find its way to the politicians in order to influence them, one way or the other. The only way to stop this is not to forbid campaign financing, super PAC or else. No, the only way to stop this is to do something most of us are not willing to do: complete separation of the economy and the State, just like total separation of Church and State was the only way to stop religious persecution, nothing short of total separation of the State and the economy will stop unfair and corrupt driven anti-tech and anti-new businesses laws.

deciplex 11y ago
What happens when, or if, the economy becomes dominated by a handful of actors who impose monopolistic economic inefficiencies just as damaging as any the state could have conjured, and with the additional injury that there is no democratic way to reverse them?
- patrickaljord 11y ago
  The argument here is that monopolies can only exist when the State is protecting them. In a free market with no State intervention, if an actor misbehave by abusing its position, it creates a business opportunity for competing services to spring. See the taxi industry, they offered very bad services, refusing rides, mistreating customers etc so what happened? Uber, Lyft and others saw the business opportunity to offer cheaper, more efficient services. Only in cities where the government banned the competition is the taxi industry allowed to continue its monopolistic abuses.
EdwardDiego 11y ago
How do you then regulate players in the economy to ensure that the harm to society caused by unfettered business is minimised?
- patrickaljord 11y ago
  If a business initiates force against you or damages your property, you should have the legal right to attack them.

deciplex 11y ago

What happens when, or if, the economy becomes dominated by a handful of actors who impose monopolistic economic inefficiencies just as damaging as any the state could have conjured, and with the additional injury that there is no democratic way to reverse them?

patrickaljord 11y ago
The argument here is that monopolies can only exist when the State is protecting them. In a free market with no State intervention, if an actor misbehave by abusing its position, it creates a business opportunity for competing services to spring. See the taxi industry, they offered very bad services, refusing rides, mistreating customers etc so what happened? Uber, Lyft and others saw the business opportunity to offer cheaper, more efficient services. Only in cities where the government banned the competition is the taxi industry allowed to continue its monopolistic abuses.

EdwardDiego 11y ago

How do you then regulate players in the economy to ensure that the harm to society caused by unfettered business is minimised?

patrickaljord 11y ago
If a business initiates force against you or damages your property, you should have the legal right to attack them.