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As long as people thing the federal government, or government in general, should be involved in funding, regulating, developing and in general spending money on

As long as people thing the federal government, or government in general, should be involved in funding, regulating, developing and in general spending money on things other than it's well defined functions - a minarchist/night-watchman state. When someone can greatly affect the outcome of events those who are effected will try to improve the outcome in their favor. In this case, it's getting laws passed to benefit you at the expense of everyone else. This happens all the time, and has happened extensively throughout the past. It has very little to do with lobbyists, they are merely a symptom. The root problem is that the government has its hand in everything and can tip the scales arbitrarily that unless you have someone in washington fighting for your cause you are likely to get the shaft. The correct solution is to remove the incentives for people to lobby. This can be achieved by drastically shrinking the size and authority of the government. By pushing governance down to local levels it becomes less cost effective to lobby, it's no longer winner take all -- it becomes winner takes 1/50th and has to keep winning. It allows democracy to thrive. Anyway, in short (TLDR) - his ideas are about treating the symptom and not the cause.

moultano 16y ago
How do you solve global problems like climate change with a local government? It seems to me that whenever there is a tragedy of the commons, the more independent actors there are in the negotiations, the more it will be exploited. When there are two entities negotiating, they can commit to something and hold eachother to it. You can't do that with 50 entities negotiating.
wdewind 16y ago
Shrinking the size and authority of the government sounds great in the light of disincentivizing certain behaviors, but I believe you're applying game mechanics prematurely here. I (liberals in general mostly) actually don't WANT a smaller government, I want a better regulated one that in many cases has MORE power (ie: banking regulation). The solution is not to join the Tea Party and tear down the federal government, it's to fix the government by providing a better feedback mechanism, and restore the regulations that Regan etc. destroyed. Governance at local levels sounds great, but unfortunately there are things that need to be regulated federally. Perhaps a compromise we can agree on is that the separation of authority is where the core issue lies, and some of that authority certainly needs to be pushed down to the local level, but some certainly needs federal regulation (again, Finance, lookin at you).
- piguy314 16y ago
  Lesig makes sure to point out that government over-regulation had as much of a hand to play in the financial crisis as de-regulation. Government incentives from the FHA and Fanny/Freddy are much of what drove of the investment boom and overvaluation of real estate. Lets also not forget that the government controls the price of borrowing through the interest rate set by their proxy the federal reserve (who kept the rate too low and caused the excess liquidity to flow into real estate). A system with no central bank or government intervention might have many smaller panics, but it certainly never would have had a large, pervasive one like the debt derivatives crash of 2008.

moultano 16y ago

How do you solve global problems like climate change with a local government? It seems to me that whenever there is a tragedy of the commons, the more independent actors there are in the negotiations, the more it will be exploited. When there are two entities negotiating, they can commit to something and hold eachother to it. You can't do that with 50 entities negotiating.

wdewind 16y ago

Shrinking the size and authority of the government sounds great in the light of disincentivizing certain behaviors, but I believe you're applying game mechanics prematurely here. I (liberals in general mostly) actually don't WANT a smaller government, I want a better regulated one that in many cases has MORE power (ie: banking regulation). The solution is not to join the Tea Party and tear down the federal government, it's to fix the government by providing a better feedback mechanism, and restore the regulations that Regan etc. destroyed. Governance at local levels sounds great, but unfortunately there are things that need to be regulated federally. Perhaps a compromise we can agree on is that the separation of authority is where the core issue lies, and some of that authority certainly needs to be pushed down to the local level, but some certainly needs federal regulation (again, Finance, lookin at you).

piguy314 16y ago
Lesig makes sure to point out that government over-regulation had as much of a hand to play in the financial crisis as de-regulation. Government incentives from the FHA and Fanny/Freddy are much of what drove of the investment boom and overvaluation of real estate. Lets also not forget that the government controls the price of borrowing through the interest rate set by their proxy the federal reserve (who kept the rate too low and caused the excess liquidity to flow into real estate). A system with no central bank or government intervention might have many smaller panics, but it certainly never would have had a large, pervasive one like the debt derivatives crash of 2008.