>Rather than take the knee-jerk response that politicians must just be in the pocket of big media, I'm going to look at how some aspects of human behavior make

>Rather than take the knee-jerk response that politicians must just be in the pocket of big media, I'm going to look at how some aspects of human behavior make this kind of highly damaging legislation more likely. Maybe I'm too cynical or listen too much to the Lessig crowd, but I think ignoring campaign contributions is naive. The government does see the problem, or at least individuals in the government do. But what politician wants to stand up for this and risk potential campaign contributions, knowing they are unlikely to garner enough support to pass legislation anyway? One can look at this conflict two ways: 1) the politician's personal gain versus the overall benefit to the country or 2) short term benefit of immediate legislation versus long term benefit of future legislation versus reelection. Viewpoint 1 is more cynical and viewpoint 2 is more naive. In reality, it's a spectrum and each legislator has to make both tradeoffs in addition to their personal beliefs and understanding of the system. But, in my opinion both these tradeoffs are bad for the efficiency of an economy. This conflict of interest is the root cause of problems like this and discussion of solutions is almost pointless if we're not trying to address that root cause.