11 ms·

Lawrence Lessig (Harvard law professor famous for fighting for sane copyright law) does a great presentation on the root cause of Americas problems. He also ran

• seibelj 4y ago
  I prefer those with more resources to have more say over the running of our country. On average in a free market those with more resources are better organized and know what’s best for the country. Furthermore the structure of society should be organized to help those that know what they are doing. An unpopular opinion however.
  • axlee 4y ago
    > On average in a free market those with more resources are better organized and know what’s best for the country. They know what is best for them. It has nothing to do with what is best for the country. As you are advocating for an oligarchy, I suggest you take a look at all the oligarchies around the world: don't you notice that they are all, without exception, terrible places to live, and not even good places for striving economies? Surely, there must be some fault in your reasoning. On the contrary, most great countries in the world have something in common: they tend to be democratic, they tend to be quite equal in the distribution of income, and they also tend to be run as social democracies.
    • seibelj 4y ago
      We are democratic. I’m advocating for letting capital invest in politicians and advertise their positions freely. $20 donations from a widespread group of people can also make their opinions heard effectively. If you seized all of Bill Gates’ wealth it would fund the USA for 3 months. Do you think making Gates a pauper to fund our profligate politicians is more effective than letting Gates keep his wealth and invest as he sees fit? I would argue Bill Gates is 10000x a better allocator of resources than the government. So maybe let him keep his wealth considering the government prints his net worth every month.
  • groby_b 4y ago
    It's not just an unpopular opinion, it also shows an utter lack of critical thinking. Do those with more resources owe them to chance, or did they do actual work? Of those who worked for more resources, how did they achieve those resources? Are those ways actually in any way beneficial to society at large, or are they not replicable across wide swaths? Or are they possibly deliberately not beneficial to the country, but to those with resources? Is it possible that growing wealth is easier if you already have access to wealth, merely by having that access? Why do you think people with more resources actually know what they are doing? There is plentiful evidence to the contrary. (See e.g. Enron) There is nothing inherent in a free market that means people with more resources are somehow more qualified to lead a country. Maybe they are, maybe they are not, but if you'd like to make that point, you'll need to go well beyond a simple declaration of faith.
  • jwkane 4y ago
    Is it reasonable to assume that the wealthiest people are more interested in optimizing society for what is best for the country as a whole or optimizing it so they can acquire more wealth/power? How often are those two possible optimizations in conflict? I think it is an unpopular opinion for two primary reasons. There are inherent conflicts of interest. Being good at one thing (often being really good at being born with the right parents) does not necessarily correlate with decision making on behalf of society at large.
  • rhcom2 4y ago
    So a plutocracy
  • runarberg 4y ago
    There is a sibling comment explaining why you might not actually want to live in an oligarchy, but regardless of your preference, there are a couple of flaws in your logic. First. The greatest predictor of individual wealth is their parents’ wealth. This undermines the whole notion of the free market (or at least in its current state) giving rise to a meritocracy. Second. Statistically, in a completely free and fair economy where all trade is zero-sum and every player will either loose or gain from a trade is up to pure chance, the money in the economy will accumulate to fewer and fewer hands as the number of trades increase. This is a pure statistical phenomena, meaning that as long as some players have more wealth then others, those players have an upper hand in any future trades for that reason only. The meritocracy of capitalism is a pretty well debunked theory at this point.
    • Bloating 4y ago
      Maybe compounding interest should be outlawed If player1 can make the same widget with less resources than player2, its not zero-sum. That does often entail that player1 has some advantage, which could be any number of things. Is that OK?
      • runarberg 4y ago
        This has nothing to do with compounding interest. It happens because the less wealthy player has a lot more to loose then gain in an unequal economy. That is even if a trade outcome is favorable to the less wealthy player, it is unlikely that the outcome is significant enough to change the balance. However it is much more likely if an outcome is unfavorable that it will significantly hinder any future opportunities for the poorer player. On the other hand, a loss for the wealthier player is unlikely to significantly effect future outcomes for them. The only likely way for a wealthy player to have a significant loss if they land a devastatingly bad deal with another equally or more wealthy player. The chances of that happening at random is pretty low overall, and gets lower the wealthier you are.
  • idiotsecant 4y ago
    fortunately there are hundreds of countries already in existence for you to choose from that use this exact system!
  • throwk8s 4y ago
    If anything, people with a track record of amassing wealth should be treated with more suspicion on entering public service. If all of their other decisions are geared toward increasing their wealth, one has to wonder whether the decision to enter public service is also geared toward increasing their own wealth.
  • gnaritas99 4y ago
    > On average in a free market those with more resources are better organized and know what’s best for the country. No, they don't, and there's not a rational or logical reason to infer they do.
• DIARRHEA_xd 4y ago
  The notable exception to this, of course, is Trump's primary AND general elections.
  • mikeyouse 4y ago
    Trump spent hundreds of millions of dollars officially, outside groups that don't need to report all of their spending (like the NRA) spent further hundreds of millions, and he had hundreds of millions worth of "earned media" due to the circus-like nature of the campaign. Because he spent marginally less than Ted Cruz in the primary and less than Hillary in the general doesn't give lie to the premise at all. His 2020 reelection campaign spent ~$1 billion when including independent expenditures!
    • tick_tock_tick 4y ago
      Trump is still proof an outsider can win. He needed money but someone outside the political class still came in and won despite his parties best efforts against it (at the beginning when he was just a primary candidate they made their bed with his now).
      • nextstep 4y ago
        “An outsider”? Trump is a billionaire who has been directly involved in politics for decades.
        • fellowniusmonk 4y ago
          If anything doesn't he represent a more direct "taking of the reins" by the lobbyist/corpo class? Even most lifer politicians themselves are more "outsiders" than he is/was. It's weird that people believe he is a political outsider. I've never heard a holistic/logical argument showing he is somehow more divested or decoupled from the implicit oligarchy class that ultimately is deciding legislation/law/executive orders these days. I guess it's because he's bounced around parties and people are really firmly sold on the republican/democrat binary, seems superficial to me but I'd be willing to hear any cogent argument made.
• ryandvm 4y ago
  Getting money out of politics would be a great reform (removing lobbyists, campaign finance reform, etc.). It also strikes me as almost impossible to implement. It's like getting the president of a company to switch to system whereby leadership is elected by the workers. It's all risk and low reward for them. However, another political reform I've toyed with in my head is secret voting in the House and the Senate. Who cares if Raytheon or Disney "owns" a given representative if those corporate sponsors can't actually be sure that they're getting the votes they paid for. It would also neutralize a lot of the petty party line votes and manipulation. Every issue would ostensibly be decided based on the representatives' actual value system. Obviously the downside would be that the public at large would be unable to hold their representative accountable for a particular vote, but that seems like the lesser concern compared to the very obvious corporate vote buying and party-line bullshit that happens today.
  • philosopher1234 4y ago
    How is that a lesser concern? How can the public have any influence over their politicians this way? You're saying corporations can choose who gets into power becasuse they finance them, and the public cant even tell what they're voting for to punish them. It seems all around worse.
    • ryandvm 4y ago
      Because the corporations would no longer have a record that a politician actually voted in their favor. They would be donating to campaigns based on rhetoric alone. Therefor the representatives would have no incentive for voting anything but their conscience. (Obviously disclosing your cryptographic vote receipt to a donor would be forbidden.)
      • nicoburns 4y ago
        Yes, but this would also apply to the electorate. Voters would have no record around what a politician actually voted for either. Which would seem to be hugely problematic for a system of representative democracy.
• ayngg 4y ago
  I have heard that same argument elsewhere too, it would also explain why it took a populist outsider like Trump to break through that system while someone like Bernie on the other side couldn't.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• dugmartin 4y ago
  I'm sure its not an original idea but I always thought a more "fair" system would be all 18+ citizens would automatically be entered in a lottery every year that would fill 1/5 of the seats of a unicameral legislature of 500 seats. The winners would be given something insane, like $1 billion dollars for each member, at the end of 5 years of service with a yearly stipend of $1 million a year during their service. This would get money out of politics the only way I can think of, which is randomly injecting ridiculous amounts to random people.
  • onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Am I reading this right? We're going to pay $100Bn per year to 100 people chosen at random to run the country? Why would they have any incentive to do a good job? Also, why would they have any desire? Also, that seems like a lot of money. >95% of people would be happy with the $1M per year salary.
    • jtr1 4y ago
      I think the point was more about reducing the saliency of bribes/lobbying than the particular dollar amount.
    • noasaservice 4y ago
      The number needs to be effectively an unbribeable number. If you're selected for public service, then you're expected to do good for the country, and not just a specific monied interest. And that means not having to worry about money ever again. You win capitalism. Done. Have fun. Live your life. That could also be done with annuities so that they get a "allowance" each month until dead.
      • onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
        Why wouldn't you take the money AND the bribes? If you have a system in place that can find and punish bribes - why not pay them a reasonable amount of money - and just eliminate bribes without spending $0.1T per year...
• nimbius 4y ago
  Trotsky explained this nearly a hundred years ago in arguing the dictatorship of the proletariat to Karl kantskys point of contention to the revolution of the working class. the Princeton study could best be summarized as scientific evidence of his conclusion disclosure: I am a communist and find little value in capitalist reformations.
  • lambert_ 4y ago
    • plainnoodles 4y ago
      Yes I'm sure China or Russia would be *thrilled* if their citizens wanted workers to own the means of production. Definitely would not involve tanks or squares or soon-to-be iconic historical photography at all.
      • lambert_ 4y ago
        China is called the CCP… if Russia and China aren’t communists or communist friendly then who is? And why won’t you accept the proposition that americas problems might be due to a poor implementation of capitalism but then call all unattractive communist countries just “poor implementations of communism?”
        • cool_dude85 4y ago
          Russia is a capitalist state, full stop, period. The West made sure of that in the 90s, remember?
          • lambert_ 4y ago
        • jonnybgood 4y ago
          China isn’t communist. China is a one-party state with state-controlled capitalism. The name CCP is only historical and fuels propaganda. Instead of looking at names, look at the actual economics of the country.
• nextstep 4y ago
  Marx saw this problem 100 years ago. Democracy under capitalism is just a mechanism for settling disputes among the ruling class.
  • parineum 4y ago
    Propose a practical solution.
  • goatlover 4y ago
    As opposed to democracy under one party communist rule? Who cares what Marx said, when we have history of his ideas being tried in Russia, China, North Korea, etc.
    • trasz 4y ago
      And in one of those three it resulted in an unprecedented growth and quality of life increase. Also North Korea is a monarchy, it’s only a “cultural communism”.
• eloff 4y ago
  Wouldn't this be solved rather easily by prohibiting fund raising and using tax dollars to finance campaigns? Everyone gets the same budget? That means money has no sway over politicians and money can't influence the result unfairly.
  • Pulcinella 4y ago
    Would you enforce that on “friends of the campaign” as well? E.g. Political Action Committees. John Jackson is running for political office using only public money. However, Big Titanium Inc. creates the privately run and funded “Friends of John Jackson” organization that is entirely unaffiliated with John Jackson but nevertheless runs pro-John Jackson ads in TV.
    • caymanjim 4y ago
      And if that's clamped down on, they just run increasingly vague ads that don't mention a candidate by name, but are clearly boosting the person/party/side they want to see succeed. A lot of people--particularly Democrats--like to say the Supreme Court got Citizens United wrong, but there's no way to get money out of politics while still maintaining any level of free speech.
    • eloff 4y ago
      Yes.
  • saxonww 4y ago
    The issue with this and any proposal is that the people making the decision have no incentive to make it. Politicians limiting their own fundraising, establishing term limits, eliminating gerrymandering, etc. - it goes against their interests. It's up to us to vote in people who would do this, but as pointed out, it's become difficult to do so in one election for one candidate, let alone the hundreds over the span of several years necessary to get people in place to actually make something positive happen.
  • nradov 4y ago
    That would presumably require a Constitutional amendment to carve out an exception in the 1st Amendment. So not easy. https://www.fec.gov/legal-resources/court-cases/citizens-united-v-fec/ https://www.fec.gov/legal-resources/court-cases/citizens-uni...
• Aunche 4y ago
  IMO, politicians are doing exactly what the people are asking for, which is spending their time virtue signalling rather than writing and negotiating meaningful legislation. Besides that, they do care about handouts, which is why we have so much pork barrel spending and stimulus checks. It's convenient to blame money in politics, but if that were the case, Congress would at least get something done. For example, Facebook, despite being one of the most heavy lobbying spenders, has spent even more money establishing their content Oversight Board. If they could actually buy politicians, we'd have more regulation that happens to benefit big tech. Both the Republican solution of not allowing social media companies to censor content and the Democratic solution of creating more rules for moderate disinformation are beneficial to Facebook because they can offload some of the responsibility of moderation to the government.
  • smaryjerry 4y ago
    I mostly agree but there isn’t really such a thing as beneficial regulation for tech companies. No rules is always the cheapest and easiest to implement. For example, why would a company even bother with disinformation in the first place if it wasn’t required by the government? You could argue for social reasons or say if you wanted your website to be like Wikipedia, that it serves some purpose, however trying to turn Facebook into Wikipedia seems like a gross misstep.
• lambert_ 4y ago
  I don’t think Bernie sanders lost entirely because he didn’t get his funding from rich people or corporations. Democrats don’t like to admit that you also need the approval of the corrupt political bodies that decide everyone ie the DNC.
  • ascagnel_ 4y ago
    Yes, the DNC uses superdelegates, which is an undemocratic part of the process. But in both 2016 and 2020, Sanders did poorly enough in the regular primaries that the number of superdelegates was irrelevant to the final outcome. As much as I hate to say it, and as someone who very much would like to have seen Sanders win either of those primaries, much of America is further to the right than Sanders, and seemingly have no desire to learn the difference between social democracy and socialism.
    • dragonwriter 4y ago
      > Yes, the DNC uses superdelegates, which is an undemocratic part of the process. But in both 2016 and 2020, Sanders did poorly enough in the regular primaries that the number of superdelegates was irrelevant to the final outcome. Superdelegates who had made public announcements were, through 2016, usually counted in running delegate counts by media and not distinguished from pledged delegates. Because the perception of winning votes is...actually, empirically, a powerful means of winning more votes, this meant the superdelegates were a significant influence on winning pledged delegates. Because Sanders did so well in 2016, his faction won major concessions in DNC rules, including the erasing of first-ballot superdelegate voting rights (well, in the circumstances where they could matter). As a result, their collective thumbs were lifted off the nominating process in 2020 (now, Sanders did worse in 2020 anyway, both the situation and the field of primary candidates were different.)
• granfalloon 4y ago
  I like the idea of "blind" or anonymous congressional voting. It feels counterintuitive, but donors might be less willing to "buy" votes if they can't confirm that they're getting what they pay for. And a representative who has accepted lots of corporate money might feel safer "betraying" those donors. I think representatives would still feel pressure to vote in line with the interests of their constituents and get results, otherwise they get replaced by the next exciting candidate.
  • anonymoushn 4y ago
    How will voters know whether their reps are voting for the right things though
    • granfalloon 4y ago
      They wouldn't! That's the downside. Or maybe not a downside -- there could be an even stronger incentive for politicians to get stuff done. Since voters would have to make their decisions based entirely actual results, and not an individual politician's voting record, the politicians might have a stronger incentive to build coalitions and influence other politicians' votes. My half-baked point is that the harm of voters NOT having access to this information is less than the harm of lobbyists and major donors having access to it.
      • bobthepanda 4y ago
        That doesn’t really work though, people vote for their rep, not some amorphous party blob. On the other hand, it gives pols plausible deniability that they aren’t getting bought out.
        • larkost 4y ago
          I should point out that places like Germany do vote for the party, not the person for positions like Parliament. In each region the parties submit slates of people they would put into the positions if they got all of the votes, and then once people vote they get a proportionate number of their slate into actual offices. There are lots of details here, but it is a system that works.
• wkimeria 4y ago
  I'm originally from Kenya. We used to have a joke "If it happens in Africa it is called corruption. If it happens in the US it is called lobbying". I remember seeing a chart of how much money a Senator had to raise every week for their next race and it was stark bonkers (and this was in the 90s, before Citizens United). I just checked and the figure is even worse now. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/02/state-of-money-in-politics-the-price-of-victory-is-steep/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/02/state-of-money-in-p... From that article, victorious senate candidates have to spend an average of about 16 million. So if you are already a Senator looking forward to your next race you have to raise about 80k a week!. And you are not getting that kind of money from the average citizen. Money in politics is the root of most of what ails the U.S political system (not all, but a very big part).
  • colpabar 4y ago
    As an american, I really enjoy learning things like this about how other countries view us and our craziness. A lot of people here would be genuinely confused at the comparison. >"If it happens in Africa it is called corruption. If it happens in the US it is called lobbying". To add to this, we (americans) also never refer to our own elite class as oligarchs. That's reserved for other countries, because ours is a totally fair, democratic, and meritocratic society, and we're definitely not ruled by a small group of well connected rich people.
    • Fnoord 4y ago
      > As an american, I really enjoy learning things like this about how other countries view us and our craziness. A lot of people here would be genuinely confused at the comparison. I'm puzzled by that. I thought it is generally well known Hollywood influences the Dems, and that the tobacco industry influenced politics in past (to name two examples).
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • mrandish 4y ago
    > Money in politics is the root of most of what ails the U.S political system I disagree that money is the root. Money is still one level above the true root, which is what the money is needed to buy: "Re-election." Thus, an alternative, though unconventional, solution is single-term limits. Once elected to any national public office, you can never run for that or any other elected office again. One and done. This idea is not without it's share of potential problems, but I think that's true of any potential solution that has a chance of actually working. After thinking it through, I'm pretty sure I'd prefer the "single-term" set of potential downsides over the others.
• akomtu 4y ago
  I'm thinking if "group identity" would be a middle ground: a few representatives belong to a group, e.g. "north texas", they vote anonymously and nobody van see their votes, but the summary vote of the group is visible to everyone.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• parineum 4y ago
  > The short version is that to win primaries you need money. And he's wrong. _That_ problem is caused by the lack of choice. The corruption is the laws passed to entrench the Republican and Democratic party as the only two practical choice on every ballot. The lack of accountability is a direct result of that and nearly all other sources of dysfunction stems from it. The amount of compromise every voter has to make to support their platform of least disgust is the problem. You can have your candidates in any color you like, so long as that color is blue/red.
• JamesBarney 4y ago
  That study has a lot of problems, and several subsequent problems pointed out the holes. Here's a good summary of subsequent research that debunked it. https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-study https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-... Even if the study were true it shows that when economic elites (150k+) disagree with the middle class they get there way more often. (Btw it showed that the middle class and the rich agreed like 80-90% of the time on policy, and when they disagreed it wasn't by very many percentage points) But a much more likely scenario than corruption is senators/representatives/presidents are all members of the economic elite, and all their friends are members of the elite and so it's no surprise they share the same opinions as their friends/wives/family members and socio-economic class.
  • xbar 4y ago
    Why is that at all more likely?
    • JamesBarney 4y ago
      Do you think it's unlikely that people share the same opinions as their family/friends/colleagues? Or do you think it's very likely that most federal politicians are extremely corrupt and not getting caught?
  • dr_dshiv 4y ago
    How much are politicians paid —and how does their salary affect corruption? It might not be a popular opinion, but perhaps we should double the wages of US Representatives (they currently make $175k—not a lot in Washington DC). Is paying US representatives $350k worth the money? First, a bigger financial cushion for representatives might reduce financial corruption. Second, a bigger salary might attract more talented leaders. Potentially, paying higher salaries would increase the quality of US governance. God, imagine if we could just pay for increased quality in government leaders! TIL that in 1789, the US president made $25k—- worth $800k in 2022. But today, the US president makes $400k. Why try to save money on presidents and politicians?
    • 4y ago
• TameAntelope 4y ago
  > Taking money from corporations and rich people creates a relationship where you have some loyalty to them or they can punish you if you don't act how they want. This gets thrown around a lot, but how often does this actually happen? I feel like we all assume it's true, but I wouldn't be surprised if this specific form of corruption were a lot less common than we think.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• bshoemaker 4y ago
  Yet another thing Democrats fight against and Republicans support
• tmp_anon_22 4y ago
  > The test for democracy is whether elected politicians pass legislation that the public at large wishes to be passed. What happens if the majority of Americans want to pass laws against their best interest? What happens if the majority of Americans want to pass laws that are deeply immoral?
  • dragonwriter 4y ago
    > What happens if the majority of Americans want to pass laws against their best interest? Democracy and good judgment are orthogonal concerns. > What happens if the majority of Americans want to pass laws that are deeply immoral? Democracy and morality of policy are orthogonal concerns.
• jonnybgood 4y ago
  > The test for democracy is whether elected politicians pass legislation that the public at large wishes to be passed. Isn’t that just rule of the majority? Since when has that been a test of a republic?
• rayiner 4y ago
  > The short version is that to win primaries you need money. Money mainly comes from corporations and rich people. Taking money from corporations and rich people creates a relationship where you have some loyalty to them or they can punish you if you don't act how they want. If this was ever correct, it’s certainly wrong today. Trump, for example, was primarily funded by small donors: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/us/politics/trump-fundraising.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/us/politics/trump-fundrai... That’s arguably a major force that’s destabilizing politics today. Technology makes it super easy to raise hundreds of millions from small donors. But the Act Blue and Win Red donors represent the most ideological segment of their respective parties. That creates a huge incentive to try and play to try Twitter audience by taking extreme positions. Going viral can be worth millions of dollars.
• lossolo 4y ago
  Here is a short video about that study for people that like more video content than written content. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6w9CbemhVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6w9CbemhVY
• closeparen 4y ago
  Campaigns need money because voters choose to be governed according to TV ads. This choice certainly frustrates elite nerds like HN readers and Larry Lessig. But it's tough to call it any less legitimate than other exercises of democratic power. To be governed by the people is to be governed by the decision-making heuristics natural to the people. In politics inclusive of everyday people, policy is going to play a minor role. That's how people are.
• tediousdemise 4y ago
  Yeah, I'm of the firm opinion that the US is a second world plutocracy that masquerades as a first world democracy by using its military might. The concept of being the best country in the world (American exceptionalism [0]) is not rooted in fact. In actuality, it's propaganda designed to keep people within US borders instead of seeing them flee to much greener pastures around the globe. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism