7 ms·

Hackerly proposals for fixing U.S. politics (compiled by Lessig)

14 points by leot 15y ago

ori_b 15y ago
Public money for public office. 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.
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  This fundamentally can't work. If you don't establish viability standards for who gets a tax-funded campaign, you get a pile of people just in it for the money, as well as a pile of people just in it for the lulz. If you do establish viability standards for who gets a tax-funded campaign, you entrench the established political parties, because previous funded campaigns help ensure future viability and future funding. 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.
  - leot 15y ago
    What about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the_United_States#Voting_with_dollars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the_... It seems like a smart, simple system. ?
    - JoshTriplett 15y ago
      As systems for public financing of campaigns go, it sucks less than some alternatives I've seen, but it remains a system for publically financing campaigns, which gives it a certain baseline level of unavoidable suckage. 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.
      - leot 15y ago
        Why would it end up going to just two political parties? 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.
        JoshTriplett 15y ago
        First of all, take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law for one major reason why we have an entrenched two-party system in the first place. 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.
        leot 15y ago
        I'm familiar with Duverger's law, but it's almost completely irrelevant here. "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.
  - ori_b 15y ago
    > If you don't establish viability standards for who gets a tax-funded campaign, you get a pile of people just in it for the money, as well as a pile of people just in it for the lulz. If you do establish viability standards for who gets a tax-funded campaign, you entrench the established political parties, because previous funded campaigns help ensure future viability and future funding. 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.
    - JoshTriplett 15y ago
      Donation-funded campaigns get funded by people who agree with them. Publically funded campaigns force people to pay for political campaigns they disagree with. 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.
      - ori_b 15y ago
        > Donation-funded campaigns get funded by people who agree with them. 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.
        JoshTriplett 15y ago
        >> Donation-funded campaigns get funded by people who agree with them. >Donation funded campaigns make it extremely difficult for new candidates from being judged on their merits. 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.
protomyth 15y ago
I'm fine with banning corporate money in politics as long as all groups are banned from giving money (e.g. unions). U.S. Citizens should be able to contribute individually in a non-tax deductible manner as they want to a candidate directly or a registered political party, but no other group or person. The obvious exception would be the political parties themselves (new tax status or maybe it exists now). 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.
- TomOfTTB 15y ago
  I don't think this is practical. So say your friendly neighborhood oil company sends a memo out to its employees saying "We need to drill in the [Insert National Park] to stay in business. So if you want to keep your job you need to send money to politicians that will allow us to drill in [Insert National Park]" 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.
  - protomyth 15y ago
    There are actually laws about the corporation doing that exact thing already. Unions are a little trickery because they do use member money to do such things, but the principal is the same. Lock a few executives up when they pull this stunt and reward the whistleblower.
    - JoshTriplett 15y ago
      Look at the flip side: consider all the companies standing against SOPA/PIPA right now. Do you want to prevent them from even drawing attention to the issue? Do you want to prevent employees from taking any steps at all to raise awareness among like-minded people, many of which might work at the same company?
jxcole 15y ago
Money is not speech. 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.
- TomOfTTB 15y ago
  Honestly, if you think something this complex is simple and the people who disagree with you are idiots than it's probably you who is acting like an idiot. 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.
- jeremyt 15y ago
  Tell me, then, is writing a blog post speech? 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.
- dpres 15y ago
  I read this as, 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.
davekinkead 15y ago
TL;DR The problem wont fix its self. The system will prevent solutions that limit it. Nothing will change until you do something. That something needs to be withing the current rules of the game. 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%).
- leot 15y ago
  The players within a game can be acting in a way they find distasteful, but which is nonetheless required of them by the rules. Students can be compelled to cheat if they perceive that it is widespread. Professors inflate their grades so their students are not disadvantaged upon graduation. Journalists "dumb down" their writing in order to better compete. Cyclists take dangerous drugs in order to stand a chance of winning against others they believe to be doing so as well. 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.
moldbug 15y ago
tldr: You might as well try to "fix" VMS. 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 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.
extension 15y ago
Seems to me that as long as votes are for sale, somebody will buy them, and the system will be corrupt. The only real solution, and it's not an easy one, is that voters have stop being so easily influenced. They need to become critical thinkers that actively research their opinions. All the ingredients are in place for this to happen, but it's going to take at least a generation to catch on.

14 points by leot 15y ago

ori_b 15y ago

Public money for public office. 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.

JoshTriplett 15y ago
This fundamentally can't work. If you don't establish viability standards for who gets a tax-funded campaign, you get a pile of people just in it for the money, as well as a pile of people just in it for the lulz. If you do establish viability standards for who gets a tax-funded campaign, you entrench the established political parties, because previous funded campaigns help ensure future viability and future funding. 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.
- leot 15y ago
  What about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the_United_States#Voting_with_dollars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the_... It seems like a smart, simple system. ?
  - JoshTriplett 15y ago
    As systems for public financing of campaigns go, it sucks less than some alternatives I've seen, but it remains a system for publically financing campaigns, which gives it a certain baseline level of unavoidable suckage. 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.
    - leot 15y ago
      Why would it end up going to just two political parties? 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.
      - JoshTriplett 15y ago
        First of all, take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law for one major reason why we have an entrenched two-party system in the first place. 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.
        leot 15y ago
        I'm familiar with Duverger's law, but it's almost completely irrelevant here. "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.
- ori_b 15y ago
  > If you don't establish viability standards for who gets a tax-funded campaign, you get a pile of people just in it for the money, as well as a pile of people just in it for the lulz. If you do establish viability standards for who gets a tax-funded campaign, you entrench the established political parties, because previous funded campaigns help ensure future viability and future funding. 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.
  - JoshTriplett 15y ago
    Donation-funded campaigns get funded by people who agree with them. Publically funded campaigns force people to pay for political campaigns they disagree with. 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.
    - ori_b 15y ago
      > Donation-funded campaigns get funded by people who agree with them. 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.
      - JoshTriplett 15y ago
        >> Donation-funded campaigns get funded by people who agree with them. >Donation funded campaigns make it extremely difficult for new candidates from being judged on their merits. 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.

protomyth 15y ago

I'm fine with banning corporate money in politics as long as all groups are banned from giving money (e.g. unions). U.S. Citizens should be able to contribute individually in a non-tax deductible manner as they want to a candidate directly or a registered political party, but no other group or person. The obvious exception would be the political parties themselves (new tax status or maybe it exists now). 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.

TomOfTTB 15y ago
I don't think this is practical. So say your friendly neighborhood oil company sends a memo out to its employees saying "We need to drill in the [Insert National Park] to stay in business. So if you want to keep your job you need to send money to politicians that will allow us to drill in [Insert National Park]" 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.
- protomyth 15y ago
  There are actually laws about the corporation doing that exact thing already. Unions are a little trickery because they do use member money to do such things, but the principal is the same. Lock a few executives up when they pull this stunt and reward the whistleblower.
  - JoshTriplett 15y ago
    Look at the flip side: consider all the companies standing against SOPA/PIPA right now. Do you want to prevent them from even drawing attention to the issue? Do you want to prevent employees from taking any steps at all to raise awareness among like-minded people, many of which might work at the same company?

jxcole 15y ago

Money is not speech. 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.

TomOfTTB 15y ago
Honestly, if you think something this complex is simple and the people who disagree with you are idiots than it's probably you who is acting like an idiot. 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.
jeremyt 15y ago
Tell me, then, is writing a blog post speech? 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.
dpres 15y ago
I read this as, 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.

davekinkead 15y ago

TL;DR The problem wont fix its self. The system will prevent solutions that limit it. Nothing will change until you do something. That something needs to be withing the current rules of the game. 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%).

leot 15y ago
The players within a game can be acting in a way they find distasteful, but which is nonetheless required of them by the rules. Students can be compelled to cheat if they perceive that it is widespread. Professors inflate their grades so their students are not disadvantaged upon graduation. Journalists "dumb down" their writing in order to better compete. Cyclists take dangerous drugs in order to stand a chance of winning against others they believe to be doing so as well. 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.

moldbug 15y ago

tldr: You might as well try to "fix" VMS. 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 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.

extension 15y ago

Seems to me that as long as votes are for sale, somebody will buy them, and the system will be corrupt. The only real solution, and it's not an easy one, is that voters have stop being so easily influenced. They need to become critical thinkers that actively research their opinions. All the ingredients are in place for this to happen, but it's going to take at least a generation to catch on.