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How to Fight Corruption with Game Theory
- bostik 12y agoThe thing I've always found intriguing is that the tricks used by politicians and parties to hide the sources of their campaign financing feel like they were adapted from organised crime. (Which politics may well be, but that's another matter.) * Make sure that individual donations are small enough to avoid the source reporting * Cycle larger donations through entities that themselves do not need to report their sources In any other context these patterns would trigger all kinds of money laundering alarms, but in politics it's considered business as usual.
- brokenmusic 12y agoI'm always amazed at how people want to fight corruption not really understanding that corruption is inherent to politics and government. You can't fight it. It's like fighting aging with plastic surgery. Sure, it may look good on the surface and it may even make you feel good psychologically, for a while. But you're still aging. Best you can do is accept that and lead a healthy lifestyle. So, if you try fight corruption, it simply becomes more obscure. Corruption exists purely because governments and institutions exist. If you didn't have those, you wouldn't need to bribe some third party in order to be able to establish a business relationship with someone else (e.g. get a licence, permit, etc).
- jim-greer 12y ago> You can't fight it. It's like fighting aging with plastic surgery. It's more like fighting crime. Aging is an irreversible process that happens to one person. Crime and corruption are background processes that happen to societies. You can fight it. You can't eliminate it, of course. Here's a good book on the subject: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/books/review/zephyr-teachouts-corruption-in-america.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/books/review/zephyr-teacho...
- brokenmusic 12y agoCrime too. If you look at what are most of the crimes that are committed in any given country, it quickly becomes obvious that those are mostly victimless crimes or crimes that are invoked by governments declaring something to be illegal (while it harms no one): like drugs being illegal provokes a lot of violence, gang culture etc. The only true systematic source of evil in any country is its government. Without it, you'd still have bad things happening, but it won't be on the same level.
- jim-greer 12y agoUh, violent crime exists. And it's worth fighting. Right? As is corruption? Or do you think we should give up on both?
- brokenmusic 12y agoWhat I'm saying is, governments foster violent crime by criminalizing many peaceful things. The best thing you can do to dramatically decrease violent crime rates is get rid of governments.
- afarrell 12y agoYou can't get rid of governments though. People would spontaneously form states either to protect themselves, or to take advantage of the opportunity to set up protection rackets and tax others.
- Retric 12y agoI find it amusing how people who dislike governments rarely move to failed states. You can easily move to an area without regulation or taxes but there not actually places you want to be.
- etherael 12y agoWhere? Rules instituted by force of arms (which you refer to as "regulations") and extortion backed by same (which you refer to as "taxes") are global. Short of war, Antarctica or establishing a seastead, you cannot escape them, period. And in the latter two cases, you stand a very high chance of simply inviting war at any rate.
- lazyjones 12y agoAmen. My impression from a small european country is that most politicians will happily damage the tax payer for an amount roughly 2 orders of magnitude higher than the corresponding bribe, whether by taking a cut when privatizations happen or by spending ludicrous amounts on infrastructure projects or military hardware, or even by investing taxpayers' money badly on purpose to benefit banks (who pay bribes). The only remedy I see is more transparency (all contracts, offers etc. must be made public) - but recent trends go in the other direction with secret agreements, more direct democracy (immediate direct public votes to prevent unpopular political decisions) and harsh punishment when officials are caught taking bribes (the Chinese go to extremes though - death penalty sometimes - with no apparent effect). Long-term, very optimistic vision: replace corrupt political decision makers by AI, but I fear human tricksters will be able to take advantage of that too.
- Istof 12y agoa good start would be to stop legalized bribery...
- lmm 12y agoFighting corruption is like putting a tax on it; it disincentivises it, makes it less efficient. If you allowed people to openly bribe politicians you would get much worse laws. Every bit of "obscurity" we force on them costs, makes corruption more expensive and less worthwhile.
- jim-greer 12y agoI've posted on here about CounterPAC before. We didn't crush it but we learned a lot for just $500k and we took out one terrible incumbent.
- jaekwon 12y agoAny thoughts on the counter-counter-PAC argument above? Also, let's play a game of poker if you're in the Bay Area.
- jim-greer 12y agoYes, see above. You can join my poker league! I'm in New York now but the league goes on, and I'll be back in August. http://sfpokerleague.org http://sfpokerleague.org
- jim-greer 12y agoI'll hijack my own comment and post some more good stuff. Zephyr Teachout wrote a great history of corruption, I'm still reading it now, but you can get a good taste from this NYT review: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/books/review/zephyr-teachouts-corruption-in-america.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/books/review/zephyr-teacho... I'll also mention that our biggest challenge to scaling this is money. If you know people who would be interested in donating, please hit me up at jim@counterpac.org. You can also send PayPal donations there if you're so inclined!
- jim-greer 12y agoMy highlights of that review are here: https://www.highly.co/article/547af11a6c696c7d69220000/user/545a6ed56c696c19a8030000/ https://www.highly.co/article/547af11a6c696c7d69220000/user/... If you want you can sign up using code 'hellohighly'
- jparker165 12y agoHow do you see this interacting with Larry Lessig's MayDay PAC? The message is slightly different, but the tactics seems identical. I'm always for the experimentation that comes with a new approach, but competition for funds and candidate engagement here could hurt. Update: Jim is on the board of MayDay
- scoofy 12y agoA decent idea, but the anecdotal evidence of success seems like feel-good fluff, and not actually relevant. CounterPAC seems like it's trying to create a spending arms race, but with the basis in simple disclosure, rather than political views. However, that the corporations have vastly higher resources and incentives to spend. Unfortunately, it seems trivial for firms to create a Counter-CounterPAC with the aim at depleting the resources of any successful PAC with these intentions. From my perspective, this is a long run failing strategy, but has the possibly to succeed in the short run. It would need to hit the reps, and hit hard. Then immediately (within a few election cycles) turn and pass strong disclosure laws to create a change in the way the game works.
- jaekwon 12y agoIt's really about informing the public, so a counter-counter-PAC may not have an equivalent response. Of course we're getting into information-wars territory.
- TheCoreh 12y agoI think one possible way of fixing that counter-counter-PAC problem is this: Instead of focusing on the politicians themselves, trying to convince them to only accept money from disclosed sources, one could focus on convincing the existing corporations/PACs to only donate to politicians that disclose all their sources. That way you end up getting the politicians on board, and you're not at an arms race with anyone. Instead you're using the money from whoever you manage to get on your side to your cause's favor.
- jim-greer 12y agoWait, is it irrelevant fluff? Or will it work in the short term? You say "the corporations" as if it's some secret cabal. Most spending is done by trade associations, not corporations directly. Trade associations like to get their legislation through. But they don't run the show. Money only matters to the extent that it buys ads that move voters. And there's only a limited amount that matters in an election. If you take a house race and outspend your opponent $10 Billion to $1 Billion, but have a worse message, you will lose. The total cost of the all federal elections in 2012, including the presidential, was around $8 billion dollars. That's a big number. It's almost a billion dollars more than the worldwide market for adult diapers: http://online.wsj.com/articles/as-births-slow-p-g-turns-to-adult-diapers-1405554364 http://online.wsj.com/articles/as-births-slow-p-g-turns-to-a... It's a very small number compared to our economy. There's enough good money out there to run our elections cleanly. We just need the will to do it. CounterPAC is a hack to do that without waiting for congress to act. You can be for it or against it, but it isn't fluff.
- JDDunn9 12y agoOh, all we have to do is out-spend the largest corporations in the world. Problem solved...
- jim-greer 12y agoSee my above comment. Elections are about the size of the world-wide market for adult diapers. It's do-able.
- gimpei78 12y agoI know I'm being pedantic, but where is the game theory? The threat of campaign spending as a device to induce a more optimal equilibrium? If that's the case everyone uses game theory, no?
- jim-greer 12y agoWe go into a race and say: "We would like you both to take a disclosure pledge. If one candidate takes it, and the other doesn't, we may go after the one who doesn't." Then we see what happens.
- eridius 12y agoI still don't see how this is game theory. This just seems like a classic carrot-and-stick approach.
- jim-greer 12y agoWhat if I tell two prisoners: "If one of you informs on the other, he'll get off with a 1 year sentence, and the other goes to prison for 10 years. If neither informs, you both go to prison for 5 years." Does that sound like game theory, or just carrot-and-stick? Here are other examples of game theory in real-life. I'd say we're in the same category: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#Real-life_examples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#Real-life_...
- SilasX 12y agoI just wish the article had been clear about that. Instead it just rambled for several paragraph, and replaced the threat with a vague statement about how you'd "hold them accountable", which could mean a dozen things. Also, I concur with the GP except that I agree this is a use of game theory, but only in the trivial sense that any offer of reward to those you like (as used by other PACs) is game theory.
- aligajani 12y agoSolving social problems with numbers ? Doesn't seem right.
- danieltillett 12y agoJim great idea. How about a extension of this idea of picking close races and trying to get the candidates to accept no money at all with the threat to go thermonuclear on the first candidate that defects?
- jim-greer 12y agoThat's a possibility - we've also thought about imposing a cap on spending and going after the first candidate to violate it.
- jchendy 12y agoThere's a great interview with Jim Greer on the Thinking Poker podcast. It's mainly about CounterPAC without much poker talk. http://www.thinkingpoker.net/2014/11/episode-101-jim-greer/ http://www.thinkingpoker.net/2014/11/episode-101-jim-greer/
- john2x 12y agoInteresting idea, and I hope it works in the both short term and long term. As an outsider (and just overall uninformed about politics), since CounterPAC is transparent, is it an additional incentive for politicians to be associated with CounterPAC? And an "anti-incentive"(?) to refuse it, since people will know that they (likely) took dark money?
- jim-greer 12y agoIt's a minor incentive, but honestly candidates mostly care about having enough money to get their message out, regardless of the source.
- alexpritchett 12y agoI'm not convinced that you know what game theory actually is...
- jim-greer 12y agoI'm not sure you do either. Think about the real-life examples here and decide whether what we're doing is in the same category: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#Real-life_examples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#Real-life_...
- tomohawk 12y agoNext time you make a donation that could be disclosed, are you prepared to lose your job over it? Disclosing the sources of campaign funding is not all roses. There are several groups who use that information to intimidate doners. They go after their careers, their businesses, their families, their reputations. They create maps of where "the opposition" lives, and then let the lunatic fringe on their side do what comes naturally to them.
- jim-greer 12y agoWant to back that up with some evidence?
- jpetra 12y agoI was curious about what was written, so I thought I would respond after a quick Google search. I assume the losing your job part is referring to the Mozilla CEO news somewhat recently. I thought it didn't really need any research as it is posted about here often enough. The maps part is described in this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/us/19prop8.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/us/19prop8.html Or with a little more opinion on this page: http://sfist.com/2009/01/09/mash-up_map_of_google_maps_and_prop.php http://sfist.com/2009/01/09/mash-up_map_of_google_maps_and_p... (the second link has a link to the actual site with the map, but it doesn't load for me)
- jim-greer 12y agoYes, one CEO candidate lost his job for a donation. Let's balance that with the damage done by routine corruption - we have to strike a balance between transparency and privacy.
- tomohawk 12y agoThe whole point about disclosure is to enable feedback. The intended feedback may be for people to be able to make informed decisions about who is funding a candidate, but disclosure also enables other kinds of feedback. It allows coercion to be applied to people (donors) once their identities are known. Brenden Eich is one example. The ability to donate anonymously is an important firebreak. It protects those with minority opinions. It also protects people in general from those who think that coercion is an acceptable means to achieve an end. I should not have to worry that my boss will see that I gave a donation to his pet political cause in order to keep my job. Likewise, I shouldn't have to worry that my boss disagrees with some cause that I have donated to and fires me. I also shouldn't have to worry that one of these reprehensible groups who believe in bullying and coercion might decide to make an example out of me just because I supported the side of a cause they disagree with. Shouldn't a political debate be more about ideas than the people who are involved? Disclosure seems to enable a kind of intolerance, a kind of "guilty by association" kind of thinking that really has no place in civil society.
- bring1 12y agoCan somebody explain me why a democracy allows for donations at all? Donations will clearly skew the political landscape towards the people who have money to donate. And those people are more likely to donate with an expected value. So they will try to skew the politics in their favour. Why would it be bad to forbid any kind of political donation for established parties. I see the need to fund a grow new parties, but established parties should get by with the money they receive from the government.
- notahacker 12y agoAn intrinsic part of being a democracy involves people being free to support a cause they want to, including financially. It's not as if rich people are going to stop spending to influence electoral results in favour of candidates whose policies work in their interests if they're banned from handing the money over directly and transparently.
- jmnicolas 12y agoWell don't underestimate the power of the poor : they are more numerous so a candidate with less money but with a program oriented toward them may eventually win.
- shetter 12y agoThe answer is simple: these are not democracies. Pretty much the only democratic aspect in nowadays "representative democracies" is that every 5 years you get to chose which of 2 leaders you prefer to govern your state/city. That's a little light to call the whole system a "democracy". You'll never make sense of politics if you don't get that.
- Cushman 12y agoFree speech. In a democracy, if I have a political opinion, I must be allowed to express it. It follows that I must be allowed to pay a spokesperson to express it on my behalf, and it follows from that that I must be allowed to fund an organization with the mandate of expressing it. That's all SCOTUS' Citizens United ruling was about; there does not seem to be a reasonable way to limit political spending across the board without at some point allowing an unconstitutional restriction on political speech, and that's anathema to our society. (And as CU has demonstrated, the distinction between that and unregulated campaign donations is academic in practice.) That's not to say that there's no way to draw a line, but so far the anti-finance crowd has been largely unwilling to engage with this argument, and none has been readily forthcoming.
- tormeh 12y agoThe NRA has been doing this for years.