From the start it seems Lessig is attacking the symptom rather than the cause.
The problem with the US government is a tragedy of the commons (ie the district-by-district and state-by-state pork barrelling).
The original intent of the Founding Fathers and the view held by libertarians and traditional conservatives (rather than the neoconservatives and religious conservatives that dominate today) is one of limited Federal government for specifically this reason. A minimal government is one not worth buying. A big and intrusive government is one totally worth buying.
Representatives and Senators raise so much money to get elected because the payoff is huge. Both in terms of direct power and the indirect financial reward (many become lobbyists for huge incomes). Lobbying isn't the problem; it's a symptom (of government being worth buying).
Davy Crockett [1] is oft-quoted on this subject.
This is why I found the "living document" "ideology" so subversive. I say "ideology" because I find myself agreeing with Justice Scalia that it is no ideology at all. The Constitution doesn't say whatever you want it to say. It says what it says. If you want pass laws or amendments otherwise well there are processes for that and it's the job of the legislative not the judicial branch to create new law.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I think the bigger problem in US politics is that the country itself is divided and so many people think the means justify the ends.
Take how elections are organized. It's clear that some states seek to suppress traditionally Democratic votes in the names of striking convicted felons off the electoral rolls. Other states try and manipulate the vote by the density of polling places and the hours they are open.
I compare this to Australia, which holds elections on a Saturday, and those elections are organized by the AEC (Australian Electoral Commission). Voting is mandatory not optional and the duty of the AEC is to ensure that everyone has ample opportunity to vote. It seems that some combination of cultural factors, the smaller size of the Australian population and mandatory voting has made this a largely nonpartisan endeavour and voting has only ever taken me 10 minutes. On Saturdays they just set up in schools and other public spaces.
Redistricting too is a hugely political issue but the big problem here is that voting patterns are so predictable that you can buy maps telling you how specific city blocks vote.
Half the country votes. Of that half, 40% always vote Republican. 40% always vote Democrat. The remaining 20% (meaning 10% of the population) actually determinate the outcome of the election. The largest electoral victories in US history (Nixon in '72 and Reagan in '84) each only captured ~60% of the populate vote.
You see the effects of this on Congress with reelection rates [2]. Being a Representative is now a career and that (IMHO) is a problem.
"Winning" on issues for many has trumped the rule of law and the Republic itself (again, IMHO) and that more than anything is the most dangerous thing.
> A minimal government is one not worth buying. A big and intrusive government is one totally worth buying.
I get what you're saying. If a government barely has any powers, they yes, it's not worth corrupting, but I really don't think we're headed in that direction any time soon. Surely even a medium sized-government would still be worth corrupting?
Moreover, why can't we have both? A government with smaller influence, but still freer of money-influence than today's.
It seems to me that the current political reality is that Lesig's proposals would be much easier to achieve than bringing our government's influence to a level more agreeable to a libertarian.
I would speculate that democracies like our own broadly tend coverage to the middle of extreme views. If that's the case, then we won't achieve a libertarain-sized government, unless you convince a good majority of voters. Hence, it seems clear that we should focus more on the quality of government, right now.
> Moreover, why can't we have both? A government with smaller influence, but still freer of money-influence than today's.
That feels like asking, "why can't we have both a simpler software codebase, with less abstraction and code, while adding all this code & logic over here to try to squash the symptoms of having too much abstraction?"
Maybe I misunderstood you, but I feel like you're asking us to get to simplicity by adding more rules, which isn't really how simplicity works.
I see your idea, that going after money-influence in politics might always end up consisting of simply adding more rules, and thus complicating and expanding government further.
I would take the idea more seriously if its something that can be rigorously demonstrated; i.e. there is no way to amend the US government without adding so many rules as to frustrate the situation even further.
That being said, any government that consists of human beings is going to have an emergent agenda of some sort or the other. It seems to me that job number one of any government would be to police it self so that that agenda is generally in the people's favor, first. I would have thought that that's really what democracy means, maybe I'm wrong.
Surely even a more libertarian government would have policies in place to fight its corruption?
> I would take the idea more seriously if its something that can be rigorously demonstrated; i.e. there is no way to amend the US government without adding so many rules as to frustrate the situation even further.
I cannot scientifically prove this hypothesis, as I am not dictator of the world, or even of a small island. (Technically, I'd have to be dictator of multiple worlds to prove my hypothesis, as I understand the scientific method.) Most political debates have this problem, so I'm not inclined to lose sleep over it. Of course, I don't expect you to accept the idea wholesale, either. I just threw it out there for discussion.
> That being said, any government that consists of human beings is going to have an emergent agenda of some sort or the other. It seems to me that job number one of any government would be to police it self so that that agenda is generally in the people's favor, first.
It's my understanding this is why we have 3 branches of government, yes. Even a relatively simple system can still verify results with other parts of the system (for example, setting up a Pingdom account to verify that yes, the website is returning HTTP 200)
> Surely even a more libertarian government would have policies in place to fight its corruption?
(a) I extrapolate my experience with architecting complex software systems to political systems. Perhaps what applies to the one is entirely different from what applies to another. Software is what I know, politics is an interesting mind game for me, and it seems like some lessons may carry over. Also, applying software architecture disciplines to business procedures has brought me continued success over the past few years, so I'm inclined to think that some/most of these principles may apply across all complicated systems, including political ones. But again, I can't prove it.
(b) I think there is a difference between letting multiple systems "battle it out" (e.g. Pingdom verifying an HTTP 200 response and perhaps even rebooting the server automatically if it is down), and a multitude of automatic failover rules within a system. For example, how many times have we seen recap blog posts from AWS or other large, abstract cloud systems which identify the root cause as "a system we wrote to automatically heal our main system screwed everything up?"
All that said, I agree with your original post's main point: sometimes you've just gotta throw duct tape on stuff yesterday, or in this case, add rules to limit political corruption. I think my point is simply that planning for both long-term seems conflicting: you throw the duct tape on today, but you don't plan to leave it there forever.
The eventual plan is to refactor to a simpler system and get rid of the duct tape.
> The eventual plan is to refactor to a simpler system and get rid of the duct tape.
Yeah, we're on the same page.
I think the critical thing with the software/systems-analogy is that it's far easier for us to understand these technologies, and more over, the technologies generally lend them selves to reproducible experiments. You can collect 'lessons learned' and do experiments, and based on that knowledge, refactor. It's much harder in politics for the reasons you mentioned.
The whole reason we have 'free' markets is that we lack the knowledge that would be required to efficiently run a command-economy, so we let the market decide, and apply duck-tape where appropriate. Same goes with democracy: we lack the knowledge to build a benevolent dictator which maximizes its people's happiness.
So I guess democracy + duck-tape is the best we can do, for now.
> From the start it seems Lessig is attacking the symptom rather than the cause.
You are, how shall I say this, late to the party.
You should probably read some of Lessig's works - I suggest Republic, Lost - which very directly and at great length address this.
Also you should probably not read works of fiction about historical personages such as Davey Crockett and then believe that they represent, well, anything.
Really good point about symptoms / causes (I do not entirely agree that it is automatically follows to make the gov not worth buying.. a bit like smashing up your car so no-one steals it). And I do not disagree with your comments about the US voting.
WRT Australian voting, in 2010 the voter turnout was around 92/93%, with a further 5.5% informal (donkey). Around 20% of the electorate voted for the minor parties / independents.
All this translated to.. 90% of the seats to the two major parties. Nope, no corruption here. In a very real sense the system is designed by the parties that run it. I mean, we all remember what happened in Tassie in the late 90's?
a bit like smashing up your car so no-one steals it
More like not putting all your server room and home entertainment system equipment (televisions, ipads, etc.) in your car, sitting on the front seat with the doors unlocked.
Your car needs to get you places. If you make it the central storage location for all the cool/expensive stuff in your life - don't be surprised when people open your doors or break your windows to take it. If in the process of storing all your junk and having it broken into - don't be too surprised when your car is no longer functioning as simple transport.
The US Government spends more money than any entity in history. You think that isn't valuable to all those who wish to obtain some of that money for themselves?
The point of my analogy was that government has some specific functions spelled out by the Constitution. If we stuck to government's main functions rather than trying to have it do everything for everyone - we would make it less of a target for corruption.
The problem with the US government is a tragedy of the commons (ie the district-by-district and state-by-state pork barrelling).
The original intent of the Founding Fathers and the view held by libertarians and traditional conservatives (rather than the neoconservatives and religious conservatives that dominate today) is one of limited Federal government for specifically this reason. A minimal government is one not worth buying. A big and intrusive government is one totally worth buying.
You were doing so well until you veered off into right-wing proprietarian ideology!
If the US government is subject to a Tragedy of the Commons due to its mode of subdivision, then eliminate the subdivision. Amend the Constitution to shift to a Mixed-Member Proportional parliamentary system.
I see no reason not to solve the engineering problem rather than declaring that having the government do more than enforce private-property titles is immoral.
The U.S. federal government is strong because it was designed to be strong. It was designed to be strong because the nation had already tried a weak national government under the Articles of Confederation, and it was an abject failure.
Not even Scalia would object to the notion that the federal government is strong. In fact he regularly rules in favor of a strong federal government, including against Larry Lessig in Eldred v Ashcroft.
I wonder if the educational system is responsible for this idea that the Constitution was designed to have a "weak government" that wouldn't be "worth taking over." Growing up in Virginia, I definitely had a "states are so amazing" slant to my education (this is the same state that has a giant statute of a traitor in its capital). I don't know what people who grew up outside the south were told.
The fact is that the Founders didn't really agree on how strong the Federal government should be, but they all agreed it should be stronger than the weak national government that existed under the Articles of Confederation. And the Federalists wanted a very robust national government indeed (and remember, the reference point of the British Parliament, which has nearly unlimited power, was the framing in this situation), while others wanted to preserve the nearly unlimited power of the states. Nobody wanted a "weak" government--it was a battle about who should hold the power.
And it was a battle that the Federalists won in the first several Congresses and during the Marshall era, and finally consolidated at the point of a sword during the civil war.
You are confused by the smoke. A law was recently passed with little discussion that protects Monsanto. This law has nothing to do with district-by-district, Davy Crockett, ideology, good intentions, Australia or any of the other issues you have raised. It simply has to do with lawmakers passing laws for those who provide money to them to be re-elected - as Lessig pointed out.
The problem with the US government is a tragedy of the commons (ie the district-by-district and state-by-state pork barrelling).
The original intent of the Founding Fathers and the view held by libertarians and traditional conservatives (rather than the neoconservatives and religious conservatives that dominate today) is one of limited Federal government for specifically this reason. A minimal government is one not worth buying. A big and intrusive government is one totally worth buying.
Representatives and Senators raise so much money to get elected because the payoff is huge. Both in terms of direct power and the indirect financial reward (many become lobbyists for huge incomes). Lobbying isn't the problem; it's a symptom (of government being worth buying).
Davy Crockett [1] is oft-quoted on this subject.
This is why I found the "living document" "ideology" so subversive. I say "ideology" because I find myself agreeing with Justice Scalia that it is no ideology at all. The Constitution doesn't say whatever you want it to say. It says what it says. If you want pass laws or amendments otherwise well there are processes for that and it's the job of the legislative not the judicial branch to create new law.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I think the bigger problem in US politics is that the country itself is divided and so many people think the means justify the ends.
Take how elections are organized. It's clear that some states seek to suppress traditionally Democratic votes in the names of striking convicted felons off the electoral rolls. Other states try and manipulate the vote by the density of polling places and the hours they are open.
I compare this to Australia, which holds elections on a Saturday, and those elections are organized by the AEC (Australian Electoral Commission). Voting is mandatory not optional and the duty of the AEC is to ensure that everyone has ample opportunity to vote. It seems that some combination of cultural factors, the smaller size of the Australian population and mandatory voting has made this a largely nonpartisan endeavour and voting has only ever taken me 10 minutes. On Saturdays they just set up in schools and other public spaces.
Redistricting too is a hugely political issue but the big problem here is that voting patterns are so predictable that you can buy maps telling you how specific city blocks vote.
Half the country votes. Of that half, 40% always vote Republican. 40% always vote Democrat. The remaining 20% (meaning 10% of the population) actually determinate the outcome of the election. The largest electoral victories in US history (Nixon in '72 and Reagan in '84) each only captured ~60% of the populate vote.
You see the effects of this on Congress with reelection rates [2]. Being a Representative is now a career and that (IMHO) is a problem.
"Winning" on issues for many has trumped the rule of law and the Republic itself (again, IMHO) and that more than anything is the most dangerous thing.
[1]: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1221671/posts
[2]: http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php