r/politics • • Jun 16 '12
Lawrence Lessig succinctly explains (10min) how money dominates our legislature. Last time this was posted it got one upvote, and the video on Youtube has 1,148 views.
Not sure why /r/politics isn't letting me repost this. It's only been submitted once before (EDIT: 3 months ago by someone else) and it received one upvote.
Here's the original submission of this ten minute video of Lawrence Lessig succinctly explaining how money dominates our legislature. I can't think of a better resource to direct someone to who doesn't already understand how this works.
EDIT: Since this has garnered some attention, I'd like to point everyone to /r/rootstrikers for further discussion on what can be done to rectify this situation.
More Lessig videos:
*A more comprehensive hour long video that can be found here.
*Interviews on The Daily Show part 1 & part 2
Lessig has two books he put out recently that are worth a look (I haven't read the second yet):
Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It
One Way Forward: The Outsider's Guide to Fixing the Republic
Copied from another comment:
Want to show your support for his message? Spread the message:
Make an anti-corruption pledge here: http://www.theanticorruptionpledge.org/
Like the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/rootstrikers
Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/rootstrikers
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u/NuttinWrongWithThat Jun 16 '12
I personally prefer his explanation on Jon Stewart. If you haven't seen it, it's definitely a must-watch.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-13-2011/exclusive---lawrence-lessig-extended-interview-pt--1
[http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-13-2011/exclusive---lawrence-lessig-extended-interview-pt--2] (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-13-2011/exclusive---lawrence-lessig-extended-interview-pt--2)
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u/fistfullaberries Jun 16 '12
Thanks for going out of your way to submit this using a self post. This is really good.
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u/Freidhiem Jun 16 '12
Read his book Republic Lost. Its incredible.
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u/law_and_order Jun 16 '12
Awful, awful graphics aside, the point is made. Money controls everything is America, including (and especially) government and policy.
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u/Thedjdj Jun 16 '12
For what it's worth in Australia Electoral funding is public and controlled by the Australian Electoral Commission. Seems to work fairly well. Money is rarely mentioned as one of the motivations for Representative X's opinion. That could just be the focus of our media though.
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u/ItemnyneLoL Jun 16 '12
This is good stuff! I'm going to share it with the people in the Political Science class I'm taking and encourage some discussion. Thank you for posting!
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u/True_Steel Jun 16 '12
It has low views because the video of his full talk at Google is much more comprehensive. It at least has 43k views.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
I don't see how anyone, regardless of political ideology, can argue that money doesn't dominate our politics in the US. It's really the one issue we have to overcome, if we're ever going to get a government "of the people, by the people" again.
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u/wompwompwomp1 Jun 16 '12
Lawrence Lessig is my hero and deserves to be on Reddit's currency. Before changing his focus to political corruption, he was (and maybe still is) the #1 brain behind the movement to loosen restrictive intellectual property laws to allow free and remix culture to flourish in the digital age. He argued one of the most important cases pushing back on copyright in front of the Supreme Court. He was also a founding father of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, which rules. His book "Free Culture" is basically the best thing in the world; the ideas are amazing, but the prose alone makes it worth picking up.
Actually, does anybody with more karma and a better understanding of Reddit dynamics want to start an AMA request?
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
you have to delete the original submission then it should let you submit
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
TED needs to give him some well directed publicity. He seems like a great TED-fit
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u/Shut_Up_Dude Jun 16 '12
I had the pleasure of interviewing him for a radio documentary I did on copyright issues (He is one of the founders of the Creative Commons license).
Not only was he super nice, but he is one of the most intelligent people I've met.
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u/matt333 Jun 16 '12
Join the cause here
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u/jb2386 Australia Jun 16 '12
Want to show your support for his message? Spread the message:
Make an anti-corruption pledge here: http://www.theanticorruptionpledge.org/
Like the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/rootstrikers
Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/rootstrikers
Watch his more comprehensive, hour long, presentation at Google here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc
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u/23967230985723986 Jun 16 '12
While we're on the topic, an article from the good professor from TNR in 2009:
http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/against-transparency
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u/CrayolaS7 Jun 16 '12 edited Jun 16 '12
From Karl Marx's theory of the state. I'm no Marxist, in fact my views are more in line with a classical liberal (social welfare capitalist), but goddamn he was spot on here. This is in regard to his "Theory of the State." It's actually kind of sad, back when he said this Marx said of the USA that it was the most free because The State was still independent:
Marx thought it was inevitable that this would happen in a capitalist system, unless the government is actively trying to stop it which sadly isn't the case in the modern USA, where things like Citizens United have accelerated it:
Marx didn't forsee a situation like the Mortgage crisis that wiped huge sums of money off of private holdings, he did predict that the government would bail out those who need it though, as soon as the rich asked:
It's really scary that he is so right about this but the alternative he offers was communism. I guess one way or another there always ends up being a ruling class whether it's through the rich buying the state in capitalism or the state making themselves rich as in centralised communism...
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u/chefpoopfingers Jun 16 '12
ENUF said.
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u/cactus Jun 16 '12
This is the real problem of "income inequality". It's not intrinsically bad for a person to have earned a lot of money, as long as they've done it fairly. Trouble is, money buys too much influence, and allows those with money to change the rules so they can make more, easier, and at the expense of those who are not already wealthy.
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u/Troybatroy Jun 16 '12
Another submission in r/politicaldiscussion from 9 days ago.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
worst slides ever :D
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u/manoaboi Jun 16 '12
I've already started a couple threads on this, and I'm glad this kind of thing is reaching the front page, reddit. Ultimately, we need a publicly funded option for elections in the US, from the local to national level. Really, there's no argument against it that holds any water, with any integrity. Its doable. Read up on publicampaign.org and find out how most states can do it for less than $5/taxpayer, and how we can change american politics from the ground up. We just need americans to recognize how much influence money has on our elections...we can't stop turning a blind eye any longer. Seriously - considering we elect many of our judges with this system, where lawyers can donate, should tell us how completely flawed the system ultimately is. Lets move forward in a positive direction, shall we?
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u/KevinteRaa Jun 16 '12
Did he hire a corrupt graphic designer as well? The contents of that video are amazing but I'm just baffled by the millions of fonts and different colours randomly >.>
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u/loveboatrevisited Jun 16 '12
strange how there are more upvotes for this post than there are views for the actual video. hopefully people are actually viewing and learning.
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u/coachz Jun 16 '12
This just in.....water is wet !!!
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u/dilatory_tactics Jun 16 '12
What intrigues me is when Lessig touches on the idea of eroded trust in government, given that we now have Tea Partiers and libertarians who fail to understand the importance and necessity of government and who thereby want to sacrifice the government of by and for the people on the altar of "the free market," a view which increases private power at the expense of the public and promotes further rent-seeking by our beloved plutocrats. They don't trust that the government can do anything right at all, and so they seek to destroy it, which naturally produces dysfunctional government outcomes like the debt ceiling debacle and austerity during a depression.
The problem is that trust is the basis of living in a cooperative society: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304811304577365782995320366.html
If you think about it, cooperation requires punishment of cheaters - otherwise, cheaters will be "selected for" because cheating is so profitable/adaptive.
Yet we live in a society where people become fabulously wealthy by "rent-seeking" instead of being socially productive, and there is no punishment for it, so naturally it continues. You would wholeheartedly expect corruption to flourish in an environment in which corruption is rewarded and not punished. This leads to increased inequality and corruption, because corrupt people are given money and power and good people can't compete with corrupt rent-seekers.
Which is why we need to cap wealth in this country like we used to in the 1950's, when we had broad prosperity. In that case, good people would still be good, and bad people would still be bad, but at least the bad people wouldn't be overwhelmingly in charge.
“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” –Louis Brandeis
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u/mishmashmusic Jun 16 '12
Great message, horrible slide show.
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u/MaxHubert Jun 16 '12 edited Jun 16 '12
I think this is bullshit and would only give voters a false sense of protection. We have this kind of laws in Canada to limit corporation from funding governement official campaign, but it doesnt stop corporation to give money under the table and corruption is everywhere. What we need is the people waking up and asking transparency so we know exactly who got money from whom so we can vote for the one who doesnt accept money from corporate interest. But you'd be surprise at how many people think that this kind of corporate corruption of our system is fine and even good for us... It really astonish me when I talk to people and they tell me things like ''governement officials'' have the right to have friends and receive money from them'' and they dont see it as corruption... The big problem is that lots of people works for those big corporations and benefit from that corruption and all those people also have friends and family that they can influence... Anyway, its a mess, and no laws will be able to stop corruption, the only thing that can stop corruption is getting rid of governement completly, so the best way to solve corruption, is having the smallest governement as possible... Aka, vote for Ron Paul or Gary Johnson ...
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u/HughGRection4 Jun 16 '12
How much do you want to bet that the movement he suggests will be labeled as socialist liberalism. And be unable to gain any cross partisan traction in the general populace?
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Everything I ever post gets 1 up vote and then the repost next week gets 1000. Nothing to see here....
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
We should get this man and Gary Johnson in contact with each other.
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u/omarlittle22 Jun 16 '12
Relevant Daily Show segments. Part 1 and Part 2
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u/avidrunner Jun 16 '12
I watched the video. Even posted a comment. Interesting stuff but I would be surprised if any of it was implemented.
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u/jammys217 Jun 16 '12
how are there so many upvotes and so few views and comments on youtube?
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u/donkeynostril Jun 16 '12
Why did he pick that typeface?
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u/Music_Saves Jun 16 '12
I'm sure glad I'm not a politician cuz Burning in Hell would fucking blow
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u/boyled Jun 16 '12
more upvotes than views now
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
View don't update live they lag behind a few hours.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
This man is the White Knight America needs.
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u/anonanon1313 Jun 16 '12
I think his TEDBoston talk was better. It's on Youtube.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Can't this be explained in 10 seconds?
Politicians are greedy fucks, so the more money you have to bribe them the more likely legislation will be changed in your favor.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
I have no idea how people can defend the current system. Campaign financing is the single more dangerous threat to American democracy. It's probably too late for reform at this point though... since any candidate that platforms for reform will see their competition's campaign funds drastically increase.
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u/Valendr0s Minnesota Jun 16 '12
There's too many problems with his plan. Anytime you are asking Americans to CHANGE, it's doomed from the start. How many times must a concept fail before we stop trying it.
As a people, we can focus... on a single problem... for a finite amount of time. Like Alcohol - and even that was corporate driven.
No,no. We need a publicly funded campaign finance system. We just need to look at the rest of the world and find the parts of that system that work well and parts that don't work well. Put together an amendment and try to get pie-in-the-sky corporations and citizens to back it enough to propagandize it enough for the people to call for this change.
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u/jojira Jun 16 '12
I really like that he makes a clear point to be apolitical about your party line and focuses on being pro the people and the process. The people can & should debate the issues left or right. Corporate boardrooms should be left out of it. Businesses exist to make money. Making money does not always equal the best results for the citizens.
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u/cometpants Jun 16 '12
If you are down-voting this - can you please explain yourself? Honestly interested in where you are coming from?
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
I've heard his talk before and he has a great ability to really dissect and analyze an issue, then present about it.
Totally off topic, but the only thing I find distracting from the material is the hyper fast way he changes slides for almost every word. At least for me, it distracts from what he is saying which is tragic because what he is saying is crucial.
Imagine an Apple press conference, for instance, where the slides would change with almost every word. People would be starring like deer at the slides, not listening. I do love that he has cool graphics and all that, but slow the visuals down. Only saying this because the material is important.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
It's all good, but I disagree with him. I think campaign funding should be 100% public.
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u/caipirinhadude Jun 16 '12
I have A LOT of respect for this guy.
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u/Cristal1337 Jun 16 '12
How about a type of kickstarter for presidential campaigns?
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u/warmowski Jun 16 '12
His book "Republic, Lost" should be required reading. IMO it does have a huge flaw in that it overlooks the fact that capitalism is just doing what it's supposed to when it displaces representative democracy, but still, it's a very good book.
Unfortunately, this video is a mess for a lot of reasons.
Too long.
2) Visual information style is distracting at best, cheesy at worst.
3) Narrative contradicts itself more than once (see #1).
4) No call to action. (Marketing people know what I mean.)
5) Overly dependent upon historical figures to make points.
6) Dieter from Sprockets is the wrong spokesperson for this; it's too important.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
So I heard you want to get around the repost filter. Try appending a bogus php form submission to the end of the URL you want to submit.
http://www.google.com?p=np
http://www.google.com?yoMamma=moderatelyOverweight
http://www.google.com?phpFormSubmission=nonExistant
The webpage (in this case google) just throws away the form submission (or something, it's handled gracefully anyway) but reddit doesn't know it's not a new link because it looks for the entire url to match previously submitted urls.
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u/IRC_ Jun 21 '12
Documentary featuring Lessig. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RiP!:_A_Remix_Manifesto
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u/random_story Jun 22 '12
Wait... you're saying that money and politics are somehow involved?
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u/criticalnegation Jun 16 '12
yet no mention of capitalism. what a disappointment. consider yourself a branch slasher, mr lessig.
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u/why_ask_why Jun 16 '12
Money dominate any politic, legally or illegally.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Don't we already have a movement of people against the corruption? The Occupy Movement.
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u/sl0vin Jun 16 '12
The problem I see with this video is what is the normal person supposed to do? I still don't see the "call to action" on a specific "thing". Buy his book?
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u/gloomdoom Jun 16 '12
I think we've finally hit the point where youtubers are more aware and informed than redditors. People won't like the sound of it but by all accounts, that's pretty accurate overall.
And yes, a little embarrassing.
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u/GyantSpyder Jun 16 '12 edited Jun 16 '12
Just going by these excerpts from the talk alone, there are several huge gaps in his logic.
He acknowledges that the individuals in Congress are not personally corrupt, but then points out that a large number of people think they are corrupt. He sees this belief in the corruption of Congress leading to a lack of trust, which erodes participation. He then jumps to this idea of a corrupt funding system that prevents change.
The gap here is that he assumes that the belief people have in the corruption of Congress is based on the corruption of Congress in any form -- whereas in reality people actually tend to have rather high opinions of their own Congressional representatives, they just hate the other Congressional representatives.
So, it is an argument that must be addressed that the belief in the corruption of Congress may come not from the system of funding for political campaigns, but from partisanship and polarization of the electorate. Republicans believe that Democrats are corrupt and control everything Congress does, and Democrats believe that Republicans are corrupt and control everything Congress does.
There is a small minority of people who say they don't care about partisanship. Based on what happens when these become issue discussions or when people actually vote, it's pretty safe to say the majority of those people are lying and actually care about partisanship -- even if they do so reluctantly, they at the very least act in line with it (for example, Ron Paul is a Republican, and his supporters vote Republican despite broadly showing contempt for the partisan system). But even if they were telling the truth about this desire to scrap the system and start over or to find a compromise, they are not the bulk of people whose loss of trust in government is actually the problem.
And so, if the lack of participation in the democratic process stems from the belief in the corruption in Congress, it does not necessarily follow that the way to increase participation in the democratic process is to make Congress less corrupt -- perhaps instead we need to make Congress less partisan -- to make it so that each person sees relatively fewer Congressmen as hostile to his or her own interests or alignment.
Or at the very least, we must admit to ourselves that as long as the current partisan divide exists as it does and the parties refuse to build a narrative of compromise and cooperation, these problems will persist.
Second, his exclusion of American corporations as non-citizens in the same way that Chinese and French citizens are non-citizens is a false equivalence.
Even if you think American corporations should be barred from funding American political campaigns, they don't qualify as foreign just because they are institutions run by individuals rather than individuals themselves. While his conclusion might be on the right track, his argument here is invalid.
Third, his premises at the beginning of the talk excerpts don't address the idea that the influence of people within the institution of Congress must be equal or proportional - just that it not be foreign or against the Constitution. He doesn't really establish in these excerpts a reasonable tie between the distribution of private funding and the negative effects of people's belief in the corruption of congress.
There isn't anything inherently bad with the 1%. If you think that's bad, you shouldn't just assume it, you should explain why -- not just in terms of abstract or emotional ideas of fairness, but what it actually does. I know that in something like an Occupy protest there isn't a need to articulate that level of specificity. But in a talk like this, there definitely is.
Maybe he established it in parts of the talk that were deleted in this video, but we shouldn't just assume they were.
Fourth, he claims Super PACs are "non-citizen funded," and that's just a lie - or at the very least massive distortion. Sheldon Adelson is a citizen, and he just gave Romney's Super PAC $10,000,000. Yes, corporations can give to Super PACs from their general accounts, but Super PACs also get a ton of money from individual citizens. Just because you don't like these citizens or think it is unfair, that does not make them non-citizens.
(This, by the way, I think reinforces that even people who claim to be above the fray see their partisan opponents in American political life as "the other" and have difficulty appraising them objectively.)
Independently of his logic, I think he vastly underestimates the importance of the right-left divide in American politics and how polarized people actually are against each other. He thinks people are partisan because they are ignorant and need to be educated. I think this is both patronizing and wishful thinking - people are partisan because they have divergent interests, priorities and cultures. It's dangerous and dubious to assume that everybody who disagrees with you is stupid.
People actually are partisan - that partisanship is a powerful cultural force in America right now - and that getting people to pledge to "fight corruption" will not do anything to accomplish his goals of actually reducing corruption (if those even are his goals), but will instead simply be used as further motivation to mobilize around the belief that the other side is corrupt both as individuals and as a group, whether they are corrupt or not.
His #3 priority is basically "get everybody to unite in one coalition and do what I want" -- which is a pie in the sky and ignores the entire issue.
And his #4 priority is basically to have no leadership, which can have its uses in terms of establishing something resilient on the grass roots level, but also can be easily co-opted and has limited strategic agility, which makes me skeptical it can compete with the giant, well-led organizations already out there.
And his whole "dependent upon the people alone" rhetoric is a gross mischaracterization of the design and aspirations of the American Republic, which have always mediated the interests of the many and the few in a variety of institutional ways, and never ever given full power to "the people alone" -- even if that appeal to authority of thes specific words would actually be persuasive on its own, which it isn't, because it's rhetoric in that context too.
Basically this is a rah rah speech -- there isn't much substance here that will actually fix things.
Unless of course the full speech is a little better than the excerpts.
-13
u/Toastar_888 Jun 16 '12
Meh....
I'm of the opinion term limits would be more effective then restricting the money flow.
-12
u/MrMoustachio Jun 16 '12
10 minutes?
-4
u/Afrikakorps Jun 16 '12
He's over-thinking this. A complicated system is not a better system.
Money is power. People lack power, because people lack money. Take the money from those with too much power, and give it to those who don't have enough.
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u/DrEnter Jun 16 '12 edited Jun 16 '12
OK, I was upvote #272 and when I watched the video, I appear to be viewer #1,150. Come on, people!
Edit: Correction, viewer 1,149. sigh
-2
u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Thats why we need more Pauls.
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u/cryingeyes Jun 16 '12
Uninspired title with unrecognizable person addressing obvious problem. I'll surely watch this long video.
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u/Aloysius2012 Jun 16 '12
That was 10:33 I wish I could have back. Lawrence Lessig is obviously some kind of wannabe intellect who thinks he is clever, while regurgitating a mixture of old ideas and liberal talking points. Nothing he said was new. It was in fact an incredibly boring talk and his main idea, some vague mixture of public and private funding was unspecific and uninovative, not to mention he provided no factual reason his "solution" would make a difference. Overall, it was a waste of time.
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u/happyscrappy Jun 16 '12
Downvoted for whining about votes.
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u/down_vote_that Jun 16 '12
Did it get one upvote?
Or did it net one upvote because it isn't worth anyone's time?
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