
Lawrence Lessig's new TED talk - psadauskas
http://lessig.blip.tv/file/3945764/
======
rwl
Some highlights:

* Eisenhower's original draft of the "military-industrial complex" speech originally referred to the "military-industrial-Congressional complex"

* every $1 spent on lobbying for lower corporate taxes brings a return of $6 to $20 in tax reductions

* the top 10 hedge fund managers last year made an average of $2.5 billion and paid 15% of that in tax

* "there were more people who believed in the British crown at the time of the Revolution than who believe in our Congress today"

More at: <http://www.fixcongressfirst.org>

------
pacemkr
I've recently tried to understand who funds the elections of my elected
official. I immediately ended up on something like OpenSecrets.org or sites
that feed basically off the same data (which in the end comes from FEC and you
can download in the raw.)

You go on OpenSecrets and discover a list of corporations that are supposedly
funding your official. The problem with this data is that if I was to
independently make a donation right now, it would be attributed to my EMPLOYER
by OpenSecrets and every other such site out there.

In reality, by law, corporations CANNOT contribute to campaigns directly. They
can establish one single PAC, which has a limit of several thousand dollars or
something like that, but thats that. Hardly the millions in direct
contributions that we hear about.

If you download the raw data from the FEC -- which I did -- what you see is
thousands of small donations, subject to the same limits as set by law ($2,300
I believe), coming from individuals. How can you possibly attribute these
contributions to their employers and claim that a particular corporation is
influencing the official through campaign money?

I really really want to understand how a corporation gets from point A (we
want to give a million dollars to this guy) to point B (he actually gets it
regardless of the limits set by law). I am very frustrated by not being able
to "follow the money" from the raw data coming from the FEC. Would somebody
please offer an explanation? Why should I blindly believe that Mega Corp USA
is influencing my official through campaign contributions? Where's the proof?!

EDIT: Quick search turns up what I mean about the data:
<http://www.delawarepolitics.net/misusing-opensecretsorg/>

~~~
Benjo
I don't think it's possible for the FEC to collect data on all the ways
corporate money can influence an election.

I agree that I would like to hear more about the logistics of how corporate
money is translated into influence.

One argument is that the election itself doesn't really matter that much.
Access to elected officials matters more: thus the economy of lobbying in DC.
Lobbyists are former congressmen or staffers who can use their connections to
influence existing legislation.

You may argue that lobbyists have no influence, but given the number of
representatives and staffers that work on the contents of each thousand page
bill, it's hard to imagine that they truly have ZERO influence. Once you've
established nonzero influence, it's just a matter of hiring enough lobbyists
to get some desired change.

~~~
pacemkr
I do think that lobbying has a profound effect in Congress. However, lobbying
is something that you can do as an individual by joining a special interests
group and visiting your officials. In other words, investing your time where
corporations invest their money. Not terribly unfair if you think about it.

The speaker in the linked presentation and the organization he represents --
not to mention that it's popular belief -- claim that lobbyists are the ones
funding the same officials' campaigns. As far as I can tell there is no data
that supports this claim.

Fair Elections Now Act is the speaker's proposed reform.

"Under this legislation, congressional candidates who raise a threshold number
of small-dollar donations would qualify for a chunk of funding—several hundred
thousand dollars for House, millions for many Senate races. If they accept
this funding, they can’t raise big-dollar donations. But they can raise
contributions up to $100, which would be matched four to one by a central
fund. Reduced fees for TV airtime is also an element of this bill, creating an
incentive for politicians to opt into this system and run people-powered
campaigns."

So lower the limit of per person donations and match whatever they collect
with tax payer money. What problem would that solve exactly and what does it
have to do with corporate money when they can't make contributions in the
first place?

~~~
Benjo
That is a good point, if all the contributions are funneled through
individuals anyway, what good does the limit serve?

My guess is that the standard method for contributing, say 240,000 is to hire
100 lobbyists, each of whom contribute the individual max (and take a cut as
their lobbyist salary.) Certainly seems like it should be illegal, but I'm not
sure it is. Limiting contributions would make that harder, as you'd have to
hire 25 times as many lobbyists, but certainly not impossible.

My guess is this is Lessig's compromise, considering the free speech
guarantees corporations enjoy. I'm sure he'd rather use more direct methods
for blocking corporate influence if he didn't think the court would overrule
it.

~~~
pacemkr
Hiring someone just to make contributions in the name of your corp would be
illegal, because that's using your company's treasury to make contributions to
campaigns, which is explicitly forbidden by existing law.

No matter how long I stare at this I just don't see how corporations are
contributing to campaigns beyond what is allowed by the PAC limit (which is a
tiny sum.)

This lack of data on the part of the speaker and lack of understanding on my
part, prevents me from believing that corporations are the puppet masters of
Congress. In a sense it's self evident, but I can't bring myself to blindly
blame it on campaign money. I want to be sure of the cause so I don't, as the
speaker ironically puts it, end up "hacking at the branches."

~~~
Benjo
If you want to, I'd love to move this to email, as I would love to get to the
bottom of it, and you've already pointed out gaps in my understanding of the
problem.

I can't find any language that expressly prohibits hiring lobbyists to make
donations, and I'm not sure how enforceable such a law would be. Are you
referring to chapter 2, section 6, "General Treasury Funds"?

------
psadauskas
Summary: All of our country's (US) problems (obesity, Deep Horizon, bank
bailout) stem from the fact that Congress serves businesses making donations,
rather than the people.

~~~
cma
re: obesity, don't the US corn subsidies for ethanol actually make corn more
expensive? Total total agricultural subsidies (excluding tariffs) amount to
less than 1% of the average american's food budget; much of it for the
aforementioned ethanol. Am I off?

~~~
telemachos
The issue is high fructose corn syrup (made from corn) versus sugar. According
to Lessig, the price of sugar (high relative to corn) and the price of corn
(low relative to sugar) are _both_ a result of market tampering. See 2.17 into
the video. (And in both cases, again according to Lessig the tampering was
straightforwardly paid for by lobbying, which is apparently a very good
investment. That is, it works very well.)

~~~
JeffL
And as a result, we get inferior sodas with corn rather than sugar. The only
country with corn soda as far as I know. =(

------
Empact
What's more fundamental: the way that campaigns are funded, or the fact the
most voters have no clue what their representatives actually stand for? Does
changing campaign funding solve a fundamental problem? It seems to me that
influence can easily be traded for things other than campaign contributions.

The energy company lobbies with millions because they can expect the benefits
of lobbying to exceed the millions. The people could easily out-vote the
special interests, but they run into the rational ignorance problem: with
current technology, the cost of casting an informed vote is greater than the
expected benefit. Isn't that the fundamental problem?

The solution, I think, is to create technology which makes it easy for voters
to hold their reps accountable, thus shifting the task of accountability into
the "worth it" category for regular people. That's what I'm working on anyway:
<http://votereports.org/>

~~~
jacoblyles
When bills are 2000 pages long, every bill is a "special interest" bill. It
doesn't matter what your rep's voting record is, by the time the bill is up
for vote the sausage has already been made.

Asking the public to pay attention to amendments made in committees and
subcommittees is wishful thinking. The inexorable economic logic of special
interests fleecing a Democratic political system crushes the intentions of the
do-gooders.

~~~
Empact
> Asking the public to pay attention to amendments made in committees and
> subcommittees is wishful thinking.

Of course - and not my wish, incidentally. The whole point is to use
technology to lower the cost of informed participation to the point that just
about anybody is willing to do it. This means that somebody has to pay
attention, but we want that somebody to be somebody _else_. That voters don't
have time, but trusted intermediaries can doing legislative scrutiny for them
and simplify it down to a actionable information for busy voters - a simple
score. Interest groups have been issuing this sort of thing for years. Ever
heard of the NRA report card? It's the lynchpin of gun advocacy political
success.

At VoteReports, we're opening up the process of creating these report cards,
simplifying and systematizing it so any user can create them, and building
higher-level concepts and tools on top of them so any voter can get answers
easily and quickly.

> It doesn't matter what your rep's voting record is ... the sausage has
> already been made.

So I guess courts don't matter - the crime has already been committed, right?
The logic of accountability is it deters bad behavior going forward. And if
politicians start losing their cushy jobs because of accountability, do you
really believe they won't shape up?

And yes, as of this week we'll be adding amendments to the mix - so we'll
bring the sausage-making to light by including those actions in their ultimate
score as well.

I guess my logic is a little different: I'm saying, if politicians are voted
for based on their actual actions, rather than party label, incumbency, or
what-not, then bad behavior is punished and the opportunity for proper
representation presents itself. Is that so crazy? What kind of sane political
system doesn't have people voting based on the issues?

------
js2
According to Snopes, the Lincoln quote presented by Lessig is misattributed.
<http://www.snopes.com/quotes/lincoln.asp>

~~~
Benjo
Lessig pulled the video after getting similar feedback:
<http://www.fixcongressfirst.org/blog/entry/lincoln-quote/>

------
JeffL
Just my opinion, but I think that even this may be striking at the root. I've
long thought that what we really need is a constitutional amendment dictating
the separation of economy and state, just as we separate church and state.

There should be no tariffs, since those economically benefit some while
hurting everyone else. There should be no subsidies, as those economically
benefit some while hurting everyone else.

Congress shouldn't be allowed to make complicated tax laws. If there's to be a
tax, it should be simple and described in 1 paragraph. No exemptions, no
breaks, no deductions. Those things are all trying to encourage or discourage
some sort of activity, but it just ends up helping some while hurting everyone
else more.

Congress shouldn't be allowed to redistribute wealth. It just helps some
people while hurting everyone else and has negative secondary consequences. It
as also not a necessary role for government.

Every way that congress dictates that the economy should go ends up helping
some group by some amount and hurting everyone else by even more. That's sort
of by definition, because if it helped everyone involved, it would take place
naturally without the need to legally dictate it.

The domain of government is ultimately force, and when it tries to act in
other areas, its monopoly on force corrupts its actions in those other areas,
so it really needs to be restricted to the very simple act of protecting our
rights as originally spelled out in the constitution. Things like tariffs, tax
exemptions, redistribution of wealth, etc, have nothing to do with the
protection of rights.

~~~
psadauskas
You should read about fairtax.org . Its just a flat sales tax on everything,
and removes all other taxes. People below a set poverty line get 100% of their
taxes refunded.

No room for loopholes.

~~~
mkramlich
loopholes:

1\. no sales tax on anything considered an investment. only on "consumer"
retail goods.

2\. if you owned say a farm to grow food and owned a company or factory or
machinery that could provide for you all the goods and services you needed
(directly, without "selling" it to you) then you would pay no federal sales
tax and therefore no federal tax at all, of any kind. Guess what class of
people would most likely to be able to pull that off? That's right, the very
rich, especially the inherited rich (remember, no tax on inheritance in this
scheme!). Oh but you'd still have to buy the farm/factory/company right? But
that would be an investment. No tax on buying an investment/asset.

3\. buy a "used" good there would be no federal sales tax. only when buying a
new good. (This would probably be abused. Imagine a bunch of people suddenly
only wanting to buy "used" new things (one previous owner, still in new
condition, no more than say 1 day old, etc.)

4\. only retailers would have to collect this tax. if one private individual
sold something to another private individual (or business!) then no tax.

Also, in a system like they propose where there is no IRS and no income tax
reporting, how do they know who is below or above the poverty line? Psychic
powers?

I'll stop now. I haven't even dug very deep.

FairTax.org has some attractive elements but it has a lot of suspicious
elements too that makes me think it's a ploy by the rich/aristocratic class.

~~~
psadauskas
1) Yup. Encourages saving/investing over spending, and credit for more
spending. Not a loophole, this is a win.

2) Yes, a very rich person owning a farm, and the tractors to farm. No private
jet, no Ferrari, no mansion. If someone is able to produce every luxury item
they need, from scratch, then yeah, that wouldn't be taxed. But its such a
tiny minority, I don't think it matters.

3) Um, ok? Sounds like the person that owned it for the one day got hosed.

4) I think thats good, too.

There are problems with FairTax, to be sure, but you listed none of them.

~~~
mkramlich
I pointed out 4 loopholes which let one evade paying any taxes at all to the
Federal government under this system. Meanwhile, said citizen would still be
benefiting from the expenditures made by that same government (defense,
highways, welfare net, etc.) I didn't even list all the loopholes or flaws
with it (for example, no gift tax allows some pretty evil hacks to evade
paying taxes as well. Also a citizen could buy goods and services from foreign
countries and have them mailed home to him, and pay no tax to Fed govt.)
Therefore from my perspective it's a horribly broken proposal as it stands
now.

Also any tax scheme which allows the rich to not pay any taxes at all, while
still requiring working class to do so, cannot be described as a Fair Tax. If
anything the name is an Orwellian mindfuck where the substance is the opposite
of the surface.

What's good about it is the attempt to drastically simplify the tax code and
reduce the amount of government spying on private lives. That goal (assuming
that was their actual goal) is noble. The means described, however, are not.

------
dantheman
As long as people thing the federal government, or government in general,
should be involved in funding, regulating, developing and in general spending
money on things other than it's well defined functions - a minarchist/night-
watchman state.

When someone can greatly affect the outcome of events those who are effected
will try to improve the outcome in their favor. In this case, it's getting
laws passed to benefit you at the expense of everyone else. This happens all
the time, and has happened extensively throughout the past. It has very little
to do with lobbyists, they are merely a symptom. The root problem is that the
government has its hand in everything and can tip the scales arbitrarily that
unless you have someone in washington fighting for your cause you are likely
to get the shaft.

The correct solution is to remove the incentives for people to lobby. This can
be achieved by drastically shrinking the size and authority of the government.
By pushing governance down to local levels it becomes less cost effective to
lobby, it's no longer winner take all -- it becomes winner takes 1/50th and
has to keep winning. It allows democracy to thrive.

Anyway, in short (TLDR) - his ideas are about treating the symptom and not the
cause.

~~~
wdewind
Shrinking the size and authority of the government sounds great in the light
of disincentivizing certain behaviors, but I believe you're applying game
mechanics prematurely here. I (liberals in general mostly) actually don't WANT
a smaller government, I want a better regulated one that in many cases has
MORE power (ie: banking regulation). The solution is not to join the Tea Party
and tear down the federal government, it's to fix the government by providing
a better feedback mechanism, and restore the regulations that Regan etc.
destroyed.

Governance at local levels sounds great, but unfortunately there are things
that need to be regulated federally.

Perhaps a compromise we can agree on is that the separation of authority is
where the core issue lies, and some of that authority certainly needs to be
pushed down to the local level, but some certainly needs federal regulation
(again, Finance, lookin at you).

------
dantheman
His proposal misses the point that money is speech. His favored solution is
limiting campaigns to 100$ per person. Then he of course would need to limit
celebrity endorsements to the 100$ limit, or the amount of volunteer time to
100$ worth, or in any way supporting a candidate to the value of 100$ per
person. Otherwise you're enabling those who have more time available and
greater reach due to celebrity to have a greater reach than those who are busy
working to produce things for the world, and have money to spend but not the
time or voice that others have. It is merely favoring one group over another.
Which is just plain wrong.

~~~
telemachos
He wants to limit donations to citizens (thus excluding corporations). You can
make all the analogies you like about time, celebrity and money, but none of
that is as distorting as corporate-funded lobbying.

Corporate money completely subverts the basic principle of "one person, one
vote." By pouring vast sums of money into lobbying, corporations have
influence all out of proportion to that principle.

~~~
dantheman
Are you against a group of people forming an organization around an issue and
then spending money they raise? How about 10 guys who pool their money to take
out an tv ad for candidate they like? Is that ok?

------
mgw
Could anyone enlighten a foreigner why these bills ('Fair Elections Now Act',
<http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:S752:>) seem stalled? Who
decides when, which actions are taken on what bills?

~~~
gojomo
Any legislator can submit a bill. The majority party's leadership has the
greatest control over which bills get hearings or substantial votes. Most
bills languish indefinitely in the committees they're referred to. Party
senior leaders with keen regional or committee-jurisdiction interests in
certain subjects have disproportionate influence on those subjects, but party
discipline is far less than in a parliamentary system. The minority party can
obstruct with a little help from dissenters in the majority, and can
occasionally force some hearings/votes for show (even if their favored bills
have little chance of passing).

------
barmstrong
Wow - quality of TED talks has been on a steady decline, but this one really
stood out.

~~~
Empact
This is a TEDxBoston talk - TEDx is a series of independently organized groups
who put on events in the spirit of TED.

~~~
mkramlich
Good to hear. Then I'm looking forward to seeing TEDxBoulder this upcoming
Saturday. Hopefully we'll have some talks on par with this one or those from
the main TED conference.

------
mian2zi3
The amazing thing is not so much that our politicians are bought, but they are
bought so cheaply and so profitably by special interests.

------
Synaesthesia
It's a great suggestion to have citizen elections, with the $100 limit, but
there's no way the Senate and House are going to cut off their own election
money!

------
Ardit20
Rather than limit citizen's donation, shouldn't perhaps all election campaigns
be funded by the tax payer?

It is not really fare that a party can win only because it has more money to
communicate their message more widely and effectively. All variable should
perhaps be minimised or eradicated except so that each candidate can be judged
on merit.

I do not think I am in any way qualified to suggest how the system might work,
but perhaps something like a dollar for every member of the party, or ten
dollars for every member, or something like that.

The alternative might be to give each and every party a set amount, however
small or large they might be, but then you might get some Nazi party with 10
million dollars to spend on corrupting the young.

So perhaps the first suggestion is preferable. That way, we are actually and
really paying for them so their lifeline depends on the number of people that
support them. I doubt democracy can be more direct than that.

~~~
Benjo
I think Lessig would be in favor of this. What he's proposing now is a more
practical compromise that is less likely to be ruled unconstitutional.

Practically speaking thought, how do you regulation how campaigns are funded?
Ultimately a campaign is just a bunch of people talking to each other, which
translates into free speech. Constitutional guarantees of free speech and the
14th amendment make it very difficult to restrict how a company can influence
an election.

~~~
Ardit20
I don't actually know how campaigns are funded, but we have a party system so
I suppose they are funded through the party system. That is each individual or
company can donate to the party. What does that have to do with free speech,
we are talking about money. They can speak whatever they like and as freely as
they like as can the companies. The companies can sponsor ads, or do whatever
they like, just not give money to politicians or their party.

And even if it infringes free speach not many things are absolute, even
murdering someone has exceptions, such as self defence, soldiers, or a
policeman for the prevention of crime. If the funding of political campaigns
corrupts the entire system so fundamentally then maybe there should be an
exception. But as I said funding hardly has anything to do with free speech,
they can speak to each other as much as they like.

------
zeynel1
the dumbest socialism man ever produced - socialized --risk-- privatized
--benefit--

wow - this really defines the wall street and the united states of america as
it exists today - this says in effect that wall street is a --legal-- ponzi
scheme - the risk of the ponzi scheme is -insured- by people and the benefit
-is- sure to go to the people who run the ponzi scheme - what an insight --i--
wish i said this myself

~~~
jacksoncarter
It's not a ponzi scheme, because additional wealth is created by the
investment of the capital. That capital buys factories, jobs, and marketing.

In a ponzi scheme, the investment goes _solely_ to pay off previous investors
-- that's it.

Wall Street is not a ponzi scheme.

~~~
mkramlich
Not true. Some of the money the Ponzi operator takes in _is_ siphoned off to
himself, in the form of "fees" or whatever. That's the reason he's in it for,
in part, along with hopefully absconding with ideally the entirety of the last
big round just before he folds it and runs and or gets exposed. Ideally, he
just keeps it going for a long time and and his fees grow since it's a
percentage.

Wall Street refers to this big amorphous blob comprised of many individual
entities and transactions and businesses. Some of them do very much resemble
Ponzi schemes. All of them? Of course not. Some? Yes.

------
noverloop
European countries just banned the most costly part of elections: TV
advertising.

------
Synaesthesia
Great movie. Thanks

