
How to Fight Corruption with Game Theory - jim-greer
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/29/how-to-fight-corruption-with-game-theory.html
======
jim-greer
I'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.

~~~
jim-greer
I'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-
teacho...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/books/review/zephyr-teachouts-
corruption-in-america.html)

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
My highlights of that review are here:

[https://www.highly.co/article/547af11a6c696c7d69220000/user/...](https://www.highly.co/article/547af11a6c696c7d69220000/user/545a6ed56c696c19a8030000/)

If you want you can sign up using code 'hellohighly'

------
tomohawk
Next 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
Want to back that up with some evidence?

~~~
tomohawk
The 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.

~~~
jim-greer
> Shouldn't a political debate be more about ideas than the people who are
> involved?

What if the idea is "I'd like a big contract for my construction company"

Or, "I'd like favorable regulation for my cable broadband provider".

This isn't just a debating society. It's a market with winners and losers.
Donor harassment is a pretty abstract problem, with Brenden Eich as pretty
much the only example. Corruption is routine, massive, and very concrete.

~~~
tomohawk
Having my boss be able to tell how I contributed to a political campaign is
not an abstract problem. It's been a big enough problem in the past that there
were laws passed to try to prevent it (see for example, the Hatch act).

Mr Eich is the only example I mentioned. In just this one political cause
(prop 8) he was one of many people who were bullied.

How about Scott Eckern? How about Jose Nunez?

And, for each example that has been made, how many people choose to remain
silent? How does that get measured? Making high profile examples out of people
is very cost effective and efficient. It demoralizes and defunds your
opposition.

I find whole idea that it is somehow acceptable to enable the bullying of
individuals by extremist groups to be deeply unsettling. Anonymous donations
prevent this sort of abuse very simply and effectively.

If it's corruption you're after, then go after that. Either limit the power
that the elected officials have (term limits, etc) or investigate them.

People with money and power will always find ways to buy certain politicians.
If one way is blocked, another will open up. Just look at how many politicians
have cushy K street jobs once they retire (provided they do their masters
bidding while in office). No campaign donations to trace or disclose.

~~~
Cushman
Am I the only one who's uncomfortable with the idea that political speech is
kosher, but responding to political speech in a way which is "bullying" is
not?

I feel like we should do more to separate the abusive harassment (which is
clearly not okay) from other real-life consequences, maybe including losing
friends or a job, that come with holding and furthering a political belief.
The latter seems like it could plausibly be a feature of a well-functioning
political discourse.

~~~
tomohawk
Why would you think that firing an employee over a political contribution they
made or did not make would be in any way acceptable?

Well functioning political discourse is, above all, tolerant. A hallmark of
non-functioning politics is the use of coercion.

How would you feel if you worked for one company, and they required you to
fund a certain cause. Then, you get fed up with that, but you're now on the
officially reported doner list for that cause (which your employer used to
ensure compliance), and another employer says they won't hire you based on a
simple web search of causes you've "supported" in the past?

~~~
Cushman
> Why would you think that firing an employee over a political contribution
> they made or did not make would be in any way acceptable?

Why would you think making a political contribution is in any way acceptable?
Because we live in a free society. You can't force someone to employ you.
We've generally outlined narrow exceptions to that rule, and this generally
isn't one.[0]

If you don't support a business's politics, if you don't think they'll use
their money for good, you have the right not to give them yours. It doesn't
seem at all intuitive to me that that right should disappear when the money's
moving the other way.

(Of course that presumes a well-functioning market for labor... If (hah) that
doesn't exist, we can only expect workers to be exploited in millions of
different ways, large and small, and this is still not a good hill to die on.)

[0] I (and many HNers) happen to live in one of the few US states where
political retaliation by employers is actually banned, and while I broadly
appreciate the sentiment, I'm not at all sure it's morally superior in the way
you're trying to claim. Look at what a huge problem liberal protection of
political speech caused in _Citizens United_ , for example.

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scoofy
A 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.

~~~
jim-greer
Wait, 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-a...](http://online.wsj.com/articles/as-births-slow-p-g-turns-to-adult-
diapers-1405554364)

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.

~~~
saraid216
> 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.

I found this dubious, so I went googling. I felt I ought to share what I
found:

[http://www.benzinga.com/general/politics/14/11/5012697/why-m...](http://www.benzinga.com/general/politics/14/11/5012697/why-
money-didnt-buy-the-2014-midterms)

~~~
jim-greer
Thanks - my point is actually narrower. It's that if both sides have enough
money to saturate the voters with their message, additional money is of low
marginal utility. Otherwise we'd have Meg Whitman as our governor in CA. She
outspent Jerry Brown by nearly 5x in 2010, and lost by 13 points.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/01/meg-whitman-
outspen...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/01/meg-whitman-outspent-
bro_n_816677.html)

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bostik
The 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
I'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
> 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-
teacho...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/books/review/zephyr-teachouts-
corruption-in-america.html)

~~~
brokenmusic
Crime 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
Uh, violent crime exists. And it's worth fighting. Right? As is corruption? Or
do you think we should give up on both?

~~~
brokenmusic
What 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
You 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
I 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.

~~~
brokenmusic
A failed state doesn't mean absence of government. Similarly to how if you
burn a church, it wouldn't make all the people in the village atheists.

What people who dislike governments can realistically do is not comply and ask
for no permission. Don't pay taxes, use Bitcoin, ignore stupid laws, don't
send children to government schools. Peacefully disobey.

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jchendy
There'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/)

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john2x
Interesting 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
It's a minor incentive, but honestly candidates mostly care about having
enough money to get their message out, regardless of the source.

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JDDunn9
Oh, all we have to do is out-spend the largest corporations in the world.
Problem solved...

~~~
jim-greer
See my above comment. Elections are about the size of the world-wide market
for adult diapers. It's do-able.

------
danieltillett
Jim 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
That's a possibility - we've also thought about imposing a cap on spending and
going after the first candidate to violate it.

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tormeh
The NRA has been doing this for years.

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alexpritchett
I'm not convinced that you know what game theory actually is...

~~~
jim-greer
I'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_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#Real-
life_examples)

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aligajani
Solving social problems with numbers ? Doesn't seem right.

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bring1
Can 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.

~~~
Cushman
Free 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.

~~~
hayksaakian
Let's not presume this is all about "free speech". The Supreme Court has
placed restrictions on free speech that society has come to accept. (Not that
I agree with them).

For example, the supreme court has made exceptions to the 1st amendment for
obscenity, of all things.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_excep...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions#Obscenity)

Now that we can recognize the Supreme Court has made exceptions to first
amendment, it's fair to dispute whether paid political contributions should
qualify as free speech or if it should be forbidden as an exception.

The fact that Citizens United already happened should not stop people from
disputing it, or the precedent it set.

~~~
Cushman
> [1]
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_excep...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_excep..).

 _speech is unprotected if (1) ... and (2) ... and (3) "the work, taken as a
whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value"_

Political speech especially is sacrosanct in US jurisprudence. It's widely
held as the reason we even _need_ free speech. On the balance of protected
speech, having a legitimate political message is not a thumb so much as a foot
on the scale.

 _If_ you grant that money spent to promote a political message counts as
political expression, by limiting it we're talking about censoring _a lot_ of
speech, across the entirety of political discourse. You will not find any
restriction on any speech anywhere in law that even approaches it in scope.
And we'll be censoring _exactly_ the speech we feel is _most_ important not
to. This will not fly.

So, you need to either come up with a reason _not_ to consider money spent to
promote a message as an expression of that message, _or_ come up with a
justification for why, despite this being speech with a valid political
message, it is _vitally necessary_ that it be censored.

Either of those could plausibly be argued, but the arguments I've seen are
mainly along the lines of "Money obviously isn't speech!" and "Clearly, the
rich shouldn't be allowed to speak louder than the poor!" In the eyes of
Constitutional law, those things are neither obvious nor clear.

------
gimpei78
I 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
We 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
I still don't see how this is game theory. This just seems like a classic
carrot-and-stick approach.

~~~
jim-greer
What 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_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#Real-
life_examples)

