How about something depressing for a change?

[tim]

You know, I post a lot of links and crap on this journal and more so on Facebook, but if you never read anything else I link to, read this article by Larry Lessig from this week's _The Nation_:

How to Get Our Democracy Back

He argues that the most important issue in the US right now is the insidious presence of corporate campaign contributions that effectively allow votes to be bought and sold. No, this isn't a new point, but Lessig argues for it with clarity and passion. The part I found most insightful:

Everyone inside this game recognizes that if the public saw too clearly that the driving force in Washington is campaign cash, the public might actually do something to change that. So every issue gets reframed as if it were really a question touching some deep (or not so deep) ideological question. Drug companies fund members, for example, to stop reforms that might actually test whether "me too" drugs are worth the money they cost. But the reforms get stopped by being framed as debates about "death panels" or "denying doctor choice" rather than the simple argument of cost-effectiveness that motivates the original reform. A very effective campaign succeeds in obscuring the source of conflict over major issues of reform with the pretense that it is ideology rather than campaign cash that divides us.

[Emphasis added.]

I agree with Lessig that you have to fix the campaign financing system before you can fix much else. I suspect I might disagree with him in that I think the most fundamental problems are those that don't yield to such a solution (we might still find that even if we get into a situation where all individuals have an equal say in politics, many of those individuals will still be racist and will have an interest in framing poverty moralistically). Still, I think the article is worth overcoming all of our Internet-induced antipathy to anything that takes more than five minutes to read.

Comments

[asrabkin]

Lessig is a smart guy, but I'm unconvinced.

He talks about restoring Congress's "institutional integrity". When was the last time they had it? I think it went missing sometime in the 1830s, and has mostly been absent ever since. The underlying problem is that small groups of very motivated people can outweigh large numbers of not-very-interested ones. And that's not going to change.

You can restrict direct contributions to candidates. If you wanted to ban private groups from doing targeted GOTV, from doing independent expenditures, etc etc, you'd basically have to repeal the First Amendment. I don't think there's a way to restrict private expenditures without basically having the government prohibit private newspapers from having an editorial line, and then instituting strict government oversight of reporting to ensure that the so-called newspaper isn't just a party mouthpiece.

[etb]

The underlying problem is that small groups of very motivated people can outweigh large numbers of not-very-interested ones.

Why do you think that's "the" underlying problem?

Isn't an oppressed minority exactly a small group that is highly motivated to rid itself of oppression, versus the majority which is not very interested?

You seem to be conflating motivation and money. The problem is not that people who fervently believe in something sometimes get their way. The problem is that absurdly rich interests get their way just because they're absurdly rich.

You can restrict direct contributions to candidates.

And publicly fund elections.

If you wanted to ban private groups from ...

Where did this come from? If it's in the Lessig piece, I missed it.

I don't think there's a way to restrict private expenditures without basically having ...

Again, where did this come from?

BTW, I know it's un-American to acknowledge the existence of other countries, but you should realize that trying to equate restrictions on third-party spending to FREE SPEECH GONE!!!! NEWSPAPERS BECOME PARTY MOUTHPIECES!!!11!1! looks kind of silly when you're next door to a country that restricts third-party spending, without having "basically" repealed 2(b).

[asrabkin]

I didn't mean to say "dedicated minorities should be ignored"! The problem is that if you design a system that lets oppressed minorities protect themselves, it'll also allow non-oppressed minorities to protect themselves. And since they're not oppressed, they'll use the mechanism more than the real oppressed groups. I think this is an acceptable tradeoff. I didn't mean to say that we should restrict special interest groups. I meant to say that it's pretty much inevitable in a free country that special interests will have outsized influence.

The most notorious special interest in America is midwestern farmers, who have left us with farm subsidies that are, as near as I can tell, indefensible on social, ecological, or economic grounds. But farmers aren't poor, but they're not at all "absurdly rich". Even ADM isn't all that rich compared to the set of people who buy food.

You could certainly hand public money to candidates, though I don't see why allowing incumbent politicians to control campaign finance would necessary improve democracy.

The reason why I brought up private expenditures and "independent" expenditures on behalf of candidates is that there isn't much point in barring direct expenditures on behalf of candidates if the people with the money can just spend it "independently." Moving campaign spending from the parties to independent 527 groups is only a limited benefit. So any serious reform along the lines Lessig is proposing really does need to restrict independent private expenditures. I assumed that was taken for granted.

[etb]

Moving campaign spending from the parties to independent 527 groups is only a limited benefit.

It's a significant benefit. Buying access to a politician is much easier than buying the opinions of the voters. To buy the voters, you have to have a public debate where the opposing side gets a chance to refute (in practice, to shout louder than) the other side. And it's tough to persuade voters to give preferential treatment to, say, a monopolistic collection of health insurance companies. You may, after a great deal of effort and money, convince them that the system of having private health insurance is fine, but you can't publicly convince the population that a particular set of companies should get to write their own regulations, which is what access to a politician gets you.

The most notorious special interest in America is midwestern farmers

Farmers, a more notorious special interest than defense contractors and health insurance companies? Seriously? When I lived in the US, I didn't notice food prices skyrocketing, and I didn't hear about thousands of people going bankrupt and starving to death because they hit whatever the food equivalent of the Illness Jackpot would be.