Larry Lessig's approach is fundamentally misguided:
1. It increases complexity and discourages participation in the election system - campaign finance regulations are anti-free speech.
2. It treats the symptom, not the problem. The symptom is that people will spend a lot to get people important to them into office. The problem is that the government controls so much money and so many things, that it is in your best interest to try influence it so that 1. the money comes to you and 2. the laws and regulations favor you.
3. The centralization of power at the Federal level exacerbates this problem, since there is one main body that you are trying to influence instead of lots of smaller ones.
Lessig's point is a fair one. And it's not about banning lobbying.
The problem is the same - money in congress is distorting its policies, agendas and outcomes.
But Lessig's solution is to make the money = the people's voice. He recognizes that money will flow, and is in fact part of the process. But the idea is that you structure the system such that the candidates want to get monies from their constituents more than they want it from the big businesses.
He proposes one way to realign these interests is to publicly fund elections - in some way or another.
But Lessig is fighting the wrong battle, as long as the government is doling out piles of money, picking winners and losers through regulations and bailouts it will make sense to try and influence them, and there is no way to stop "corruption", we should note that this isn't taking bribes etc, without hampering legitimate forms of speech.
Lessig seems to be willing to limit our ability practice political speech through regulations and limitations, and to entrench the current political system by focus on government funded elections in which of course only major parties will be able to speak.
Lawrence Lessig argues that the fundamental problem in government is money. Getting elected is expensive, so candidates have to build a network of donors, which creates an obvious conflict of interest if they get elected. A decent introduction to Lessig's ideas can be found here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/...
Public financing of elections would be a definite step in the right direction and meets all of your constraints.
I would agree with that. So here's what Lessig doesn't get now: he thinks that the money going into politics is the problem. It's not, it's just a symptom. The immense centralized power that Congress has to pick winners and losers, and to grant special favors, is the problem. As long as that power exists, no law can stop the money from flowing to the politicians (and their families). The force at work here is that special interests get a positive return on investment by supplicating to those in power, because those in power can give them what they want at the expense of others.
Congress is not uniquely problematic because members of Congress have to raise money. Everyone has to raise money. Larry Lessig has had to raise money many times in his career.
There are two reasons that members of Congress have to spend so much time raising money.
First, there are strict limits on federal campaign contributions. Candidates can only get up to $2,700 from each person per cycle, and no money from organizations at all. Nonprofit guys like Bill McKibben or Grover Norquist can land $100,000 in one meeting. It will take a federal candidate at least 37 individual donors to get the same amount.
I'm not saying the limits are bad. I think they are good. But they have side effects.
Second, people don't want to give money to politicians, so it takes a ton of time and energy to get even small donations.
And here is where Lessig and others have been so counter-productive. They think they're making the sort of subtle argument that you describe. They think they're firing people up for action. But what they've actually done is promulgate 2 simple messages: 1) Money In Politics Is Bad, and 2) The System Is So Broken You Can't Win.
Both these messages discourage their fans from engaging effectively in political and civic institutions--thereby making things even worse for themselves. Lessig told all his fans that money is bad and politics is unwinnable... of course he's having trouble creating a political movement!
Lessig's thesis, if I'm not mistaken, is that only people who contribute money to politicians have access to them, and therefore only issues the contributors care about are dealt with.
He would like to limit the maximum amount an individual is able to contribute to a very low figure (something like $100 or less) in order to change who has or has not access.
As a French, I find this very naive. Our politicians and their campaigns are paid for by public money, and have been for over 20 years now. It doesn't make our politicians more willing to listen to ordinary people. French politicians invented -- and implemented! -- Hadopi, for instance.
Access is very important, yes, but it's an illusion to link access with just money. I would say access is 1/3 social circles (who politicians went to school with, who they're married to, etc.), 1/3 power (economic power such as who employs the most people, but also who can make the most noise (farmers!!!)) and 1/3 "cultural power" (stars and pseudo-stars politicians meet when they're invited on a TV show, etc.)
Just because one removes the access that money give, they won't miraculously make politicians unbiased. Humans are biased, not just politicians, and there's not much anyone can do about it.
What can be done is what the founders of the US have done: write a strong Constitution and a stronger Bill of Rights. Despite what everyone says and complains about, that has proven to work pretty well for the last 200 years.
1. Can Oprah, or any famous person, support/campaign for a candidate? How is her cashing on her celebrity any different than a person funding an advertisement? And the current laws to a large extent support the idea money=speech. Lessig's group couldn't even follow the campaign laws that already exist (http://www.campaignfreedom.org/2014/11/20/fec-complaint-mayd...)
2. The problem I've identified is that the federal government has grown too large and does too many things. This is the problem, powerful people will be powerful and have an influence on society - through fame, money, etc.
3. Reducing the scope of the government could easily be accomplished if the commerce clause was read in a different way. If granting new power to the federal government required constitutional amendments then it would be better -- prohibition required an amendment, why don't modern drug laws? Additionally, returning the selection of senators to the state government instead of a popular vote would also be be an improvement.
I don't think he has nailed the arguments, I think he fundamentally simplifies and distorts the case. Money is a symptom, the problem is the size/scope/breadth of action.
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.
Even if by some miracle you could make it happen, "taking money out of politics" won't work, either, unless you somehow include, e.g., AARP, both public- and private-sector unions, and every "underrepresented" minority voting bloc, not to mention anyone rich enough to own a media company. That isn't remotely an exhaustive list, and in any case I fear that the savviest special interest groups are far too clever to be stopped by mere campaign finance reform. Unfortunately, the root of the problem is one level deeper than Lessig, et al., are prepared to dig.
Basically, publicly-funded elections could remove the corrupting influence of corporate money. Still not clear on how we get there, but I may pick up his latest book to learn more
I don't see what's to stop special-interest-funded candidates from using their already existing money to advertise to the people and get as many My Voice Tax Credits from them as possible (if only to dry up money for the other candidates).
A Constitutional amendment would at least trump the Supreme Court. I wish Lessig would just insist on getting Congress to pass an Amendment he wants. But the states are already on their way, bypassing Congress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_PAC#Progress_in_particula...
I like the other solutions Lessig is promoting, especially FairVote.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean nickff, and I'd like to. Is this a slippery slope argument, where if we start restricting spending, we might empower the government to restrict other things (like stamps) which can influence elections? Or is it that you think that restricting spending by any person or corporation in any way would result in a more distorted process than what we have now? Or something else?
If it does seem likely that restrictions on spending _could_ restrict free speech, do you think that they _will necessarily_ restrict free speech? Maybe it just means we need to be careful in our implementation so we restrict the bad parts of unlimited spending while allowing the good stuff. I hope so, although I'd love to hear good evidence pointing either way.
And just to bring this back to the context of Lessig's plan, they don't want to restrict spending at all (https://mayday.us/the-plan/#fundamental-reform-in-the-way-el...), at least not until they try more important stuff first. They just want to make it more desirable to raise money from the many instead of the few.
I agree that the feedback loop between corporations who contribute to political campaigns with money and politicians that can regulate/deregulate and who need money to run their campaigns to get (re)elected is corrupting. They are extorting each other for money and regulatory influence. This does not mean that rich corporations, regulation or money in political campaigns are inherently corrupting.
It just means that the way it works need to be adjusted.
"For example, to borrow an idea from Yale’s Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres, if elections were funded by what we could call “democracy vouchers,” where citizens could allocate up to $50 to any candidate and candidates could receive money only from citizens in their districts, then a dependency upon voters might well be the same as, or close enough to, a dependency upon contributors."
http://bostonreview.net/BR35.5/lessig.php
This is a feature of democracy. The solution is not campaign finance reform, it is reform of democracy itself. Place additional separation between the people/corporations and the purse-strings of the treasury, and you will reduce this problem. Alternatively, you can take power & responsibility away from the government so that market forces come to bear upon the issue.
Democracy is, after all, a system in which a determined voting majority can use the hammer of the state to extract wealth from the rest of the population. Many people vote in self-defense.
I know that arguing for smaller government and less democracy is an unpopular position, but it is the only way to achieve long-term success. The areas of the economy with the most government involvement and regulation are where we find costs ballooning out of control: healthcare, prisons, infrastructure, student loans, military. Continuing on the present course is not sustainable.
Campaign finance reform is a bad idea. Not only would it also limit legitimate free speech it also wouldn't solve the problem. The real problem is excessive power in the hands of the government. Today congress has its fingers in every industry, to a degree that can easily result in causing the success or failure of one or another company based on their more or less arbitrary decisions. This creates a natural need to try to control or influence that power. If we take away the ability to contribute to campaigns then corporations and moneyed interests will simply turn to more direct forms of corruption.
In short corruption is a symptom, trying to stop the least objectionable types of it will merely drive it underground and more direct. The problem we need to solve is the ability of corruption to be successful.
So if your real problem is with money in politics, why not get money out of politics instead of targeting this weird, roundabout, more difficult to implement, and antidemocratic method that may not have any actual impact on the problem?
I think it's important to note who the lobbyists are trying to speak for: it's you as a voter. Same with money.
Bottom line: you cannot buy a political office anywhere in America. You still must be voted in. You also cannot directly give money to a politician for their personal benefit; money can only be contributed to their (re-)election campaign. It's valuable because it buys media (that's 60% or more of a campaign cost).
So money, and lobbyists, are just proxies for large blocks of votes.
To fix this problem, you really need voters who stand by their own principles and aren't overly influenced by one-sided media (that's the only reason a politician needs money).
You also need to somehow disconnect the influence of media and advertising from actual voters. Would love to hear ideas on that particular problem.
More realistic changes include those that Lessig proposes: finance campaigns through what is effectively a capped tax credit offered to every taxpayer to allocate among candidates as they see fit, then repeal Citizens United.
2. It treats the symptom, not the problem. The symptom is that people will spend a lot to get people important to them into office. The problem is that the government controls so much money and so many things, that it is in your best interest to try influence it so that 1. the money comes to you and 2. the laws and regulations favor you.
3. The centralization of power at the Federal level exacerbates this problem, since there is one main body that you are trying to influence instead of lots of smaller ones.
reply