TEDx Talks
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 11 months, 2017–2024
20:54 · 2.7M views · Oct 20, 2015
Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig argues that US democracy is corrupted by money, since a tiny fraction of the population effectively funds who gets elected. He says fixing this must come before addressing issues like climate change or student debt.
It is HN's go-to link in threads on lobbying, campaign finance and political dysfunction, as a clear statement of Lessig's root-cause argument.
12 comments from Hacker News
I've spent large amounts of time in other countries. America is an absolute embarrassment. There are countries you can go where it feels like the government actually cares about trying to help people have a better life. There are countries where infrastructure projects get completed. There are countries where infrastructure isn't just completed, it's good . There are countries where the administrative overhead of health care is 2% instead of (a likely underestimated) 25%. You can't fix infrastructure policy, or any other policy, in America without first fixing campaign finance reform. As long as senators and justices can be openly bought and sold there is no hope of getting responsible leadership that acts in the interests of citizens. Very good video explaining the core issue of American politics by Harvard Law professor and founder of creative commons Lawrence Lessig-- Our democracy no longer represents the people : this video
Lawrence Lessig (Harvard law professor famous for fighting for sane copyright law) does a great presentation on the root cause of Americas problems. He also ran for president in 2016. It can be watched here: this video The short version is that to win primaries you need money. Money mainly comes from corporations and rich people. Taking money from corporations and rich people creates a relationship where you have some loyalty to them or they can punish you if you don't act how they want. Thus the primary corrupting force in America is pro-corruption campaign finance laws. The test for democracy is whether elected politicians pass legislation that the public at large wishes to be passed. Our very own Princeton did a study to answer this question. The key finding: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”[1] In a very real, non hyperbolic sense we are in a plutocracy where money rules. We are not a democracy due chiefly to our campaign finance laws. Here is a campaign that aims to work on this: [LINK] [1] [LINK]
The problem is that what we understand as theoretical democracy and what is generally practically applied on the ground are two philosophically different things. An anti-thesis of democracy itself. Prof Lawrence Lessig of Harvard nails it when he calls this type of corruption of democracy as Tweedism. Here's a quick summary of his thesis (2015): this video Here's a longer, more academic, version (2014): [LINK] Both talks begin with the Hong Kong student protests of 2014.
Larry Lessig backs both net neutrality and democracy. See his plan for restoring democracy to the United States: this video The main points are: 1) Citizen funded campaigns 2) Equal representation (ie, Proportional Representation) 3) Equal freedom to vote
Won’t matter. ‘They’ donate to both sides of the isle. Lessig has a good video that breaks a lot of this process down. this video