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Comment by sequoia | Hacker News Reader

It seems like this whole hubub is about someone stating openly what's a well known open secret in US politics: He who pays the piper calls the tune. I mean, really, EVERYONE knows this. "Why did my industry's trade association spend 1.8 million dollars on various candidates who may be voting on legislation that makes or costs us 10 times that much? Oh, no reason... we just think they are very nice ladies and gentlemen and we love to be helpful. :)"

Chris Dodd just stated more plainly what is 115% clear to all the recipients of this cash: "We are paying you to make specific legislative decisions in our favor. Stop doing that job and we stop paying." i.e. quid pro quo i.e. bribery. I'd really like to hear ideas of how we can stop this racket; I'm afraid asking Barack Goldman Sachs Obama to "look into it" isn't going to work (tho I did sign the petition).

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Larry Lessig (the same guy who single-handedly designed Creative Commons) has spent the last 4 years investigating how to "stop this racket", and summarizes his thoughts in this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/...

If you want to know what to do, a nice first step would be to buy and read Republic, Lost.

Why not just pirate it?

The fact that it's a whole book makes me nervous.

A strategy which requires a whole book to be explained sounds like giving up on anything simple and claiming we can go through 1001 non-radical steps to eventually get to a happy place.

This to me is a form of denial. You realize simple solutions can not be practically implemented and you convince yourself a marathon of tiny changes is the way to go.

(Disclaimer: I have not read that book.)

> The fact that it's a whole book makes me nervous.

At least 3/4ths of the book beats you over the head with countless examples of the corruption, how it came to be, and why it's not technically illegal.

The very last part covers potential solutions, none of which have a great chance of success due to the vested interests but should be tried anyway. e.g. a constitutional convention is one way out, if we can convince enough states to call one.

The very last part covers potential solutions, none of which have a great chance of success due to the vested interests but should be tried anyway

What happens if we try them all and they (as expected) do not succeed?

If they don't have a great chance of success, why can't we find other solutions?

I'd really like to hear ideas of how we can stop this racket

I can think of a way to get money out of congress: remove elections.

Think of it: serving in Congress could be like Jury Duty. Everyone's in the pool and every election cycle random people are selected from the pool and asked to serve.

With no elections, there are no campaigns to donate to. It would be illegal for any Congressperson to accept any gifts or money from anyone other than their paycheck from the government and a ban on working for, directly or indirectly, with any person or corporation that was affected by any bills in which the Congressperson participated or voted.

Would there still be corruption and political favors? Absolutely. People would still have a tendency to push for laws that would benefit either themselves, family, or friends or the industry in which they worked.

The lack of up-front monetary gain would likely have a significant impact but corruption is a problem of honesty and integrity which human nature tends to lack and tacks personal disciple to evolve.

Until mankind becomes entirely focused on building social welfare (what's good for all) instead of personal welfare (what's good for me), these problems will always be here.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but without elections, you also don't have democracy, right?

I of course do not mean to say that democracy is The Answer to All Problems, but this idea seems to touch the very core of the political system in place.

Random selection (qua jury duty) is still "statistically democratic" and without bribery may very well be more democratic than what we have now.

Well Athens had that system and made some bad kneejerk descisons - for example The Mytilenian Debate.

And you would be handing much more power to unelected civil servants.

I think both parties going to OMOV and doing away with primary's go back to state delegates deciding who the presidential candidates are - Oh and I would ban mandating of delegations.

That's part of the point I'm trying to get across. Every political system has it's pros and cons. I studied Comparative Politics in University and we studied various forms of government and election law, each trying to solve a specific problem but introducing their own different problems.

> Until mankind becomes entirely focused on building social welfare (what's good for all) instead of personal welfare (what's good for me), these problems will always be here.

Until we start building social and political systems for humanity as it is rather than humanity as we might idealistically want it to be, we're going to have these problems -- not that I'm convinced that self-interest is really something we want to eradicate from human psychology. Markets already have features which effectively translate self-interest into the greater good, and so does democracy in the sense that if everyone voted selfishly, majority rule would benefit the majority. So let's focus on where markets and democracy aren't working the way we'd want them to and stop wringing our hands about how evil and selfish the human nature is.

If everyone voted selfishly then majority rule would benefit the majority? I don't think so. This definitely doesn't scale in the way you seem to think it does.

An extreme example. Suppose a country consists of three tribes. Each tribe hates the other. Tribe A hates tribe B less than C. A & B vote to combine their interests in liquidating C. After C is gone the majority tribe then votes to kill off the smaller remaining tribe.

Given the grand scale of environmental destruction going on in the world I don't think its fair to say that markets (nominally free ones) have done such a good job of translating self-interest into the greater good.

What's good for each of us does not necessarily translate into what is good.

Those are exactly the kind of problems I meant when I said "let's focus on where markets and democracy aren't working the way we'd want them to". You're grossly misrepresenting what I said: I didn't say markets and democracy (especially the way they're currently implemented!) perfectly translate individual self-interest into the greater good; I said they have features which do.

I did read that last sentence of yours and tried to think about your overall message. The part where you wrote about markets effectively translating selfish behavior into the greater good seemed to indicate that you thought the parts where markets aren't working are a side issue.

I don't think everyone pursuing their own self interest is at all a good thing when done on a global scale. I think the features of markets lead people like myself into knowingly buying products made by oppressed labor. It leads me to buy gas from companies that pollute on a grand scale in Nigeria and Ecuador. I think the self-interest aspect of markets is far more destructive than the positives are positive. I gathered from what you wrote that you think the opposite. Hence I tried to briefly explain why all of pursuing our self-interest is a bad thing, overall.

> I don't think everyone pursuing their own self interest is at all a good thing when done on a global scale.

I think that's irrelevant. Humans have whatever natural inclinations they have. Propose solutions that work with them or shut up; misanthropically blaming human nature isn't constructive in the slightest.

Frankly, this is the same kind of unenlightened thinking that e.g. the Catholic Church applies to questions of public health. The Church thinks that the solution to AIDS is for people not to fuck; enlightened thinking realizes that people do fuck and proposes a system of preventative health care, including condoms, that addresses that reality. It's funny to see the selfsame leftists who condemn the Catholic Church for trying to keep condoms out of Africa apply the same basic fallacy to economics. If we just stop people from being self-interested....

Your tone is inappropriate. There is no need for me to shut up.

Step 1 of fixing a problem is to understand the nature of the problem. If one thinks that selfishness is a good thing that leads to positive outcomes then the same destructive path we are on will continue. Recognition that everyone acting in their self-interest does not collectively yield good results would be a giant step forward into solving some of the pressing problems our species has.

You're still not understanding my point; in fact, you've got it totally backwards. If people's actual behavior doesn't produce good results in the current political and economic system, change the system until it does. Don't try and change human nature, that's just ridiculous. If people are going to be self-interested, treat that as a requirement and build a system that gets the most common good out of that. You'll get more that way than by wringing your hands about individual sinfulness.

Naive randomly selected lawmakers are just going to be pounced on by significantly more experienced and predatory lobbyists. They'll think of a way to bribe these regular people.

I have a slight twist on this idea: make it more like a lottery where each citizen automatically gets one ticket. If you win you sit for one term in the office and are paid $10 million per year. Once you leave office you are paid $1 million per year for life. Money is always going to find its way into government - why not just do it upfront?

That's a great idea. Just like the draft. There could even be a Constitutional boot camp, so you can learn how to be a member of Congress.

> I'd really like to hear ideas of how we can stop this racket

The simple solution - in the sense that it's an obvious one, and a naive one - is to just forbid campaign contributions altogether.

Then only independently wealthy candidates or publicly funded candidates could run.

Yup, that's why it's naive. One possible patch for this issue is to forbid spending money on elections, but again, that just opens up new cans of worms.

As long as we have an uneven distribution of wealth, we will have an uneven distribution of power.

It doesn't matter what laws you try to pass or what government you try to have. The entities who those laws threaten will fight against them.

You sound a lot like Obama, who wants everyone's paycheck to be same except his own.

Down voting is not going to help, have you heard his any speech in last year? in most of his speeches he has talked about distribution of wealth.

What motivation does the smart people have if that happens? Entrepreneurs work hard and give up their social and personal lives to become successful and at the end of it if distribution of wealth happens who would want to do that?

So my comment was not just a remark but is a fact and he talks about wealth distribution any chance he gets.

As a society, we need acknowledge that using money to influence voters is simply a way to increase voting power beyond "1 man, 1 vote".

One way to mitigate that is to ban independent advertising on behalf of candidates (SuperPACs), require all donors to donate into a common pot which candidates may draw equally from, and require all media companies to provide equal time to candidates on their networks.

A downside of this approach is that many insincere candidates may exhaust the common campaign financing pool. Requiring failed candidates to pay back a percentage of their spend may be a way to mitigate that (e.g. a "co-pay").

> Requiring failed candidates to pay back a percentage of their spend may be a way to mitigate that (e.g. a "co-pay").

Doesn't this also create a pretty powerful disincentive for the non-wealthy to run?

There would need to be a mechanism which prevents insincere candidates from looting the common campaign financing pool.

As you pointed out, the challenge is to find the least bad one. In this country, many health plans require a co-pay of $10-$20 in order to see a doctor. The purpose of the co-pay is to deter would-be patients from flooding doctors with trivial inquiries who would then be able to bill insurers for their (wasted) time.

So, yes, a co-pay is a disincentive, but arguably less so than the disincentives present in the system it's proposed to replace.

Which is why we finesse the obvious but naive solution.

Campaign contributions are becoming / have become de facto bribery, but without campaign contributions only the independently wealthy can stand for office.

How about limiting how much an individual entity can donate? We don't allow the rich more votes because they've got more assets so could we not also restrict the amount they're able to donate?

How about restricting donors to entites entitled to vote in an election? Whatever my opinion on (say) Julia Gillard, I'm not eligible to vote for her or for any of her opponents because I've got nothing to do with Australia. Logically therefore (and my knowledge of Australian electoral law is almost nil, so this point is purely hypothetical), what is the justification for allowing me to influence the election by funding candidates?

Corporations don't have votes beyond the individual votes of their owners and employees in spite of their legal personhood, and that's good. Likewise, I think there's a case to be made that as unenfranchised legal persons, they shouldn't be able to influence elections financially.

There are already limits. Around ~$2k per person per politician and around ~$30k for a party committee for a single person. Encouraging people you have influence over to donate can help overcome this limit.

And yet we regularly see corporate donations to individual campaigns well above that level; clearly there are ways around the rules as they stand.

What is the difference between that behavior, and groups of people deciding they don't want to donate to representatives who don't represent them anymore?

Magnitude.

>I'd really like to hear ideas of how we can stop this racket;

The law not only has failed, but the lawmaking process has become 100% corrupt, therefor one should consider options that are not lawful.

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