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LESSIG_CLARITY

                                             January 18, 2012

   Some misc notes from soon
   after the Lessig Longnow                      LONG_SHOT
   talk, even less organized
   than usual.


Point by point:


o We need "clarity"-- meaning unity?
  Good luck with that.                  There is almost certainly
                                        no way you can create or
                                        control the direction
                                        the people take, so you
                                        might as well encourage
                                        them to take multiple
                                        paths toward the goal.

o We need to be "bi-partisian"
  about this.                           Four years of the Obama
                                        administration has made
                                        "bipartisian" synonymous
                                        with wimpy and ineffective,
                                        an invitation for the bad
                                        guys to walk over you.

                                                  REPUBLICAN_LOST

o This has to be grassroots
                                         (because when Lessig
                                         went to Washington
                                         he flopped?)

     Really, there's no
     particular reason not
     to go at this at any    Lessigs take is that working
     level that seems        at the state level alone is    (So maybe we
     reasonable to you.      no good because people don't   should just
     State, National,        pay attention to it.           abolish the
     Global...                                              states?).
                                 FIXED_NATURE




     Non-profits, NGOs, start-ups,
     political parties.

     Even the Democrats might be
     persuaded to do something useful.





 o Dismissive of the Occupy crowd:
   they've choosen to avoid adopting   This is excessively harsh:
   any detailed program, which         arguably they succeed in speaking
   guarantees they're irrelevancy.     for the 99% because they're not
                                       bogged down in details.  As
                                       Krugman points out they almost
     His site "rootstikers.org"        immediately achieved a change in
     now claims "we support            national discourse from spurious
     Occupy Wall Street".              fears of inflation and debt to a
                                       discussion of unemployment.




 o  Transparency can be useful,
    but by itself it's limited.    The idea seems to be that
                                   no one can wade through
                                   it all, most of the time
                                   the people sleep.

                                      Clearly though -- and Lessig
                                      knows this -- transparency
                                      allows an ecosystem of
                                      watchdog agencies, journalists,
                                      citizen summarizers...



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