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LONG_SHOT

                                             January 18, 2012

                             http://longnow.org/seminars/02012/jan/17/how-money-corrupts-congress-and-plan-stop-it/

  Some reactions, having just
  seen Lessig do his pitch at
  his Long Now talk, covering
  the material in his book
  "Republic, Lost".

                                                      CREATIVE_COMMONS
  Lessig was originally
  known as an opponent of
  the abuse of "copyright"       A cute feature of his talk was pushing the
  and the expansion of           limits of "fair use": a clip from Cassablanca,
  "intellectual property".       a picture of Mickey Mouse-- he would love it
                                 if they'd come after him, but they won't,
                                 because he's not going to roll over and play
                                 dead if someone sends him a threatening
                                 letter.


  Lessig documents some
  examples of shall we say,
  suboptimal decision making
  on the part of Congress.
                                                                  WIDER_FIGHT
  Lessig argues persuasively
  that the root cause is            Really, there's no
  money corrupting the              need to persuade on    But actually, the
  political process, and the        this point, but        situation is a
  solution has to be:               when Lessig started    little more complex
                                    talking about this     than you might
  (a) campaign finance reform--     years ago he got       expect, and Lessig
  enacted by a constitutional       some static for        repeatedly points
  convention.                       daring to use the      out it was worse in
                                    "c" word.              the 1800s.
  (b) invoking the 11th Amendment
  to reign in super-Pacs near          If you accuse someone of
  election time.                       being bought-- no matter
                                       how obvious it is-- someone
                                       is going to come out of the
                                       woodwork with an "innocent
                                       until proven guilty"
                                       response: "How do you
                                       *know* that? Perhaps they
                                       sincerely believe--"
            CORRUPTED_REASONING
                                           Lessig's schtick for this
                                           talk was carefully chosen.
                                           He would repeatedly follow-up
                                           a description of dubious
                                           congressional decisions with
                                           a refrain like:

                                           "Now *why* would they do this?
     Lessig's                              Hell if I know.  But what I do
     prescription is                       know is that they recieved a
     perhaps less                          tremendous amount of campaign
     impressive than                       contributions from--"
     his analysis of
     the problem.
     As you might      Though there may
     expect.           be some room to
                       disagree even         KLEIN_MONEY
                       with the analysis.

                                               FIXED_NATURE

           Lessig insists he's identified
           the one central problem that
           needs to be attacked before all
           others: "We need to strike at
           the root".

           To me, it looks more like there's
           a network of reinforcing problems.
           There may not be a single root.

               THE_BIG_KNOT

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