[izendejas]

Holy shit! How does this not have thousands of upvotes?

It's a masterful presentation -- the likes of which I haven't seen before. I reckon I got a similar feeling that so many did when they heard MLK speak. If you read about leadership, this is it folks. You tell very compelling stories that inspire you to action not because you want to follow the likes of Lawrence Lessig, but because you believe this cause is very important. For someone to kindle that passionate response is an art form.

And then there's the issue. It's a no-brainer: attack the root of countless legislative problems--campaign financing, the corruption.

I grew up the first part of my life in a country that is terribly corrupt and when I look at the US, the place I now call home, the only difference that I see, is that it's legal here. I was outraged at the Citizens United decision--in my mind, that was one of the worst decisions ever because it continues to legitimize a farce of democracy that we live under today.

tl;dw (ie, too long didn't watch): watch it for a lesson on leadership and get outraged at campaign financing!

edited: typos, toned down the hyperbole to avoid distracting from the message.

[pdkl95]

[comments don't always parse as intended, so let me first say that I mean this in the very best way possible, and intend to find ways to support Lessing and everybody else fighting corruption]

This may be the most powerful talk I've ever seen. Mr. Lessig has alway given a very interesting (and entertaining) talk. There have been some good talks recently, such as some of the 30c3 talks and Doctorow's caution for the future[1] a year earlier. There are, believe, there's two reasons this talk is so effective.

First, Mr. Lessig gave such a clear and simple goal. This prevents the problem from being immediately interpreted as one of those "big problems" that never get solved.

It doesn't even matter if campaign finance really is the "root" of the problem. It's still worthwhile, and even a small success has got to a lest help some when fighting for other causes in the future.

When dealing with other difficult situations such as addiction or depression, a common suggestion is to make small goals first, that are actually attainable, because trying to solve everything at once often ends up conditioning for apathy over the "impossible task". Those voting numbers shown at the end, however, suggests some victories are easily within reach.

That said...

I believe the key reason this talk was so powerful is that Mr. Lessig called on one of the original ways of rallying people to the cause. It works because it's a reminder that people matter, and some things cannot wait until later...

...because this fight already has a martyr.

Maybe we should make some progress before other are claimed as well.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI

[loup-vaillant]

tl;dw. Yet I'm confident campaign financing is not the problem. It's just a symptom of something much deeper: the constitution itself.

It's very simple: in nearly all developed countries (the "West"), the rules of power (the constitutions) were written by men in power. There is a huge conflict of interest, so the constitutions suck. Or maybe they don't, but the people sure don't rule. We don't live in a democracy by any reasonable meaning of the word. (My current best guess is that our countries are plutocracies: money and businesses rule. Anecdotal evidence: Fractional Reserve Banking, which means private bank makes profit from printing money —they don't actually print money, but the effects are the same.)

Want to solve campaign financing? Don't support elections in the first place. Elections aren't democratic anyway: 2 candidates you can vote for? What a farce: that's 1 bit of decision thrown as a bone to the people. The pool of potentially worthy presidents is way bigger than 2. So many bits of decision power stripped from the people.

Want an _actually_ representative assembly? Do what any rational poll company does: select the citizens by random trial. That may not be enough though, so you may want to use the first assembly to bootstrap something better (typically by having them write a constitution, then leave politics forever).

[pdkl95]

What Mr. Lessig is doing, I believe, isn't about "campaign financing".

This is about waking people up to the idea that they can change things. There's a deep apathy an general defeatist attitude in most of the country because people have watched things spiral out of their control far too often.

It doesn't mater what the cause is; campaign finance is just one of problems that, at least in some areas. It'll help, but the goal is to remind people that you can fight back.

This is about giving the a victor, for moral sake, and we need a LOT more people pulling a Howard Beale on corruption in general.

/me walks over to window

(clears thought)

/me sticks head outside, and yells

I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I AM NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANY MORE!!

[izendejas]

Yes and no. I've certainly reduced what Lessig states to what I found the most fitting way to summarize the problem he describes, but the corruption in the system really comes down to that as he so clearly explains towards the end of the video by marching in New Hampshire for campaign finance reform.

Many people don't participate because they don't feel represented until the issue affects them directly (NIMBY politics), yet there are countless issues in which we are affected as citizens because we let lobbyists and those that fund campaigns dictate legislation.

Many people here are always raging about patent law, copyright law, etc. Those were all Lessig's causes until Aaron Swartz made him realize that all the powerful interests have the legislators by the balls, so until that gets fixed, progress on any other front will be difficult.

[izendejas]

I think you should reconsider watching the video.

Don't support elections in the first place? So continue business as usual? I am not sure I understood correctly, but your solution IS the non-solution we're practicing today.

It's really difficult to summarize this video, just watch the first 5-10 minutes (that's what I tried) and you'll be hooked.

For added value: I'll buy you a beer for each filler/non-lexical sound (eg, "uhm", "eh", etc) you catch Lessig making whenever you're in the south bay.

[loup-vaillant]

> Don't support elections in the first place? So continue business as usual?

Not quite.

Basically, I do not condone elections for anything bigger than a small city, and neither should you. They don't work. They don't empower the people. They're an illusion.

That was the problem. Now my solutions:

(1) Don't vote for elections that don't make any difference. This means most elections bigger than small cities. Or do vote, but put a blank entry.

(2) Spread the word.

(3) Think of alternatives, such as random trials. Some of those have already been tried. Look for instance at ancient Athens.

If we can get the majority of citizens to acknowledge the problem and know about the possible solutions, there will be a revolution. Hopefully this one won't be too violent.

[dragonwriter]

> Basically, I do not condone elections for anything bigger than a small city, and neither should you. They don't work. They don't empower the people.

Since there are empirically measurable difference in how well different electoral systems work in empowering the people in nation-scale polities (see, e.g., Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy), I don't think it is at all the case that they don't work or are an illusion in general.

Its true that the electoral systems in certain large polities (the US among them, but not the only of them) work exceptionally poorly, which might lead to the faulty generalization that elections in large polities are fundamentally broken for those for whom the ones with exceptionally bad systems are the only referents, but that's a flawed generalization from limited information.

[loup-vaillant]

Okay, then, how effective is the high end? I expect not very.

And more importantly, are elections the best we can do? Handing over nearly unlimited power to a group of people we hope will not use it unwisely in the next few years?

No way. There's got to be a better system.

[dragonwriter]

> And more importantly, are elections the best we can do?

I would say elections are almost certainly an essential element of the best we can do; elections alone aren't a complete system of government.

> Handing over nearly unlimited power to a group of people we hope will not use it unwisely in the next few years?

Elections don't imply that. It sounds to me like your problem isn't actually with elections at all, but with the details of the powers given to officials who are elected.