A message from Lawrence Lessig [video]

http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/blog/message-lawrence-lessig

by irabinovitch1 • 12 years ago

146 39 12 years ago

btgeekboy• 12 years ago

I had the privilege of attending this talk in person last weekend.

I'm generally very apathetic about politics in general, and have no interest in participating. By the end of this session, though, I think that may have changed. I'm not quite sure how I want to participate quite yet, but the seed's been planted.

rayiner2• 12 years ago

There's a conceit among technologists that Washington doesn't know how technology works. I don't think this is true. In my experience with the federal government, I have been quite amazed at how much people did understand. Washington is full of nerds. They are often latin majors rather than computer science majors, but they are nerds nonetheless, and they are sharp and quick learners.

What is missing is not people who are "technically enabled." Rather, it's people who share the values many technologists share. You can understand how TCP/IP works without buying into the philosophies pertaining to an open and neutral internet. And its those people that seem to shy away from participating in politics. Not people who can describe what happens when a packet gets dropped, but people who can articulate why its better to have an internet that doesn't drop packets based on who sent them.

cbsmith4• 12 years ago

There's a conceit among technologists that Washington doesn't know how technology works. I don't think this is true.

As someone who has sat in the room with one of the highest ranking congressmen whilst explaining to him that one of his bills to support one of his big campaign contributors was going to stifle free speech, kill privacy as we know it, and undermine private property rights... I gotta say, no they really don't. Not surprising, as most people, even people who work in technology, don't know how technology works.

Washington is full of nerds. They are often latin majors rather than computer science majors, but they are nerds nonetheless, and they are sharp and quick learners.

I think all of that is true, and concede that a lot of people in Washington are probably smarter than me. I have absolute confidence that they understand computer technology at least as well as I understand Latin.

Here's the dose of reality: how many of the non-Latin majors on Hacker News explain how Map Reduce works in Latin? ;-)

Rather, it's people who share the values many technologists share.

Totally agree, and frankly it's a really big problem for engineers in particular. Engineers like tools, and they like the freedom to come up with ways to creatively use them. Most people prefer products. Just that difference alone creates a whole different set of values.

gonehome• 12 years ago

If you haven't seen Lawrence Lessig's other talk about campaign financing creating a second dependency within congress on their funders in addition to the people, it's worth watching.

www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim.html

spoiledtechie2• 12 years ago

I believe his Google Talk is FAR BETTER.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc&noredirect=1

arghbleargh• 12 years ago

For the benefit of those who can't/don't want to watch the video, can someone summarize what Lessig's "cause" is?

EDIT: More specifically, I am wondering why he's calling for the help of "technically enabled" people. What is the relevance of technology here?

MaysonL• 12 years ago

His basic thesis can be summed up as:

The American political system (especially Congress) is very corrupt. This is due to the fact that it is almost impossible to be elected without raising a lot of money, and even harder to get reelected without doing so. This requires Congresspeople to spend a large fraction of their time contacting potential campaign contributors and convincing them to give money. It also makes them very very aware of which positions on which issues will bring in money. It also leads to large proportions of ex-Congresspeople and former Congressional staffers becoming (very well-paid) lobbyists.

And that because of this, nothing substantial to improve the current corporate/financial domination of American society can be done until the influence of money in politics is removed.

The poll statistics he quotes are worth noting:

1) 96 percent think that lessening the influence of money in politics is important.

2) 68 percent think that this is very important.

3) 91 percent think it's unlikely, and therefore not worth spending any effort on.

aaren• 12 years ago

The technology bit starts at 34:15. I'm paraphrasing here...

I'm here to recruit you. To help turn us from cows to ants, to build awareness, to save this republic.

This movement has enormous needs which you [tech] uniquely can provide. This movement will only succeed if we can find way to knit people together in a different model than tv / advertising model of politics today. This needs to be built and people with your skills can do this.

If you think you can help then email SCALE@lessig.org

So he has an open ended problem, not a spec, that he believes technology can play a large role in solving.

He mentions Aaron Swartz as inspiration multiple times through the talk. I think he wants more people with Aaron's technical skills to contribute to the movement to politically empower the wider population.

IvyMike• 12 years ago

It's always interesting me to take the passion and fury of online discussions about politics and freedom and to reconcile that with the comparatively paltry amount of money donated to political organizations by people in silicon valley.

I think there's this feeling in Silicon Valley that "I'm changing the world through code" or "I believe the best ideas should win". And I wish that were the case. But in the meanwhile the Koch Brothers and hollywood quietly funnel bajillions of dollars into superpacs and get all the politicians in their pockets.

(I saw Lessig give this excellent talk at SCALE, and my take away from his talk is that we should remove the need for politicians to whore themselves out for money. And I strongly agree. But I guess I'm saying that in the meanwhile, if that's how the game is played, we need to put more skin in the game.)

rayiner2• 12 years ago

The refrain that politics is all about money is both destructive and counterproductive. If it were, that would be great, because Silicon Valley is rich. I don't know if you read the news, but Facebook is worth more than Halliburton and News Corp put together and Apple could buy both with cash on hand.

Lobbying is a big part of politics, but at the end of the day, the biggest aspect of lobbying is showing how proposals that benefit an industry: 1) fit in with politicians' ideological preconceptions; 2) create jobs. Silicon Valley punches beneath its weight in lobbying because its ideology doesn't fit neatly into either the left or the right, and because it employes relatively few people.

protomyth3• 12 years ago

"meanwhile the Koch Brothers and hollywood quietly funnel bajillions of dollars into superpacs and get all the politicians in their pockets."

Here's the problem. You probably think the Koch Brothers is one of the biggest spenders. The joke of it is that they aren't. Their PAC network isn't in the top 10, but they are good targets for certain networks (in the same way Soros is for other networks). Heck, some of the stuff Koch is for horrify Republicans.

Hollywood, as a whole, is much more effective with money, but money is not their only weapon. The glamour of Hollywood and mingling with celebrities has always attracted politicians. Look at the celebrities testifying in front of Congressional Committees. Does anyone honestly believe they are the most qualified to testify? No, but the can surely attract the attention of politicians so it makes up for the lack of expertise and is one hell of a money equalizer.

The media is not a neutral observer and their pointing to "enemies" is a distraction for themselves and their friends. Go find the actual contributions and PAC spending to see what is real. Big Tech needs to deal with reality and the actual system.

asnyder• 12 years ago

Really odd, it's my firm opinion that the media is not only not a neutral observer, they're actually very damaging, but not in the way you suggest. It's my perspective that the media no longer points out outright lies and other silliness as demonstrated by the talking heads and punditry that's presented as fact and news, when the reporters know very well that their guests are liars, avoiding the issue, or misleading the facts.

Though for some reason most of conservative "friends" will tout similar talking points, when in truth the real issues are blatant untruths and misrepresentations being presented to the people. Only in America can we have a negative, lame-duck narrative of a newly re-elected presented who's had consistent job growth for 47 months, lowered the deficit the most aggressively out of any President over the past 20+ years, an obvious economic recovery as defined by numerous measures, and I could go on and on, but yet, somehow the media narrative continue to present Republicans as stewards of the economy, despite facts to the otherwise over the past 13 years, not to mention an unnecessary and financially damaging shutdown, along with whatever talking point they wish to present on any given day.

The facts of the matter is that the media loves sensational soundbites and talking points, over actual facts regardless. Which for whatever reason Democrats have been absolutely terrible at combating and presenting the actual situation. Furthermore, the cable news/social media driven 24hr self-selected news cycle doesn't help things.

Heaven help us.

cbsmith4• 12 years ago

The deal with the Koch Brothers is that, for example, they are (or at least were) to a large degree bankrolling Tea Party in a huge way, but most Tea Party supporters saw the movement as a purely grass roots org. The other thing is that the specific agenda they are advocating seems like it'd cause quite a massive transformation on the country, yet that change doesn't seem to have a lot of currency with the general public.

startupfounder2• 12 years ago

30%-70% of our government representative's time is spent calling the 0.05% (150k people) of US citizens to raise money to get re-elected.

Our Republic is a Representative Democracy (not a true democracy) where there are 2 election cycles, the "Funders" and the voters. As a representative you can't get your name on the ballot in the voting cycle unless you pass the "Funders" cycle.

This is a closed source program where one has to "lean to the green", towards the 0.05% of people who have the money, to play.

NH is the KEY! Isolate 50,000 people in New Hampshire who say, "What will you do to end the system of corruption in Washington?" 50,000 people will swing the vote.

How can technology help isolate those 50k people? What apps can we build? What networks can we build?

dublinben• 12 years ago

How are 50,000 people in New Hampshire going to change anything? That state has two representatives in the House of Representatives. What are two people in a corrupt legislature supposed to do?

startupfounder2• 12 years ago

What is the first stop in the presidential primary?

New Hampshire. Specifically Dixville Notch, NH[0]

It has massive media coverage because it is the first stop for both parties[1]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixville_Notch,_New_Hampshire [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire_primary

mayneack• 12 years ago

One of the reasons that politicians can "get away" with the current campaign finance model is that on a national stage it almost never gets talked about and is never part of "the conversation". If something is important in New Hampshire, then it has to be part of "the conversation" at least once every 4 years.

snowwrestler• 12 years ago

Even if we accept that this characterization is true, you would still need to show that it results in worse policy outcomes than whatever alternative system you my care to propose.

That is very difficult to do because policy outcomes are subjective. What you think is a worse policy outcome might be desired, or at least acceptable, to a majority of people.

It all comes down to policy, even for Larry Lessig. His turn toward reforming the entire system only happened after the system produced an outcome (on copyright extension) that he strongly disagreed with.

cbsmith4• 12 years ago

I disagree that worse policy outcomes are strictly necessary to propose a need to fix the system.

There are already demonstrable and massive distortions between what Congress debates and invests effort in vs. what the populace is preoccupied with vs. what these interests are preoccupied with. That means we've derailed the original intent of democracy/the Constitution.

Either you ratify a change to the constitution to make that okay, or you make whatever changes are needed to prevent this from continuing. You don't leave something this central to law & order in this country to be bypassed just for the fun of it.

It all comes down to policy, even for Larry Lessig. His turn toward reforming the entire system only happened after the system produced an outcome (on copyright extension) that he strongly disagreed with.

You should watch the video. You are implying post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning here, and that's not really how it went down. He was working on what he thought was his part of the problem until his definition of "his part of the problem" was changed, and it wasn't changed by his failure to get the outcome he wanted.

colinwinter• 12 years ago

THANKS for sharing this. Wouldn't have discovered it otherwise and definitely a positive refresher with new points beyond his TED talk.

For anyone still sitting-on/queuing/water-latering Lessig's main TED talk on money in politics, as a vidder I created a remix of it to help improve engagement and intensity, using soundtracks by Zack Hemsey and a few video clips from other sources for support:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB-vGYR8S58 I never really shared it beyond the organizers behind Lessig so I hope someone more useful than the avg youtuber can benefit from it here...

adamfeldman• 12 years ago

So, is the question how can technology greatly reduce the costs of campaigning? Would this allow for campaign finance reform where more restrictions are placed on candidates in return for funds and publicly funded technology tools to enable far smarter campaigns (like what Obama's re-election team did with voter turnout)? Could technology change the costs of voter outreach to a point where the funders become irrelevant?

cbsmith4• 12 years ago

Most important question: if you won't watch the video which informs about all this and/or read the materials Lessig has posted explaining all this, why should anyone think you'd read their replies answering the same questions here on Hacker News?

spoiledtechie2• 12 years ago

Lawrence is by far one of the most important thought provokers of our century. This man is on his way into history.

teamdemocracy• 12 years ago

For those in the SF Bay Area, we are having a hackathon the weekend of March 29–30 in San Francisco. We will be working on tools to support Lawrence Lessig, the NH Rebellion organization, and their grassroots movement to end the system of corruption in DC. If you're interested in participating, hit us up at teamdemocracyus@gmail.com and we'll send you the details.

izendejas3• 12 years ago

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.

loup-vaillant5• 12 years ago

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).

pdkl952• 12 years ago

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!!

izendejas3• 12 years ago

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.

pdkl952• 12 years ago

[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

A message from Lawrence Lessig [video]

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