How to Fight Corruption with Game Theory

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/29/how-to-fight-corruption-with-game-theory.html

by jim-greer • 12 years ago

126 69 12 years ago

jim-greer19• 12 years ago

I've posted on here about CounterPAC before. We didn't crush it but we learned a lot for just $500k and we took out one terrible incumbent.

jaekwon2• 12 years ago

Any thoughts on the counter-counter-PAC argument above?

Also, let's play a game of poker if you're in the Bay Area.

jim-greer19• 12 years ago

Yes, see above.

You can join my poker league! I'm in New York now but the league goes on, and I'll be back in August.

http://sfpokerleague.org

jim-greer19• 12 years ago

I'll hijack my own comment and post some more good stuff.

Zephyr Teachout wrote a great history of corruption, I'm still reading it now, but you can get a good taste from this NYT review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/books/review/zephyr-teacho...

I'll also mention that our biggest challenge to scaling this is money. If you know people who would be interested in donating, please hit me up at jim@counterpac.org. You can also send PayPal donations there if you're so inclined!

jim-greer19• 12 years ago

My highlights of that review are here:

https://www.highly.co/article/547af11a6c696c7d69220000/user/...

If you want you can sign up using code 'hellohighly'

jparker165• 12 years ago

How do you see this interacting with Larry Lessig's MayDay PAC?

The message is slightly different, but the tactics seems identical. I'm always for the experimentation that comes with a new approach, but competition for funds and candidate engagement here could hurt.

Update: Jim is on the board of MayDay

jim-greer19• 12 years ago

Mayday is supporting candidates that promise to vote for campaign finance reform.

CounterPAC is pressuring candidates to run their races cleanly . We don't care about their legislative positions. Just how they run their race - which is immediately measurable and actionable.

Republicans have a hard time with their party leadership if they sign on for reform legislation. They are pretty free to run their race however they want, as long as they win.

jim-greer19• 12 years ago

I wrote a follow up piece to this on Medium, comparing the amount we spend on elections to incontinence products, Halloween candy, etc.

https://medium.com/@jimgreer/us-elections-are-bigger-than-ad...

Here's the key message:

Why do our leaders have to spend half their time raising money? Why is a former cable company lobbyist running the FCC? Why has Wall Street largely returned to risky business as usual after the taxpayers bailed them out?
I think it’s because the power of the private sector is on the wrong side. Innovative startups are not fixing this problem. In fact the innovative startups are growing up to join trade associations and lobby Congress, just like every Fortune 500 company does. It’s understandable. Companies have opinions about their issues. But it’s gotten out of control.

scoofy2• 12 years ago

A decent idea, but the anecdotal evidence of success seems like feel-good fluff, and not actually relevant.

CounterPAC seems like it's trying to create a spending arms race, but with the basis in simple disclosure, rather than political views. However, that the corporations have vastly higher resources and incentives to spend. Unfortunately, it seems trivial for firms to create a Counter-CounterPAC with the aim at depleting the resources of any successful PAC with these intentions.

From my perspective, this is a long run failing strategy, but has the possibly to succeed in the short run. It would need to hit the reps, and hit hard. Then immediately (within a few election cycles) turn and pass strong disclosure laws to create a change in the way the game works.

jaekwon2• 12 years ago

It's really about informing the public, so a counter-counter-PAC may not have an equivalent response. Of course we're getting into information-wars territory.

TheCoreh• 12 years ago

I think one possible way of fixing that counter-counter-PAC problem is this: Instead of focusing on the politicians themselves, trying to convince them to only accept money from disclosed sources, one could focus on convincing the existing corporations/PACs to only donate to politicians that disclose all their sources. That way you end up getting the politicians on board, and you're not at an arms race with anyone. Instead you're using the money from whoever you manage to get on your side to your cause's favor.

jim-greer19• 12 years ago

Wait, is it irrelevant fluff? Or will it work in the short term?

You say "the corporations" as if it's some secret cabal. Most spending is done by trade associations, not corporations directly. Trade associations like to get their legislation through. But they don't run the show.

Money only matters to the extent that it buys ads that move voters. And there's only a limited amount that matters in an election. If you take a house race and outspend your opponent $10 Billion to $1 Billion, but have a worse message, you will lose.

The total cost of the all federal elections in 2012, including the presidential, was around $8 billion dollars. That's a big number. It's almost a billion dollars more than the worldwide market for adult diapers:

http://online.wsj.com/articles/as-births-slow-p-g-turns-to-a...

It's a very small number compared to our economy. There's enough good money out there to run our elections cleanly. We just need the will to do it.

CounterPAC is a hack to do that without waiting for congress to act. You can be for it or against it, but it isn't fluff.

001sky• 12 years ago

Why not attack 501c-4, That alone is a big lack of disclosure.

The free-speech stuff in elections is a bit of a black hole.

One mans free-speech is another mans boogeyman.

Likewise, the issue with corporate personhood.

But fighting non-profits would be a social win and is on firmer logical ground.

Just food for thought.

saraid216• 12 years ago

Money only matters to the extent that it buys ads that move voters. And there's only a limited amount that matters in an election. If you take a house race and outspend your opponent $10 Billion to $1 Billion, but have a worse message, you will lose.

I found this dubious, so I went googling. I felt I ought to share what I found:

http://www.benzinga.com/general/politics/14/11/5012697/why-m...

scoofy2• 12 years ago

Right, so i said the idea was decent, but the anecdotal evidence of long term effectiveness as an overall strategy, with n=1, was irrelevant.

I only say "the corporations" as those entities who attempt to participate in the gift economy laid out in Lessig's "Republic Lost." I do not think a meta trade group reminiscent of ALEC or the Chamber of Commerce would be very unlikely if there was evidence that this strategy was effective.

While i agree with your point about swaying voters, as well as what i've read about Levitt's work on the subject, with the assent of self-selective media, Fox News and other various media outlets of questionable independence, it seems that there is much influence in coordinating talking points than there is in ads alone. Maybe i'm a bit paranoid about that, but with the deterioration of a diversity of media firms, i really don't think so.

The issue about billions of good money available amounts seems to lack the reason there is so much spending. The opportunity cost of a coal firm fighting potential crippling regulations would be essentially zero. If they stand to loose significantly in certain elections, then they can clearly spend exactly an equal amount to stop it.

On the side of good, there are no hard and fast numbers to budget, thus an coordination problem arises on who ought to spend what.

Like i said before though, i think lack of knowledge of the effectiveness of such an organization is it's greatest asset. If politicians are suddenly hit with a big stick, they may be out for the count. If they know what they are up against, they can probably raise money to counter-counter accordingly.

JDDunn9• 12 years ago

Oh, all we have to do is out-spend the largest corporations in the world. Problem solved...

jim-greer19• 12 years ago

See my above comment. Elections are about the size of the world-wide market for adult diapers. It's do-able.

gimpei78• 12 years ago

I know I'm being pedantic, but where is the game theory? The threat of campaign spending as a device to induce a more optimal equilibrium? If that's the case everyone uses game theory, no?

jim-greer19• 12 years ago

We go into a race and say:

"We would like you both to take a disclosure pledge. If one candidate takes it, and the other doesn't, we may go after the one who doesn't."

Then we see what happens.

eridius• 12 years ago

I still don't see how this is game theory. This just seems like a classic carrot-and-stick approach.

SilasX• 12 years ago

I just wish the article had been clear about that. Instead it just rambled for several paragraph, and replaced the threat with a vague statement about how you'd "hold them accountable", which could mean a dozen things.

Also, I concur with the GP except that I agree this is a use of game theory, but only in the trivial sense that any offer of reward to those you like (as used by other PACs) is game theory.

aligajani• 12 years ago

Solving social problems with numbers ? Doesn't seem right.

danieltillett• 12 years ago

Jim great idea. How about a extension of this idea of picking close races and trying to get the candidates to accept no money at all with the threat to go thermonuclear on the first candidate that defects?

jim-greer19• 12 years ago

That's a possibility - we've also thought about imposing a cap on spending and going after the first candidate to violate it.

jchendy• 12 years ago

There's a great interview with Jim Greer on the Thinking Poker podcast. It's mainly about CounterPAC without much poker talk. http://www.thinkingpoker.net/2014/11/episode-101-jim-greer/

john2x• 12 years ago

Interesting idea, and I hope it works in the both short term and long term.

As an outsider (and just overall uninformed about politics), since CounterPAC is transparent, is it an additional incentive for politicians to be associated with CounterPAC? And an "anti-incentive"(?) to refuse it, since people will know that they (likely) took dark money?

jim-greer19• 12 years ago

It's a minor incentive, but honestly candidates mostly care about having enough money to get their message out, regardless of the source.

alexpritchett• 12 years ago

I'm not convinced that you know what game theory actually is...

jim-greer19• 12 years ago

I'm not sure you do either. Think about the real-life examples here and decide whether what we're doing is in the same category:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#Real-life_...

bostik• 12 years ago

The thing I've always found intriguing is that the tricks used by politicians and parties to hide the sources of their campaign financing feel like they were adapted from organised crime. (Which politics may well be, but that's another matter.)

* Make sure that individual donations are small enough to avoid the source reporting

* Cycle larger donations through entities that themselves do not need to report their sources

In any other context these patterns would trigger all kinds of money laundering alarms, but in politics it's considered business as usual.

brokenmusic4• 12 years ago

I'm always amazed at how people want to fight corruption not really understanding that corruption is inherent to politics and government. You can't fight it. It's like fighting aging with plastic surgery. Sure, it may look good on the surface and it may even make you feel good psychologically, for a while. But you're still aging. Best you can do is accept that and lead a healthy lifestyle.

So, if you try fight corruption, it simply becomes more obscure. Corruption exists purely because governments and institutions exist. If you didn't have those, you wouldn't need to bribe some third party in order to be able to establish a business relationship with someone else (e.g. get a licence, permit, etc).

jim-greer19• 12 years ago

You can't fight it. It's like fighting aging with plastic surgery.

It's more like fighting crime. Aging is an irreversible process that happens to one person. Crime and corruption are background processes that happen to societies.

You can fight it. You can't eliminate it, of course.

Here's a good book on the subject:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/books/review/zephyr-teacho...

lazyjones• 12 years ago

Amen.

My impression from a small european country is that most politicians will happily damage the tax payer for an amount roughly 2 orders of magnitude higher than the corresponding bribe, whether by taking a cut when privatizations happen or by spending ludicrous amounts on infrastructure projects or military hardware, or even by investing taxpayers' money badly on purpose to benefit banks (who pay bribes).

The only remedy I see is more transparency (all contracts, offers etc. must be made public) - but recent trends go in the other direction with secret agreements, more direct democracy (immediate direct public votes to prevent unpopular political decisions) and harsh punishment when officials are caught taking bribes (the Chinese go to extremes though - death penalty sometimes - with no apparent effect).

Long-term, very optimistic vision: replace corrupt political decision makers by AI, but I fear human tricksters will be able to take advantage of that too.

Istof• 12 years ago

a good start would be to stop legalized bribery...

lmm2• 12 years ago

Fighting corruption is like putting a tax on it; it disincentivises it, makes it less efficient. If you allowed people to openly bribe politicians you would get much worse laws. Every bit of "obscurity" we force on them costs, makes corruption more expensive and less worthwhile.

tomohawk4• 12 years ago

Next time you make a donation that could be disclosed, are you prepared to lose your job over it?

Disclosing the sources of campaign funding is not all roses. There are several groups who use that information to intimidate doners. They go after their careers, their businesses, their families, their reputations. They create maps of where "the opposition" lives, and then let the lunatic fringe on their side do what comes naturally to them.

jim-greer19• 12 years ago

Want to back that up with some evidence?

jpetra• 12 years ago

I was curious about what was written, so I thought I would respond after a quick Google search.

I assume the losing your job part is referring to the Mozilla CEO news somewhat recently. I thought it didn't really need any research as it is posted about here often enough.

The maps part is described in this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/us/19prop8.html

Or with a little more opinion on this page: http://sfist.com/2009/01/09/mash-up_map_of_google_maps_and_p...

(the second link has a link to the actual site with the map, but it doesn't load for me)

tomohawk4• 12 years ago

The whole point about disclosure is to enable feedback. The intended feedback may be for people to be able to make informed decisions about who is funding a candidate, but disclosure also enables other kinds of feedback. It allows coercion to be applied to people (donors) once their identities are known. Brenden Eich is one example.

The ability to donate anonymously is an important firebreak. It protects those with minority opinions. It also protects people in general from those who think that coercion is an acceptable means to achieve an end.

I should not have to worry that my boss will see that I gave a donation to his pet political cause in order to keep my job. Likewise, I shouldn't have to worry that my boss disagrees with some cause that I have donated to and fires me.

I also shouldn't have to worry that one of these reprehensible groups who believe in bullying and coercion might decide to make an example out of me just because I supported the side of a cause they disagree with.

Shouldn't a political debate be more about ideas than the people who are involved?

Disclosure seems to enable a kind of intolerance, a kind of "guilty by association" kind of thinking that really has no place in civil society.

d23• 12 years ago

then let the lunatic fringe on their side do what comes naturally to them.

Sure. It's not explicitly about donors, but the fringe have no problems taking advantage of things like this.

http://host.madison.com/news/local/writers/steven_elbow/wisc...

Long story short, the Scott Walker recall petition was public, and people were targeted if they signed it. There's a good piece on NPR's This American Life about it.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/509/i...

mason240• 12 years ago

Brendan Eich, would be CEO of Mozilla.

valar_m• 12 years ago

Justice Thomas's concurrence in Citizens United cited several examples:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/08-205P.ZX1 [pdf]

jacques_chester• 12 years ago

In Australia there's a fixed amount below which donations may be anonymous. It means that if you want to donate more and can face the scrutiny, you can. If you don't want the scrutiny, you can still donate without being seen to.

bring1• 12 years ago

Can somebody explain me why a democracy allows for donations at all? Donations will clearly skew the political landscape towards the people who have money to donate. And those people are more likely to donate with an expected value. So they will try to skew the politics in their favour.

Why would it be bad to forbid any kind of political donation for established parties. I see the need to fund a grow new parties, but established parties should get by with the money they receive from the government.

notahacker• 12 years ago

An intrinsic part of being a democracy involves people being free to support a cause they want to, including financially.

It's not as if rich people are going to stop spending to influence electoral results in favour of candidates whose policies work in their interests if they're banned from handing the money over directly and transparently.

jmnicolas• 12 years ago

Well don't underestimate the power of the poor : they are more numerous so a candidate with less money but with a program oriented toward them may eventually win.

shetter• 12 years ago

The answer is simple: these are not democracies. Pretty much the only democratic aspect in nowadays "representative democracies" is that every 5 years you get to chose which of 2 leaders you prefer to govern your state/city. That's a little light to call the whole system a "democracy". You'll never make sense of politics if you don't get that.

Cushman4• 12 years ago

Free speech.

In a democracy, if I have a political opinion, I must be allowed to express it. It follows that I must be allowed to pay a spokesperson to express it on my behalf, and it follows from that that I must be allowed to fund an organization with the mandate of expressing it.

That's all SCOTUS' Citizens United ruling was about; there does not seem to be a reasonable way to limit political spending across the board without at some point allowing an unconstitutional restriction on political speech, and that's anathema to our society. (And as CU has demonstrated, the distinction between that and unregulated campaign donations is academic in practice.)

That's not to say that there's no way to draw a line, but so far the anti-finance crowd has been largely unwilling to engage with this argument, and none has been readily forthcoming.

hayksaakian• 12 years ago

Let's not presume this is all about "free speech". The Supreme Court has placed restrictions on free speech that society has come to accept. (Not that I agree with them).

For example, the supreme court has made exceptions to the 1st amendment for obscenity, of all things.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_excep...

Now that we can recognize the Supreme Court has made exceptions to first amendment, it's fair to dispute whether paid political contributions should qualify as free speech or if it should be forbidden as an exception.

The fact that Citizens United already happened should not stop people from disputing it, or the precedent it set.

AnthonyMouse• 12 years ago

Why would it be bad to forbid any kind of political donation for established parties.

Everybody is responding to your question with the generic "free speech" answer. It needs to be fleshed out so everyone can understand it.

What political donations are used for is to buy advertising and get on television, which politicians need to do to get elected. Now suppose we ban political donations whatsoever. Cui bono?

You haven't changed the need for politicians to get their faces on the TV in order to get elected. So now what determines whether they get on TV? They can still buy advertising themselves, of course, but only if the candidate is rich. Not really what we were going for. And even then, who has more power in this scenario? A millionaire candidate who can personally afford to buy some TV spots or the billionaire who owns the local TV stations? And if the prospect of handing Comcast/MSNBC and News Corp that much control over elections doesn't make the point sufficiently, imagine what happens when MSNBC, Fox and CNN are purchased by Exxon, Chevron and BP.

You can't stop people from buying airtime. It only consolidates the power of the people selling it. What you can do is public financing of elections. Public financing doesn't restrict anyone's speech -- the candidate can buy the same ad with money from the treasury as with money from coal producers. But the candidates are going to work for whoever is funding them; if that isn't the general public then it will be defense contractors and Monsanto.

tormeh• 12 years ago

The NRA has been doing this for years.

How to Fight Corruption with Game Theory

Related Stories