We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim | Lawrence Lessig

I'd argue that Congress has not done a good job of anything (at least not anything that the majority of Americans would care about) because our motivations are not aligned. That's the point of this campaign - to remove the motivation for Congress to act in ways that our not in the best interest of the general public, by removing the financial incentives for them to do so. This TED talk from Lessig gives more background: ▶ this video

in “The Launch of the Mayday Citizens' SuperPAC” · View on HN

That is a valid question. Good speech about it: Lawrence Lessig: We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim: ▶ this video

in “Privacy Protects Bothersome People (2013)” · View on HN

Is it a crime for a hungry man to steal bread? None of your proposed solutions would address his needs. America's government is so corrupt it is no longer democratic. Watch this video: ▶ this video

in “Prism Break” · View on HN

There is very little outright corruption in Congress. Special interests exert most of the influence through campaign contributions that are publicly disclosed. Larry Lessig has a great book on this: [link] . And here is the link to his TED talk on the same topic: ▶ this video

in “The entire US Code is now online in XML” · View on HN

> the candidate who spent less won. That is entirely unsubstantiated. There is no reasonable way to measure this and any measurements taken are inherently political. I am amenable to the idea of that being true for official spending, but unless the twitter purchase, for example, were tabulated, or spending on our American "pravda" (Truth social which was clearly influenced by [link] ), I would be extremely suspicious of those numbers. > so at least at presidential level, there is neither apathy, complacency, or the ability to buy elections. Again, I completely disagree, and so does Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, who argues that it is extremely hard to win a primary without fundraising, and fundraising is structurally an election where money counts as votes, and therefore nearly all candidates who make it to the primary have already been filtered through by those with money: ▶ this video

in “How malicious AI swarms can threaten democracy” · View on HN

I keep saying that what we are currently living through is a surprisingly accurate reflection of how democracy began. In the city state of Athens, all free men had the vote. The definition of "free man" just happened to exclude approximately 97% of the population. Our governments have since figured out that you can merrily hand out the privilege, as long you remain in control of what is allowed to be put on the vote in the first place. I'm not alone with my view, btw. Lessig has made the same point in his "Country of Lesters" talk.[0,1] 0: [link] (overview, writeup) 1: ▶ this video (recorded talk)

in “Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations” · View on HN

"...governments can be counted out of taking the leadership needed to solve this within 12 years." This is the issue.[0] Governments are the middlemen between citizens that we the people decide to put in power through voting to represent us and our issues like climate change. But democracy has been hijacked by putting additional middlemen between we the people . The second middleman is the capital election , specifically ~132 Americans who donated 60% of the SuperPAC money. So our representatives spend a significant portion of their time in office calling these people to get funding for the next election cycle and when they vote on issues they think of these donors. Follow the money. Yes we can fix data centers or cargo ships or deploy nuclear power or utility regulation, but at some point regulation for these as well will be dependent on the people we vote to put into power to represent us. At the end of the day, corporations have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to maximize profits and shareholder value. If leaders lead, companies will follow. I have an idea! Why don't we, the very large community of Hacker News with 3-3.5M+ monthly uniques[1] petition one of the most innovative and powerful institutions to fund more projects that will fix broken governments around the world? "Government" is only mentioned one time in the YC RFP[2], maybe it should have it's own category. Send them an email: [email protected] or [link] or contact your friends who are in the YC networ

in “Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?” · View on HN

And that's because the US government no longer responds to the needs and wants of the people, but to the needs of corporations and rich people, which happened because of legalized bribery, or the ability to buy a politician's vote with "donation money". This is why Larry Lessig was right when he kept saying that this is the root cause that needs to be fixed before anything else . People should be supporting such "single issue" politicians that want to reform this system all over, because this is what will fix everything else in the long term, whether it's economic, healthcare, or even social issues (which tend to be turned into issues to distract from the real harm they're doing somewhere else). [link] ▶ this video

in “Amazon Health” · View on HN

It's not about what the people want, because the U.S. is no longer a democratic country. When more people start admitting that and seeing that way, then they'll be ready to change that at the detriment of everything else . It's the biggest issue that affects all the other issues, but some still believe if you support this change at the detriment of everything else then you're a "purist" or a "single issue candidate". Of course, usually the people who call you those names are also the ones who benefit from the current system. [link] [link] ▶ this video [link]

in “Net Neutrality’s Holes in Europe May Offer Peek at Future in U.S” · View on HN

I am going to get flamed to oblivion for this, but nonetheless: You are not looking far enough in the past. The very textbook definition [0] of fascism (or to be precise - one of the basic definitions) is that it is a political movement that was directly linked with corporatism. Or in other words, a form of government where the major political power is wielded by powerful corporations and furthers primarily their interests.[1] Quoting from [0]: "fascism, especially once in power, [attracts] support primarily from what in a classical sense is called the 'far right' or 'extreme right'." Authoritarianism and police state mentality are both drivers, but also the results of this mentality. Considering how the politics in the western world, US included, have been going for at least the recent half a century... I am going to say that fascism didn't go away with the deaths of Hitler and Mussolini. It has been a dark undercurrent in the US politics (as well as UK and the Scandinavian countries, at least) all this time. We have ALL been on the road back to fascism for decades. It didn't start with G.W. Bush in the US, or with Thatcher in the UK, or with True Finns in Finland, or with whatever the French populist party happens to be called this week. Each one of these is just a manifestation of a more generic right-wing, very much misandry-fuelled swing in public opinion. US has been on its way to fascism for a long time. But you are not alone, your country has just been the most powerf

in “Tech firms are departing from their see-no-evil stance on society and politics” · View on HN

For startups working on improving democracy, I'd suggest you start helping these three groups in any way you can: [link] [link] [link] Creating a more fair representation in government that doesn't only involve the duopoly parties as well as getting money out politics should be the two main priorities before anything else. Unless these two things are fixed first, everything else will continue to be broken. [link] ▶ this video

in “Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy” · View on HN

Term limits should be set. I think 12 years in Congress is about the optimum number: not too long to become your life, but also long enough to get "enough experience" and pass it along to the newcomers as they come in. That would be 6 terms for House Representatives and 2 for Senators. Of course it's not a magic bullet. Many other things need to be changed: 1) banning corporations, PACs or any organization from giving money to politicians - only individuals should be able to donate and the sum should be limited to maybe $1,000 (allowing "NGO's" and such to give money is just a loophole looking to be abused) 2) making votes in Congress anonymous [1]. Votes shouldn't have "transparency". There's a reason why anywhere else voting is anonymous: it's much harder to get influenced this way, whether it's by money or peer/leader pressure (see invasion of Iraq, passing the "Patriot" Act, etc). The lobbyists can give you money, and then you can still vote as you wish, which over the long term it will seem like a less and less viable strategy for lobbyists. 3) switching to a much more democratic voting system ("approval voting" [2] would be ideal, but even the 2-voting rounds system that's used in some European countries would be a HUGE improvement, as it would fix the "spoiler effect" somewhat - but still nowhere near enough as approval voting does) 4) proportional party representation in Congress (seems like a no-brainer to me). The idea that 2 parties can dominate Congress/Parliament

in “Big companies are stopping Congress from fixing the patent system” · View on HN

Hobbes had said that humans give up some of their rights to be protected by the government. That's what the western philosophy is built on. You may try to deny it but needing security is already a loss of freedom. Examples of peaceful countries like sweden or switzerland can be given, but what did they do to stop hitler? Poland started to crack the enigma code and later turing with his friends in secrecy completed it in England. What we need is people that can be trusted to be in power. The voting system in America is just plain wrong. ▶ this video

in “NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor” · View on HN