Lessig On Corruption and Reform

Brian Stretch sends us to the National Review for an interview with Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig. Lessig talks about money, politics, money in politics, and his decision not to run for an open seat in Congress. From the interview: "Lessig hates corruption. He hates it so much, in fact, that last year he announced he'd be shifting away from his work on copyright and trademark law... to focus on it... 'One of the biggest targets of reform that we should be thinking about is how to blow up the FCC.'"

Comments

FCC moves aim to curry favor of future employers

[SpaceWanderer]

I thought this was interesting. Found it on Lessig's blog. Basically, FCC employees brown-nose prospective future employers by decreeing public policies that benefits those future employers.

The wires are sparking with news of the GAO report (pdf) that FCC insiders routinely tipped lobbyists and corporate insiders about agency agenda decisions before they were made public. This is critical, because under agency "sunshine rules," FCC members can't be lobbied for the week between the public announcement of an agenda and the meeting. Knowing what's going to be announced on the agenda in advance thus gives lobbyists and corporate insiders an opportunity to lobby before the sun[shine rules] rise. From the report: FCC generally followed the rulemaking process in the four case studies of completed rulemakings that GAO reviewed, but several stakeholders had access to nonpublic information. Specifically, each of the four rulemakings included steps as required by law and opportunities for public participation. Within the case studies, most ex parte filings complied with FCC rules. However, in the case studies and in discussions with other stakeholders that regularly participate in FCC rulemakings, multiple stakeholders generally knew when the commission scheduled votes on proposed rules well before FCC notified the public. FCC rules prohibit disclosing this information outside of FCC. Other stakeholders said that they cannot learn when rules are scheduled for a vote until FCC releases the public meeting agenda, at which time FCC rules prohibit stakeholders from lobbying FCC. As a result, stakeholders with advance information about which rules are scheduled for a vote would know when it is most effective to lobby FCC, while stakeholders without this information would not. When I commented upon this to a colleague, his response was typical: "What do you expect? And anyway, so what? What's wrong with giving affected parties a bit more time to make their case?" "What's wrong" first is that the rules say otherwise. "What's wrong" second is that the rules are bent in a completely predictable way. Agency insiders curry favor with precisely the people they'll be getting a job with after they leave the FCC. And "what's wrong" third is just what this indicates about the kinds of bending we might expect goes on inside the FCC. If the agency is willing to bend the rules to favor futures employers, are they willing to put the thumb on the scale in difficult contested policy determinations? But my colleague was right about one thing: "What do [I] expect?" Here's an agency chaired by a former lobbyist. Is it likely to be scrupulous about rules meant to constrain or balance the lobbying process? This example is just one many that is our government. (As I'm learning as I work through the extraordinary reading list compiled by my Read-Write readers at the Lessig Wiki on Corruption. But it needs to become a bigger issue for the candidates in this election. Let's hear a promise by the presidential candidates that they will only appoint FCC commissioners who promise not to work for those they have regulated for at least 5 years after their term is over. That would be real change.

You won't get the money out of politics...

[Nova Express]

...until you get politics out of money.

More government control of the economy = more corruption. The more opportunity congress has to pick winners and losers, the more money businessmen are willing to spend to rig the outcome. The more powerful and less accountable a bureaucracy is to voters, the less checks their are to curb corruption. This is why the scandals in the previous French government and the UN oil-for-food scandal dwarf anything that's ever gone on in America. And the trend is to makle those bureaucracies even less accountable to votes (think of the EU's centralizing drive, and how the latest UK Labour government decided it didn't need to let its citizens vote on surrendering sovereignty to the EU after all. The more centralized power, the fewer chances for checks and balances to prevent corruption. And of course the communist bureaucracies of the old Soviet Union were the most corrupt of all, with millions killed while the Nomenklatura lived in luxury.

As Lord Acton noted, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The larger and more centralized government becomes, the more opportunities for corruption.

Re:You won't get the money out of politics...

[Spy Hunter]

Lessig doesn't really seem to agree with this. He says he knows government is corrupted by money. The Libertarian answer is to reduce the size of government to reduce the amount of corruption, but Lessig somehow thinks that the amount of corruption can be dramatically reduced without taking that step. But he can't explain concretely how.

His only plan is to get politicians to promise they won't take lobbyist money, and to "abolish earmarks", and to add more campaign finance restrictions. Sorry Larry, but politicians are professional promise-skirters, and I see no reason to believe that them making yet another promise is going to significantly change how the government works at all levels.

The "abolish earmarks" thing is especially quixotic; you might as well make them promise to stop gerrymandering while you're at it. They'll find another way to do it, and just call it something else, or outright deny that's what they're doing, playing with the word definitions. As for the lobbyist thing, lobbyists have *plenty* of ways to influence politicians besides outright giving them money, and there's not even a way to enumerate all of them, much less make every politician promise to ignore them, and then enforce that promise.

I don't see any part of Larry's plan that makes me think it's more sensible than the Libertarian point of view. The problem of government corruption is just too complex to confront head-on, and it's okay to admit that. "Special Interests" are ingenious, well-funded, and determined; thinking that they can be outmaneuvered forever is just hubris. There is a simple solution, and we know what it is: the way to *truly* remove corruption from a part of the government is to eliminate that part of the government.

Re:You won't get the money out of politics...

[Danse]

The Libertarian answer is to reduce the size of government to reduce the amount of corruption The problem with the Libertarian answer is that it is vague and largely unworkable due to the current level of corruption. You need to come up with ways to reduce the amount of impact the corrupt officials can have by proposing things that are concrete and easier for people to get behind than something like "reducing the size of government".

Re:You won't get the money out of politics...

[CRCulver]

More government control of the economy = more corruption.

And yet, those Nordic countries were the state has great control over the economy are also marked by some of the lowest government corruption in the world.

Re:You won't get the money out of politics...

[jmv]

More government control of the economy = more corruption.

Sorry, I have to disagree on that one. Some of the least corrupt governments in the world happen to be the scandinavian countries, which also happen to be very much on the socialist side. You can also find plenty of the opposite case, i.e. banana republics where the government doesn't control the economy and is very corrupt. I wouldn't go as far as saying that more govt control means less corruption, but I definitely disagree on your simple "more control = more corruption" statement.

This is why the scandals in the previous French government and the UN oil-for-food scandal dwarf anything that's ever gone on in America.

I disagree on that one to. All the oil-for-food scandals around the world (not just French, there was AU and probably others) are just dwarfed by the US corruption involved in the Iraq invasion. Starting from Halliburton's ex-CEO supporting the was a vice-president, making up false "evidence" (and screwing up the career of the wife of the guy who exposed that in the process), turning a blind eye on over-billing (Halliburton and others), and all the stuff we haven't heard of yet.

As Lord Acton noted, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

True, but there are ways to reduce the power of *individuals* while making sure the govt has control on the economy. Just because the US screwed up at that, doesn't mean you have to deregulate everything. What needs to be done is that the power must be distributed. That's the idea behind the US "checks and balance" principles. The only problem is that there's currently an individual who managed to mostly seize most of the powers. That's where the problem is.

Re:You won't get the money out of politics...

[krasmussen]

A bit of facts.

GDP per capita 2007:
Norway: 47,098
United States: 44,765
Iceland: 41,680
Denmark: 38,438
Finland: 37,957
Sweden: 36,687

Re:"Blow up" the FCC?

[Bartab]

It's just you. You're a crazy conspiracy nutcase.

Re:Explosives

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Yes! Let's also blow up the other letters of the alphabet! After that, we target pictograms and heiroglyphics!

Re:FCC moves aim to curry favor of future employer

[Danse]

Basically, FCC employees brown-nose prospective future employers by decreeing public policies that benefits those future employers. So it's just like Congress, or any number of other government agencies.

Careful there Larry

[eclectro]

Many a nerd who happens to read your blog got their ham license through the FCC and talked with the world *before* there was an internet. Or even computers. Many of us built computers from schematics that showed up in the early magazines and interfaced them to radios. We were making phone calls with radios *before* there was cell phones. Countless hams worked in the electronics industry, and worked in companies that brought forth many of the innovations we use today. A ham radio license, which was hard-eanred (most of us automatically decode all that mosrse code when it shows up on TV :D), is and continues to be a cherished part of many peoples lives. And was the beginning of many careers in technology and science.

While the FCC has many flaws, be careful to not throw out the baby with the bathwater. While I mention ham licenses, they do have a place in technical matters as well.