'The Laws Are Written By Lobbyists,' Says Google's Schmidt

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from The Atlantic: "'The average American doesn't realize how much of the laws are written by lobbyists' to protect incumbent interests, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Atlantic editor James Bennet at the Washington Ideas Forum. 'It's shocking how the system actually works.' In a wide-ranging interview that spanned human nature, the future of machines, and how Google could have helped the stimulus, Schmidt said technology could 'completely change the way government works.' 'Washington is an incumbent protection machine,' Schmidt said. 'Technology is fundamentally disruptive.' Mobile phones and personal technology, for example, could be used to record the bills that members of Congress actually read and then determine what stimulus funds were successfully spent." We discussed a specific example of this from the cable industry back in August.

Comments

Re:Rambling bunch of Duhs!

[hedwards]

Wow, either trolling or you're a complete moron. It's pretty well established that the dams are harming the salmon and preventing them from going back to the way they used to be.

The Chinese government doesn't deserve any admiration for that. They've chose to put people's lives at risk over a poorly considered project. China: cracks in the Three Gorges Dam, so 300,000 people can wave goodbye to their homes

Yeah, that sounds like something I want my government doing. At least with the dams, there's scientific research to back the idea that the dams are harming our fishing industry. All so that we can sell the power that we don't use or need to the Californians that don't care about the effects it has on our economy.

Re:Not news

[Cadallin]

Think the current recession is bad? Why yes, yes I do, given that by any indicator available to use, the current one is worse. Nice attempt at blatant revisionism to justify your Libertarian tin foil hattery, though.

Re:Not news

[Jawnn]

No, the solution is well-known, just unpalatable to many people: stop having the government attempting to micromanage the economy.

Perhaps "fuckwit" is too harsh a term, but seriously, you really should study history, not to mention current events, before you open your yap about "the evils of government regulation".

• The insurance industry has "designed" our health care system. Their "design" is driven by profit above all else. The result is markedly ineffective when patient outcome versus dollars spent is given even a cursory examination.
• While it has a pretty spotty record of late, due to a decade or two worth of attempts to thwart it, the FDA is pretty much all that stands between you and patent medicine
• China, for example, has very little regulation when it comes to the safety of it's manufactured goods. What little regulation there is is routinely unenforced. Can you say melamine? How about lead? Yeah, less regulation is definitely a recipe for success, at the expense of the entire population of consumers.
• Automobiles sold in the U.S. are far, far safer than they were, say 50 years ago. This is due, in large part, to government regulation. By comparison, the influence of the insurance industry, which as a very clear monetary interest in safer cars, has had relatively little influence. Why might that be?

I could go on all day, but the point is that our lives are, for the most part, far better than they would be if mindless libertarian fuckwits had their way and did away with all "government regulation". The important fact, always overlooked by libertarian fuckwits, is that an effective free market depends on an informed consumer and in practice, this is a practical impossibility. No individual has the resources to effectively understand and weigh the qualities of virtually anything he or she buys today. That goes for toothpaste as much as it goes for "packages" of worthless mortgages.

Re:Not news

[demonlapin]

Wow. Seriously, you need to get out more.