Larry Lessig Takes on The World
Larry Lessig, whose books have changed my view of the world, is leaving copyright reform to take on what’s arguably the single most important issue of our times: the privatization of public policy.
After talking about the basic inability of our political system to reckon the truth about global warming, Gore observed that this was really just part of a much bigger problem. That the real problem here was (what I will call a “corruption” of) the political process. That our government can’t understand basic facts when strong interests have an interest in its misunderstanding. … Why? The answer is a kind of corruption of the political process. Or better, a “corruption” of the political process. I don’t mean corruption in the simple sense of bribery. I mean “corruption” in the sense that the system is so queered by the influence of money that it can’t even get an issue as simple and clear as term extension right. Politicians are starved for the resources concentrated interests can provide. In the US, listening to money is the only way to secure reelection. And so an economy of influence bends public policy away from sense, always to dollars.Modern societies vitally depend on the relative independence of their functionally differentiated sub-systems. In order to cope with a world of dramatically increasing complexity, the law liberated itself from the grip of morality and religion and became positive law. The economic system, in turn, broke free from the shackles of a feudal political system and quite literally changed the world by embracing property in rivalrous goods, voluntary exchange, and competition as the means of generating wealth. (Few have described this evolution more engagingly than Marx and Engels.) Functional differentiation and relative independence are the basis for the separation of church and state, of law and morality, and of politics and economics. It is that separation and relative independence, which is at the heart of the political project of the Enlightenment. Godspeed, Larry Lessig!
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June 21st, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Hanno, I’m surprised at you. Are you so naive to believe that politics could and would exist in a vacuum were it not for those evil private interests out to subvert it? Do you really think that, absent corporations, politicians would be pure-minded, noble souls, out to ensure nothing but the betterment of mankind? And do you really think that the problem is private influence instead of a political system that extends itself so fully and firmly into every facet of our lives that it creates a massive incentive for private interests to attempt to exert influence? Larry Lessig is not about to see political excess as the problem (no matter how many times he describes himself as a libertarian). I’m sorry he lost Eldred and became so bitter. I’m disappointed that he believes that the only reason a political system could oppose his view is that it is corrupt. I’m no great fan of our bloated political system, but I’m absolutely certain that Larry Lessig will do nothing useful to stymie the actual problem. Lessig consistently fails to distinguish the implications of government intrusions into our lives from those of private actors in his books, and anyone who believes that the real threat to life as we know it is George Lucas and not the likes of Ted Stevens, Ted Kennedy and, yes, his beloved Al Gore is a fool. Not to put too fine a point on it.
June 21st, 2007 at 2:25 pm
The question is whether governments are necessarily corrupt or not. If they are necessarily corrupt, because, after all, they are run by self-interested people, then I agree with you that we’re better off with an ultra-minimal state a la Nozick or even with anarcho capitalism a la David Friedman. But if governments are not necessarily corrupt, because, given the right institutional framework (checks and balances, separation of power, public financing of elections, etc.) even self interested people have the capacity to act in the public interest, then we cannot entirely rule out the possibility of good government. (I know, the idea of good government is becoming increasinly hard to maintain, given present conditions. So maybe cynicism is indeed rational and any residual idealism is naive.) In my view, as you know, good government, honest government, government, in other words “of the people, by the people, for the people” is possibe and if achieved, even imperfectly, it can be a great promoter of societal good, and in that role it can achieve more than the market left to its own devices. I doubt that markets alone would protect the environment, would provide for sufficient education, would reach out to the poor, mantain shelters, would get you a lawyer if you’re down and out and accused of a serious crime, etc. But, and that, I think is the baseline commitment to libertarianism, as soon as you show me that in any of these and other areas markets do a better job than the government (how hard can that be?), I’ll be the first to insist that the government get out of the way.
June 21st, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Geoff, I think there is a lot of room between the privitatization of public policy and politics in a vacuum. Sure, there have always been special interest, corporate or not, and they have had varying degrees of influence of politics. (Weren’t burgeois revolutions fought about this?) One of the tenets of the liberal state was the control of the state over central infrastructure. There are good arguments against what you call the bloated political system, but we will also need to look carefully at what we consider infrastructure going forward (I would count information-distribution technology) and who we think should be in control of it: (1) no one, (2) the state, or (3) private special interest or corporations.