Republic, Lost Flashcards
The sources of funding for research on the safety of BPA, cell phones, Google, and Wikipedia
BPA - Studies done outside of the BPA industry found found harm in 85% of their tests. studies done in the industry that created BPA products did 13 studies and found harm in NONE of the cases. Trust in the system is undermined by the funding relationship. Lessig is trying to argue that monetary incentives undermine trust.
Cell Phones - There is evidence that cell phone radiation increases the risk of brain cancer. Industry-funded studies found NO biological effect, while independent studies did. The point isn’t that cell phones are or aren’t harmful, but rather that we don’t know because of a lack of reliance on industry studies.
Google - Some companies and people already understand that monetary incentives undermine trust. The mere APPEARANCE of corruption is harmful without the corruption itself. Google replaced their advertisement-based search engine model with one that independently evaluates “relevance” of the pages of to the consumers. Moves like this INSPIRE TRUST.
Wikipedia - Wikipedia doesn’t accept advertising at all in order to inspire trust. They spend $150 million each year to keep this independence.
- All of these points have one thing in common: institutions only need to prioritize public trust and it must not be an institution free of money. Money isn’t the issue; it’s money in the wrong place. Wikipedia and Google are examples of money within an institution that is properly cabined.
Sugar tariffs, corn subsidies, HFC and Type 2 diabetes and obesity
HFC: Lessig argues that we don’t have free markets. Childhood obesity has increased dramatically over the last 20 years, and a lot of that is due to the increased consumption of High Fructose Corn Syrup. The reason for the increase is because it is cheaper to produce than normal sugar. Lessig argues that the food market is not “free” because food products are heavily subsidized by the American government The beneficiaries of these subsidies are the world’s richest and most powerful corporate farmers.
Sugar Tariffs: Sugar is 2 to 3 times more expensive in the U.S. because the government puts tariffs on the sugar to “protect” domestic sugar manufacturers (giving them $1 billion in extra profit every year while costing the economy about $3 billion).
Corn Subsidies: the government spent $73.8 billion to ensure that farmers produced more corn than the market knew what to do with. It produced a lot of HFC. These highly subsidized large corporate farmers drove out smaller family owned farmers. Cattle ranchers began to feed corn to cattle because so cheap- they couldn’t digest it so had to give them antibiotics. Many have argued that the consequence is the breakout of E. coli and salmonella. There is campaigning and lobbying for the sugar industry and the corn industry that keeps getting larger and larger.
Teachers’ unions spending for lobbying on school reform
America doesn’t have a successful school system, in large part because of tenure. America has fallen from high in the ranks providing high education to 14th and even lower in some subjects. Although we have seen improvement in teachers getting paid more, that isn’t the problem and money can’t fix this problem. Studies have shown that the biggest deciding factor in education is good teachers. Unfortunately, replacing bad teachers with good teachers is difficult because teachers from K-12 have tenure. “Tenure” refers to workplace protections that make it extremely difficult to let go of these tenured employees. According to Lessig, effective teacher performance is vital to reforming our national education system. Politicians have continued to defend tenure.
-teacher’s unions are among the largest contributors to the Democratic Party
“Does the influence of the union’s’ spending weaken your ability to believe that the current pro-tenure policy makes sense”
Financial system reform efforts.
Lessig argues that our financial system isn’t safe. 2008 was the worst financial crisis since the great depression. History of financial regulation. As part of the New Deal, the Glass Steagall Act of 1933 put regulations in place to prevent further catastrophe. The rules stated that financial assets be traded publicly, transparently, and subject to anti-fraud requirements. 1980’s derivatives were introduced. constant question about whether and how derivatives should be regulated.
Deregulation History: Jan 1993: most derivates exempt from federal regulation
1994 - lobbyist killed 4 anti-derivative bills in congress
1999 - Clinton abolished the glass steagall act
2000 - Congress (overwhelmingly) passed an act that forbade the CFTC from regulating derivatives
The effects of this are clear from the 2008 financial crisis. Banks invested heavily in derivatives (allowed them to maximize on their profits unaffected by the risk posed to the economy as a whole). , “Does the fact that more than $1 billion was given affect your ability to believe that this insanely important if endlessly complicated area of regulatory policy was regulated sensibly?”
The BOTTOM LINE for this question is that money in the wrong place is all it takes to weaken confidence.
List and discuss at least five reasons Lessig identifies for why there is so much money currently being spent on congressional lobbying and campaigning.
Demand for Campaign Cash Polarization/Extremism New Norms New Suppliers Gift Economy
Demand for campaign cash
When Congress changed from being democratic-led to republican led, this was in large part because of republican fundraising. Now, leaders were being chosen in part by their ability to raise campaign cash (where as before it had to do with seniority, political ties, etc.) Leading fund-raisers became the new leaders. Fundraising became the new game. There was a driving demand for control based on who would control congress. The cost of campaigns increased dramatically as well. (partly due to rising media costs). but also because of advanced campaign technology.
Supply - Polarization/Extremism
As the demand for campaign cash rose, the political economy for it’s supply changed. The political message of both parties changed in a direction that increased the supply of campaign funds. One example was that democrats switched their view to pro-business and de-regulation. The main reason was because both democrats and republicans had a non-economic message that was much more extreme than it previously was. This made fundraising easier. Direct marketers began telling campaigns that a strong and clear message to the party base is more likely to elicit a large financial response than a balanced moderate message to the middle. EXTREMISM PAYS, LITERALLY. “sing the message to inspire the most money, even if the message is far from the views of both.
New Norms
Compared to congressmen in the 1980’s, gaining money from campaigning is viewed very different today. Back then congressmen knew there were limits on not accepting funds from people but now the congressman is proud of how much money he has raised and has the largest influence over congress.
Back then, raising money from the very people you regulate “compromises the integrity of the institution”. More recently, Congressmen have quoted “There’s no shame anymore. We’ve blown past the ethical standards, we now play on the edge of the legal standards.” The new norms make fundraising easier just at that moment when the demand for raising funds rises dramatically.
New Suppliers
Lobbyists: Unlike campaign managers who have one boss (the political candidate) and whose main job is to fundraise money for them, the new suppliers work for special-interest clients and they are paid by a firm that sells their services directly to interests eager to persuade policymakers to bend policy in one way or another. Their practices were hidden, therefore limited. They knew shame. Today however, lobbyists are ethical, educated, and work extremely hard to work within the letter of the law. They help Congress understand the complex legislation and rules. Yet as lobbying has become more respectable, and that is the key, it has also become more dangerous. The demand for campaign cash has turned the lobbyist into a supplier. The feed congress with a dependency on campaign cash, but they can only feed that dependency if they can provide something of value to their clients in return. (DRAW PICTURE) Special interests - lobbyist - members. These special interests have become so dependent on the government because of the increasing influence the government has on America, so they look to give money to congress and the lobbyists are the middleman. Lobbyists have become indispensable to politicians.
Gift Economy
a gift economy is a series of exchanges between two or more souls who never pretend to equate one exchange to another, but who also don’t pretend that reciprocating isn’t important. Gifts in a sense are not selfless acts to each other. Gifts are moves in a game and they oblige others. Washington has switched from an exchange economy to a gift economy. Obligation not expressed in legally enforceable contracts, but in the moral expectations that a system of gift exchange yields. A gift economy is grounded on relationships that grow over time as actors within that economy build their power by developing a rich set of obligations that they later draw upon to achieve the ends they seek. Power grows by giving gifts to create an obligation that later can give them what they really wanted to begin with. Washington is regulated to be a gift economy rather than a quid-pro-quo economy (exchanging cash for goods).
Discuss Lessig’s two concepts of corruption.
Type 1 corruption: Bribery (when speaking about government officials). Bribery is taking money in exchange for special favor or privilege from the government (also referred to as quid pro quo). Congress has the power to criminalize quid pro quo but also has the power to ban contributions that might raise suspicion of bribery.
Type 2 corruption: dependence corruption. Congress is intended to be independent, which means Congress is supposed to be dependent on the people alone. However, this dependence gets corrupted when a conflicting dependency develops in congress itself. For example, a company said it would provide $1,000,000 in any congressional district to defeat any representative that wanted to enact climate change laws. This would be independent of any particular campaign, but someone might take down a pledge to support climate change in order to protect their political interest. This is dependence corruption. This is the pressure to protect one’s own political position within.
Explain why transparency and anonymity are “two reforms that won’t work” according to Lessig.
-Transparency : Federal law required disclosure of campaigns contributions that were greater than $200. The information disclosed also included whom someone worked for. Lessig says that lists of contributions leave us more confused than before on where the influence may be. We are more likely to come to conclusions without support. Also, this information gives us too little. If we believe that there is a relationship between a contributor, a donation of “5,000” does not really tell us much about this relationship and what came out of it. Another reason why transparency is not the answer is because influence does not necessarily have to translate into a written check. For example, influence could be a threat to support the opposition. This would obviously not be disclosed in the contributions lists.
Anonymity: This method to bring reform is the other side of transparency. If the core problem is the risk of corruption, then why not make the contributions unknown to both the public and the member. Lessig states that his concern is not whether or not it would work, but if it would be perceived to work. This would require a lot of trust from contributors in those anonymously relaying their contributions to members. There would be no record of the contributions being relayed to the members and the suspicions would surely lead to less campaign contributions.
