Lawrence Lessig and Fighting Corruption

by on December 15, 2008 · 17 comments

I’ve been reading some of Larry Lessig’s thoughts on corruption and I’ve drafted a short reaction at OpenMarket.org.

In short, I think that Lessig’s right to say that Washington is corrupt, he’s right that money has an incredible power to corrupt the system, but I think he’s wrong to say that we ought to focus on money.

Why?  Because there are other forms of influence that special interests can use to push lawmakers toward the policies they would prefer.  Eliminating money from politics is likely an impossible goal but would also do little to stop corruption.  Taking away power from government and returning it to individuals seems to me to be the only way we can truly fight corruption.  I articulate this all more fully in the post.

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Cord Blomquist / Cord Blomquist spends most of his time pining for the singularity. To pass the time while waiting for this convergence, he serves as the New Media Manager at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Before landing this sweet gig, Cord hocked policy writing for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, toiled in the halls of Congress, and even worked in a crouton factory. In college, Cord spent his hours studying political philosophy and artificial intelligence, resulting in an unhealthy obsession with Lt. Commander Data. All of these activities will, of course, be viewed as laughable when he is ported from this crude meatspace into the nanobot cloud.

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