Our democracy no longer represents the people. Here's how we fix it | Larry Lessig | TEDxMidAtlantic

I've spent large amounts of time in other countries. America is an absolute embarrassment. There are countries you can go where it feels like the government actually cares about trying to help people have a better life. There are countries where infrastructure projects get completed. There are countries where infrastructure isn't just completed, it's good . There are countries where the administrative overhead of health care is 2% instead of (a likely underestimated) 25%. You can't fix infrastructure policy, or any other policy, in America without first fixing campaign finance reform. As long as senators and justices can be openly bought and sold there is no hope of getting responsible leadership that acts in the interests of citizens. Very good video explaining the core issue of American politics by Harvard Law professor and founder of creative commons Lawrence Lessig-- Our democracy no longer represents the people : ▶ this video

Lawrence Lessig (Harvard law professor famous for fighting for sane copyright law) does a great presentation on the root cause of Americas problems. He also ran for president in 2016. It can be watched here: ▶ this video The short version is that to win primaries you need money. Money mainly comes from corporations and rich people. Taking money from corporations and rich people creates a relationship where you have some loyalty to them or they can punish you if you don't act how they want. Thus the primary corrupting force in America is pro-corruption campaign finance laws. The test for democracy is whether elected politicians pass legislation that the public at large wishes to be passed. Our very own Princeton did a study to answer this question. The key finding: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”[1] In a very real, non hyperbolic sense we are in a plutocracy where money rules. We are not a democracy due chiefly to our campaign finance laws. Here is a campaign that aims to work on this: link [1] link

Won’t matter. ‘They’ donate to both sides of the isle. Lessig has a good video that breaks a lot of this process down. ▶ this video

Larry Lessig backs both net neutrality and democracy. See his plan for restoring democracy to the United States: ▶ this video The main points are: 1) Citizen funded campaigns 2) Equal representation (ie, Proportional Representation) 3) Equal freedom to vote

The problem is that what we understand as theoretical democracy and what is generally practically applied on the ground are two philosophically different things. An anti-thesis of democracy itself. Prof Lawrence Lessig of Harvard nails it when he calls this type of corruption of democracy as Tweedism. Here's a quick summary of his thesis (2015): ▶ this video Here's a longer, more academic, version (2014): link Both talks begin with the Hong Kong student protests of 2014.

I was not being reductive. Money gets to vote on candidates before people do. Before any general election there is a primary, and to win the primary you do fundraising. People with money give politicians money with the implicit understanding that making anti-donor decisions will result in withdrawal of future money or (thanks to citizens united) unlimited contributions to their opponent. Money literally votes on political candidates before any person does. That is why we have a "democracy" more responsive to money than to the will of the average voter. Even if you look at it as a black box, Princeton did a study and asked if the legislation our politicians pass correlate most with the average citizen, interest groups, or the desires of rich people, the correlation was highest with rich people: link Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. Here you can watch Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig talk about this issue: ▶ this video As wealth concentrates, it is able to purchase and corrupt further institutions. Bezos bought WaPo, Musk bought Twitter, I'm sure there are more examples. Do you think that is a form of power that is able to manipulate public opinion or government policy? Do you think ownership of a media outlet could help a person concentrate their

The U.S. has legalized what is considered corruption in most other western democracies. Campaign finance reform is needed. People should not be able to give money to politicians they are not eligible to vote for, i.e. rich people buying politicians on the other side of the country. Companies, unions and trade associations are not people and should not be able to give money to politicians. It is my understanding that the U.S. is definitely the outlier. Other countries like Canada, the U.K., Germany, Japan, etc don't allow money to influence politics like in the U.S. More information: Our democracy no longer represents the people. Here's how we fix it | Larry Lessig | TEDxMidAtlantic | ▶ this video

> you are served by competent legislators. Until campaign finance law is reformed, there can be no expectation of competent legislation. In American government, politicians must spend significant amounts of time fundraising. Most of the time, the candidate that is most successful fundraising wins their primary. The general election only involves candidates who won their primary. So before any person gets to vote in a general election, people must vote in a primary election, and before people vote in a primary election, companies get to vote with money in the "fundraising election". If you've ever thought our government is more responsive to money than public opinion, it's because money gets to "vote" on political candidates before anyone else does. Here is Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig's presentation on this very idea: ▶ this video Here is a related political campaign: link

I am aware of situations like this. An employee I know was given a completely false performance evaluations despite having been one of the most productive people in her team. Members of her team and other teams had previously praised her for her contributions towards helping them and their organization. One day out of the blue one day she was told she was under-performing. Then she was given a "test task" to "improve her performance". The task given was extremely challenging with very short timescales and after she delivered it in time, she was told it was not good enough for nitpicky reasons. I do not find this situation unusual at all. I am even aware of cases that led to suicides. Issues like this are prevalent in every organization, private or governmental that I have any knowledge of. Even the UN is not free of such issues : link There is an opportunity here for a sociologist to do some good research to explain why this is such a common problem and what can be done about. However at the root of the problem is the fact that laws pertaining to work place bullying are almost non-existent in most countries. There are some laws pertaining to "harassment" which is like bullying but only when applied to protected categories. This is another opportunity for a political scientist to investigate why do almost all countries not have well developed laws against workplace bullying. It doesn't take a genius to propose hypothesis regarding both these questions. It may take a genius t

I see where you are coming from, but I still object. Based on all the problems in our system I don't know that the U.S. deserves to be called a democracy, unless the word has lost much of its meaning. Candidates are effectively preselected via funding by .02% of the population before people can vote, and gerrymandering districts is rampant so that political parties are selecting voters, instead of the other way around [0]. Would you say that things like that make the U.S. a de jure democracy, also? I think the problems with our so-called democracy explain why Trump has had the following that he does. He had the money and media experience to get elected based on the outrage so many people have for all other politicians who do not really represent them. The establishment seemed more interested in getting rid of him than addressing the sentiment that brought him to office. I'm not a Trump supporter myself, and I loathe his demagoguery, but I think that understand why he got elected. He's popular with a lot of politically apathetic people because they really believed he would "drain the swamp" and that he wasn't like every single other politician - not another Bush, not another Clinton, another insider, not someone who was going to bail out Wall Street again, etc. Apologies for nitpicking and spouting off a bit, but like I said this has all very much been on my mind lately. I know that I may be tilting at windmills here, but words are important and shape our thoughts, which led m

I think US politicians' failure to act effectively in the interests of US citizens is caused more by the concentration of political power than it is by bad people. The US isn't alone among developed countries in having this problem, but there are plenty of developed countries that manage to avoid it. The answer is more democratic accountability, in the form of measures such as proportional representation. This Jennifer Lawrence video summarises some desirable reforms: link See also Lawrence Lessig's "Our democracy no longer represents the people. Here's how we fix it": ▶ this video

Since you brought up 'free elections', I think this talk by Lawrence Lessig is relevant. "I don't care who does the electing, as long as I get to do the nominating" ▶ this video