I was not surprised that I did not agree with the author on what values we should have government state (e.g. I oppose minimum wage, etc.), but I was surprised, to my great joy and shame, that his analysis of what has happened during the past decades was very accurate and told in a way that enabled me to understand something new. I also agree with him that we do have a problem and that we should find ways to make politics a democratic institution of public policy. Not a battle-ground for corporations that seek to maximize their profits (I don’t see anything wrong with maximising profits, but see something wrong, when public policy is hijacked for this purpose). And I also agree that his ideas on how to proceed are better than any I have seen before.

The situation we are in, reminds me, in a scary way, of the times of roman republic, in which, after conquests had brought huge properties to certain families/parties, the boundaries of private profit, military action, and public policy slowly vanished, until at the end all were the same under the rule of an emperor. The ultimate outcome of the game for bigger and bigger profits at the expense of all else.

So thank you for recommending this book. I shall await your next recommendation with anticipation. We have a problem we need to solve while we still have time. Hopefully, we still have time.

“government is pretty good at forcing internalization when it benefits strong special interests (again, copyright),”

“Pretty good?” I guess you know best. But it’s private and often personally financed litigation that enforces the internalization, and at least sometimes the little guy needs to sue a corporation for the little guy to internalize anything, and surely all the time the corporations know this.

Depends what exactly you define the market as. Why no government because government is a monopoly. Have competitive governments (anarchocapitalism) and then there is no problem.

Is democracy compatible with capitalism? Actually a better question is, is anything other than capitalism compatible with democracy. Capitalism and democracy have always coexisted. Is weak government compatible with democracy. Sure. Why not? Again historically American government was weaker than it is now and America was democratic so why shouldn’ t the two be compatible

BTW, it is correct that in Somalia there is no last mile problem.

Thanks for the recommendation 🙂

I made my last post after reading only Lessig’s post and only a few of the comments. Now that I’ve read the full thread, I would like to pay you a compliment. Your rhetoric is at once beautiful and devastating. Your comments are as elegant as they are trenchant. Still, I can’t help but wonder what might happen if you cast your pearls before something other than swine, so to speak. In the hope that I am casting my pearls before the proper entity, I would like to make some comments on what you have written, and ask a question or two as well.

You write: “Thomas Jefferson could have devoted a decade to drafting articulate letters and petitions to the British Crown addressing the amelioration of policy toward the colonies. He did not. Lessig can retreat to the safety of issuing mild exhortations for reform. I and many others are hoping that he will not.”

HH, have you ever read the Frozen Republic by Daniel Lazare? He argues that Jefferson deeply distrusted centralized power and wanted to establish an agrarian idea. Yes, America is a more urban then rural society, but agrarian interests (The Red States) have grossly disproportionate power as a direct result of Jefferson’s ideas. We are now living in a version of his agrarian ideal. There is also the point to consider that had we remained part of England, we would now enjoy the benefits of a much more egalitarian society. Anyway, I would like to know more specifics about what you hope Lessig will do. By invoking Jefferson, if you were simply making the point that actions speak louder than words, I agree.

I would like unpack this comment:

“I remain baffled by the reluctance of highly intelligent modern observers to grasp the potential magnitude of the political transformations that will result from the radical novelty of one billion people who are now effectively in continuous electronic communication all over the world. This development absolutely dwarfs the innovations of Gutenberg and the Encyclopedists. Yet commentary on the future of Internet society remains firmly focused on consumer appliances and chitchat.”

Well, have you considered that maybe the observers of which you speak aren’t so intelligent? And which observers are you talking about, exactly? And what difference does it make if they’re smart if they lack imagination and good will? By framing your question this way, (…highly intelligent modern observers…) I have to question the degree to which YOU grasp the potential magnitude of the political transformations that will result from the radical novelty of one billion people effectively in continuous communication all over the world. Don’t you get that you are now the highly intelligent modern observer of which you speak when you make intelligent comments in a public forum available to be read by billions of people? To whom else should we look? I mean, either it’s you or it isn’t. If you beg off, you contradict yourself. The shackles that currently bind us are ones which are mind-forged. They can be easily thrown off by thinking differently which I exhort you to do. At least allow me to attempt to explain how it might be done.

Also, your comment seems to indicate that you are not aware of a certain fundamental truth that in other instances you have made reference to in the above exchange. Except for a few places on the internet, there is no meaningful public discourse. The intelligent public observers of which you speak are invariably mouthpieces for the high priests and priestesses of the cult of money lovers. They’re at the podium right now, and they sort of set the agenda for what gets talked about and how. Don’t expect them to start going on about how the internet, if used properly, could cause their annihilation. The only way that they can conceive of the greatness of the internet is by thinking about how it might be useful for making someone billions of dollars. That’s about it.

The money-lovers are an absurd lot (as anyone who has read Richistan can attest) and we need to start bringing them to greater public ridicule. There are branches of social science already established which attempt to understand the causes and pathologies of poverty. That there is apparently no similar branch which attempts to understand the causes and pathologies of grotesque wealth might be viewed as a testament to the degree to which we are blind to it. But indeed it is a problem every bit as insidious as poverty and springs from various disturbances in human character.

HH, you speak of money-lovers, but let me ask you–do you feel like you adequately understand from where the impulse to love money comes? I would posit that it is of piece with the impulse to love ice cream. In the presence of a virtually unlimited supply some people find it difficult not to over indulge which goes at least part way in explaining why there are so many fat people today. For all but a blip of human history, the only environment there was one of scarcity. There really was no need to devise an accumulation off-switch. Those who speak of the virtues of self-interest and greed are making reference, even if unwittingly to this important impulse. And I too agree that it has its place. But in the same way that a rat will continually inject itself with cocaine under certain lab conditions, we will just endlessly accumulate money and whatever. We need to examine and understand this impulse a little better.

And unlike the accumulation of obscene weight, there is no social opprobrium reserved for those who accumulate obscene wealth. In fact we champion and celebrate those heifers who dwell in the outer reaches of plutocracy. Why should it be so?

But if people bend to anything at all, it is to social pressure. There may be no way to eradicate the impulse to be become a heifer, but we can at least make it unfashionable to do so in the same way that we have made smoking cigarettes unfashionable. I mean, Imelda Marcos isn’t the only one who has accumulated 4,000 pairs of shoes (while many children around her died of starvation). To a certain extent, as argued by the notable Peter Singer, when you have a billion dollars in your bank account and people are dying because those funds are unspent, you are committing atrocities. (How’s that for something for some of you money-lovers out there to chew on?)

Further, HH, declaring that the internet is big, great, and awesome, 300 X’s better than radio TV and the Gutenberg press combined doesn’t really amount to a whole lot. If only in some vague way, this is obvious to everyone by now. We need to start imagining what we want it to do and how we want it to do it. I mean very specific ideas. I have plenty of ideas that I will be happy to share. If you are willing to indulge me, I hope that you and others bring the precision and force of your intellect to these ideas I have so that they may be annealed in some fashion.

You write also this:

“This is a monstrous result of unchecked profit-making selfishness, and it cannot be addressed by retreating into the primitivism of tribal society or the dogmas of super-capitalism. Collectively-devised world-wide regulation is required to defend the public good.”

That’s spot on.

To those who defend capitalism, I have a question. Isn’t it at least apparent that capitalism and the market are two different and very contradictory things even if they are essentially though of as being more or less same things? Capitalism wants profit and nothing else. But profit suffers from competition, which is why most major companies put in a lot of effort in destroying a true market. Additionally, why should the government be restricted from coming to the market? Exactly how are we to view it as triumph of the market that Americans pay more for slower corporate provided internet access and connectivity than do residents of many countries where the government has stepped in? And what is so bad about government anyway? Theoretically it is all WE have to resist the depredations of power. One can’t really hold the idea of democracy and weak government (excluded from the market) up at the same time.

In conclusion, though I have spent a great deal of time writing this post, I’m rather sick of writing. There needs to be a call to action. HH, as I’ve said, you make terrific arguments. If you know of a cause that needs joining, let me know where to sign up. I’m happy to do any kind of work. If not, I encourage you to join my cause. I don’t want to spend another minute writing essays. I am eager to take action NOW. If anyone’s interested in devising a plan, let me know. 503-946-8389

HH–The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.,,you make it seem as if there is no hope…that corporations are simply too powerful to go up against. Where does that leave us?

The truth is the pards in question are made of paper and not muscle and sinew. Am I the only one here who has watched the Wizard of Oz? I would recommed it before Reich’s book.

To Lessig: Of course the singular drive for profit is constantly at odds with the public weal. But watch your arguments:

“If government were doing that sensibly, it would force carbon producers to internalize the negative externality of carbon (something our current government doesn’t do), just as it would force those who benefit from creative work to internalize the positive externality of creativity (something our current government is obsessed with doing).”

Not being a member of the intelligensia, I can only guess that this is an argument against the cap and trade system of offsets. What is wrong with it if, for the same amount of money I can reduce a greater amount of co2? If this is so, you may make a moral argument, but you won’t make a convincing practical or economic argument. The other part of the argument I’m not smart enough to understand–should choose different wording if possible if you want to be heard and understood by a wider audience.

In your precis of Reich’s book, Mr. Lessig, you did not, as Blake might have said, “dare frame [the] fearful symmetry” (of the tiger). Why do we need to hobble it? How exactly does the profit motive interfere with the public weal? What does it do and how does it do it? Where does it sleep at night, how does it kill, what is its favorite prey? Does it really bother us, or only lambs? When we know better about all of these things perhaps we can devise a strategy.

The argument that corporate power should be curbed is hackneyed. I need to know particulars. I, for one, deeply resent having to take a piss test every time I apply for a job. I regard that as a gross violation to say nothing of how it promulgates the so-called war on drugs, and the prison industrial complex. If urine today, blood tomorrow and then semen, and then DNA. Can we talk about this for a minute?

I presume that the intellecuals that frequent this blog will automatically dismiss this as philistine (I’d still like to hear your arguments though). But this is the kind of thing that you can get people to care about. Challenging power is ultimately about getting people to care, so remember that. Otherwise whatever you want to do it is going to etnernally remain a discussion among academics and nothing more.

To extend the metaphor, tiger’s are endangered. Tigers are no match for people with the right implements. So let’s get busy making the right implements.

It would be extremely easy to do if people simply sat down and decided that they wanted to do it. I for one have plenty of suggestions. Let’s talk about what we want to do and how we’re going to do it. Let’s be creative and let’s have fun while doing it. 503-946-8389