We the People and the Republic we must reclaim Lawrence Lessig

once upon a time there was a place

called lesterland now laster land looks

a lot like the United States like the

United States it has about three hundred

and eleven million people and of that

311 million people it turns out 144,000

are called Lester if Matt’s in the

audience I just borrowed that I’ll

return it in a second this this

character from your from your series so

144,000 recalled Lester which means

about point zero five percent is named

Lester now Lester’s in lesterland have

this extraordinary power there are two

elections every election cycle in

lesterland one is called the general

election the other is called

the Lester election and in the general

election is the citizens who get to vote

but in the Lester election it’s the

Lester’s who get to vote and here’s the

trick in order to run in the general

election you must do extremely well in

the Lester election you don’t

necessarily have to win but you must do

extremely well now what can we say about

democracy in Lester lab well we can say

number one is the Supreme Court said in

citizens united the people have the

ultimate influence over elected

officials because after all there is a

general election but only after the

Lester’s have had their way with the

candidates who wish to run in the

general election and number two

obviously this dependence upon the

Lester’s is going to produce a subtle

understated we could say camouflaged

bending to keep the Lester’s happy okay

so we have a democracy no doubt but it’s

dependent upon the Lester’s and it

dependent upon the people

it has a competing dependencies we could

say conflicting dependencies depending

upon who the Lester’s are okay that’s

Lester wet

now there are three things I want you to

see now that I’ve described lesterland

number one the united states is

lesterland the united states is

lesterland the united states also looks

like this also has two elections one we

call the general election the second we

should call the money election in the

general election it’s the citizens who

get to vote if you’re over 18 in some

states if you have an ID in the money

election it’s the funders who get to

vote the funders who get to vote and

just like in lesterland the trick is to

run in the general election you must do

extremely well in the money election you

don’t necessarily have to win there is

Jerry Brown but you must do extremely

well and here’s the key there are just

as few relevant funders in USA land as

there are Lester’s in lesterland now you

say really really Oh point zero five

percent well here the numbers from two

thousand and ten point two six percent

of America gave two hundred dollars or

more to any federal candidate point zero

five percent gave the maximum amount to

any federal candidate point zero one

percent the 1% of the 1% gave $10,000 or

more to federal candidates and in this

election cycle

my favorite statistic is point zero zero

zero zero four two percent for those of

you doing the numbers you know that’s a

hundred and thirty two Americans gave

sixty percent of the super PAC money

spent in the cycle we have just seen

ending so I’m just a lawyer I look at

this range of numbers and I say it’s

fair for me to say it’s point zero five

percent who are irrelevant funders in

America in this sense the funders are

our Lester’s now what can we say about

this democracy in USA land well as the

Supreme Court said in citizens united we

could say of course the people have the

ultimate influence over the elected

officials we have a general election but

only after the funders have had their

way with the candidates who wish to run

in that general election and number two

obviously this dependent upon the

funders produces a subtle understated

camouflaged bending to keep the funders

happy

candidates for Congress and members of

Congress spend between 30 and 70% of

their time raising money to get back to

Congress or to get their party back into

power and the question we need to ask is

what does it do to them these humans as

they spend their time behind the

telephone calling people they’ve never

met but calling the tiniest slice of the

1% as anyone would as they do this they

develop a sixth sense a constant

awareness about how what they do might

affect their ability to raise money they

become in the words of the x-files

shapeshifters as they constantly adjust

their views in light of what they know

will help them to raise money not on

issues 1 to 10 but in issues 11 to 1,000

Leslie burn a Democrat for Virginia

describes that when she went to Congress

she was told by a colleague quote always

lean to the green than to clarify she

went on he was not an environmentalist

so here too we have a democracy a

democracy dependent upon the funders and

dependent upon the people competing

dependencies possibly conflicting

dependencies depending upon who the

funders are okay the united states is

lesterland point number one here’s point

number two the United States is worse

than lesterland

worse than lesterland because you can

imagine in leicester land if we lester

has got a letter from the government

that said hey you get to pick who gets

to run in the general election we would

think maybe of a kind of aristocracy of

Lester’s you know there are Lester’s

from every part of social Society

they’re rich Lester’s poor Lester’s

black Lester’s white lists not many

women Lester’s but put that to assign

one second we have Celestia’s from

everywhere we could think what could we

do to make Lester land better it’s at

least possible

the Lester’s would act for the good of

last to end but in our land in this land

in us a land there are certainly some

sweet Lester’s out there many of them in

this room here today but the vast

majority of the Lester’s act for the

Lester’s because the shifting

coalition’s that are comprising the

point zero five percent are not

comprising it for the public interest

it’s for their private interest in this

sense the USA is worse the

Lester laughs and finally point number

three whatever one wants to say about

Lester land against the background of

its history of traditions in our land in

us a land

Lester land is a corruption a corruption

now by corruption I don’t mean brown

paper bag cache secret among members of

Congress I don’t mean Rob Blagojevich

sense of corruption I don’t mean any

criminal act the corruption I’m talking

about is perfectly legal it’s a

corruption relative to the framers

baseline for this Republic the framers

gave us what they called a republic but

by a republic they meant a

representative democracy and by a

representative democracy they meant a

government as Madison put it in

Federalist fifty-two that would have a

branch that would be dependent upon the

people alone so here’s the model of

government they have the people and the

government with this exclusive

dependency but the problem here is that

Congress’s of all the different

dependence the longer our dependence

upon the people alone increasingly

dependent upon the funders now this is a

dependence to but it’s different and

conflicting from a dependence upon the

people alone so long as the funders are

not the people this is a corruption now

there’s good news and bad news about

this corruption one bit of good news is

its bipartisan equal opportunity

corruption it blocks the left and a

whole range of issues that we on the

Left really care about it blocks the

right to as it makes principled

arguments of the right increasingly

impossible so the right ones smaller

government when Al Gore was vice

president his team hasn’t had an idea

for deregulating a significant portion

of the telecommunications industry the

chief policy man took this idea to

Capitol Hill and as he reported back to

me the response was hell no if we

deregulate these guys how are we going

to raise money from them this is a

system that’s designed to save the

status quo including the status quo of

big and invasive government it works

against the left and the right and that

you might say is good news but here’s

the bad news

it’s a pathological democracy destroying

corruption because in any system where

the members are dependent upon the

tiniest fraction of us for their

election that means the tiniest number

of us the tiniest tiniest number of us

can block reform I know that should have

been like like a rock or something I can

only find cheese I’m sorry so there it

is blocked reform because there is an

economy here an economy of influence an

economy with lobbyists epicenter which

feeds on polarization it feeds on

dysfunction the worst that it is for us

the better that it is for this

fundraiser henry david thoreau there are

a thousand hacking at the branches of

evil to one who is striking at the root

this is the roots okay

now every single one of you know this

you couldn’t be here if you didn’t know

this yet you ignore it you ignore it

this is an impossible problem you focus

on the possible problems like

eradicating polio from the world or

taking an image of every single street

across the globe or building the first

real Universal Translator or building a

fusion Factory in your garage these are

the manageable problems so you ignore

so you ignore this corruption but we

cannot ignore this corruption anymore we

need a government that works and not

works for the left or the right but

works for the left and the right the

citizens of the left and right because

there is no sensible reform possible

until we end this corruption so I want

you to take hold to grab the issue you

care the most about climate change is

mine but it might be financial reform or

a simpler tax system or inequality grab

that issue sit it down in front of you

look straight in its eyes and tell it

there is no Christmas this year there

will never be a Christmas we will never

get your issue solved until we fix this

issue first so it’s not that mine is the

most important issue it’s not yours is

the most important issue but mine is the

first issue the issue we have to solve

before we get to fix the issues you care

about no sensible reform and we cannot

afford a world a future with no sensible

reform ok so how do we do it

turns out the analytics here are easy

simple

if the problem is members spending an

extraordinary amount of time fund

raising from the tiniest slice of

America the solution is to have them

spend less time fund raising but fund

raise from a wider slice of America to

spread it out to spread the funder

influence so that we restore the idea of

dependence upon the people alone and to

do this does not require a

constitutional amendment changing the

first amendment to do this we require a

single statute a statute establishing

what we think of as small dollar funded

elections a statute of citizen funded

campaigns and there are any number of

these proposals out there fair elections

now act the American anti-corruption act

an idea in my book that I call the grant

and Franklin project that give vouchers

to people to fund elections an idea of

John Sarbanes called the grassroots

democracy Act each of these would fix

this corruption

by spreading out the influence of

funders to all of us the analytics are

easy here it’s the politics that’s hard

indeed impossibly hard because this

reform would shrink K Street shrink K

Street and Capitol Hill as congressman

Jim Cooper a Democrat from Tennessee put

it has become a farm league for K Street

a farm League for K Street members and

staffers and bureaucrats have an

increasingly common business model in

their head business model focused on

their life after government their life

as lobbyists 50% of the Senate between

1998 and 2004 left to become lobbyists

42% of the house those numbers have only

gone up and his United Republic

calculated last April the average

increase in salary for those who they

tracked was one thousand four hundred

and fifty two percent so it’s fair to

ask how is it possible for them to

change this now I get this skepticism I

get this cynicism I get this sense of

impossibility but I don’t buy it this is

a solvable issue if you think about the

issues our parents tried to solve in the

20th century issues like racism or

sexism or the issue that we’ve been

fighting in this century homophobia

those are hard issues you don’t wake up

one day no longer a racist it takes

generations to tear that intuition that

DNA out of the soul of a people but this

is a problem of just incentives just

incentives changed the incentives and

the behavior changes and the states that

have adopted small dollar funded systems

have seen overnight a change in the

practice when Connecticut adopted this

system in the very first year 78% of the

elected representatives gave up large

contributions and took small

contributions only it’s solvable not by

being a Democrat not by being a

Republican it’s

solvable by being citizens by being

citizens by being Tennyson’s because if

you want a kickstart reform look I could

kickstart reform at half the price of

fixing energy policy I could give you

back a republic okay but even if you’re

not yet with me even if you believe this

is impossible what the five years since

I spoke at Ted has taught me as I’ve

spoken about this issue again and again

is even if you think it’s impossible

that is irrelevant relevance I spoke at

Dartmouth once and a woman stood up

after I spoke right in my book and she

said to me professor you’ve convinced me

this is hopeless hopeless there’s

nothing we can do when she said that I

scrambled I tried to think how do I

respond to that hopelessness what is

that sense of hopelessness and what hit

me was an image of my six-year-old son

and I imagine a doctor coming to me and

saying your son your son has terminal

brain cancer and there’s nothing you can

do nothing you can do so what I do

nothing just sit there accept that okay

nothing I can do I’m going off to build

Google glass of course not I would do

everything I could and I would do

everything I could because this is what

love means that the odds are irrelevant

and that you do whatever the hell you

can the odds be damned and then I saw

the obvious link because even we

liberals love this country

and so when the pundits and the

politicians say that change is

impossible what this love of country

says back is that’s just irrelevant we

lose something dear something everyone

in this room loves and cherishes if we

lose this Republican so we act with

everything we can to prove these pundits

wrong so here’s my question do you have

that love do you have that love because

if you do then what the hell are you

what the hell are we doing then Franklin

was carried from the Constitutional

Convention in September of 1787 he was

stopped in the street by a woman who

said mr. Franklin what have you wrought

Franklin said a republic madam if you

can keep it a republic a representative

democracy a government dependent upon

the people alone we have lost that

republic all of us have to act to get it

back thank you very much

thank you