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