Hacker News Comments on
Republic, Lost: Version 2.0
·
2
HN comments
- This course is unranked · view top recommended courses
Hacker News Stories and Comments
All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this book.Better yet - campaign finance reform: https://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Version-Lawrence-Lessig...I think there are good people that want to serve, but they have to play the money game to survive (costs millions/billions to get elected?? What?!). Which eventually corrupts them ...
Term limits might be nice too.
> The question is: Why can't a new party come up? Is it due to the system itself or the "will of the people"?I honestly and genuinely don't think that's much of a question.
I encourage you to read Lawrence Lessig's "Republic, Lost"[1] - which talks about how the big money behind campaign financing makes average Joe's feel as if they're choosing a politician based on their will, which turns out to not really be the case. Rather, they're choosing from a select group of politicians already rubber stamped "OK" by deep pocketed donors.
A good quote (not verbatim) from the book is basically how deep pocket donors have a sense of: "Let me choose the potential candidate options, and I don't really care who wins".
So it's the "will of the people" only so far as the people's will aligns with something they have 0 control over - the intentions/ambitions of those with money - which doesn't sound much like free will.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Version-Lawrence-Lessig...
⬐ ethbroMoney has always been integral to political campaigning.But I'd say the 2016 election clearly refutes your assertion.
Republican fundraising as of 6/22/2016 in USD$millions, {total}, {candidate}, {affiliated PAC} [1]: Donald Trump (67.1, 64.6, 2.5), Jeb Bush (162.1, 35.2, 126.9), Ted Cruz (158.0, 92.6, 65.4), Marco Rubio (125.0, 47.3, 61.8)
If one wants to blame the Illuminati for secretly supporting candidates... this is a harder point in history to find support.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/electi...
⬐ sjg007One more reason why we need to overturn Citizens United.