Joe Rogan Experience #1214 — Lawrence Lessig Transcript

Transcript

0:00 three two one and we're live how are you sir hey I'm great thanks for being here man I really So we've got a system where we have a money primary and then we have a regular election. If you ask the number of people who give the maximum contribution over the course of a campaign, meaning in the primary and the general election, it's about 22,000 Americans in 2014 who gave the maximum contribution to one political campaign. So what that means is it's a tiny, tiny fraction who are the most important funders of political campaigns. And candidates for

2:51 minute is it that bad yeah you know it's i actually since that video i've come to think it's even about gerrymandering. You know, we gerrymander districts in America so that about 85% of the House seats in the United States Congress are safe seats, which means if you're a Republican in a safe seat Democratic district, your views just never matter to the congressperson because that vote of a Republican will never determine who's in Congress.

4:19 So what those incumbents in those safe seat districts do Right. It's just that the system has become corrupted. we got to raise the money to defend ourselves the next time around. And then the Democrats the institution becomes an institution focused on the game of getting reelected. Jim Cooper, it's a lot of money, but to people on Capitol Hill, it doesn't seem like a lot of money.

8:14 this as their this their business plan it's their honeypot yeah and there's um whatever the district It's like the golden city on the hill, you know, the Oz. for the purpose of buying influence to buy legislation that makes it so these incumbent dinosaur corporations he came back after being arrested for smoking crack yeah and people like whatever yeah a little

10:13 just we don't have a competitive, powerful economy that gives them the opportunities I mean, you know, my mother lives in Hilton Head, which is, of course, a very Republican district. the next time around. Their sole focus is the elections. And this is really different. Democrats' extraordinary turnaround in this lax election, you can be damn sure that's exactly

12:19 I mean, she doesn't have to raise money, I'm sure. There's a congresswoman, Leslie Byrne, Democrat from Virginia, who describes that when she a congressman in New York stood on the floor of the House and said, understand the waves and the ins and the outs of the tide. It just this is just what it is. And it And like money is really – people would say, no, what are you talking about?

15:04 If we don't fix. If we don't fix I mean, it is unbelievable in its breadth. So it has public funding of congressional campaigns so that congressmen don't spend 30 to 70 percent of their time sucking up to the Lesters. Because most people look at what Washington does and says, it's just a game the Democrats are playing to embarrass the Republicans. How would they stop congressmen

17:30 become almost like, you know, lawyers, policy wonks that kind of go to Capitol Hill and say, And these other things are good additions but not as critical. The point is to get money that doesn't represent a eventually part of whatever this big reform package is that would create a way of funding campaigns where everybody gets a voucher or a set of vouchers.

19:40 of the 1%. They'd be raising money from everybody. And so the point is that you would be using that And those people are going to fight like hell to block it, which is why as wonderful as it is to me and that so many people are so disturbed that it's going to make people more politically active, all agree about is the deeply corrupted nature of this government. There was a poll done by

22:22 There was no statistical difference between Republicans and Democrats. political system. If only we could find the candidates who would do it. And I think what insurance companies are funding elections. You can't say you're going to get climate change agree on. Now, if that's a universal agreement amongst Republicans and Democrats, that funding and that money and that all this is what's ruining politics, the people that are donating all this money, the lesters of the world, what could they possibly do to stop this reform? And what's their reaction to this kind of reform? Yeah. Yeah. So let me be clear about one

25:32 But when you ask the Republicans in Washington and the Lesters, And so I think the way around that fight is to agree free speech is the fundamental value. in the way because we want a congress filled with people who care about what their voters want what do my funders want? And if they can't answer that question in a way that supports the legislation, they're not going to support the legislation. Or if it's important for them to

28:32 Because, you know, for example, H.R. 1 plus Rocahanna's bill, all perfectly constitutional. democratic administration. 10 great ideas. Not a single one of those ideas addressed the corruption our anger on the billionaires, which he does, we need to focus more anger on the congressmen, And he didn't do that while Hillary Clinton was running for president and he knew it.

31:27 But I'm talking about now. They're half right. two is released today, which is about an Article 5 convention. But season one was about how to anything about it? And they say, because nothing can be done. Or, you know, African Americans in But they obviously have enormous financial backing behind them and They need information. like, Congressman, here's what's going to happen if you pass this bill. Like, these jobs will disappear, or this lead will reappear in the water system.

36:22 good. My arguments are better. I don't want a system where I win because my ideas are good. My arguments are better. I don't want a government relations departments, and they oversee the government relations department as long as they don't go on to Capitol Hill and shake hands, but instead set up the meetings on Capitol Hill with lower people shaking hands.

37:56 He ran on a Tea Party ticket and he was like this amazing Republican to win as a senator in Massachusetts. He's a government relations person who's like calling people on Capitol Hill. He used to be you've got all sorts of obligations of reporting, They get to deploy in their work of doing lobbying. that's worried about being representative of America, as opposed to representative of the

40:35 okay, what are you going to do about this problem, The question is, are you going to bring America around so that America thinks on day one, election about the unity around this recognition rather than the disunity, which is the screaming And Citizens United said that you couldn't limit a corporation's ability to spend Now, when that happened, there were a bunch of us who were chicken littles about this,

43:45 organizations or into what evolved after Citizens United, something called super PACs. with corruption. That was the issue that they were overwhelmingly trying to avoid. And they And if just one of them voted with the four liberals who've already said HR1 is trying to do. That's the sort of thing Rocahontas is trying to do. But that's the sort well well how about make it so they can't give them money? And there's all these real

47:21 like tens of millions of dollars to support their candidate or to oppose their opponent. And so the supporters for those super PACs are an even tiny, those are the Adolphs in order to have the entitlement to say, the politicians who do. And if we could build that as the movement, the recognition, the core This guy has had it in his DNA from the first moment he went to Washington to end any regulation of money in politics. He engineered the selection

50:03 decisions of the Supreme Court. And he said he's going to fight like hell to defend it. And when this And I think he's, like, responsible for 85% of the judicial structure that makes it possible for this to be blocked. the system. It's the system's corrupt. And then McConnell, almost clueless, just said, And that's as much corruption as bribery is.

52:52 because they give you all the electoral votes, and this is how you win an election. The problem is, I mean, it is a bad thing that the loser wins. the purple states. And those 14 states are the only states that matter to those candidates. happen to live in these battleground states. So this is just a product of the way the electoral based on a stopped recount by 531 votes.

55:57 this winner-take-all system, many thought it was an outrageous perversion of the constitutional design. change the Constitution, and three-fourths of the states are not going to agree with to the Republican, vice versa in Texas. That's the way that system would work. And I personally like this system because I believe in the idea of one person, matters. If you're a Democrat in Texas, your vote never matters, because we just count your vote up,

59:05 going to get half the electoral votes, but you'll get 40%, maybe 45%, and that could matter. Or a state. And so if we can get a court would be a game changer. the idea that small states got to kind of thumb on the scale, which is what the Electoral College does. So there is some or again, you know, you can imagine a presidential candidate But the problem is they've got to convince states to join the compact.

1:02:40 like California. So Wyoming gets three electors. Disproportionate in terms of the population. It's not hard to understand why they're there. We've got to get rid republic-like system because the Electoral College was the worst possible thing in the world. This moment right now, Cohen's going to go to jail for three years, Individual number one. And so I think it's clear that the worst for Donald Trump is yet to come.

1:05:55 decided I wanted to become a lawyer. But the big difference between these two times And then when he resigns, his support rate among Republicans is about 50%. are not being told the stories that the people living in the MSNBC, NPR news universe are. And that's, I think, our biggest challenge right now. which is the current politics of both the Democratic and Republican

1:09:24 The slow democracy movement, which I think, you know, I think I pointed to you as part of that. Like, you know, the fact that you get people to listen to you talk about an idea for an hour, two hours, sometimes three hours is astonishing. way to get to get someplace is to begin to have conversations that are at the hour-long chunk or the two-hour-long

1:11:45 good thing, but it is just never coming back. And the world of Sean Hannity is a world that I don't know if you watch Homeland. I watched it until the redheaded guy died. that, you know, that's number two. I think shows like Homeland, of the tensions at issue. Did you watch House of Cards? It's just craziness. You're like, wow, this really powerful guy, Frank Underwood, actually can actually get important bills passed.

1:14:10 what the tentacles of funders are directing them to do. Yeah. What the hell is that? And, you know, my point is that's not going to be Fox News. Fox News can never cover it at the more and more on top of it. But that was just kind of the limits of what it could do. There their companies alone, which means they can make tons of money by polluting our environment

1:17:22 Voting online. to these proprietary providers of technology to enable us to vote, they give us shit. You know, and intended backdoors built into it. Yeah. Well, because I've seen so much that contradicts some of the claims about, you know, the extent right now that I think eventually could get us there. An open source system like a Linux-based Fingerprints, obviously.

1:21:10 But on the other hand, we need to realize that these technologies are also incredibly insecure which was then going to be revealed, and the need to cover up the fact that there was such that you click on and it then embeds itself in the phone and there's no way you see it that the Saudis had exploited this in a way that was going to be revealed, And for most people, it doesn't matter.

1:23:44 I'm clean. Don't worry about me. But that's not what we're't do anything. What are they going to do? I'm clean. Then we've got a system that no longer makes it possible for ordinary people to stand up to power. Yeah. So the problem is not the kind of particular technologies working the way you I'll talk about that in a second. best case where everybody's working hard to make their system as secure as it can be.

1:26:59 from American companies. That was it. The potential for error is massive, right? people whose self-identity and professional framework is nonpartisan, independent, like districts and 20 minutes to vote in other districts. There's no incentive to do that then more power to them. And that's exactly what happened in Georgia with this recent governor's

1:30:16 that have a vested interest as great or greater than the sean hannity's of the world and the CNN's and the traditional news And, you know, the question is what we mean by bias or discrimination here. There was an actual choice? Category, yeah. based on what they saw people happen to be interested in and then throw up categories to see what sticks. You know, like this hilarious hearing that was just held on Capitol Hill two days ago, I think.

1:33:37 That's the guy who didn't know that Google didn't make the iPhone? people what we think people want based on what they've done in the past and what they've shown When you're talking about, or Google, rather. Yeah. Child sex. of any of these companies, against any of these companies. And we've allowed them to become so in 2010, Facebook is facing a pretty powerful competitive threat from Instagram.

1:37:49 Have they? That's amazing. you'd have companies that try to compete by protecting your privacy differently, The solution to that problem might be governments making sure we have the right kind of competition going on here so that they can't get away with behaving in this bad way. platform but those tend to get infested with trolls and 4chan type people. As soon as you say, we're not going to have any regulation, the idea would be, right, you say, oh, Google and Facebook, they are so progressive.

1:40:17 Anything means anything. in today's day and age because there's a lot of bored people out there and they get excited about a platform where they can say something that they know is But when you think of conservative, you open the door for a lot of people that are rejected by these progressive groups. I mean, this is what Yochai Benkler's book is all about, like what the nature of truth is on cable television on the right

1:42:40 And so you constantly engage because you're constantly trying to feed this feedback. fast food companies figure out how to exploit the brain chemistry that makes it so that you eat Facebook is tilted to the left, but the reality is there is an extraordinary amount of exploitation If telling the truth did that, they would tell the truth. Isn't that the reason why something like Google or Facebook has gotten so big is because there's so much money behind it?

1:45:44 You've become so successful. That's one sentence. And what we want to do in America is encourage companies It's all the companies they bought. $23 billion. That's insane. YouTube videos have a different kind of constraint. If you did a three-hour YouTube video, you would not live in the same way that you get to live in the context of podcasts. youtube videos that are very successful i heard his his podcast. Yeah, there's a hunger right now for unedited thought.

1:48:21 I agree. More power to you. that fact steers it in a certain way. And I'm saying we need to build alternative So there's no one else. Maybe that's not what it is. You don't get that. Why? Why is this the case? Why is this leaning in this direction? What's the real motivation behind this bill? And I was hitchhiking through Eastern Europe, And he said, well, when you wake up in the morning, you read the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal and you think you know the truth.

1:53:25 even though it's not printed, it's just an email. And so he just kind of like, oh my God, funny story michael sherman you know michael scher, who is a professional skeptic. I get a DM from him, says, there's a story about you on B... there's a story about me and he logged in he's a fucking professional skeptic wow they got him I had to email him and go, dude, you got hacked.

1:55:37 The number of people who are being tricked into believing the IRS is calling them on What about the cats? much so much really bad stuff. just are amazing. these critical attitudes, we have this ability to think across. And the army is filled with so many pretty pretty crazy even as they were getting kicked out the rest of the audience was having were next to those people you would say oh the crowd there sucks the people are always yelling

1:59:30 And I think that this is in terms of politics, in terms of business, in terms of everything. Yeah. you're like, holy shit, the world fucking hates me. this is going to work itself out in a far better way than has ever happened before. That's right. what's at stake and what the facts are, so that we can act as a democracy in a sensible way then the question is how do we run a democracy you know because if we

2:02:26 different universes means we can't address problems as a democracy with even the same facts. all their time geeking out about campaign finance reform legislation? And that's why I think we need whoa this is the this is the changing of the world this is it as opposed to those panel shows necessarily do that. It's the same thing with the information space. That's why the slow food

2:05:20 and any of these are perceived to be biased sources of information But what I know gets us there is competition. And once that intervention happened, people could layer on top of their wires of that had any clue about what would come out of it. And that is a huge problem. antitrust is you should also worry if companies are so big that they can corrupt the government.

2:09:00 There was a huge fight as the incumbent industries leveraged their power over government to protect themselves from this new competitor. I mean, there's more voices now and there's a lot of – look, in the past when you had to be selected in order to speak, it was very difficult to get through that selection process and it's not necessarily the best voices that got through it's just sometimes the most persistent and the most

2:10:44 it would be very hard to get a producer to sign off on the way a lot of these guys communicate What I fear and what I'm not sure any rational person should be optimistic about, but that doesn't mean you don't fight it. When you see people like Tulsi Gabbard, or when you see the young woman in New York, How about when she tweeted to the president, making us Saudi Arabia's bitch is not putting

2:12:47 Yeah. if we're going to get any of these things done. by fixing the political system. they don't even notice anymore just how broken it is, how outrageous it is. And they need to rage, and say, it's time that I get into politics and make a difference. How quickly do they become part of the system? debate is debate to C-SPAN. It's like a speech to C-SPAN. And that's what it is. So the life of

2:16:14 And when you hit your numbers, it's like, hooray, I did something. going to make it into a democratic issue. It's like the Democrats care about it, so the Republicans I'm not going to tell you that I think we're going to. I'm grateful. Appreciate it.