At 01:11 AM 6/8/2005, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: Russ's notion of free speech is based on the legal theory that money talks.
That's why Russ opposes campaign spending reforms in general.
Without accepting Mr. Ossipof's right to tell us how Russ thinks, I'll note that I support Ossipof's pointing out of access restrictions that favor entrenched power, and I also oppose campaign spending reform, but for an entirely different reason.
This is an election methods list, and I don't want to go too far afield, I'm already far to disposed to that.... but my solution to the problem of money in politics is to make it irrelevant.
The basic problem is that the electorate is itself not organized. There is no lobby which actually represents the people. Collectively, the people have far more wealth than any special interest. It is a tautology! However, special interests, generally, are organized, and the people are not, except through the defective institutions of electoral democracy, which are, of course, vulnerable to influence by moneyed and other highly-motivated special interests, leaving the people without a voice.
Plenty of organizations claim to represent the people, but if you look at them, however well-meaning they might be, they actually don't. They are not democratic organizations, practically without exception, or, in the rare case that they are, they use electoral systems that disenfranchise, effectively, the minority. They are quite free to do this; but it merely means that they cannot act as true spokespeople for the electorate. Hence my favorite topic, delegable proxy, which theoretically could accomplish this.
For the purpose of this instant thread, money in politics becomes irrelevant if the people are organized, because they can not only muster larger financial resources, if they choose, but they can directly coordinate their own votes, making the spending of substantial sums in an attempt to deceive them an exercise in waste. For this to work, the "organization of the people" must have certain characteristics, and these are the characteristics by design of FA/DP organizations, about which see www.beyondpolitics.org. The public is generally invited to participate in the development of the model, Beyond Politics is itself a Free Association and will incorporate Delegable Proxy whenever anyone actually requests it.
(While it is theoretically possible for Beyond Politics to become the mentioned "organization of the people," that is not its purpose; its purpose, rather, is to develop and promote the technology that could make such an organization possible, and to encourage the application of this process to small and new associations, as well as to existing NGOs, recognizing that the latter may be quite difficult because of what I've called, rather egotistically and for lack of a better term, the Lomax Effect: existing organizational structures, if they are not fully equitable, act to preserve themselves, because those they favor have, by the definition of "equitable," more power than others. Examples abound.)
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