Joe Rogan Experience #1214 - Lawrence Lessig

1. 0:02 – 2:53

   Lesterland: the “money primary” and why big donors dominate campaigns

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:02

      Three, two, one. And we're live. How are you, sir?

   2. LLLawrence Lessig0:07

      Hey, I'm great.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:08

      Thanks for being here, man. I really appreciate it.

   4. LLLawrence Lessig0:09

      It is the coolest thing I've done.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:11

      Really?

   6. LLLawrence Lessig0:11

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:11

      Ever?

   8. LLLawrence Lessig0:11

      Well, you know.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:12

      (laughs)

   10. LLLawrence Lessig0:12

       I can't remember that far back, but it's pretty cool.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:15

       Um, I watched your TED Talk on, um... What was the word that you used? Uh, Lesterland?

   12. LLLawrence Lessig0:21

       Lesterland.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:21

       Yeah. And, uh, it felt hopeless.

   14. LLLawrence Lessig0:25

       (laughs)

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:25

       Like, if, if... For people who don't know what I'm talking about, could you just give like a brief synopsis of... The way you were describing how comple- completely rigged our election system is.

   16. LLLawrence Lessig0:38

       Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:38

       And, and what, what it actually takes to be elected and how much of the time they spend is involved in raising money and why.

   18. LLLawrence Lessig0:48

       Yeah. So we've got a system where we have a money primary and then we have a regular election. And in the money primary, to compete, you gotta raise tons of money to be able to fund your campaign. And when you raise that money, you raise it from a tiny, tiny fraction of the 1%. So in Les... In the, in the TED Talk about Lesterland, I said, you know, "Imagine a place called Lesterland, where, um, basically it's the Lesters who rule." And by the Lesters, I mean the same proportion of people named Lester as in the United States right now. So there's about 150,000 Americans named Lester. I'm one of them, but here we are, the Lesters. So imagine a world ruled by Lesterland. Um, because that's essentially the world we have because of the way we fund our campaigns. Because there's about 150,000 men who give even just the maximum contribution to one political candidate. Um, if you ask who... 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, uh, 2014 who gave the maximum (laughs) 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 Congress and members of Congress spend 30 to 70% of their time sucking up to this tiny, tiny fraction. And so is it any surprise that you see Congress bending over backwards to keep those guys happy? Because they know without those people, they don't have a shot at getting back into Congress.

   19. JRJoe Rogan2:31

       And the way you were describing it as... when you were saying it as Lesterland, it was like, imagine if we were this screwed up. That was essentially what you're saying.

   20. LLLawrence Lessig2:39

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan2:39

       But we're more screwed up-

   22. LLLawrence Lessig2:40

       We're more screwed up.

   23. JRJoe Rogan2:40

       ... than Lesterland.

   24. LLLawrence Lessig2:42

       Yeah, we're more screwed up.

   25. JRJoe Rogan2:43

       That was a disturbing video because, uh, I was realizing, it was emerging as you were speaking, I was like, "Wait a minute. Is it that bad?"

2. 2:53 – 5:39

   Beyond money: gerrymandering, safe seats, and extremist leverage

   1. LLLawrence Lessig2:53

      Yeah. You know, it's... I actually, since that video, have come to think it's even worse, right? Because-

   2. JRJoe Rogan2:59

      So like a Clarence Land? (laughs)

   3. LLLawrence Lessig3:02

      (laughs) Well, it, it could be worse because it's even smaller number. And if you-

   4. JRJoe Rogan3:05

      Yeah.

   5. LLLawrence Lessig3:05

      ... look at the number of Super PAC, uh, donors, you know, the really critical Super PAC donor, about 100 people who gave more than half of the Super PAC money in the last presidential election. You know, so-

   6. JRJoe Rogan3:16

      100?

   7. LLLawrence Lessig3:17

      100. You know, so this is a really tiny, tiny number. Um, but what this tiny number represents in the way we fund campaigns is the extraordinary inequality on that dimension, right? But since, since I was focused on the money, I've, you know, more recently started thinking about the other screwed up dimensions. So think 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. Or a Democrat in a safe seat Republican district. That's, that's the same. Okay, but that doesn't mean those congresspeople are not afraid about reelection. Of course they are afraid about whether they'll be reelected, but they're afraid not of a Democrat running against a Republican, they're afraid of an even more extreme Republican running against the incumbent Republican. So what those incumbents in those safe seat districts do is they obsess about what the extremist in their own party cares about. So the extremists on the left and the right have this ability to leverage extraordinary influence inside of the House of Representatives simply because we've decided to gerrymander these districts to create these safe seats. So those extremists are a kind of Lester's too. There are more of them. Uh, you know, it's more democratic than Lesterland, but they too have enormous influence over ordinary people, and most ordinary people's views then, to these congresspeople, just don't matter.

   8. JRJoe Rogan4:58

      That feels hopeless for a dummy like me sitting on the outside looking at this. I'm like, "God." Uh, uh, if, if this is this deeply entrenched with... I mean, uh, I guess it's not technically corruption-

   9. LLLawrence Lessig5:13

      Right.

   10. JRJoe Rogan5:13

       ... because it's all legal.

   11. LLLawrence Lessig5:14

       Right.

   12. JRJoe Rogan5:15

       But it's an entanglement with money-

   13. LLLawrence Lessig5:18

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan5:18

       ... and with influence that... I mean, how do you unwind this?

   15. LLLawrence Lessig5:23

       Yeah. So that point is really critical. It's not technically illegal.

   16. JRJoe Rogan5:28

       Hmm.

   17. LLLawrence Lessig5:28

       And what that means is the people who are engaged in this are not doing wrong things.

   18. JRJoe Rogan5:33

       Right.

   19. LLLawrence Lessig5:33

       They're just playing by the rules.

   20. JRJoe Rogan5:34

       Right.

   21. LLLawrence Lessig5:34

       They're playing with the system. Uh, it's just that the system has become corrupted.

3. 5:39 – 11:58

   How it got this way: Gingrich-era fundraising escalation and the K Street pipeline

   1. JRJoe Rogan5:39

      When did it start?

   2. LLLawrence Lessig5:41

      Well, I think that the moment the United States Congress begins to fall apart in a really dramatic and interesting way is when Newt Gingrich becomes Speaker of the House. Um, so when the Republicans take control of Congress, um, in '95, um, it's the first time the Republicans have taken control of the House of Representatives in 40 years. So the House becomes incredibly competitive. Each election, you know, is up for grabs, who's gonna control the House.So Gingrich turns his members in the House into perpetual fundraisers. It's basically, "We gotta raise the money to defend ourself the next time around." And then the Democrats followed suit, so the Democrats turned their members into perpetual fundraisers, and they changed the rules about, like, who gets to be chairman of committees. It's no longer, like, who's the person with the most experience or the most insight. Increasingly, it becomes who raises the most money. And the Democratic Party, I know f- about the Democratic Party, the Republicans don't talk to me much, but the Democratic Party increasingly changes its focus from, "What are the policies that our members care about?" to "What are we gonna do to make sure that you as a member meet your fundraising target?" And so from '95 until today, the institution becomes an institution focused on the game of getting reelected. Um, Jim Cooper, a Democrat from Tennessee who went to Congress first in, like, 1983, so he's been there for a long time. Um, Cooper says, "Capitol Hill has become a kind of farm league for K Street." Okay, so what he means by that is members go there. They learn how to raise money. They become focused obsessively on ra- ma- raising money. But one of the things that they're really focused on, it's how do they go from Capitol Hill to becoming a lobbyist? Because that's where the real money is. You know, a member of Congress gets paid about as much as the students I educate at the Harvard Law School in their first year as lawyers. Co- you know, so to ordinary Americans, it's a lot of money, but to people on Capitol Hill, it doesn't seem like a lot of money. But then they go and become a lobbyist, they can make ten times that as a lobbyist. Um, and so what Cooper says is you have this institution which has become so focused on the money that it's, it's just a institution for producing influence that can be sold. And first, the congressmen are basically sucking up to the people who wanna buy influence, and then the congressmen become the people buying influence themselves because they're working as lobbyists for these important interests.

   3. JRJoe Rogan8:05

      (sighs) So they're in the rig game, they understand how it gets rigged, and then they work to rig it.

   4. LLLawrence Lessig8:10

      Yeah. Yeah. They k- they see this as their, this as their business plan.

   5. JRJoe Rogan8:14

      It's their honeypot.

   6. LLLawrence Lessig8:15

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan8:16

      And there's, um... Whatever the district is outside of Washington, DC and Virginia where there's some ungodly number of wealthy people per capita-

   8. LLLawrence Lessig8:25

      Yeah. Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan8:25

      ... where there's more, there's more lobbyists in that area than anywhere else in the United States.

   10. LLLawrence Lessig8:30

       Right.

   11. JRJoe Rogan8:30

       And that's this giant collection of wealth.

   12. LLLawrence Lessig8:33

       Right. Washington, DC is an incredibly prosperous place, and anybody who's been there, um, you know, for a long... who's seen it for a long time, like I, I clerked there in the early 1990s and it was a pretty grungy place. But it's a really opulent city now. It's like the-

   13. JRJoe Rogan8:50

       Hmm.

   14. LLLawrence Lessig8:50

       ... golden city on the hill, you know, the Oz, um... And the reason for that is the extraordinary amount of money that's been poured into that district for the purpose of buying influence to buy legislation that makes it so these incumbent dinosaur corporations that have protected themselves against co- competition across the country can, can, continue to profit.

   15. JRJoe Rogan9:11

       It's a weird place though, because even though it's incredibly wealthy, it's also incredibly poor.

   16. LLLawrence Lessig9:15

       Mm-hmm.

   17. JRJoe Rogan9:16

       There's a vast m- difference.

   18. LLLawrence Lessig9:19

       It's a picture of America, yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan9:19

       Yeah, the, the, the spectrum is really wide-

   20. LLLawrence Lessig9:22

       Yes.

   21. JRJoe Rogan9:22

       ... 'cause I mean, that was when... In the 90s, was that... That's the Marion Barry time, right?

   22. LLLawrence Lessig9:26

       Yeah, yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan9:26

       So that was when... I mean he won as mayor again when he came back after being arrested for smoking crack.

   24. LLLawrence Lessig9:33

       For cooking. Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan9:34

       And people are like, "Whatever."

   26. LLLawrence Lessig9:35

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan9:35

       "A little crack." (laughs)

   28. LLLawrence Lessig9:37

       (laughs) Yeah, it's, it was an ugly place then. It's become an, you know, grotesque place now from the pr- from the standpoint of the principles of what America's supposed to be.

   29. JRJoe Rogan9:46

       Yeah.

   30. LLLawrence Lessig9:47

       Because the privileged there, uh, are not people who are privileged 'cause they've, you know, Elon Musk, like invented-
4. 11:58 – 13:44

   Why “it’s legal” still means corruption: incentive-driven shapeshifting in office

   1. JRJoe Rogan11:58

      And if there's no other viable alternative, this is a game that they have to play.

   2. LLLawrence Lessig12:02

      Yeah. Good people have to play it. This is the point.

   3. JRJoe Rogan12:05

      Yes.

   4. LLLawrence Lessig12:05

      It's not like you can have the good people who say-... uh, "I'm not gonna play this game." I mean, there's some famous people who could say, "I'm not gonna play this game." Um, you know, Alexandria, um, O- Ocasio-Cortez, I mean, she doesn't have to raise money, I'm sure. Um, and people on the right, uh, too, you know, who are the famous people on the right, they don't have to worry about this. But the ordinary congress person knows given the way the system is right now, they've gotta obsessively focus on how to raise money.

   5. JRJoe Rogan12:31

      Yeah.

   6. LLLawrence Lessig12:31

      And what they kno- what that means is they develop a sixth sense, a constant awareness about how what they do will affect their ability to raise money, becoming 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. Um, there's a, a Congresswoman, Leslie Byrne, Democrat from Virginia, who describes that when she went to Congress, she was told by a colleague, quote, "Always lean to the green." Then to clarify, she went on, "You know, he was not an environmentalist." (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan13:00

      (laughs) Wow.

   8. LLLawrence Lessig13:00

      So the point is like, you know in your heart of hearts which way you gotta go to make sure. And if you're good and you're smart, you'd never say anything to indicate it, but it's operating. But sometimes you're not so smart. So in the tax bill, leading up to the passage of the last tax, uh, cut, you know, the $1.6 trillion gift to corporations and wealthy people primarily, a congressman in New York stood on the floor of the House and said, "You know, my donors have told me that if we don't deliver on this, I should never call him again. I should never call them again." So it's basically, you know, as simple and clear as possible. You don't reduce our taxes, don't ever ask us for more money.

   9. JRJoe Rogan13:40

      Pew.

   10. LLLawrence Lessig13:41

       And, and that's the reality of what Washington has become.

5. 13:44 – 18:15

   A concrete reform agenda: H.R.1, public financing, anti-gerrymandering, and ethics rules

   1. JRJoe Rogan13:44

      Now, once this gets started and it moves in this direction, um, w- we don't have a long history of this to understand the, the waves and the ins and the outs of the tide. It just, this is just what it is, and it keeps moving in the same general direction. How would that, that ever stop? How would there ever be some sort of reform that puts this back into a position where it makes sense and it's tenable?

   2. LLLawrence Lessig14:07

      Yeah. So, you know, I, I've been in this business for about, uh, 12 years now, in the business of, like, trying to figure out what can we do-

   3. JRJoe Rogan14:14

      Yeah.

   4. LLLawrence Lessig14:15

      ... to reform this corrupted system. And, you know, part of me feels, as you said, like it's hopeless, but part of me feels like it's the most hopeful moment we've seen. Because, like a decade ago when I would, uh, go around and say, "You know, we got this really corrupted system and, like, money is really..." People would say, "No, what are you talking about? Uh, uh, no, we, we just have to focus on getting the people we want elected. And if we get the people we want elected, we'll get the policies we want passed." Now almost everybody realizes that until we fix this broken Congress, nothing else can happen. So it's not like this is the most important issue out there. You know, you could think climate change or healthcare or jobs or com- competitive mar- You could think those are the important issues. But what people increasingly seeing is that this is the first issue. If we don't fix this, we don't fix anything. And what's really encouraging to me is that that frame is increasingly being embraced by important leaders. So, you know, about, um, six years ago, I think, um, Nancy Pelosi was on Jon Stewart's show, The Daily Show, and Stewart said, "You know, the whole system's corrupt." And Nancy Pelosi's, "No, no, no. The system's not corrupt. Eh, eh, people in the system are corrupt, but the p- system's not corrupt." And Jon Stewart just had a field day because of how ridiculous that statement is now. But now Nancy Pelosi is gonna introduce as H.R.1 the most ambitious and comprehensive reform package that Washington, I think, has ever seen. I mean, it is unbelievable in its breadth. Um, so it has public funding of congressional campaigns so that congressmen don't spend 30 to 70% of their time sucking up to l- to the Lesters. It has a mandate to end gerrymandering, politic partisan gerrymandering, exercising Congress' power under the Constitution to tell the states, "Clean this mess up." It has an incredible, um, uh, ethics package to kind of close, block the revolving door so congressmen are not running off to K Street. And it has an incredible restoration of voting rights, the res- voter rai- re- re- Restoration of Voting Rights Act, automatic voter registration. It's the most comprehensive package of political reform, I think the civil rights bill of the generation, but, of course, nobody outside of Washington has heard anything about it because most people look at what Washington does and says, "Oh, this is just a game the Democrats are playing to embarrass the Republicans."

   5. JRJoe Rogan16:45

      How would they stop congressmen from becoming lobbyists?

   6. LLLawrence Lessig16:49

      Well, one thing they do, uh, and then they build loo- loopholes into it, but one thing they can do is they can basically say, um, "Once you're a congressman, you can't be a lobbyist for five years." Um, and-

   7. JRJoe Rogan17:00

      For five years?

   8. LLLawrence Lessig17:00

      Yeah, or whatever the time is. But the more fundamental fact is, you know, if you change the way you fund campaigns, if it was no longer the lobbyists who were kind of channeling the money in or that were getting their clients to channel the money in, then it's not like there wouldn't be lobbyists anymore. They just wouldn't be so well paid. They wouldn't be as valuable.

   9. JRJoe Rogan17:20

      Mm-hmm.

   10. LLLawrence Lessig17:21

       And if they're not as valuable, it's not as valuable for them to pay the congressman an incredible amount of money to become con- uh, lobbyists. You know, they would become almost like, you know, lawyers, policy wonks, that kind of go to Capital Hill and say, "Here's what'll happen if you adopt this legislation." Uh, you know, that's an important part of the process. But they wouldn't be the makers in the system. They wouldn't be the people who called the shots. And so the value of their services would fall, and if the value of their services fell, then, um, it wouldn't make so much sense to go and become a lobbyist. Maybe you'd come home and be a doctor again or come home and, like, be a businessperson again or do whatever you want, uh, back in your district. So I think if you change the way you fund campaigns, you would change 70% of the problem. You would just fix it right then. And these other things are good additions, but not as critical. But without changing the way you fund campaigns-... I think all of these other changes are irrelevant.

   11. JRJoe Rogan18:14

       (laughs)

   12. LLLawrence Lessig18:14

       They just can't get over the money.

6. 18:15 – 21:22

   Fixing campaign funding without “taking money out”: democracy vouchers and broadening influence

   1. JRJoe Rogan18:15

      You always hear the phrase, "Take money out of politics." It's a constant phrase, but that's not really possible.

   2. LLLawrence Lessig18:21

      No. No, and I, I don't even think it's really good.

   3. JRJoe Rogan18:23

      No.

   4. LLLawrence Lessig18:23

      The point isn't, the point isn't to get money out. The point is to get money that doesn't represent a tiny fraction of the special interests controlling how Congress people think. So, um, I think today, uh, a congressman from California, Ro Khanna, is gonna introduce a bill that he hopes will be eventually part of whatever this big reform package is, that would create, um, a way of funding campaigns where everybody gets a voucher or a set of vouchers. You know, so Seattle has done this for city elections, where everybody gets four $25 vouchers that are only usable to fund campaigns. So a candidate comes around and tries to persuade you to give him or her the voucher, and then they take that voucher and they use it to fund campaigns. Okay. If Ro Khanna's bill passed, and everybody had vouchers to use to fund Congressional campaigns, and, you know, the idea is basically you take the rebate of the first $50 of your taxes, which every American pays at least $50 to the federal government. You take that first $50, you give it back, and you give it in the form of a voucher, and you say, "Take this voucher and help fund campaigns with it." Congressmen would still be raising money. They'd still be spending a large time raising money, but they wouldn't be raising money from the tiny fraction of the 1%. They'd be raising money from everybody. And so the point is that you would be using that money to spread the influence in the way that a democracy is supposed to spread the influence to every American, as opposed to the influence in a tiny, tiny fraction of the 1%. So that wouldn't get less money. I think that could be more money in the system, but it wouldn't be corrupting money, because it would be money that is democratically accountable.

   5. JRJoe Rogan20:03

      But the Lesters of the world would probably try to put the kibosh on that-

   6. LLLawrence Lessig20:07

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan20:07

      ... before it ever got moving.

   8. LLLawrence Lessig20:08

      Yeah. I mean, you know, the biggest block to anything like H.R.1 happening is that the most influential people in Washington have the most to lose.

   9. JRJoe Rogan20:19

      Right.

   10. LLLawrence Lessig20:20

       The lobbyists, you know, the value of the industry of lobbying just collapses. Um, and those people are gonna fight like hell to block it.

   11. JRJoe Rogan20:26

       Yeah.

   12. LLLawrence Lessig20:27

       Which is why, as wonderful as it is to me to see somebody like Nancy Pelosi take up the charge and say, "Here it is. Here's a package of reform, and it's gonna be the first thing we do, fix democracy first." What, what's true, what's obvious about this is without a president taking up the charge, it's never gonna happen. And what's most depressing to me is that right now in the Democratic Party, you don't have any candidate for president who's making reform, uh, uh, even an important issue, let alone a primary issue. Um, and of course, we had a president who was elected under the Drain the Swamp slogan, but of course nobody believes he has any plan or have any intent to do anything to drain that swamp.

   13. JRJoe Rogan21:07

       Yeah, I'm hoping that having him in office is such a ... that the whole thing was such a clusterfuck and, and that so many people are so disturbed, that it's gonna make people more politically active-

   14. LLLawrence Lessig21:18

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan21:18

       ... and more aware of the consequences of having someone like that in office.

7. 21:22 – 41:40

   Building a cross-partisan movement: shared anger at corruption and the ‘democracy first’ frame

   1. LLLawrence Lessig21:22

      Yeah, and actually, weirdly, unifying.

   2. JRJoe Rogan21:27

      Yeah.

   3. LLLawrence Lessig21:28

      Because even though the Democrats are not doing this right now, which is really depressing to me, you know, we, we have these things that we know we disagree about, and we, like, fuel the politics of hate as we kind of yell at each other about these things. But there's a set of issues that we all agree about, and the, and the most important set of issues we all agree about is the deeply corrupted nature of this government. You know, there was a poll done by University of Maryland in the middle of 2016 a- a- asking about anger and frustration with government, found the highest level of frustration in the history of polling. And then when they asked the reasons why they were so angry and so disaffected with their government, the reasons people gave were all the same, things like the influence of money, the influence of lobbyists, the parties care more about corporations than about ... And then, then when he broke them down about how do Republicans think about this and how do Democrats think about this, there was no statistical difference between Republicans and Democrats.

   4. JRJoe Rogan22:24

      Hmm.

   5. LLLawrence Lessig22:24

      You know, sometimes the Democrats were more concerned, sometimes the Republicans, and the levels were at like 80 and 90%. So literally 84% of Americans would say, "It is big money that is corrupting the way our Congress functions." Right? So here is common ground. And what was so extraordinary about the 2016 election is watch a Republican candidate stand on a debate stage, you know, in, in September of 2015. Donald Trump stood on a debate stage and pointed to every one of those candidates and said, "I own all of you. I've given all of you money, and I know the way the system works, and the system is corrupt." And he called super PACs an abomination, and he attacked the idea of money in politics. And so what that signaled is that Republicans too could be rallied to this cause of addressing this deeply corrupted political system, if only we could find the candidates who would do it. And I think what Donald Trump has done is teed up this moment where we can step back and say, "Look, we disagree about a lot of things, whether it's GMO or climate change, whether it's healthcare for all, or college for all, whatever. We disagree about a lot of things, and we gotta work a lot of things out. But here is something we all agree about, and we should be smart enough to realize if we don't fix this, then none of the things we're arguing about matter." You know, you can't ... Uh, it's not serious to stand on a debate stage and say you, you support single-payer healthcare without also saying, "But first, we're gonna fix this corrupted system," because there's no way to get single-payer healthcare in a world where doctors and pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies are funding elections. You can't say you're gonna get climate change (laughs) legislation in America without addressing the corrupting influence of money in politics, because the oil comp- the, the dirty energy industry has an enormous opportunity to block this change through the way we fund campaigns. So this is a moment where we should be able to get everybody in this political system to step back and say, "Hey, wait."... the system's broken. We can see it's broken. The first thing we have to do is to fix the broken Congress, and if we fix that Congress, then we have a chance to have an argument about what policy makes sense for America. And, and we each have our views, but no, the views are different, but, uh, the thing we don't agree about, we should be able to agree on.

   6. JRJoe Rogan24:38

      Now, if that's a universal agreement amongst Republicans-

   7. LLLawrence Lessig24:41

      (clears throat)

   8. JRJoe Rogan24:41

      ... and Democrats, that funding and that money and that... all, all this is what's ruining politics, the, the people that are donating all this money, the, the, these, these, the Lesters of the world, what could they possibly do to stop this reform and what's their reaction to this kind of reform?

   9. LLLawrence Lessig25:01

      Yeah. Yeah. So let me be clear about one really important thing. I, um... when I say Republicans and Democrats, what I mean is people in the districts across America.

   10. JRJoe Rogan25:11

       Yes.

   11. LLLawrence Lessig25:11

       I don't mean in Washington.

   12. JRJoe Rogan25:11

       Right.

   13. LLLawrence Lessig25:12

       You know, like Mitch McConnell is, you know, I think the focus of evil in the modern world. Mitch McConnell, um, will block any reform here at all. So, you know, Nancy Pelosi can offer what she wants, but it'll never get through the Senate because of Mitch McConnell. And so there are many Republicans in Washington who are gonna block any reform. But, um, but when you ask, you know, the Republicans in Washington and the Lesters, what can they do to stop it? Well, the game, the game strategy is clear. They've deployed it before, right? So, um, you know, they'll, they'll say things like, "This is welfare for politicians. Um, this is just corrupting free speech. You don't believe in the First Amendment if you don't believe that, you know, the Koch brothers or the Soroses have the right to spend unlimited amounts of money in political speech." Um, and so I think the way around that fight is to agree free speech is the fundamental value, and nothing of the reforms I support would, like, try to restrict people's ability to speak. What we're talking about is congressmen raising money. We're not talking about individuals speaking in the marketplace. So you have a very loud voice, Joe. Your voice is heard by millions, and nothing in our Constitution should permit the government to be able to suppress you at all so long as you're within the bounds of decency, or at least... uh, not decency because that's not a bound- boundary that this (laughs) podcast obeys often, but, but at least-

   14. JRJoe Rogan26:43

       Yes.

   15. LLLawrence Lessig26:43

       ... if you're not, you know, spreading false rumors and causing great harm. But the point is, um, even though this free speech needs to be protected, we still should be able to focus on the influence, the economy of influence congressmen live under when they spend 30 to 70% of their time sucking up to the Lesters to fund their campaigns. That should be a focus of regulation without the First Amendment getting in the way because we want a Congress filled with people who care about what their voters want, not what their funders want. The Framers didn't create a constitution to replicate an aristocracy. They were fighting an aristocracy. They had a system where there was a house, the House of Lords, that had to ask the aristocracy, "What do you want?" And everything could be blocked if the aristocracy didn't like it. Well, we've replicated that system more efficiently in America than they had there because we have a system where both the House of Representatives and the Senate is filled with people who are obsessed with a single question, "What do my funders want?" And if they can't answer that question in a way that supports the legislation, they're not gonna support the legislation. Or if it's important for them to block legislation, they will block legislation. And that's the dynamic of Washington right now. Um, uh, Francis Fukuyama describes, uh, k- uh, our government as a vetocracy, veto-ocracy. And what he means by that is that there's so many places where influence, powerful influence can block the ability of the government to do something that it just can't do anything anymore. And that's, I think, the consequence of allowing this corruption of money to be so deeply woven into our political system.

   16. JRJoe Rogan28:26

       Is it possible to fix?

   17. LLLawrence Lessig28:28

       Yeah, it is possible to fix because, you know, for, for example, H.R.1 plus Ro Kahana's bill, all perfectly constitutional. You wouldn't have to amend the Constitution to do it. I think that bill alone would solve 80% of the problem. The possibility... the problem isn't, like, conceiving of what changes have to happen. The question is, how do you build the political movement to get there? And what that takes is leaders willing to say, "We have to fix this corrupted democracy first." And, and leaders who stop, like, pretending that we can get, like, a Christmas list of great changes in government without fixing this democracy first. So, you know, Bernie published, uh, last month in the Washington Post list of the 10 things that should happen in the first 100 days in the next Democratic administration, 10 great ideas. Not a single one of those ideas address the corruption of our political system. You know, it was just a, it was just a Christmas list of all the things that the progressives want. And, you know, I'm a progressive. I want some (laughs) of those things, but the point is you c-

   18. JRJoe Rogan29:33

       Like what things were they?

   19. LLLawrence Lessig29:34

       Well, you know, things like a trillion-dollar infrastructure projects, single-payer healthcare, free college, um, you know, all the things that Bernie is pushing-

   20. JRJoe Rogan29:42

       Mm-hmm.

   21. LLLawrence Lessig29:42

       ... and has made so salient, and things that I think it's great that he has made salient. I mean, he's a hero in, like, making these issues central to at least the debate. But what frustrates me is that instead of focusing our anger on the billionaires, which he does, we need to focus more anger on the congressmen, the politicians, which he does not. I mean, the guy's been in Congress for almost 30 years now. And so it might be natural for him not to notice that the people around him are the problem.

   22. JRJoe Rogan30:10

       Is it a natural thing, or do you think that he's possibly-... aware of the consequences of stirring up that hornet's nest? Because, you know, if anybody has a right to complain, when the DNC conspired to rig the primaries- Absolutely.

   23. LLLawrence Lessig30:24

       ... against him. He's the number one guy, he should be screaming from the rooftops, "You're dealing with a corrupt system and this is disgusting." And he didn't d- didn't do that. And he didn't do that while Hill- Hillary Clinton was running for president and he knew it. He knew he had been screwed out of the primaries, he knew they had conspired, he knew it was all illegal, and he kind of just kept his mouth shut. Yeah, well, I think, you know, that was a responsibility.

   24. JRJoe Rogan30:47

       Yeah.

   25. LLLawrence Lessig30:47

       I think that was a kind of, um, um, you know... I was a person reflecting on the horrendous outcome if he took Hillary Clinton down. And so I think he restrained himself. Um, you know, not perfectly. I mean, the fact is after it was clear he was not going to be the nominee, he still continued to talk about the, quote, "corruption" around Hillary, which Donald then picked up and turned-

   26. JRJoe Rogan31:09

       Mm-hmm.

   27. LLLawrence Lessig31:09

       ... into, uh, a weapon against her. But I think he re- he recognized, you know, as every responsible politician does that, you know, it's not just about him, it's about the future of America. So when he restrained himself and didn't want to take the whole system down then, um, I- I- I get that.

   28. JRJoe Rogan31:25

       Right.

   29. LLLawrence Lessig31:25

       But what I'm talking about now.

   30. JRJoe Rogan31:26

       Right.
8. 41:40 – 49:09

   Citizens United, Super PACs, and Lessig’s legal strategy to challenge Super PAC constitutionality

   1. JRJoe Rogan41:40

      To a person on, sitting on the outside who doesn't have any involvement in politics, like myself, it seems so unbelievably complicated that it ex- it's, it exhausts you when you start examining it and trying to pay attention to it and how the system all works. Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but in, in the recent past, there was something that was changed that allows corporations to donate money the same way that an individual would.

   2. LLLawrence Lessig42:03

      Right. So in, um, 2010, the United States Supreme Court decided a case called Citizens United. And Citizens United said that you couldn't limi- limit a corporation's ability to spend money independently of a political campaign. So a corporation is not allowed to contribute directly.... but that's not worth that much because you're only allowed to give a total of $5,400 to a candidate over the course of the life of his campaign. But what Citizens United said is that the Constitution protects the right of the corporation to engage in political speech independent of a political campaign. So if, you know, if some congressman is running for Congress, um, Exxon Corporation can come in and spend a million dollars to say why that congressman is a good congressman or why that congressman's a terrible congressman, but they have a constitutional right to do that. Now when that happened, there were a bunch of us who were, you know, Chicken Littles about this, who said, "Oh, this is the end of democracy," 'cause these corporations are just gonna spend unbelievable amounts of money in the political process, like spending their money to affect the results. And that was not correct, because what happened is corporations quickly f- discovered the high price of free speech, right? So corporations like Target backed a, uh, anti-gay candidate for governor, um, and, uh, all of a sudden found their stores being picketed across the country because people were furious that they would be supporting such a candidate for governor. So corporations have quickly found that it's not cheap to engage in political speech in the marketplace. They didn't wanna do it like that. Instead, they wanted to find a way to channel their money into dark money organizations or into what evolved after Citizens United, something called Super PACs. So Super PACs were created not by the Supreme Court. Super PACs were created by a lower court that said, "Well, if you can spend unlimited amounts of money, you should be allowed to give unlimited amounts of money to an independent political action committee." That was the Super PAC. Supreme Court has never ruled on that question. We have a case that we're taking up through Alaska that's trying to appeal to the Supreme Court to get them to actually decide whether Super PACs are mandated by the Constitution. And what's different about this case is the argument we're making is to the conservatives. What we're saying is the framers of our Constitution were obsessed with corruption. That was the issue that they were overwhelmingly trying to avoid, and they weren't focused on bribery. They were focused on institutional corruption, these institutions that became unconnected to their purpose, representing Americans. And what our view is, is, you know, these conservatives on the Supreme Court like, um, you know, uh, Neil Gorsuch or Justice Thomas or Brett Kavanaugh who say that we interpret the Constitution the way the framers would've interpreted it. We're gonna make the argument to them, which is there is no doubt the framers of the Constitution (laughs) would've looked at these Super PACs and said, "These are an abomination. These are outrageous from the perspective of the democracy they were trying to create." And those justices should, at least one of them, be willing to stand up and defend the framers' values against this modern corruption. And if just one of them voted with the four liberals who've already said they think Super PACs are an abomination, then we could have a way to end the Super PACs in this system, and that, and that would be an enormous benefit because they've become so powerful. But the courts alone can't save us. Even if you ended Super PACs tomorrow, you still have Lesterland because the Super PACs are not what I was talking about in Lesterland. What I was talking about in Lesterland was giving to candidates directly, and the small number of people would still be giving to candidates directly, and the only way to solve that is for Congress to pass l- uh, new laws that change the way campaigns get funded. That's the sort of thing HR1 is trying to do. That's the sort of thing Ro Kahana's trying to do, but that's the sort of thing that we don't have a president to support right now. We don't have Democratic presidential candidates who are making it the champion issue right now, and, um, it won't get done unless they do.

   3. JRJoe Rogan46:16

      Well, uh, it seems complicated to people when you try to explain campaign finance and you try to explain contributions to candidates and contributions to sitting senators and congressmen. It's, it's complicated and, and there's so many different things to think about when you're discussing this, that to a person who's on the outside, "Well, how do you fix this? Well, what are, what are the laws now? Well, how did it-

   4. LLLawrence Lessig46:37

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan46:38

      ... get that way? Well, well, w- how about make it so they can't give them money?"

   6. LLLawrence Lessig46:42

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JRJoe Rogan46:42

      And there's all these, like, real simplistic views of it from the outside, but it seems that it l- at the very least, limiting the amount of money that someone's allowed. Like, what is the maximum amount of money someone can give to a candidate?

   8. LLLawrence Lessig46:55

      Right now, in the primary and the general, it's $5,400, $2,700 in each, and that goes up according to inflation. And that's pretty small potatoes compared to what the Super PACs are doing in this election.

   9. JRJoe Rogan47:08

      Right.

   10. LLLawrence Lessig47:08

       So you have these people running who expect they're gonna raise the money to run their office from their direct contributions, but they're counting on the Super PACs to come in and spend ungodly amounts of money, like, tens of millions of dollars, to support their candidate or to oppose their opp- their opponent. Uh, and so the supporters for those Super PACs are an even tiny... Those are the Adolfs in America, (laughs) you know-

   11. JRJoe Rogan47:33

       Mm-hmm.

   12. LLLawrence Lessig47:33

       ... the people named Adolf. This tiny, tiny, tiny number of people who are contributing, uh, to those, uh, to those things, but you're right. People... Look, there's no reason why most Americans should understand the complexities of campaign finance law, and they don't need to. What they need to ask is, "Do we have a system of integrity in the way we select representatives?" And if you're, if you're not brain-dead in America, you believe the answer to that question is no. We do not have a system of integrity. There's no representational integrity. It is corrupted in all the obvious ways. And, like, nobody should, like, be forced to study campaign finance in order to have the entitlement to say, "Hell, hell no, this system has got to end." Uh, and so I, I think you're right. If we f- you know, if people are forced to, like, articulate all the 34 different changes that have to happen, we're never gonna (laughs) get there, but let's not go there. Let's just start and end with, "It is a corrupted system, and we want politicians to fix it. And if they don't fix it, we'll throw them out until we get the politicians who do." Um, and if we could build that as the movement, the recognition, the core message of 2020, I think there's a real shot because we've primed the Republican Party. There are a lot of people in that party who are now so disgusted with the corruption of this system-Not necessarily Mitch McConnell, he loves it, but, you know, e- ordinary Republican voters. And the Democrats have now committed themselves to fixing this corrupted system. This is the moment to do that. And we don't have to get into the details of how much you should be allowed to contribute to say there is a way to fix this that would give us a representative democracy, maybe not again, but for the first time.

9. 49:09 – 52:34

   Mitch McConnell as the reform roadblock: FEC paralysis and a narrow view of corruption

   1. JRJoe Rogan49:09

      Why is Mitch McConnell so, uh, uniquely evil?

   2. LLLawrence Lessig49:12

      This guy has had it in his, uh, uh, DNA from the first moment he went to Washington, um, to end any regulation of money in politics. He engineered the selection of the FEC, this is the Federal Election Commission commissioners, so that they would block basically every enforcement action of the FEC. The FEC does nothing now because it's a commission that has half Republicans and half Democrats. So if the Republicans disagree from the Democrats, then nothing gets done. They can't enforce the most simple rules anymore because Mitch McConnell has populated the FEC with people who don't believe in campaign finance rules. He has said Citizens United, this decision that said corporations could give unlimited amounts of money to independent political speaking, says one of the greatest decisions of the Supreme Court, and he has said he's gonna fight like hell to defend it. And when this proposed HR1 was raised to him, Mitch McConnell said, "There's not a chance in hell this will ever even get a debate in the Senate." This man is obsessed with the idea that money should have the power in Washington that it has right now, and people who are talking about reforming it are the enemy. And so, you know, the, the thing about Mitch McConnell is he's actually an incredibly smart man, and he's an incredibly smart strategist, and he's been playing this game for a long time. Um, and, um, and I think he's, like, responsible for 85% of the judicial structure that makes it possible for this to be blocked. There's an amazing series of debates happened 20 years ago between John McCain and Mitch McConnell. So this is when Congress was passing something called the McCain-Feingold Law, which was the last great effort to deal with this problem. It was flawed in a bunch of ways, but it was an important success. Mitch McConnell, um, uh, y- uh, stood on the floor of the Senate and said, "Mr. McCain says that, uh, the Senate..." Well, you can't say Mr. McCain. He said, "The senator from Arizona has said that the system is corrupt. I want him to name the corrupt people." And McCain stands there and said, "I'm not talking about particular individuals. I'm talking about the system. It's the system's corrupt." And then McConnell, almost clueless, just said, "If the system's corrupt, there must be corrupt people. If there's not corrupt people, then the system's not corrupt." So the only corruption he can imagine was corruption where somebody was taking a bribe, and if that's the only corruption we're allowed to remedy, then the whole system of influence we have right now is not to be touched. But, you know, I think McCain's point was you can have a system filled with lots of honest Congresspeople and lots of honest senators who never engage in bribery, but they know how to bob and weave and bend and speak and say the right things to attract the right kind of money, and that's as much corruption as bribery is. And McCain's view was we had to end it. So he was the last great Republican fighter for reform of this corrupted system. There've been many before. Barry Goldwater was an incredibly, uh, vocal opponent to the role of money in politics. Um, but I think what we have to do is to find a way to revive that and to leverage from this president's assertion that this is a corrupt system and we have to change the system into actually building the political power to make that change happen.

10. 52:34 – 1:04:16

    Electoral College dysfunction: battleground-state bias and two non-amendment fixes

    1. JRJoe Rogan52:34

       Another thing that's very weird is that every four years or so, there's this cry to eliminate the electoral college. Uh, every four years ago, people realized that the battleground states are so critical and that so much money is being spent on this small handful of states because they give you all the electoral votes, and this is how you win an election. And then people say, "Well, why is that? That doesn't make any sense. It should be one person, one vote." Are we really that divided as a nation that we need to isolate ourselves into these small little lines in the, on the dirt where, you know, this part is worth this amount and that part's worth that amount? And so everybody plays this weird f- electoral college game, and then you get a situation like w- what just happened where Hillary Clinton wins the popular vote, but is not the president because the electoral college is what, what makes everything.

    2. LLLawrence Lessig53:21

       Yeah. So the way you just described this problem is exactly the way people have to think about it. The problem isn't... I mean, it is a bad thing that the loser wins. I mean, that's just not the way- (laughs)

    3. JRJoe Rogan53:32

       Right.

    4. LLLawrence Lessig53:32

       ... an election is supposed to work. So that's happened twice in our lifetime.

    5. JRJoe Rogan53:36

       Yeah.

    6. LLLawrence Lessig53:36

       Um, and, uh, it happened 100 years before that, and it's gonna happen more frequently going forward. We can show that demographically. But that's not the real problem. The real problem is that in every election, the presidential candidates are focused on just 14 states, the battleground states, the purple states, and those 14 states are the only states that matter to those candidates. And, and what scholars have demonstrated is that presidents and campaigns bend themselves and their policies to make those states happy, and those states don't represent America. They're older, they're whiter, their industry is kind of 19th century industry. There are seven and a half times the number of people in America working in solar energy as mine coal, but you never hear about solar energy in a presidential campaign 'cause those people live in California and Texas. They don't matter to the presidential election. What you hear about is coal mining because the 50,000 coal miners left in America happen to live in these battleground states. So this is just a product of the way the electoral college or the way states count their votes to allocate their electors, something called the winner-take-all system, so all but two states.... say that the winner of the popular vote gets all of the electoral votes for that state. So in, you know, in 2000 in Florida, um, George Bush won that state based on a stopped recount, um, by 531 votes. Uh, he got all the electoral college votes in that state, even though he just barely won that state. And so winner take all is what makes it so that it doesn't make sense for anybody to spay, uh, pay any attention to any of the non-battleground states and spend all of your time in the battleground states. In 2016, 99% of campaign spending was in 14 states.

    7. JRJoe Rogan55:25

       99?

    8. LLLawrence Lessig55:26

       99%. 95% of time, but the only ti- reason they were not 99% in those battleground states is the other 5%, they were in New York and California raising money, right? So (laughs)

    9. JRJoe Rogan55:36

       Huh.

    10. LLLawrence Lessig55:37

        ... so this is a system designed to give power to these battleground states. And then you say, "Well, why?" Is it something the constitution requires? And the answer to that is absolutely not. The constitution does not say how the states will allocate their electors. And indeed, when states started adopting this winner take all system, many thought it was ou- an outrageous perversion of the constitutional design. So Jeff- so, uh, Jefferson was outraged, but then he said, "Well, if some states are gonna do it, then all states have to do it." Because if you're a state that, uh, allocates all of your electors to the winner, you're gonna have more power than your neighboring state that only gives-

    11. JRJoe Rogan56:17

        Right.

    12. LLLawrence Lessig56:17

        ... half the electors to the winner. So very quickly, there was a race to the bottom, and that's kind of where it stuck. Uh, and so the question is now what we can do about it. Well, there are two big reform efforts out there. One of them is called the National Popular Vote Compact. Uh, I mean, I should say, you know, you could imagine amending the constitution, but it takes three-fourths of the states to change the constitution, and three-fourths of the states are not gonna agree with abolishing the electoral college. So this is not gonna happen anytime soon through the constitution. But there are two ways, without amending the constitution, we could fix this problem. One, the National Popular Vote Pri- uh, Compact is basically states who say, "Look, we're gonna pledge our electors to the winner of the national popular vote." So, um, the state, you know, looks at who won the national popular vote and then picks the slate of electors from their state with the party of the person who won the national popular vote. So in a state like New York, if, uh, the Republican won the national popular vote, even though most people in New York are Democratic, they would allocate their electors to the Republican, vice versa in Texas. That's, that's the way that system would work. And, you know, I personally like this system 'cause I believe in the idea of one person, one vote. Everybody's vote as an American citizen for the American president should be equal. It shouldn't, shouldn't matter that you're having to live in Wyoming versus Pennsylvania versus, uh, New York. Um, but there are people who are worried about this 'cause they fear that it'll become a kind of flyover democracy, that the only places that candidates will care about will be places like, you know, LA or New York or Chicago. I, I actually don't think that's right, but I get the understanding. I, I think they're wrong about the way the campaigns work, but I understand why they're anxious about it. So then that leads to the alternative solution, which is something, you know, my group, equalcitizens.us, is litigating, uh, this right now. Um, we're just trying to declare this winner take all system violates the constitution because it basically says that if you're a Republican in California, your vote never matters. If you're a Democrat in Texas, your vote never matters, because we just count your vote up, and then we throw it away.

    13. JRJoe Rogan58:22

        Right.

    14. LLLawrence Lessig58:22

        'Cause we allocate all the electors to the dominant party in your state. And so we've got, um, David Boies is our chief litigator. We've got a case in California, Texas, South Carolina, and Massachusetts asking the courts to declare winner take all unconstitutional and instead say that electors have to be allocated proportionally. So if you get 40% of the vote in a state, you get 40% of the electors. If you get 50%, you get 50% of the electors. And what that would do overnight is it would make every state in the nation competitive. Like, there'd be a reason for a Democrat to go to Texas, because you're not gonna get all the electoral votes. You're not even gonna get half the electoral votes. But you'll get 40%, maybe 45%, and that could matter. Um, or a Republican would go to California because, you know, you're not gonna get all the votes in California, but you're gonna get a lot. There are a lot of Republicans in California. Um, so this change would immediately make every state in play. But unlike the national popular vote alternative, there are many people who look at this and say this would be better because small states would still have a pretty important role. Like, an elector is an elector, and if I can get it from Arizona, I'm gonna care about Arizona. If I can get it from Arkansas, I'll care about Arkansas. Um, so it's not gonna just be the big states or the big population centers. It's gonna be every state. And so if we can get, you know, a court to say this violates the constitution, um, then you could have states forced to allocate their electors proportionally. And if they did that, um, then the problem that you identified at the start, which I think is the problem, could be solved overnight. You would no longer have these battleground states deciding everything. You'd have a president who cares about getting elected by all of America, and that would be an incredible improvement.

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:00:08

        That seems like in, in and of itself would be a game changer.

    16. LLLawrence Lessig1:00:13

        Yes.

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:00:13

        If, if they could do that.

    18. LLLawrence Lessig1:00:14

        Yes.

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:00:14

        That, that would change a lot. But one of the things that you said, uh, you said you don't think that it's possible that we would ever vote out the electoral college. But is there support for the electoral college?

    20. LLLawrence Lessig1:00:25

        No.

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:00:26

        Is there a good argument for it?

    22. LLLawrence Lessig1:00:28

        Um, so there is support for the idea that every state have a, uh, a role, and there's a support for the idea that small states get a kind of thumb on the scale, uh, which is what the electoral college does. So there is some support, but most people, you know, 70% of people don't like the idea that the president is not chosen from the majority of voters voting.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:00:52

        Right.

    24. LLLawrence Lessig1:00:53

        So most people would oppose it. But the point is to change the constitution-... you need the state legislatures or state conventions to agree with the change. And what many states, at least 13 states, I fear, would say is that, "You know, we actually win more under this system than we lose-"

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:01:11

        Yeah.

    26. LLLawrence Lessig1:01:11

        "... so we're not gonna change the system." Uh, and so unless you get, um, like some overwhelmingly popular movement to support it, or again, you know, you can imagine a presidential candidate who kind of made fixing this part of the democracy part of the plan too, I don't see how you're gonna build a political movement to, to get there. Another way of putting it is, you know, this National Popular Vote Compact, which is going around state to state and getting states to join, right now has about 100... And so the way this works is that when the equivalent of 270 electoral votes have been committed, then the compact kicks in. So when they get to 270, the problem goes a- you know, the problem of this electoral college goes away because at 270, according to the plan, the winner of the popular vote wins the electoral college. They right now have 172 electors pledged, right? So they have less than 100 more to go. But the problem is they've gotta convince states to join the compact, and they're kinda, they've kinda hit this red wall now because many Republicans think the only way to win the presidency is through the electoral college now. So many state legislatures-

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:02:19

        Why do they believe that?

    28. LLLawrence Lessig1:02:21

        I think many Republicans just think that, uh, their great benefit is from the electoral college. It's not surprising.

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:02:26

        Because the battleground states are-

    30. LLLawrence Lessig1:02:27

        Y-
11. 1:04:16 – 1:08:24

    Trump-era ‘Watergate’ and the collapse of shared reality in modern media ecosystems

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:04:16

       Um, I wasn't old enough to understand what was going on during Watergate. Uh, I, I don't even... What year was that?

    2. LLLawrence Lessig1:04:23

       Well, 70, uh, so-

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:04:25

       Yeah.

    4. LLLawrence Lessig1:04:25

       ... you know, the break-in happens in the lead up to the '72 election.

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:04:28

       Yeah.

    6. LLLawrence Lessig1:04:29

       And then he re- uh, eventually resigns after that.

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:04:31

       But this is our Watergate, right?

    8. LLLawrence Lessig1:04:32

       Yeah. (laughs)

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:04:32

       This, this moment right now. And Cohen's gonna go to jail for three years, and, and, uh, I mean, he's testifying against Trump, and all these people are testifying and th- they're calling him... What are they calling him? Co-conspirator number one? Is that what the-

    10. LLLawrence Lessig1:04:45

        Yeah. Yeah.

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:04:45

        ... the, uh-

    12. LLLawrence Lessig1:04:45

        Individual number one.

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:04:46

        ... official, individual number one?

    14. LLLawrence Lessig1:04:48

        Yeah. Yeah.

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:04:48

        This is, uh, a v- very unusual moment for us-

    16. LLLawrence Lessig1:04:52

        (sighs)

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:04:53

        ... to, to be watching this all unfold and to see this slow dissection. What Mueller seems to be doing is, like, slowly closing off all the escape routes.

    18. LLLawrence Lessig1:05:03

        Yeah.

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:05:03

        And slowly circling the troops around this one area that he's trying to-

    20. LLLawrence Lessig1:05:08

        Yeah.

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:05:08

        ... that he's, that he's attacking.

    22. LLLawrence Lessig1:05:10

        Yeah. So, um, he's a brilliant, uh, tactician.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:05:14

        Yeah.

    24. LLLawrence Lessig1:05:15

        And, and, uh, and so I think it's clear that the worst for Donald Trump is yet to come. Um, and I do think the parallel is Watergate, but there's a really important difference here. You know, um, so I'm old enough to remember Wate- (laughs) Watergate. I was, like, 12 or 13 when this happened. And my uncle happened to be the lawyer who worked in the House of Representatives convincing the House of Representatives to vote the articles of impeachment.

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:05:38

        Hmm.

    26. LLLawrence Lessig1:05:38

        So he... And that weekend, when Nixon resigned, he came to visit us. We lived in the Kentucky part of Pennsylvania, the kind of right wing middle part of the state. He came to visit us, and, um, he told me this was gonna happen. And, uh, that was the event. That was the weekend that I decided I wanted to become a lawyer.

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:05:55

        Hmm.

    28. LLLawrence Lessig1:05:56

        Um, but, uh, but the big difference between these two times is that when that happened, the way most people got access to news was three television networks. Every day, they watched the news at the same time 'cause there was nothing else on. And those three television networks kind of shot right down the middle and told the story as they saw it. Um, you know, it was kind of the Walter Cronkite era of news. Um, and as this story broke, they just reported it as they saw it. And as they saw it, it was a pretty damning indictment of the president. And what's amazing is you watch the polling among Republicans and their support for the president. Six months before the president resigns, the poll says among Republicans, he has about an 83% support rate. And then when he resignS, his support rate among Republicans is about 50%. And that's because the news, newspapers and television, had, like, told everybody the same story. And Americans hearing the same story came to the same view that there was something deeply corrupt about this president and he had to go. We don't live in that news environment today.... we live in an environment where half of America lives in one news world, and the other half of America lives in another news world.

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:07:11

        Mm-hmm.

    30. LLLawrence Lessig1:07:11

        And the half of America living in the Breitbart, Fox News world are not being told the stories that the people living in the MSNBC, NPR news universe are. And so, in this world, the opportunity for Americans to, like, see the facts, the same facts, and have a reflective judgment about it and come to a view that this president, um, uh, uh, you know, needs to resign, um, or be impeached... I don't think he should be impeached, but let's, that's a separate question... um, is, is not possible. And that's what's so terrifying about it. When you live in a democracy, where we don't all live in the same universe, you know, kind of-
12. 1:08:24 – 1:17:19

    ‘Slow democracy’: why podcasts, comedy, and serious storytelling may rebuild civic understanding

    1. LLLawrence Lessig1:08:24

       No. It wasn't the past, but I think the thing we need to realize is, it is the future.

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:08:29

       Hmm.

    3. LLLawrence Lessig1:08:30

       Because it pays. Cable news-

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:08:33

       Yeah.

    5. LLLawrence Lessig1:08:33

       ... pays.

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:08:34

       Tremendously.

    7. LLLawrence Lessig1:08:35

       When these people become partisan hacks inside of a politics of hate, which is the current politics of, like, both the Democratic and Republican parties, and the cable news stations, they build tribes who are deeply loyal to them. And the loyalty to those tribes translates into advertising dollars. It is the business model of cable.

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:08:55

       Right.

    9. LLLawrence Lessig1:08:56

       So, Sean Hannity looks to, you know, old geezers like me, like a, an abomination from the perspective of what news should be like. But from the standpoint of what the future's gonna be, he is the future. And so then it becomes a question, like, how do we knit together a democracy given there will be people like the Sean Hannitys on cable television? Uh, and, you know, I've begun to talk about the slow democracy movement, which I think, you know, I think I pointed to you as part of that. I think that there's a need to begin to think about, how do we build political understanding, not through broadcast television, but through something else that gives people a chance to think in more than 30-second bites?

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:09:35

        Yes.

    11. LLLawrence Lessig1:09:35

        And podcasting, I think, is a core part of that.

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:09:37

        Is it entirely possible that something could be profitable that does shoot down the middle because people are so tired of this CNN-Fox bipolar distribution of information? I mean, I remember when the elections were going on, I would flip back and forth between the two channels, and it was like two alternative universes.

    13. LLLawrence Lessig1:09:56

        Yes, exactly.

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:09:56

        They were different worlds.

    15. LLLawrence Lessig1:09:57

        Yeah.

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:09:58

        Different worlds of focus, different worlds of the, the, what they're projecting.

    17. LLLawrence Lessig1:10:02

        Yeah. So it... But I, I don't think the point is that it has to be down the middle.

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:10:06

        Right.

    19. LLLawrence Lessig1:10:06

        I think it has to be deep. So this is what I think is so powerful about podcasting. 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. Literally astonishing in an age where the most a cable news channel will allocate to a news story is a minute and a half, two minutes, three minutes, right? And you know in the context of, like, the tweet thinking of cable news, they can't afford to go deep on anything, and everything they're gonna talk about are the things they can talk about sensibly in 25 seconds or 30 seconds or 40 seconds. And what you know because you've lived this life of, like, having deep conversations about things that are important is that it sometimes takes more than 30 seconds to understand something.

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:10:52

        Always.

    21. LLLawrence Lessig1:10:53

        Yeah. And the point is, if we have media that's focused at the 30-second chunk, and that's how America understands the issues, we're never gonna get anywhere. And the only way to get to, uh, s- to get someplace is to begin to have conversations that are at the hour-long chunk or the two-hour-long chunk. And it's not important that that be neutral or balanced. Uh, I don't care if it's balanced. I care that it is attempting to be serious and in-depth, understanding the issues. So I don't care if Cato wants to have podcasts that try to tell us the deep story of Ayn Randian economics or something like that. That's fine, that's good. I think it's important that people start thinking about these issues in a richer, deeper way. And I think the challenge we have now is, how do we begin to produce understanding, realizing that the world of Walter Cronkite is never coming back? And it might be a good thing, but it is just never coming back. And, um, the world of Sean Hannity is a world that will destroy democracy. So, how do we rebuild democracy outside of that? And, you know, if you, if you had to pick the three things (laughs) that are the most hopeful, I think podcasting is number one. I think some of the reflective, deep, you know, funny, playful, but, uh, in the end, at the end of the hour-long segment of a podcast, you understand something you didn't understand before. I think that's number one. I think comedy, like comedy television, like, brings people into understanding things in a way that's not possible on Fox News. I think that, you know, that's number two. I think shows like Homeland, I don't know if you, you know, watch Homeland.

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:12:25

        Mm-hmm.

    23. LLLawrence Lessig1:12:25

        Right, so-

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:12:26

        I watched it until the redheaded guy died.

    25. LLLawrence Lessig1:12:27

        Yeah, yeah, I know. And then it went through this dark period in the middle, but the recent, uh, seasons are just unfucking believable.

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:12:34

        Really?

    27. LLLawrence Lessig1:12:35

        And because... They're unbelievable because they are such a deep, rich understanding of the tensions at issue. Like, you wanna understand the Iran, uh, nuclear deal? Watch the last season because after watching that season, you, like, understand the tensions between the CIA and the president and what's actually going on with Israel. And, and I think that if you imagine television shows aspiring to tell the story, uh, in an entertaining way, in a way that brings people in, that, that they voluntarily wanna watch it-

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:13:07

        Mm-hmm.

    29. LLLawrence Lessig1:13:08

        ... uh, but that in the end, at the end of watching a season, you understand something. I understand the current season's about the Russia, you know, struggle, and I can't wait (laughs) to watch it because it's gonna be a richer understanding of that story than anything on television.

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:13:20

        Did you watch House of Cards?
13. 1:17:19 – 1:30:05

    Voting technology and online voting: proprietary insecurity, open-source hopes, and election administration problems

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:17:19

       Yeah. Um, voting online, what, what would be the pitfalls of that and why hasn't that been implemented? If you can bank online, why can't you vote online?

    2. LLLawrence Lessig1:17:29

       (clears throat) So I think, you know, most of the tech, uh, the experts who are disinterested, meaning they're not working for Diebold or something like that, uh, would tell you that we don't yet have the infrastructure to be able to be confident about this. Now, there are lots of people working on, I think, really great open source implementations, um, that, that could be, could eventually produce the kind of confidence that we need to have to be able to vote online. Um, and so I- I don't foreclose it in the long run, but I think what we've seen in the short run is that when we turn to these proprietary providers of technology to enable us to vote, they give us shit. Uh, you know, look at- look at these voting machines. There was this recent story about, um, this 11-year-old who was able to, uh, within, like, 15 minutes hack into the Florida election, um, uh, uh, system and change the results from, uh, you know, one, one candidate to another. Um, because, you know, the companies that build these technologies are not filled with a bunch of rocket scientists. Like, if you're really good, you're gonna go work for Google or for Facebook or something like that. So, so the proprietary software has all of these bugs and holes and intended back doors built into it that-

Episode duration: 2:17:46