Larry Lessig and the Lunching Libertarians
Outside the realm of copyright, Cato folk (and libertarians generally) don’t often see eye-to-eye with left-leaning cyberlawyer and Harvard prof Lawrence Lessig. Nevertheless, I wasn’t too surprised when Lessig signaled his interest in opening a dialogue with Cato scholars about his Change Congress project and his research on political corruption. After all, we’ve long argued that an expansive state will inevitably attract moneyed interests eager to feed at the public trough or co-opt well-intentioned regulation to stifle competitors. And as Lessig argues, legislators may come to see growing government as a means of creating supportive constituencies.
He’s posted the presentation he gave to a group of us at a luncheon discussion earlier this week, which I think makes an interesting case:
As he writes over at the Huffington Post, we see many of the same structural problems, though we differ as to the solutions. Lessig has been critical of the legal reasoning behind the recent Citizens United decision, which we at Cato welcomed. Despite this, we were pleasantly surprised to hear Lessig aver that he is not interested in overturning the decision—that he prefers, rather, to find ways of reducing the political influence of special interest money without restricting speech. Lessig’s favored solution is public financing of elections, whereas I think the majority here at Cato share the skepticism of my colleague John Samples about the viability of that kind of reform.
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