Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Is Now Chairing Lessig's Presidential Bid 119
Funksaw sends a followup to Tuesday's news that Lawrence Lessig is pondering a presidential campaign: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is now chairing the committee for Lessig's campaign. Wales said, "Larry's run for President is different. He's crowdfunding his campaign instead of seeking out rich donors. He's showing people that we can change the rigged political system. ... The Internet community came together to fight back against SOPA and we were successful. Now we’re behind Lessig to fight for citizen equality." Lessig's goal is to raise a million dollars by September 7, and they're already at roughly $300,000. Relatedly, Newsweek had a brief interview with Lessig over his potential campaign, and Eric Posner wrote an insightful piece about it at Slate.
I applaud this (Score:1, Troll)
Nice of them to split the left vote.
They've got my vote (Score:2)
Should fix Wikipedia first (Score:1)
Jimbo needs to fix Wikipedia first by grtting rid of abusive admins and deletionists.
Jon and Neil? (Score:2)
Any candidate that has a poll on their "plan" page that even entertains the notion of Jon Stewart and Neil Degrasse Tyson for VP has already convinced me to stop listening.
Just what we need... (Score:3)
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Now, is it perfect? Nope. Can you shift the party platforms and future candidates? Absolutely, just look at how effective certain insurgent forces have been within the Repu
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What a load of partisan bullshit. If that's how republicans are crying themselves to sleep at night; rationalizing their own losses on a manipulated brain rather than being remotely introspective about the candidates they put forth, they're more deluded than the general public. I'm confident republican spindoctor Frank 'Death Tax' Luntz sitting next to him on the panel corrected his assertion that it was the democrats alone were preying on the gullibility of the human mind.
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Someone asked 'why modded down'?. Whoever that AC was, let me point out that I agree with that mod by answering your question:
Firstly, all sources have to be laid open. Affiliations included.
Secondly, your post is not quite on topic, because Lessig has never said anything close to 'censoring'. Watch his talk at TED. He wants the result of elections to be a result of the votes alone, like written by the founding fathers. When the idea is, any candidate, irrespective of funding by 132 (watch said talk) indivi
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You are assuming that money can compel a person to vote a certain way and that they don't have the choice to do otherwise, but they do. The AC got it right. Work on the desire. The corruption is in the taking of the money, not offering. We can all turn our backs. You have it completely backwards. If they are talking about limits, then it is censorship.
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What did roman_mir ever do you YOU?? I always see his posts are modded down to hell and/or marked troll even though they basically just offer an anarchist perspective on TFA.
What a colossal waste of time and resources! (Score:3, Insightful)
If I'm going to support a candidate for the job of POTUS I expect them to get elected and then do the f***ing job for at least four years.
If he says he will be a one term president up front I then applaud him for that. But getting elected so he can resign makes no sense.
Go back to academia where you can play what if. We need a real POTUS committed to the job of running the country.
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The problem is, NOBODY can be trusted with that much power. So you also don't want the leader of the majority in the Senate to have that much power. And NOBODY includes those not in government, but who are exerting their power via bribery.
The secondary problem is that designing a system that would be dynamicly stable without excessive centralized power is trivial next to getting it enacted.
P.S.: Evidence seems to show that you can't even trust people with the amount of power given to a police chief or a
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I like that he thinks that's new (Score:5, Insightful)
... "crowd funding" in politics is ancient. And I'd point out that most crowdfunding systems have no problem with rich donors. Go to kickstarter... scroll down... they've got prizes for people that give 10k. Generally involves people going to some stupid party with the developer or them inserting you into their work or something.
There's nothing new about Larry's campaign. Guy that founded Wikipedia likes him? Okay... that's interesting sort of... but the crowdfunding argument? I'm not such a low information voter that that doesn't pass the smell test.
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He held that out like it was something special.
Do you think Bernie is raking in the big money from the shadowy corporate overlords?
And if that's your basis of voting for the guy, you might as well vote for Rick Perry... so few people are giving him money that i think he's not paying his staff at this point.
So... I'd need a more compelling reason to vote for the guy.
I watched his Ted talk after reading this article so I could get a better idea of who he was... and he basically gave an entertaining whine on t
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I don't want a nerd president because we don't have a country of nerds that only have nerd problems.
What you're describing to me is cabinet level stuff. Building a platform on nerd issues is going no where.
First off, most voters shift older. So you're not going to get the votes right there.
Second, the various constituencies you need to satisfy on EITHER side are very marginally interested in nerd issues.
Third, if the point of him is to inject ideas into the campaign and get candidates to take positions on i
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Problems are not merely matters of money. We spend huge sums on cancer research. Saying we don't have a cure because we didn't spend enough on it is unsupportable.
As to problems in other countries, we're not electing a president of the WORLD we're electing a president of the United States. This evangelical notion that you're going to save the world by spreading your vision for how people to live is how we got into trouble in Iraq. Just stop.
As to nerds solving the world's problems... then you don't understa
Prior Art = Ron Paul (Score:2)
Ron could raise a million dollars in a weekend, and he did it 25.00 to 50.00 at a time. That's called real grass roots.
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... "crowd funding" in politics is ancient. And I'd point out that most crowdfunding systems have no problem with rich donors. Go to kickstarter... scroll down... they've got prizes for people that give 10k. Generally involves people going to some stupid party with the developer or them inserting you into their work or something.
Give 500K and get an ambassadorship? [washingtonpost.com]
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It wasn't the first time that happened.
Ambassadorships are sort of an anachronism at this point in many cases as well.
The two sides of the typical argument are this:
Side 1: I should be an ambassador because I helped get the president elected and he knows who I am so if I say X to him in the coming years he'll take me seriously.
Side 2: I should be an ambassador because I've been a diplomat all my life and know how to the state department works.
What they rarely point out is that neither side tends to speak th
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I think the best defence of the practice I saw is that because the rich donors take the postings to nice countries the troublesome countries are the ones who actually get talented diplomats as ambassadors.
I agree it's mostly a prestige position but it is one where you're still summoned to meet heads of state and/or senior officials, the important stuff is handled higher up but I think it's still a concern because they will be doing something for which they're not the best person for the job. It's also essen
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As to corruption, sure... but the point I'm making is that the entire job is mostly an anachronism.
If I am a head of state, and I have just run of the mill stuff to conduct with the US state department then I don't care who I'm talking to. I'm filing paper work. I don't care who they are. It could be no one. I could email it to the US state department. What the fuck do I care.
if its something more serious then I also do not want to talk to the ambassador because what the fuck is he going to do for me? He ha
Only one issue? (Score:4, Insightful)
If he has only one bill he wants to pass, and then resign, that doesn't seem like much of a vision to me. The country can't be "fixed" by changing one law. I'd rather elect somebody who has a vision with a bit more scope.
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I admire your unrestrained enthusiasm for a particular politician and party. I suspect I've been around a little longer than you, because I've learned that one thing is true about ALL politicians: they lie. At least, whenever their lips are moving. One day you'll learn that even Obama himself is...a politician.
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No, the country can't be 'fixed' by changing one law. And Lessig doesn't say so.
But no amounts of laws can 'fix' a country that is governed by people who could only make it into government by buy-ing into politics of powerful sponsors. Sponsors who expect the elected ones to push for the policies of the 'generous' sponsors.
So make it two steps: First remove the decision of the sponsors on who can become a candidate. Second, get candidates that are determined by the (voter) population alone.
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You sound like a true believer. Unfortunately, I'm much more cynical, I don't trust what ANY politician says, not even Lessig.
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Unfortunately the world will not pause for two to four years while we make needed repairs to our political infrastructure.
While I commend his bravado and focus, he must enumerate some credentials and contingency plans for the full spectrum of responsibilities required of a commander and chief of the worlds (currently) most pre-eminent military and commercial power before I can even toss a copper into his tip jar.
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Hey, I think you're on to something! Since the law can't possibly get passed, that means Lessig wouldn't actually have to resign, there would be no broken promise if he stayed around for the entire term...making him no different from every other politician out there.
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The unbalanced part doesn't bother me as much of the deletionists. I've created about five dozen pages, and almost a dozen of them that I can remember have been deleted for "not being notable." I included the required minimum number of citations, but the deletionists still deleted them. One was my uncle who is a musician that has two platinum and five gold records. One song even hit #5 on RPM's charts which was the main Canadian music chart at the time. It was the Canadian equivalent of Billboard Magaz
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> the deletionists
Wikipedia seems to think deleting information is more important than providing information. That has been true for several years. One study:
http://files.grouplens.org/papers/wp-gender-wikisym2011.pdf
Found that only that only 13% of the edits allowed were by women. My name is Terry, and my account on Wikipedia contains my name. Despite being a male, since I have a name that is often female, every single one o the pages I've created since I started contributing to Wikipedia the past e
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Why AC?
I have created some pages, and found them deleted likewise. No, not about family members or stuff, but as a starting point to collectively collect sparse information about some almost forgotten actors in not almost forgotten movies. Actors that have impressed me one way or another, despite minor roles. Why is it so wrong to start a wiki page on person XYZ who pops up in the credits of a movie as cinematographer or actor, and put in a few lines, as many as I can do, a link to the IMDB entry of the mov
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Okay, you love to use cliches until the cows come home.
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...this guy with the beard and dedication will fix all ...
Karl Marx?
Does this mean... (Score:3)
...that contributors will have their contributions blocked or reversed at the behest of vindictive campaign insiders without explanation or appeal in order to stroke the insiders' petty egos?
The elephant in the room (Score:1, Interesting)
Jeez, this is like reading Xinhua News. Just a collective ignoring of the fact that all these people are on the far left of politics, and instead pretending that "the internet community" is some sort of monolithic bloc that supports this. SOPA wasn't a divisive issue, it was something everyone could get behind. But come on, simply presenting statements like "Now we're behind Lessig to fight for citizen equality" with no context? Look at how it assumes the sale and doesn't give anyone the chance to raise
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Yeah Democracy ie Proportional Representation, is a pretty far left idea.
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See? You just did it again. Sarcastically assuming that democracy is totally on your side, your own far left ideas are the only possible ones, and that anyone who disagrees with you must be a bad person because they're against democracy. How about being pro-democracy and anti-leftist? If your conception of politics is so narrow as to exclude this viewpoint, then you're part of the problem I stated above.
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As somebody who grew up in a country with proportional representation I find the notion that this is somehow "left" rather bizarre.
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As somebody who grew up in a country with proportional representation, I agree: proportional representation is not particularly left wing, it is something that political extremists in general like, whether on the left or on the right. It turns a parliament into a collection of many small parties with extremist viewpoints and unstable, unpredictable coalitions.
Proportional representation also gives those political parties enormous power over their party members (since "proportionality" is determined at the p
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It turns a parliament into a collection of many small parties with extremist viewpoints and unstable, unpredictable coalitions.
As opposed to what we have in the U.S. now, which is two giant monolithic parties who don't really represent anyone except their own politicians' desire to maintain the status quo.
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Germany has a nice mix, that allows for local candidates as well as proportionality (two votes system).
Extremists are kept out via a 5% threshold that a party need to clear to get into the government.
German governments tend to be very stable, and the count of conservative chancellors outweighs the left of center one (they also tend to govern longer, i.e. Merkel, Kohl).
Also political aristocracy like you have in Japan is quite alien to Germany.
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Perhaps you should see the science, your political views are bizarre and don't align with reality. The USA is so far right its falling off the edge of the globe. It's technically a hyper fascist state with 2 parties that believe the same things.
There is no left wing party in america.
See the science on human reasoning the human mind is REALLY bad at reality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
Look at these numbers and tell us again how left america is?
https://imgur.com/a/FShfb
http://www2.ucsc.edu/who
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Numbers from far-left news sources indicate that America needs a far-left government? How does that work exactly?
Maybe America doesn't want a far-left party. Ever considered that? No, because the only government you consider valid is one that agrees with your own beliefs.
"Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view."
-- William F. Buckley, 1964
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Yes, there are no socialist or communist parties. There are also no fascist or Christian parties. Great, isn't it? I hope we can keep it that way, rather than turning into Europe.
And if you look at these numbers, you can see how good that is: http://www.heritage.org/index/... [heritage.org]
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Yes, when it's proportional representation, it's mob rule. It's what lefties want when they are in the majority, but scream and holler about when they're in the minority. Sorry, hypocrisy is not morally justified.
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Your "ie" is wrong. Proportional representation is only one of many forms of democracy, and not a very good one.
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How interesting, your comparison of Lessig's campaign and Xinhua News. Is it?
Some mods seem to think so, I don't. Since i have no mods points, I have to write that is more of OT.
Lessig's campaign is not without context either.
Enough.
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Western journalists are poor sobs, with no valuable skills other than networking and rhetoric. If they want to have any sort of career, they need to suck up to politicians and/or create outrage, preferably both.
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If you flunk out of Calculus and they won't let you into the English Department you transfer to J-School. You get to stand around the lit tables in the student union talking to cute chicks and it counts for course credit.
Proportional Representation (Score:1)
Lessig wants Proportional Representation via his Citizen Equality Act and ranked choice voting system.
If he manages to achieve that for the USA then it will be a huge historical leap forward.
It will mean the introduction of democracy to the USA - long overdue.
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Some mods are trying hard to mod down not on objective reasons, but on political and subjective dis-/agreement. Sad.
Don't take the down-mod too seriously. Probably your last sentence infuriated a proud US citizen.
these guys are delusional (Score:1)
They want to elect a 'reform' president who will serve only long enough to turn it over to a "biz-as-usual" VP from their same party and who were pigs sucking at the public swill they now seek to reform, just like the other party. Delusional idiots. Usefull idiots to the demokrats perhaps.
Bennett Hasselton (Score:1)
I nominate Bennet Hasselton for president. He's the president we deserve, but not the one we need. Imagine the 400 page state of the union address he would write every year.
Fanatic (Score:2)
Lessig is a fanatic by Churchill's definition: he can't change his mind and won't change the subject. That alone makes him unfit to be President. That he's a raving left-wing kook is just icing on the cake.
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It's a terrible shame the best candidates in 2015 to represent the American people is Sanders and Trump. I kinda wish we'd dump the presidency for consulship. A joint Trump/Sanders administration would be an excellent team of representation.
Wasted time and money. (Score:2, Interesting)
Lets be honest, wasting time and money to beat Trump is futile. You simply can't prevail over stupid.
Oh... I feel with absolute certainty that Trump is the optimal representative of the vast majority of the American people. I will actually register to vote for the first time and vote for him. I hate his guts, I bel
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I thought MAYDAY was non-partisan? (Score:3)
I spent the past two years pointing out that if you're trying to convince someone you're nonpartisan, you shouldn't name your PAC after a communist holiday. Or rail against how money from big corporations is distorting the political system because they give most of their money to one side. (In practice, big business needs to be friends with whoever's in power, so they give money to both sides roughly evenly.) Or rail against money from big corporations, while other big special interest money (i.e. from labor unions), which is actually donated one-sidedly.
Now that he's running for the Democratic Party's nomination... NOW can we agree that he's a leftist and his PAC was leftist?
Wikimedia is a charity, not a PAC (Score:2)
Donations to Wikimedia Foundation are tax deductible. Donations to a political action committee are not. So if Jimbo wants to use Wikimedia's donation drives for politics, it's going to have to make a separate entity to receive political dollars. It's the same reason that NORML is two different companies.
An easier fix: Make stronger parties (Score:2)
The trouble with trying to keep money out of politics is that money is very powerful so has a strong motivation to find its way around whatever obstructions you put up. So the fix isn't to put up stronger gates, it's to reduce the incentive by making that money less powerful.
Donors dominate because individual legislators have a lot of autonomy and are easy to push around. But if you take away the legislator's autonomy by strictly enforcing party discipline then they're a much less tempting target and they h
Dumb and dumber (Score:1)
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uh oh, reddit is leaking...
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Why is /. giving this guy so much news space? Isn't this place news for nerds? Something has to be going on in the STEM world. Sure he created CC and some CS law stuff.
If an SJW isn't in your face being annoying and stupid they aren't a true SJW
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Why is /. giving this guy so much news space? Isn't this place news for nerds? Something has to be going on in the STEM world.
I'm probably feeding the troll here ( in the classic sense). But Larry Lessig is an absolute giant in the STEM world.
Pretty much everything we do in the STEM world is shaped by "intellectual property" law. Not so long ago Larry Lessig threw his heart and soul into trying to get some sanity back into copyright law - ending perpetual extensions of copyright and returning copyright to it's original purpose of giving people the incentive to create things that would then enter the public domain within a reasonab
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Re:Waste of space. (Score:4, Informative)
In theory I like proportional representation. In practice every European country with PR seems to have at least one ridiculous/evil/nationalist party run by someone suspiciously similar to Donald Trump, which always seem to make the threshold. For awhile the Law of Jante seemed to protect the Scandinavian states and Germans from this, but the last Swedish elections resulted in a minority government that almost fell due to the Moderate's ignoring the Law of Jante and supporting some ridiculous brinksmanship from the Sweden Democrats.
So it's kinda a trade-off. In the first-past-the-post system minor, relatively unpopular movements, all have to co-opt themselves into a larger movement or be irrelevant. The advantage here is that they don't get office unless they have mainstream allies, which means they have to be somewhat reasonable. Unlike Sweden Democrats, the Finns Party, or a half-dozen other European movements. The disadvantage is that sometimes the local definition of "reasonable" is wrong and somebody (ie: the US Greens) should have more power then they get.
In the US, of course, we have the added complication of Separation of Powers, whereby the larger movements can really fuck up the system without taking much responsibility; so they tend to court smaller movements by brinksmanship.
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Fighting against 'Disney' has little at all to do with the kind of intellectual property reform that is needed. Nerds don't care that much about mainstream Hollywood shit. I wish we could get over the idea that people making copies of commercial entertainment content, which for the most part has ONLY entertainment value, is a bold move for greater communication.
Greater communication was things like open USENET threads that people could communicate through (yes, before the majority of the people 'using' US