Lessig’s Plan To Fix the Government

I went to see Lawrence Lessig as Long Now last week and I was a little disappointed by his proposed solution to government corruption in the US.
  1. Amend the constitution
  2. Public campaign financing

He gave a rousing talk however and at the end offered this challenge.  Though it may seem hopeless for us to curb the influence of money on public policy, consider this thought experiment:  Suppose a doctor told you that your child had brain cancer and that there was nothing you could do.  Would you really do nothing?

The problem is that partisans are not really focused on the question of campaign financing and are too busy fighting one another.  And the rest of us are frozen with apathy or hopelessness.

For me, it’s simply a matter of style: http://rootstrikers.org/.

Moral Dimensions of the Liberal Conservative Spectrum

http://www.psypost.org/2010/07/difference-moral-foundation-liberal-conservative-1060

It’s all making sense to me now.

The moral foundation theory developed by Graham and his colleagues consists of five main moral foundations:

Harm – caring for and not hurting others,

Fairness – equality and reciprocity,

Ingroup – loyalty to one’s group,

Authority – respect for leadership, and

Purity – the sanctity of social norms and customs.

Liberals elevate harm and fairness above the others, conservatives consider all equally.

If these dimensions seem odd, there is some evidence that this is a good model of morality

http://moralfoundations.org/mft-mail/GHN.supplement.final.pdf