One of the biggest targets of reform that we should be thinking about is how to blow up the FCC. The FCC was set up to protect business and to protect the dominant industries of communication at the time, and its history has been a history of protectionism — protecting the dominant industry against new forms of competition — and it continues to have that effect today. It becomes a sort of short circuit for lobbyists; you only have to convince a small number of commissioners, as opposed to convincing all of Congress. So I think there are a lot of places we have to think about radically changing the scope and footprint of government.
Most interesting to me was when I was doing research very early on about this, and I talked to someone who was in the Clinton administration. They were talking about Al Gore’s original proposal for Title VII of the Communications Act. Title II deals with telecom and Title VI deals with cable and Title VII was going to be an Internet title. And Title VII was going to basically say, no regulation except for minimal interconnect requirements — so it would be taking away both DSL and cable and putting them under one regulatory structure that minimized regulation of both. When this idea was floated on the Hill, it was shot down. The answer came back was, “We can’t do this! How are we going to raise money from these people if we’ve deregulated all of this?”
So I completely agree. I think we’ve got to recognize that the way the system has functioned is to insinuate regulation in all sorts of places that aren’t necessary in order to fuel this political machine of fundraising. There’s this great speech of Ronald Reagan’s in 1965 where he talks about how every democracy fails, because once people realize they can vote themselves premiums, that’s what they’re going to do, and they’ll bankrupt the nation. Well, he had it half right, in the sense there’s a system where people realize they can vote themselves the benefits and destroy the economy. But it’s not the poor who gathered together and created massive force in Washington to distribute income to them. It’s this weird cabal of politicians and special-interest insiders that have achieved this effect. Basically, they can pervert the economy and growth in ways that protect and benefit certain interests.
I’ve read
National Review from the age of twelve. I’m a liberal Democrat and I’m proud to be called a liberal Democrat. But the core values that true
National Review people talk about in this regulatory context are ones that I understand and in many contexts would wholeheartedly endorse.
NRO: Reihan Salan, a fairly well-known political writer and blogger on the right,
recently noted that you call yourself liberal, but clearly your worldview comes from a lasting engagement with conservative ideas. If you were a teenage Reaganite and then a libertarian, what caused you to drift left?
Lessig: My sense of responsibility has changed — responsibility to society. And what’s so weird about the current time is that to argue for that is not as radical as it would have been to argue for that in 1960. For example, one of the things that I think is outrageous about what’s happened in the recent past is that most of the kind of distortions that I would point to and say, “We’ve got to fix this,” are distortions that were shifting wealth and benefits to the richest in our society. I’m not talking about tax cuts — that’s a totally separate issue. I’m just talking about regulatory and fiscal structures, successful efforts to shift wealth from the middle to the top.
I find that wrong. And responsibility in my view is that those who are wealthiest, in the strongest position, shouldn’t be using their power to further benefit themselves, using their power over government to benefit themselves. At a minimum, they should bear the burden as much as anybody else and more than that, they should take the view that their responsibility is to make sure the worst off in society have some opportunity. And that means taking care of education, making sure public education functions in the way it is intended to function, and to make sure that health-care systems function in the way that is most efficient. All of these things are the focus of the Democrats right now. I think can be understood as extensions of what it means to be responsible members of society.
NRO: I can understand why you think that's the Democrats' focus, what I’m wondering about is the actual mechanics of the solutions. I think most conservatives wouldn’t disagree with you at all about regulatory benefits — Big Business can certainly be as intrusive and detrimental as Big Government. I’m curious to see how you’re going to match up with the Democrats given these libertarian ideals of yours often conflict with their statist tendencies.
Lessig: I guess we’re going to have to take it when we hit it, see how things match up or clash. I’m not apologizing that I believe there is a role for the state. But I am going to say that you have to structure it so that it’s not captured by special interests and being perverted from a minimally intrusive, efficient regulation necessary into a protect-the-most-powerful-class-against-competition regulation.
I think if you look across the history of regulation, you get this time after time. Look at copyright regulation. It is a massive invasion in the innovative process that has been pushed and extended by special interests inside Washington, who have done nothing more than try to use government to protect their business models against new forms of competition. And I think you can see this in a hundred different areas.
I don’t think a liberal should shy away from saying we understand government gets captured. That’s a truth that political scientists have taught us from the day FDR went to Washington — we should learn from that and we should try to respond to that not by saying, therefore there shouldn’t be government. I think in places there ought to be government, but by being really clear to get rid of regulations of government where they’re not serving anything except special interests that happen to have the power to get them into place.
NRO: Why did you decide not to run for Congress?
Lessig: The race was a special election being held on April 8. It became clear it was going to be impossible to achieve any recognition of the campaign or the issues in 30 days. The fear was that a failure would be an indictment of the reform movement.
NRO: Would you consider running again?
Lessig: I wouldn't rule out anything, but I only would run if I thought that it would be something that would help out the reform movement. But I haven't upset my life altogether that much yet.
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