What Is Value? What Is Money? (via via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Sep 1, 2012 - 15 comments

"[T]he corrupting influence of money is the first problem facing this nation. That unless we solve this problem, we won’t solve anything else... The Framers, Lessig says, had just one kind of dependence in mind for members of Congress: a dependence on the people. He quotes The Federalist (the then-anonymous essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay that are often used as a contemporary account of the Framers’ intentions) to make this point: number 52 describes the House of Representatives as that “branch of the federal government which ought to be dependent on the people alone” (emphasis added). But in the last two decades, Lessig writes, members of Congress have developed a fearsome dependency: campaign cash. The total amount spent on campaigns by all candidates for Congress in 2010 was $1.8 billion. Fundraising has become a way of life..." (via 3 Quarks Daily)
posted by caddis on Aug 1, 2012 - 48 comments

Winner-Take-All Politics [1,2] (PDF) - "The sources of American economic inequality are largely political – the result of deliberate political decisions to shape markets in ways that benefit the already-privileged at the expense of a more-or-less unaware public." (via bd) [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Oct 21, 2010 - 47 comments

eXtreme Democracy : While at the Rocking Personal Democracy Forum last Monday ( what is Personal Democracy ? scroll down ), I ran into none other than Adam Greenfield, at a PDF breakout session on "Extreme Democracy". The conference was notable but the book is a really great read on - well - the future of democracy. Edited by Jon Lebkowsky and Mitch Ratcliffe.
posted by troutfishing on May 21, 2005 - 8 comments

How Rich is Too Rich For Democracy? At what point does great wealth held in a few hands actually harm democracy, threatening to turn a democratic republic into an oligarchy? It's a debate we haven't had freely and openly in this nation for nearly a century, and last week, by voting to end the Estate Tax, House Republicans tried to ensure that it wouldn't be had again in this generation. But it's a debate that's vital to the survival of democracy in America. In a letter to Joseph Milligan on April 6, 1816, Thomas Jefferson explicitly suggested that if individuals became so rich that their wealth could influence or challenge government, then their wealth should be decreased upon their death. He wrote, "If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree..."
posted by mk1gti on Apr 20, 2005 - 65 comments