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The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Why good people are easily corrupted (with Lawrence Lessig)

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Society & Culture, News, Politics, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.610.8K Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2019

⏱️ 83 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

I’ve been learning from, and arguing with, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig for a decade now. We have a long-running debate over whether money or polarization is the root cause of our political ills. But our debate works because we share a crucial belief: Bad institutions overwhelm good individuals. In his latest book, America, Compromised, Lessig is doing something ambitious: He’s offering a new definition of institutional corruption, then showing how it plays out in politics, academia, the media, Wall Street, and the legal system. This is a definition of corruption that doesn’t require any individual to be corrupt. But it’s a definition that, if you accept it, suggests much of our society has been corrupted. Here, Lessig and I discuss what corruption is, how to understand an institution’s purpose, whether capitalism is itself corrupting, our upcoming books about the media, how small donors polarize politics, Lessig’s critique of democracy, why good people are particularly susceptible to institutional corruption, whether we should ban private money in politics, and ways to reinvent representative democracy. So, you know, nothing too big or heady. Book recommendations: The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalismby Edward E. Baptist Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Powerby Shoshana Zuboff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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A powerfully perfect combo.

0:24.0

Sweet tarts dare to combine.

0:28.0

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0:33.0

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0:37.0

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0:44.0

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0:51.0

It used to be Congress had its own army of information researchers who could give members of Congress what they needed to know.

1:03.0

Now members of Congress need to turn to lobbyists to get what they need to know to figure out what to do.

1:08.0

And it's no surprise then that what they learn from the lobbyist isn't just the unvarnished truth, but is a truth that benefits the clients of the lobbyists.

1:22.0

Hello and welcome to this or clunch show on the box media podcast network.

1:31.0

In his new book America compromised Larry Lessig has this great line.

1:35.0

It's a line I wish people would use more when they write books where he says that my hope is simply that you leave this book with a way of talking about whether these or other institutions are in the sense I described corrupt.

1:46.0

My purpose is to introduce a way of talking it is not to provide the punch lines.

1:51.0

So this book and the work Lessig has been doing for some time now is about corruption about institutional corruption and he's using case studies of some of the central organizations and institutions in American life, Congress, Wall Street, academia, law, media, medicine.

2:06.0

And the question he's asking is what would it mean for them to be corrupt? What would it mean? How would you define that kind of corruption and then what really if anything could you do about it?

2:16.0

So this is a conversation about corruption. It's a conversation that I hope is going to challenge your views. It's challenge my views about what corruption actually is.

2:24.0

And it's a conversation also about places where I have some issues with Lessig's definition of corruption. For instance, is he really just talking about capitalism and the incentives they come from having to actually pay money for people to work for you or to fund your work in calling that corruption?

2:38.0

And so are the answers much more radical than he wants to admit or in a different space would actually changing how we fund Congress would moving it to small donors.

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