Comments on: The Basic Premise Behind Campaign Finance Laws

By: Brad Warbiany

Brad Warbiany — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 19:56:54 +0000

Chris,

Great post… I think it really well describes the view of the media and the public on campaign finance law…

…but I think it leaves out the reason that elected officials and the major parties are in such strong favor of limiting electoral speech: they want the forum to themselves.

They want the ability to control the message and exclude everything outside of it. That was a huge portion of McCain-Feingold, and the restriction on issue ads within 60 days prior to an election.

The leftists want to keep corporate speech out of elections; the pols just want to keep any speech but their own out of elections. Neither one is acceptable to a free society.

By: ricketson

ricketson — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 17:21:19 +0000

BTW, I think that the solution to our non-democratic information network is to build a democratic system from the ground up, not to try to reform a structurally undemocratic infrastructure (especially not by state regulation, which is inherently undemocratic).

By: ricketson

ricketson — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 17:19:36 +0000

While many of the proponents of campaign spending restrictions are just political opportunists, there is also a sincere concern based on theories of democracy. Unfortunately, the first group includes the most prominent advocates — professional politicians and partisan hacks. They just want to diminish the influence of their political opposition.

I’ll try to describe a democratic theory of information networks on my blog when I get a chance, and link to this.