Episode 101: Jim Greer

16 thoughts on “Episode 101: Jim Greer”

1. This sounds exciting. Eager for my commute today.

   Just thinking it would have been neat to label this Episode 102, and leave 101 in the ether somewhere. Kind of like elevators with no 13th floor, except out of deference not superstition.

   Welcome back boys.

2. I enjoyed it very much. I encourage the young poker wizards in the audience to hang in there through the entire thing. Overall, very good thought-provoking conversation. Also, something for Los at the end.

   As one of those (small “l”) libertarians Jim and Andrew mentioned in the episode, I was very pleased with Jim’s ideas and approaches. I support Jim’s ideas on tinkering, allowing experimentation by state, and most importantly, his efforts to use private money and actions to fix what is essentially a government/political failure. I really like his approach of trying to change or create incentives for the better. Too often the only avenue taken for change is to claim the moral high ground and then appeal to a governmental master to fix what one doesn’t like about the world. Kudos to Jim for taking this approach instead of donating to legal wizards to try to get a different Supreme Court outcome. I also liked the good, interesting examples of other similar approaches by Nate and Jim toward the end of the conversation.

   However, I don’t accept the premise of anonymous money as a negative influence in the political process. I was pleased to hear Nate ask for that evidence or argument. I was honestly shocked when Jim drew a blank. To be fair, he essentially argued that it was obvious. And to be truthful, in a debate I would simply concede Jim is correct: Anonymous money brings negative influences. Where I was disappointed was in the total lack of discussion of the positive aspects of anonymous money. Privacy is a bedrock principle in this country for good reason. The idea of anonymous political contributions helps ensure those who participate in the political process do not face retribution for expressing their opinions. And the history Jim mention indeed includes terrible cases of retribution, both by the government (IRS targeting political groups for $400 Alex) and by private employers. Making all political activity open to public disclosure will certainly have the effect of limiting or halting those activities.

   The real issue of how we should regulate (publicly or privately) political donations comes down to the net impact of these negative and positive aspects. My instinct, and it’s nothing more than an instinct, is that the positives outweigh the negatives. So I don’t support Jim’s position, but I greatly support his approach and his right to take it. Sounds a lot like free speech, huh?

   Very good episode. Perhaps Jim can weigh in on the poker AI debates in a future episode.

   • Thanks for the thoughtful comment!

     Thanks for making the bit about privacy explicit. It was behind a lot of my questions (“we don’t automatically think other things have to be publicized, so why this?”), but I wasn’t as explicitly aware of these considerations as I should have been.

     It’s interesting to read this: “[How we should regulate this issue] comes down to the net impact of these negative and positive aspects.” I can’t be sure, but this sounds a lot like a basically consequentialist argument. Do you ever get resistance from other libertarians for claims like this? A lot of my libertarian acquaintances are proudly / defiantly deontological about these things–that is, they think we are obligated to maintain and respect personal freedom even if it occasionally causes a little more pain than pleasure (or whatever metric you’re judging “net impact” with).

     • Nate, it’s a great question. I don’t have a great answer. I’ve become a self-described libertarian by stumbling through life. I have not studying it’s philosophy in any meaningful way.
       My answer is that I often hold the view you describe to your friends. As I’ve aged, I’ve tried not to be so absolute. I don’t find that it sells with the broad public. Libertarians may be morally or philosophically correct, but then they poll at 3% on a good day. A net positive expected outcome is a good enough standard for me in lots of conversations, especially when I’m trying to convince others. It’s just a practical approach.

       The real point I was trying to make is that the world is complex. It is more complicated than simply saying money causes problems in politics. In reality, it causes some problems and has some benefits. I’d at least like to see the benefits discussed before folks attempt to fix the negatives. Unintended consequences and all that.

       • Yeah, that makes sense. These questions are interesting to me largely because, insofar as I have sympathies with some mainstream libertarian positions, it’s come to me by “stumbling through life” too.

         A smart friend of mine (hi, Jason!) pointed me to the work mentioned in this 538 article…

         fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-wild-conservative-west/

         …by this smart guy…

         http://www.andrewbenjaminhall.com/papers/

         …who claims that corporate money *reduces* extremism in candidates. For whatever that’s worth.

         • I’ll look forward to reading those. It makes sense, on the face, that corporate money has a moderating effect. Of course corporations chase their own interests, but often, the low hanging fruit is to support the status quo, as the corporations have already made it and change can only hurt them and help the upstarts.

           • Just off the top of my head, the corporate money supported Obama and Romney. The young idealists supported Ron Paul. I think that is a common theme through history. And to circle back to my original point, Paul may have received more money if donations were truly anonymous.

             I’ll stop now so as not to drive away the core audience. Great stuff guys.

   • Very good point. For example, if Alabama had a law in the 50’s or 60’s requiring advocacy organizations (i.e., the NAACP) to publicly disclose every individual who has provided funding for an advocacy campaign, we would probably have serious concerns about such a “transparency law,” as contributors on that list would face serious personal risk of retribution from the then very active KKK. (There was actually such a situation in 1958 when the Alabama AG tried to subpeona the NAACP’s membership list in Alabama – the Supreme Court said no way).

     While it is now fairly rare for people to face violence for political positions (at least in the US), there are repercussions for unpopular political views. For example, should someone be fired from their job for holding a political opinion with which their employer disagrees? Many people would object to seeing someone fired by a Republican (or Democrat) employer simply for giving money in support of a liberal cause (or a conservative cause). More generally, I think many would agree that it is generally beneficial to encourage people to participate actively in the political process, so subjecting people to financial risk (or harassment) to do so creates problems. Letting them donate anonymously provides a measure of protection – particularly for unpopular views.

     Of course, by acting as a private party, CounterPAC can let the voters decide. If a SuperPAC is running advocacy ads wants to keep its donors anonymous to protect them, it can present that argument in response to a CounterPAC and the voters can weigh the arguments of CounterPAC and the SuperPAC in making their decision. The key distinction is that CounterPAC is not using the weight of the state to compel the disclosure of donor’s identities.

     Finally, I think the discussion of Citizens United might suggest to some people that it changed the law to allow someone like Sheldon Adelson to run unlimited political ads. That’s not the case. If someone wanted to spend their personal money to buy advertising and tell people what they think about a candidate, that is political speech and there were never any restrictions on doing that – whether it was me spending $500 to put an ad in my local newspaper or Sheldon Adelson spending $10,000,000 to run a nationwide advertising campaign urging people not to vote for Candidate X.

     Instead, the campaign finance laws governed the raising and aggregating of funds, including aggregation through corporate entities. Before the Citizens United case, corporations, unions and similar organizations were restricting in spending money on the electioneering advertisements directly talking about a candidate. The ruling in Citizens United struck down that ruling, so groups of people working together as an organization (whether stockholders incorporating a corporation or Jim Greer collaborating with other donors) can freely run electioneering advertisements right before an election, the same way an individual can.

   • I guess voting would be the most obvious counter example to me: votes are anonymous to allow voters to express their true preference without fear of judgement or retribution.

     Coincidentally, this ran in the economist recently:

     http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/11/big-money-politics

     In short: uk restrictions mean that the last general election involved less money than the current senate race in Arkansas, but people still think big corporates have excessive influence. I also think that an international study of the sort of things Jim pointed to as signs of there being a problem (public opinions of politicians being the one I recall) would suggest that the trends are very similar in the uk, despite the financial situation being very different. We are in the midst of a perceived crisis in politics: low turnout, nut job parties on the up, politician approval at impressive lows, political scandals leading to essentially no change.

     That’s not that I don’t think Jim has a point, but rather 1) I’m not sure cleaning up the money would be a panacea and 2) I agree that it was very much case not made.

     • re your point about anonymous voting:

       Important to note that there are strict rules about who is allowed to vote, and voters are required to register and furnish proof of registration before casting a ballot. Point being that, sure, the contents of the completed ballot are anonymous, but there is pretty heavy regulation of voting as an act of speech. (And curiously the same folks who are anti-regulation when it comes to money as political speech tend to be in favor of increased regulation when it comes to voting.)

       By contrast, there is no mechanism for enforcing rules surrounding the identity of those making independent political expenditures — for example, ads could be being paid for with money from foreign entities (via donations to politically active 501(c)(4) groups) and there would be no way to know.

3. I mean, I am in the minority of listeners I am sure, but more of this, a lot more. I don’t want to hear Jim talk poker, tbh, I want to hear him on this stuff.

   Anyways, as a matter of comparative politics, the campaign finnancing rules in Canada are of much interest. This is pretty prohibitive:

   http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=pol&document=index&dir=lim&lang=e

   Or the more thorough article

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_political_financing_in_Canada

   I could be getting my history wrong as I am going from memory but there was a period in time where Jean Chrétien was leaving office after a typically Canadian stay in power, that being ten years. As a legacy project he passed a prohibitive limitation on corporate donations, this was 2003, on account of wanting to screw over his in-party rival and heir to the throne Paul Martin, but of course on the reason on the face of it was to clean up Canadian politics a bit.

   On the transparency issue I wonder what all the Americans think of the Scandinavian annual procedure of explicitly publishing everyone’s income for the previous year. Neighbours look up their neighbours tax return online type deal. It is like that in Norway and Finland for sure, I would have to look up the others.

   • I appreciate the lessons on other countries. I don’t have a strong reaction, other than to note how different that is from the American standard, so right or wrong, it would be a difficult transition.

   • agree with Gareth here regarding more of this!!! one my all time favourite episodes and I’m a non American listener

4. As I often do, I went to sleep last nite with my ear phones listening to the podcast. I drifted off and dreamed I was in China. I got into a cab going to see this old flame I once knew in Shanghai. He kept talking about gaming and politics and I couldnt get him to shut up. I kept trying to tell him the location but he wouldnt stop. I didnt know what the hell he was jabbering about.
   He spoke real good English for an old Chinese cab driver.

5. That’s funny keone. I dreamt that I was having a meeting with someone to discuss CounterPAC, and he kept trying to have me drive him somewhere in Shanghai.

6. Yall weird man.

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