Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign

But your last sentence makes me think you actually believe, so I'm going to burn some time on you and perhaps get past the emotion here.

Like you said, just tax everyone more! A 100% tax on earnings is reasonable in some cases; Norway does it, just tax like madmen until the debt is paid.

Well, you could do that, you could even seize everyone's property to pay down the debt, (and I don't see why that isn't a reasonable proposal either.)

The problem with that plan is, even if you did those things, the growth in social security and Medicare is too fast for even asset seizure to catch. All these trust funds "running out of money" you hear about are simply the growth of those programs outstripping the IOU's owed AND the amount congress allocates extra for additional growth. You'll get to a point where the growth spirals as lives are extended, etc

Debt is the place that you can start to install some controls. That is why our media and congress always describe it as a "showdown" or "battle". The battle is quite lopsided because the vast majority of politicians in all parties don't want to touch this and hate any boat rocking, and there's a lot of lobbyists to pay back.

Can you honestly tell me what the spending priorities are for congress? There are none! Everything is important, and all budgets for every department may only grow based on their rules for baseline budgeting in the face of increasing divides between parties and people in government - in other words, the stalemate we've seen over the past 18 years results in budgets each year that are simply last year's budget + 5% with occasional huge jumps in new spending whenever a crisis arises and everyone temporarily agrees to authorize new spending.

As I said, debt is the place to begin the place to begin debate about our spending priorities. Why? Because any new debt must be _authorized_, hence voted on. It's annoying to confront tough issues! Hence all the acrimony.

Okay, so just look at your life, your security. You think the system we have here is stable? Its so fragile and full of corruption, look at what happened in 07-08 with the fraudulent loan scams the big banks were running. And congress is the flashpoint for these crises every time. So, I'm agreeing with you that there is potential for damage if we try to rein in the spending and get some priorities.

What's the alternative that you are suggesting? Don't deal with it, let the instabilities grow, and eventually have an unmanaged collapse. Do you disagree?

Quite a bit.

> Why is he not just switching to the Republican party? What's this nonsense about his ideals being more in line with the democrats?

The "nonsense" is the truth; there's actually considerable overlap between the positions Lessig took on issues and those taken by other notable Democrats, including Democratic candidates (most particularly, on Lessig's central issues, Sen. Sanders), with differences largely in the relative priority between issues rather than the positions on major issues. You don't see the same overlap between Lessig's positions and Republican positions (this became even more clear after he adopted a more full platform.)

> thought the Republicans were all about the founding fathers and making sure the United States are not ruled by the old-rich?

You need to look beyond the surface rhetoric at substantive policy positions to even begin to understand where the parties lie and why Lessig might feel more comfortable with the Democrats.

Well, you've convinced me. Clearly you've reflected a lot on this. Everything IS awesome except for Republicans and tax rates. Go Bernie in 2016!