Just listened to a terrific presentation from the organizer of www.change-congress.org. While it was a terrific presentation, it’s just one more group obsessed with campaign finance reform. I say obsessed because they have a myopic focus on one simple equation.

Money=Influence (M=I)

Indeed, this equation is irrefutable. But it doesn’t just apply to Congress, it applies in every sector of our economy and every aspect of our lives. M=I is a fact of life. So Change-Congress simply can’t be a campaign to get rid of the equation itself. To do so would require destroying the very system of property-rights, trade and markets that make this democracy work.

The real concern must only be influence in politics, a reasonable concern for sure. But what never gets discussed is how a democracy could work without influence. Representatives are human beings, and like all human beings, their decision-making process is often dominated, not by reason and deliberation, but by influence. Think about any public policy position and how you arrived at it, chances are someone else you trust significantly influenced your decision. Reps are the same.

So the question is, if we get the M out the equation, what replaces it? Are we so naive as to think nothing will? No. Personal relationships and political connections will likely fill that void. This is how the Soviet Union achieved the same disparity in wealth and power as existed in the US. Wealth (not money) followed through personal/political connections.

I’m not opposed to having a real discussion about money in politics. But doing that requires a broader reexamination of how we do representation in the first place. As long as representatives have POWER they will be subject to INFLUENCE (if P then I) and the question is what that influence should look like.

The would seem to be that constituents should be the predominant influence on their representatives and the question for groups like Change-Congress, is how we can hope to achieve this condition when 95% of representatives don’t even have to worry about losing their jobs!

If there were no money in politics, representatives wouldn’t suddenly be accountable to their districts. They’d simply be accountable to connected elites or power advocates or groups who might give them a job when they retire. But all of these groups will be inside the beltway and not necessarily representative of their districts.