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America, Compromised
“There is not a single American awake to the world who is comfortable with the way things are.”
So begins Lawrence Lessig's sweeping indictment of contemporary American institutions and the corruption that besets them. We can all see it—from the selling of Congress to special interests to the corporate capture of the academy. Something is wrong. It’s getting worse.
And it’s our fault. What Lessig shows, brilliantly and persuasively, is that we can’t blame the problems of contemporary American life on bad people, as our discourse all too often tends to do. Rather, he explains, “We have allowed core institutions of America’s economic, social, and political life to become corrupted. Not by evil souls, but by good souls. Not through crime, but through compromise.” Every one of us, every day, making the modest compromises that seem necessary to keep moving along, is contributing to the rot at the core of American civic life. Through case studies of Congress, finance, the academy, the media, and the law, Lessig shows how institutions are drawn away from higher purposes and toward money, power, quick rewards—the first steps to corruption.
Lessig knows that a charge so broad should not be levied lightly, and that our instinct will be to resist it. So he brings copious, damning detail gleaned from years of research, building a case that is all but America is on the wrong path. If we don’t acknowledge our own part in that, and act now to change it, we will hand our children a less perfect union than we were given. It will be a long struggle. This book represents the first steps.
So begins Lawrence Lessig's sweeping indictment of contemporary American institutions and the corruption that besets them. We can all see it—from the selling of Congress to special interests to the corporate capture of the academy. Something is wrong. It’s getting worse.
And it’s our fault. What Lessig shows, brilliantly and persuasively, is that we can’t blame the problems of contemporary American life on bad people, as our discourse all too often tends to do. Rather, he explains, “We have allowed core institutions of America’s economic, social, and political life to become corrupted. Not by evil souls, but by good souls. Not through crime, but through compromise.” Every one of us, every day, making the modest compromises that seem necessary to keep moving along, is contributing to the rot at the core of American civic life. Through case studies of Congress, finance, the academy, the media, and the law, Lessig shows how institutions are drawn away from higher purposes and toward money, power, quick rewards—the first steps to corruption.
Lessig knows that a charge so broad should not be levied lightly, and that our instinct will be to resist it. So he brings copious, damning detail gleaned from years of research, building a case that is all but America is on the wrong path. If we don’t acknowledge our own part in that, and act now to change it, we will hand our children a less perfect union than we were given. It will be a long struggle. This book represents the first steps.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published November 15, 2018
38 people are currently reading
361 people want to read
About the author
Lawrence Lessig
67 books482 followersLawrence "Larry" Lessig is an American academic and political activist. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications.
He is a director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University and a professor of law at Harvard Law School. Prior to rejoining Harvard, he was a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of its Center for Internet and Society.
Lessig is a founding board member of Creative Commons, a board member of the Software Freedom Law Center and a former board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
He is a director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University and a professor of law at Harvard Law School. Prior to rejoining Harvard, he was a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of its Center for Internet and Society.
Lessig is a founding board member of Creative Commons, a board member of the Software Freedom Law Center and a former board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
March 10, 2019
Lessig gives example after example of how self-regulation of the powerful does not work, but somehow doesn't want to connect the dots for what that implies.
I do not get what the point of this book is. It's not out-and-out BS; it contains lots of facts, but then it's just a big mess. The culture of corruption and incompetence in America ( Detroit: An American Autopsy) is a real and important problem to deal with, but Lessig's academic hair-splitting about different types of corruption doesn't move things forward, mainly because it just doesn't even make any sense.
For example, with the banks and the 2008 financial crisis (p.46) he argues that that wasn't real "corruption" because the bankers went chasing after profits as they're supposed to. Except that Lehman, Wa Mu, Countrywide, etc. etc. went bankrupt, destroying shareholder value. A massive public bailout was required to keep many of the rest afloat. So the bankers didn't do their actual basic job of properly assessing loan risk, and they didn't even succeed at running profitable companies. They may have all walked away from the disaster with millions in their personal pockets, but that's still a corruption of their capitalist duties, even forgetting about any social conscience or morality.
This sort of wishy-washy thinking continues through considerations of the news media, medical ethics, etc.
I do not get what the point of this book is. It's not out-and-out BS; it contains lots of facts, but then it's just a big mess. The culture of corruption and incompetence in America ( Detroit: An American Autopsy) is a real and important problem to deal with, but Lessig's academic hair-splitting about different types of corruption doesn't move things forward, mainly because it just doesn't even make any sense.
For example, with the banks and the 2008 financial crisis (p.46) he argues that that wasn't real "corruption" because the bankers went chasing after profits as they're supposed to. Except that Lehman, Wa Mu, Countrywide, etc. etc. went bankrupt, destroying shareholder value. A massive public bailout was required to keep many of the rest afloat. So the bankers didn't do their actual basic job of properly assessing loan risk, and they didn't even succeed at running profitable companies. They may have all walked away from the disaster with millions in their personal pockets, but that's still a corruption of their capitalist duties, even forgetting about any social conscience or morality.
This sort of wishy-washy thinking continues through considerations of the news media, medical ethics, etc.
December 13, 2018
How can I review this extremely difficult book? Difficult to read, complex quite beyond definitive or quantitative qualities which reach to the elaborations of a labyrinth.
Please read this review with patience too. If you don't understand parts of it? Well the book itself is far harder to composite or comprehend, so don't attempt the book. I understood the Medical parts of Academy- but entire non-fiction books have been written on that subject which were much better. Funding onus and publishing to succeed quotients are only the tip of the iceberg.
Yet it is a 5 star read if you were going to evaluate only for its written purposes as he defines them, attempts to actualize the entities of USA establishments, and in/for the fairness or spirit of the writer. That too is commendable- but its verbiage is never easy. Or broken down to simple either. Kudos to his brainiac attempt to try. He holds quite a bit of bias, but it is forgiven by me, a Conservative (obviously he leans left in his commentary evaluations) because his brilliance and acuity are evident throughout. Not only in his defining skills either (they are also incredible), but in his own experiences and the immense research here within those depths of categories for the vocational, Constitutional and organizational entities he analyzed here within America, Compromised. Those he CHOOSES to analyze.
Nearly all declarative statements of reactions, citizen "eyes", 2018 America life- they are almost all vastly true. They are defined in every sense of his long paged definition for the word "corruption" that he uses in this book continually. How all are "corrupted". Not in a sense of good/evil as much as in a sense of being "within" that idiom of its own culture that the "eyes" within each cultural fabric are now blinded to what is NOT "within". To the point that it excludes and makes obtuse any but the "inside" opinion and process. And that its dependency failures rest upon lifeblood from money source onus that compromises its very original purposes.
Yet, here is the problem within this excellent attempt. His language is so dense, lawyer word bound, and concept core defined in 30 paragraph lengths each, that the "average" reader will not get much beyond page 10. I'm not kidding. Possibly a handful on goodreads posters might?? Thesis writing!
For instance, counting all the people in my entire life that I've know in seven decades and within all my associations for business, work, family, church, community- not even 10% would be able to read this copy and then begin to understand either the abstract concepts defined or the particularity of this language of tech, vocabularies of vocations, tangent actuary type estimations etc. that he uses.
The beginning sections are 4 stars or better. Finance is almost entirely over my head but I do get his gist and yet I consider his "eyes" for this quite elitist for their evaluations. The Media section is spot on but he is too elite himself again to understand how his own "corruption" definition applies to himself BIG TIME for the commentary in this section which are majority personal judgment. Also within Academy, the same. His remedies final chapters are just circles around the possibility/ ideas for having all of our leading institutions and authority entities and sciences etc. etc. becoming "unhitched" or non-dependent upon or to their current funding and approvals' innards of pecking orders. Which have truly made them failures at this point for their actual or original founding purposes. That's rather pie in the sky ridiculous to me. As specific as some of the ideas described are? They are still sounding exactly to my ears like the common "can't we just all get along" kind of pap that never has solved any REAL "eyes" differences in what outcomes DO occur in real life. Especially upon who is invisible to the elites and where the "worthy" get heard. Or to those who never get heard or considered as "us".
With the kinds of cultural fractures that have occurred in the last 100 years, and within differences in every aspect of their entire lives that various citizens experience where they live and try to prosper? And how they have developed such varying "eyes" and "ears" because of it. What between them makes their culture "together" for all's "best"? Very little, and at times and over which is considered "important"- nothing at all. Essential base factors in their lives' strides of what each consider important? Nearly nil to the oversect of these between groups in the "same" culture.
You better take more than a prozac to have anything but negativity about the future if you want to read this book. It's factual to the dependability (governmental and other funding and vocational levels "musts" that are actually non-productive)factors. They are beyond points presently and becoming such HUGE dead weights that democracy itself (accepting "the other" too as "same" culture/ society) will be next to impossible.
3.5 stars but I'll not round it up. He's never wrong in observations and the facts of uses/ outcomes are superb, and yet his expressions to those "real" quantities don't include all the inputs, even within his great verbosity for definition.
Very, very depressing book. But most of it is 4 star true. The Law section is at least 4 stars. And his Academia, Scientific World evaluations are 4 stars too. Occasionally he makes a 5 star comment of some paragraphs that would be quotable. Like the one on juries and the one upon the "liberal" left Democratic partisan no longer being liberal or tolerant.
He skirts the divisions constantly with very brief survey towards the onus of how identity politics has further fractured the cultural, societal, national identity fabric. It's in here, but not given the copy necessary to the divisional nature of discussion and tone it has caused. That was a 2 star hole.
Please read this review with patience too. If you don't understand parts of it? Well the book itself is far harder to composite or comprehend, so don't attempt the book. I understood the Medical parts of Academy- but entire non-fiction books have been written on that subject which were much better. Funding onus and publishing to succeed quotients are only the tip of the iceberg.
Yet it is a 5 star read if you were going to evaluate only for its written purposes as he defines them, attempts to actualize the entities of USA establishments, and in/for the fairness or spirit of the writer. That too is commendable- but its verbiage is never easy. Or broken down to simple either. Kudos to his brainiac attempt to try. He holds quite a bit of bias, but it is forgiven by me, a Conservative (obviously he leans left in his commentary evaluations) because his brilliance and acuity are evident throughout. Not only in his defining skills either (they are also incredible), but in his own experiences and the immense research here within those depths of categories for the vocational, Constitutional and organizational entities he analyzed here within America, Compromised. Those he CHOOSES to analyze.
Nearly all declarative statements of reactions, citizen "eyes", 2018 America life- they are almost all vastly true. They are defined in every sense of his long paged definition for the word "corruption" that he uses in this book continually. How all are "corrupted". Not in a sense of good/evil as much as in a sense of being "within" that idiom of its own culture that the "eyes" within each cultural fabric are now blinded to what is NOT "within". To the point that it excludes and makes obtuse any but the "inside" opinion and process. And that its dependency failures rest upon lifeblood from money source onus that compromises its very original purposes.
Yet, here is the problem within this excellent attempt. His language is so dense, lawyer word bound, and concept core defined in 30 paragraph lengths each, that the "average" reader will not get much beyond page 10. I'm not kidding. Possibly a handful on goodreads posters might?? Thesis writing!
For instance, counting all the people in my entire life that I've know in seven decades and within all my associations for business, work, family, church, community- not even 10% would be able to read this copy and then begin to understand either the abstract concepts defined or the particularity of this language of tech, vocabularies of vocations, tangent actuary type estimations etc. that he uses.
The beginning sections are 4 stars or better. Finance is almost entirely over my head but I do get his gist and yet I consider his "eyes" for this quite elitist for their evaluations. The Media section is spot on but he is too elite himself again to understand how his own "corruption" definition applies to himself BIG TIME for the commentary in this section which are majority personal judgment. Also within Academy, the same. His remedies final chapters are just circles around the possibility/ ideas for having all of our leading institutions and authority entities and sciences etc. etc. becoming "unhitched" or non-dependent upon or to their current funding and approvals' innards of pecking orders. Which have truly made them failures at this point for their actual or original founding purposes. That's rather pie in the sky ridiculous to me. As specific as some of the ideas described are? They are still sounding exactly to my ears like the common "can't we just all get along" kind of pap that never has solved any REAL "eyes" differences in what outcomes DO occur in real life. Especially upon who is invisible to the elites and where the "worthy" get heard. Or to those who never get heard or considered as "us".
With the kinds of cultural fractures that have occurred in the last 100 years, and within differences in every aspect of their entire lives that various citizens experience where they live and try to prosper? And how they have developed such varying "eyes" and "ears" because of it. What between them makes their culture "together" for all's "best"? Very little, and at times and over which is considered "important"- nothing at all. Essential base factors in their lives' strides of what each consider important? Nearly nil to the oversect of these between groups in the "same" culture.
You better take more than a prozac to have anything but negativity about the future if you want to read this book. It's factual to the dependability (governmental and other funding and vocational levels "musts" that are actually non-productive)factors. They are beyond points presently and becoming such HUGE dead weights that democracy itself (accepting "the other" too as "same" culture/ society) will be next to impossible.
3.5 stars but I'll not round it up. He's never wrong in observations and the facts of uses/ outcomes are superb, and yet his expressions to those "real" quantities don't include all the inputs, even within his great verbosity for definition.
Very, very depressing book. But most of it is 4 star true. The Law section is at least 4 stars. And his Academia, Scientific World evaluations are 4 stars too. Occasionally he makes a 5 star comment of some paragraphs that would be quotable. Like the one on juries and the one upon the "liberal" left Democratic partisan no longer being liberal or tolerant.
He skirts the divisions constantly with very brief survey towards the onus of how identity politics has further fractured the cultural, societal, national identity fabric. It's in here, but not given the copy necessary to the divisional nature of discussion and tone it has caused. That was a 2 star hole.
December 19, 2018
I wanted to like this book, having followed Lessig's work from the early copyright/Creative Commons days, admiring his sharp insight and eloquence, and daring to switch gears as an academic mid-career from intellectual property to the subject matter of this book: institutional corruption.
When that project started out around 2008-2009 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-lED...), you could tell it was focused, first and foremost, on the improper influence of money on US politics. 10 years later, America, Compromised sums up the resulting research and intervention project. It tries to present a general theory or model of institutional corruption across government, the media, health care, and the academy. Its main argument in a nutshell is that institutions require and currently lack trust, trust that flows from the perception that the institutions are not beholden to any influence but the one they are intended to heed: the people in government, what the people need to hear as citizens in media, evidence in health care and the academy. If people even *perceive* a system to be under undue influence, no matter if that influence actually plays out or not, that already undermines the proper functioning of the system. Furthermore, all of the actors in the system may have the best of intentions: any actual undue influence will over time drift their and the system's behaviour in its direction (e.g., political representatives spending more time listening to people making campaign contributions than other constituents).
This view of institutions is almost social systems theory à la Niklas Luhmann, which thought each institution to be a 'closed system' like a computer that has its own base currency and distinction and literally 'doesn't compute' any other information: the law asks whether something is legal or illegal, the state asks whether something has the most power, science asks whether something is true or untrue, etc. It is unsurprising that Luhmann was a legal administrator and Lessig a trained legal professional: this view is a strongly idealised, normative one, how systems *ideally should* operate, seeing anything else as either corruption (Lessig) or straightforwardly impossible (Luhmann). Reality is more messy, which Lessig's theory at least accommodates but then tries to find remedies for.
This normative, idealistic view of institutions works best for normative institutions, chiefly political systems, and a decade later, Lessig's analysis still has the most bite and is the most fitting for the US house of representatives, while it's application to other cases becomes strained. Indeed, his analysis of e.g. the media seems mostly an annex to understand how the media is complicit in the current sorry state of US political affairs. Here, Lessig switches to a a techno-determinist argument about how digital media dissolved the business model of 20th century mass media (particularly TV) manufacturing consent, or better, manufacturing a shared set of topics and beliefs in the body politic. It comes across as somewhat simplistic.
I wanted to like this book, but upon completion it revealed an underlying unresolved tension: it promises a general theory of institutional corruption, yet Lessig's heart is with understanding and fixing corruption of the US house of representatives, which is what the strong parts of a short book end up being about. For readers interested in fixing corruption in US politics, this is a good, compact analysis. For readers interested in institutional corruption writ large, this book leaves you wanting.
When that project started out around 2008-2009 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-lED...), you could tell it was focused, first and foremost, on the improper influence of money on US politics. 10 years later, America, Compromised sums up the resulting research and intervention project. It tries to present a general theory or model of institutional corruption across government, the media, health care, and the academy. Its main argument in a nutshell is that institutions require and currently lack trust, trust that flows from the perception that the institutions are not beholden to any influence but the one they are intended to heed: the people in government, what the people need to hear as citizens in media, evidence in health care and the academy. If people even *perceive* a system to be under undue influence, no matter if that influence actually plays out or not, that already undermines the proper functioning of the system. Furthermore, all of the actors in the system may have the best of intentions: any actual undue influence will over time drift their and the system's behaviour in its direction (e.g., political representatives spending more time listening to people making campaign contributions than other constituents).
This view of institutions is almost social systems theory à la Niklas Luhmann, which thought each institution to be a 'closed system' like a computer that has its own base currency and distinction and literally 'doesn't compute' any other information: the law asks whether something is legal or illegal, the state asks whether something has the most power, science asks whether something is true or untrue, etc. It is unsurprising that Luhmann was a legal administrator and Lessig a trained legal professional: this view is a strongly idealised, normative one, how systems *ideally should* operate, seeing anything else as either corruption (Lessig) or straightforwardly impossible (Luhmann). Reality is more messy, which Lessig's theory at least accommodates but then tries to find remedies for.
This normative, idealistic view of institutions works best for normative institutions, chiefly political systems, and a decade later, Lessig's analysis still has the most bite and is the most fitting for the US house of representatives, while it's application to other cases becomes strained. Indeed, his analysis of e.g. the media seems mostly an annex to understand how the media is complicit in the current sorry state of US political affairs. Here, Lessig switches to a a techno-determinist argument about how digital media dissolved the business model of 20th century mass media (particularly TV) manufacturing consent, or better, manufacturing a shared set of topics and beliefs in the body politic. It comes across as somewhat simplistic.
I wanted to like this book, but upon completion it revealed an underlying unresolved tension: it promises a general theory of institutional corruption, yet Lessig's heart is with understanding and fixing corruption of the US house of representatives, which is what the strong parts of a short book end up being about. For readers interested in fixing corruption in US politics, this is a good, compact analysis. For readers interested in institutional corruption writ large, this book leaves you wanting.
May 31, 2019
What do Congress, the financial industry, the media, the field of psychiatric medicine, and the law all have in common? They are all corrupt.
That is, according to Lawrence Lessig.
Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor and the founder of Creative Commons, lays out his case for corruption in "America, Compromised" – a compact, tightly-written, well-reasoned treatise on what ails some of our country's bedrock institutions.
In brief:
Congress is corrupted by money – more specifically, the never-ending fundraising Congresspeople are essentially required to do due to a lack of restraint around the private funding of campaigns. The result is that even well intentioned Congresspeople frequently fall under the influence of an influential donor's pet projects.
Financial ratings agencies – Moody's, Standard and Poors, etc. – have power that should be reserved for the federal government. No one went to prison after the 2008 financial crisis. Wall Street bankrolls many major political candidates. The result here of late: the rich are getting richer at the expense of everyone else.
Psychiatry was corrupted by the pharmaceutical industry – Lessig insinuates that the rise of Pharma spending on research is uncovering conditions that can only be treated by...wait for it...pharmacological intervention.
Where once there were only a handful media resources that most people paid attention to, today's media landscape has become much more diverse. So diverse, in fact, that people are siloing themselves into whichever feedback loop satisfies their preexisting opinions. The result is that we have more news than ever before, but less understanding of the critical information people must know in order to perpetuate a strong democracy.
Anyway, you get the idea. Lessig offers some suggestions for correcting these issues, few of which are politically feasible. Public financing of elections makes the most sense, of course, but the idea of repealing Citizen's United is a nonstarter, at least for now. Disconnecting the pharmaceutical industry from healthcare delivery? Good luck with that. Regardless of the inadequacy of the proposed fixes, Lessig has done us all a service by pointing out the shortcomings of some of America's most important institutions.
That is, according to Lawrence Lessig.
Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor and the founder of Creative Commons, lays out his case for corruption in "America, Compromised" – a compact, tightly-written, well-reasoned treatise on what ails some of our country's bedrock institutions.
In brief:
Congress is corrupted by money – more specifically, the never-ending fundraising Congresspeople are essentially required to do due to a lack of restraint around the private funding of campaigns. The result is that even well intentioned Congresspeople frequently fall under the influence of an influential donor's pet projects.
Financial ratings agencies – Moody's, Standard and Poors, etc. – have power that should be reserved for the federal government. No one went to prison after the 2008 financial crisis. Wall Street bankrolls many major political candidates. The result here of late: the rich are getting richer at the expense of everyone else.
Psychiatry was corrupted by the pharmaceutical industry – Lessig insinuates that the rise of Pharma spending on research is uncovering conditions that can only be treated by...wait for it...pharmacological intervention.
Where once there were only a handful media resources that most people paid attention to, today's media landscape has become much more diverse. So diverse, in fact, that people are siloing themselves into whichever feedback loop satisfies their preexisting opinions. The result is that we have more news than ever before, but less understanding of the critical information people must know in order to perpetuate a strong democracy.
Anyway, you get the idea. Lessig offers some suggestions for correcting these issues, few of which are politically feasible. Public financing of elections makes the most sense, of course, but the idea of repealing Citizen's United is a nonstarter, at least for now. Disconnecting the pharmaceutical industry from healthcare delivery? Good luck with that. Regardless of the inadequacy of the proposed fixes, Lessig has done us all a service by pointing out the shortcomings of some of America's most important institutions.
January 16, 2019
Corruption is Larry Lessig's field of study & he knows what he is talking about. In this volume, he's talking about corruption in Congress & regulatory agencies, in drugs & medicine, & in academic research all of it precipitated by growing & unacceptable levels of economic inequality. In other words, the golden rule: corporations & plutocrats have all the gold so they get to make all the rules. It is said that corporations thrive with a docile labor force. By means of long stagnating wages, anti-union activity, & scarcity of jobs due to outsourcing & off-shoring, big business has achieved a docile labor force. Now as Lessig points out they are well on their way towards achieving a docile government & non-profit sector by similar means.
One quibble: Lessig illustrates his thesis with an example contrasting physicians with psychiatrists. He seems to forget that psychiatrists ARE physicians & as such are members of the AMA. Further he suggests that psychiatrists are governed by the APA but the APA is the American Psychological Association & has nothing directly to do with psychiatrists. Psychiatrists & psychologists (APA) are two different professions. I'm not sure this is important but it weakens his arguments.
One quibble: Lessig illustrates his thesis with an example contrasting physicians with psychiatrists. He seems to forget that psychiatrists ARE physicians & as such are members of the AMA. Further he suggests that psychiatrists are governed by the APA but the APA is the American Psychological Association & has nothing directly to do with psychiatrists. Psychiatrists & psychologists (APA) are two different professions. I'm not sure this is important but it weakens his arguments.
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January 2, 2020Minuteman. Institutional corruption in law, media, congress, finance, medical research including psychiatry. Dependency on money such that a conflict of interest and inability to function as needed in a democracy. Psychiatry, it's dependency on drug money starting the time of DSM III. Media, dependency on approval of politicians to keep access to them (as in Bombshell w Fox/Meghan Riley and Trump)
January 12, 2022
Whilst not as strong as Lessig’s other works, AC is still an engaging read. Lessing’s attempts to offer new solutions to corruption are a little thin but a good start. The problems highlighted with corruption here are however well explained, in a concise manner, without emotion and help to give an in depth reasoning of how the faults in the US systems have allowed corrupt practices to capture them.
November 24, 2018
Another great read by Lessig. While I certainly miss his thoughts and ideas on the whole remix economy, this was a good read to gain a better look into the corruption within the political, health, and finance sectors. So scary to see how recently all the issues with these started. I liked his ideas for how to fix them as well, although I share his pessimism of whether it will happen or not.
June 21, 2020
A good guide for thinking about institutional corruption and how thoughtful, compassionate people could be part of a corrupt institution when the incentive structure favors pursuing something other than their stated purpose.
August 3, 2022
Excellent dissection of how systems can become corrupt without any direct conspiracy or bad actions of the participants. We need more systems improvement, which is the most effective way to address the serious social, political, medical, and climate issues we all face.
November 22, 2021
I definitely learned a few things from this book about the forces at work in finance, medicine, academia and law, however it was difficult to get through.
April 12, 2019
É o melhor livro sobre corrupção que já li. Análise robusta e resultado de anos de trabalho do Prof. Lessig no laboratório de corrupção institucional de Harvard. Leitura necessária para formular soluções para o Brasil de hoje, principalmente a respeito do Congresso Nacional, da Mídia e do Direito.
October 29, 2023
Compellingly argues that American institutions from the media to Congress are fundamentally broken. The main solution proposed is deliberative democracy.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews