Tuesday, August 24, 2004

The McCain-Feingold Farce

Any strategy that is effective will be used. This is one of The Rules. It explains why there is always a black market for contraband goods. The Volokh Conspiracy attacks the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform and George Bush for signing it. Their angle is that contributing to political campaigns is speach.

While I don't disagree with them on that point, I take more of the approach that few problems are ever solved with more rules. The only things that more rules accomplishes is to make the methods of infraction harder to follow. Giving money to political candidates is seen as effective in advancing one's political agenda. Therefore, people will always try to do it. The only way to clear the air is to remove the rules, and put the burden on the campaigns to account for who gives the money and where it goes.

The only rules I would suggest (I'm a Minarchist, remember) is that all donations go into one account, all expenditures come out of the same account, and all contributions shall be signed by an individual and not a "legal entity", ie corporation or PAC. The primary means of enforcing the rules will be from a net-impartial media. Net-impartial meaning that while a particular journalist may be biased to one side, there would be another journo who will pursue the other side just as vigorously. Far from perfect, but at least this way the rules breakers could be more easily spotted and smoked out by the media, which at this point is the weak link in the chain.

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