In Chicago last week, for an event in honor of the 100 birthday of Milton Friedman, I briefly stopped by the Occupy Chicago protest to get a breath of fresh air. Since I'm interested in monetary policy, I was interested in why they'd chosen the Chicago branch of the Federal Reserve (there are 12 branches) as the venue for their demonstration. There turned out to be no particularly clear ideological reasoning behind the choice and, in fact, some sentiment that they really ought to decamp in favor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Nobody had especially strong views on monetary policy. It made me wish Chicago Fed President Charles Evans would come down and speak to the protesters.

As a fan of Lawrence Lessig’s pioneering work on copyright and digital culture, I was saddened when, a few years back, he shifted his focus to congressional corruption and campaign finance. Efforts to take the money out of politics—as opposed to playing the underdog’s hand as well as possible—had long struck me as a sucker’s game. Either way, you have to beat the moneyed interests. My skepticism deepened at a dinner where Lessig presented his ideas and, in response to hostile questions, seemed unfamiliar with an extensive academic literature casting doubt on the commonsense theory that campaign contributions buy policy results.