The bulk of the first part of the book consists of detailed scenarios of government activities that seem obviously to put the interests of specific parties (read: corporations) ahead of the interests of the nation at large. His telling of the lead-up and aftermath of the current financial crisis is worth the price of admission by itself. (Fun fact: credit for many of the key deregulations, including the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the decision that federal agencies should not regulate the growing derivatives market, goes to the Clinton Administration.)

But consider the case of food subsidies and tariffs. These manipulations began during the Great Depression, when the cost of actual staple foods -- flower, rice, etc. -- was high enough that starvation was not unheard of. The government introduced tariffs to protect domestic farmers, and subsidies to lower the costs of food. But the system has now been in place for close to a century and political money has twisted it into shapes that have no hope of being justified by any actual utility. We place tariffs on sugar, so that sugar in the U.S. is two to three times as expensive as in other countries. And we subsidize corn production: the US government spent $73.8 billion between 1995 and 2009 subsidizing corn, driving its price close to zero. One result of these policies is that High Fructose Corn Syrup was nonexistent in 1980, but accounted for 41 percent of all sugar consumed by Americans by 2006. Another result is that cattle raised in the U.S. are now fed almost entirely corn, which they don't digest well, requiring antibiotics on a massive scale and producing poorer quality meat. And even though the subsidies account for huge outlays for the federal government and the tariffs make products more expensive for Americans (the sugar tariffs cost the overall economy an estimated $3 billion per year, while providing $1 billion of extra profits to domestic sugar producers), they've proved impossible to eliminate under the current system. Every time a politician floats the idea of reforming or eliminating the farm bill, they're reminded that a small percentage of the money the beneficiary companies make is allocated to campaign contributions, and crucial for the reelection of a large number of senators and representatives.

Again, Lessig takes great pains to point out that eliminating these influences is in the interests of both Republicans as Democrats. Reform of the tax code and the education system can't happen under the current system. The government has grown wildly under every Republican president in memory. Folks on the right want a smaller government, a simplified tax code, and efficient markets. How the current system has blocked those reforms just as much as those of the left is also explained in the book. But the point is that this effort can only succeed by finding common ground between these two groups, and finding a way for them to come together on the central issue that prevents everything else from being addressed.

* * *

The subtitle of the book promises solutions, and in the last 50 pages it delivers. But it's complicated. To be taken seriously, a solution must be presented with a strategy for how it's going to be brought about. It must deal with the realities of a relatively disengaged electorate, an entrenched political system, and the boundaries set by Supreme Court decisions. And so what we get is actually nine pages of solution, and 41 pages of strategy.