Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Lessig at Occupy Wall Street

Joseph Stiglitz teach­es at the Colum­bia Busi­ness School and Columbi­a’s Depart­ment of Eco­nom­ics and, of course, won the Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics in 2001.

The mon­ey quote from his appear­ance had less to do with eco­nom­ics per se and more with democ­ra­cy: “We have too many reg­u­la­tions stop­ping democ­ra­cy, and not enough reg­u­la­tions stop­ping Wall Street from mis­be­hav­ing.” No bull­horns, are you seri­ous?

You prob­a­bly know Lawrence Lessig because of his work found­ing Cre­ative Com­mons and pro­mot­ing “Free Cul­ture.” (Watch his final speech on Free Cul­ture here.) Sev­er­al years ago, Lessig moved from Stan­ford to Har­vard, where he took up a new focus — gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion. That’s what he grap­ples with in his new book, Repub­lic, Lost and this relat­ed video. Giv­en Lessig’s focus on how cor­po­rate mon­ey cor­rupts our polit­i­cal sys­tem, it’s not sur­pris­ing that he would have some­thing to say about the poten­tial of the Wall Street protests.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Slavoj Zizek Takes the Stage at Occu­py Wall Street