Politics & Power Quote by Lawrence Lessig

Lessig’s line punctures a recurring fantasy in tech and libertarian circles: that dismantling government is a shortcut to freedom. He’s not defending bureaucracies so much as defending the basic rule of power: vacuums don’t stay empty. The sentence is structured like a trap for utopian thinking. “Disappears” and “gone” sound clean, almost magical, but he immediately replaces that cleanliness with the messier reality of “other interests” stepping in. The word choice matters. He doesn’t say “people” or “communities.” He says “interests,” a deliberately clinical term that hints at organized, well-resourced actors: corporations, oligarchs, platforms, private security, the already-connected.

The subtext is a warning about substitution, not abolition. If you cheer the retreat of the state, you’re still choosing a regulator; you’re just choosing one that isn’t bound by elections, transparency laws, or public-interest mandates. Lessig’s larger project - especially his work on campaign finance and the architecture of the internet - treats “code” and institutional design as forms of governance. In that frame, the question isn’t whether we’ll be governed, but by whom, and with what accountability.

Contextually, this reads like an anti-naivete memo aimed at both sides of a familiar debate: the anti-government right that romanticizes “markets,” and the techno-optimist wing that treats decentralization as moral progress. Lessig’s point lands because it’s bluntly ecological: remove one apex predator and the ecosystem reorganizes. The paradise story is a comforting narrative; he’s offering a colder, more accurate one about power’s persistence.