It's "Regulatory Capture;" it's something like Capture The Flag, only in this game, it's always captured and no matter the professed ideology of the captured regulators and those who've captured them, you and I (and our grandparents and the hippie down the street) lose.
Oddly, most critics seem to think the solution is more regulations and/or better regulators. They overlook the best way to end the game is to remove the prize.
The present administration thinks that putting Jamie Gorelick in charge of anything more important than a sewage treatment plant is "hope and change". As you know, an understanding of her career doing exactly what her political masters bade her do is how you grok the rationale behind her nickname "The Mistress of Disaster". She may not be guilty of all that she is judged by, but facts have a weight all their own...
ReplyDeleteAh, Jamie Gorelick: in the real world, she'd be unemployed and unemployable.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking more of guys like the current FCC ramrod (who seems set to run over-the-air TV off the air), and of regulatory histories like the Commission's.
I'm not sure I'd want Gorelick in charge of a sewage treatment plant, either. She'd manage to find a way to either kill the critical bacteria, or, more likely, get them to mutate into something, well, disastrous...
ReplyDeleteWith enough regulatory capture we achieve fedulatory rapture.
ReplyDeleteRegulatory capture presumes that the regulator was at some time not captured. In most cases, the regulation was created to benefit the industry. Meat reguations were created to drive the small butcher out of business, not created for some good purpose, and then perverted by capture.
ReplyDeleteBut if your remove the Regulations (and the Agencies that created them), what do you do with all those people hired to misinterpret them and cause us pain and grief? How can you force all those Assistant Deputy Deputy Assistants out of work, along with their staff and the outside consulting companies who just hired all those people to consult with the ADDA's on Regulatory Enforcement? I mean, if they go away, how can the Anointed One and his Minions make the claim that he saved or created Millions of (Gov't. Employee) Jobs?
ReplyDeleteOur not-friend Julius Genachowski also wants to help LightSquared destroy the utility of the GPS system over the more heavily populated portions of the US; create a tiered broadband system under the guise of "net neutrality," and do a number of other things of equal anti utility. And assist in turning most of the "lightly used 70 cm Amateur Band" into "first responders only."
ReplyDeleteHypothetically speaking, I do not know if Mistress Disaster Gorelick would be a worse FCC commissioner than Genachowski, but she has been a complete flop at every thing else she has been tasked with. As Genachowski has.
Stranger
Your first paragraph confuses me, even though I agree 100% with the second.
ReplyDeleteIf it is a foregone conclusion that the flag is "... always captured", how do we explain the relationship between BATF and Remchester?
And I say this in all sincerity, because in my own industry - hard rock mining - we've been working diligently attempting to subvert MSHA (the Mine Safety & Health Administration) since their creation in 1977 with little evidence of our efforts. In fact, every major safety initiative over the past 30+ years that MSHA now points to with pride originated within the industry.
If you could please guide us in our quest for regulatory capture, we could finally re-direct our efforts towards our true goal of oppressing our workforce :-) OK, that's not true - we'd try to capture the EPA next, and THEN we'd move on workforce oppression.
I'll admit I'm being a bit of a smart-aleck here, but I am serious about the question. I deal with two major regulators in my current job, and have exprience in the past with ATF. I'm feeling damn foolish right now for not succeeding by capturing any of them.
Hi, I'm anonymous@9:09, and I just recognized I wrote an ambiguous sentence above.
ReplyDeleteWhen I bragged that Industry had fed MSHA it's major safety accomplishments, I meant to use that to point out our impotence in preventing their other, far less helpful, regulatory actions.
If MSHA were truly "captured", we'd have lower accident incident rates - and we do - (which line the evil mining company's pockets with filthy lucre) but we WOULDN'T have an Agency with a stated goal of regulating fewer mines via closure.
Wait, that sounds alot like the ATF plan...
Anon: I can't speak to the MSHA or the EPA, but I think the issue with ATFeieio is that they're way more tied up in their role as "enforcement", at an agency culture level, than they are in their role as "regulators". I mean, sure, they like to use that regulating stick often and hard, don't get me wrong, but they do it so that they can have more excuses to go enforcering.
ReplyDeleteAnon 9:09,
ReplyDeleteThere is some truth to the accusations of GCA'68 being more accurately titled "The Domestic Firearms Industry Protection Act of 1968".
And how about the bad ol' days of the "National Association of Stocking Gun Dealers", who cheered as the Clinton era BATFEIEIO made sure that the "kitchen table" FFL was a vanishing species?
Sometimes, the industry captures the regulators, sometimes the regulators capture the industry: ever notice how its a revolving door at the top between the owners and the regulators?
ReplyDelete