How else could it be? To craft regulations in the field X, you need experience in the field X. That means, you must have worked in the field X, and probably doi

How else could it be? To craft regulations in the field X, you need experience in the field X. That means, you must have worked in the field X, and probably doing something worth mentioning, otherwise what kind of experience would it be? Then, after you are done crafting regulations, what else you would be doing? I mean, you could just drop everything you know and start a new career, but it'd be weird to expect that happen in a majority of cases. I am actually surprised that's only 30/40 percent (maybe some of the staff weren't actually domain specialists but did something else). Most of the time, you could stay in the government for a while, but then you'd might move on to work in the field X again (might not, but everybody can't work work the government - I hope not). So the article sounds like "people with law degrees work as attorneys!" - yeah, thanks, Captain Obvious, you never disappoint. Now, I can see what people can be worried about - that the insiders of the industry would craft regulations in self-serving ways (also known as regulatory capture). The thing is, this is something that follows from the very nature of the thing - unless you want a highly technical field to be regulated by people who have no idea what's going on (not that it could happen in our politics, oh no sir, never!) you have to solicit help from the insiders and rely on their opinions. And then those insiders wouldn't just retire happily, having served their country, they'd continue being insiders with their own self-interest. We should stop being surprised about it.