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You left out "after you get big, hire a senior regulator from the Obama era to leverage personal connections in Washington." It's so depressing. It's probably

You left out "after you get big, hire a senior regulator from the Obama era to leverage personal connections in Washington." It's so depressing. It's probably better to not know how this stuff works.

mkr-hn 5y ago
The government->business pipeline is older than any living president. It's not like all the companies who founded Silicon Valley on government contracts lucked into it.
- chickenpotpie 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A... and the business->government pipeline when Eisenhower's advisors all used to work/currently work for The United Fruit Company
  - mkr-hn 5y ago
    It seems like any sufficiently advanced business is indistinguishable from government.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      That's true, and IMO, it's pretty much entirely the function of size. Modern governments are what you get when you try to organize millions of people - so it's not really surprising that, as a company grows, it starts to look like a government from the inside. It couldn't be any other way.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      In particular, a sufficiently advanced business looks like an undemocratic, authoritarian, central-planning government. Basically, the problem with large corporations is that they are communist dictatorships.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        And here I thought that once you include boards and shareholders, you get something isomorphic to democracy :). If we're considering corporations to be "undemocratic, authoritarian, central-planning (...) communist dictatorships" inside, then so are all democratic governments. The "voice of the people" part of a democratic government is just a surface layer, the tip of an iceberg. Or, more charitably, a rudder of a ship - the part that sets the course, but is nevertheless insignificant in mass compared to the rest of the ship. The bulk of every government is a top-down hierarchical structure, because it can't really be any other way. You can't hold votes on whether a particular clerk is supposed to be in a particular building on Monday 09:00, and whether they're supposed to approve the form you're trying to submit.
        frenchy 5y ago
        That would be an oligarchy, good sir. In a representative democracy you get a voice on who executes the orders regardless of whether you are rich or poor or smart or stupid or went to business school with who-knows-who.
        imbnwa 5y ago
        Are they? Corporate shareholders have power of on-demand accountability and enough competency to grasp the goings on of a board meeting, that is not what a random _demos_ in a representative democracy is composed of and it changes the whole game, that's not a minor detail. Even besides the competency/knowledge problem, American citizens cannot, amongst themselves, zero external mediation, vote an elected official out of office as far as I'm aware. If we were in Plato's perfect Republic where all the uninitiated adults were purged from the polis and there were only citizens trained since childhood to seriously consider matters of state, now we'd be in the same sport, if not ballpark.
    - imbnwa 5y ago
      I'd put money on Amazon having sufficient power to control a number of desperate state governments at the least
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- navierstokes 5y ago
  This is different from lobbying. How would you feel if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission soft-balled Mr. Burns, then one of its commissioners jumped ship to work at Springfield Nuclear? Even if that commissioner was an enlightened patrician of high moral character, it would create the appearance of corruption. And that alone is corrosive to the rule of law. People with less integrity, people downstream in industry, might interpret that as a signal that regulators are a joke. They may go on television and say things like "I don't respect the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >How would you feel if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission soft-balled Mr. Burns, then one of its commissioners jumped ship to work at Springfield Nuclear? If I'm from New Hampshire, Ohio, Maine, South Dakota or somewhere else government is still kinda sorta accountable I'm Outraged(TM). If I'm from Massachusetts, Louisiana, California, New York, or somewhere else government has been unaccountable for generations I shrug and move on with life.
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    Part of the issue, IIRC, is that you want regulators who are experienced with what an industry does, and practically speaking the easiest way to get that is to hire from within the industry. We should probably keep that bit of the revolving door working. The bigger problem is the reverse; we should really have the government do something like finance's "garden leave", where leaving employees are paid while banned from industry employment, so that whatever competitive info you had is outdated by the time you can take a job in industry again.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
mrgordon 5y ago
Oh look, it’s a brand new account calling out people in the Obama administration for corruption and ignoring all of the much more recent corrupt Republicans. Alright, spam Hacker News with your throwaway accounts to push your political agenda. Sad to see you want to water down the community with this drivel.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > it’s a brand new account calling out people in the Obama administration for corruption and ignoring all of the much more recent corrupt Republicans To be fair, its possible that the poster was merely meaning that the template is “Hire the available ex-regulators of the party currently in power”, but was communicating that by applying the template to the current situation, where we are in the first year of an Administration, so the available supply of regulators meeting that description will generally be from the last Administration of the same party.
- navierstokes 5y ago
  I'm very sorry I gave you that impression. When Jamie Dimon discussed the warm relationship between Obama officials and tech in a public speech at Stanford, I assumed it was (1) common knowledge and (2) socially acceptable to discuss in public. I think the current administration has made excellent personnel choices in the regulatory agencies. I am hopeful for the future. But I don't think I "called out" anyone. I understand that expression to mean "seeking to direct reflexive mob anger toward a specific individual". It's the practice that's troubling, not the people. I actually believe that most of the people engaged in this practice (revolving door) have impeccable moral character.
  - mrgordon 5y ago
    Thanks for the thoughtful response. Unfortunately many people call out Obama specifically as a way to take a partisan political jab at the left especially on forums. Trump’s White House was full of crooks who really were there based 100% on who they knew since many were otherwise unqualified. It makes going back a president feel like cherry picking an example but I see you could have done it as Biden would draw from Obama’s sphere more. I am not aware of the specific Dimon speech you mentioned. Ajit Pai had a close relationship with the ISPs and Telecommunications companies with all their attacks on net neutrality etc. so I do find that the argument that Democrats are so much cozier with tech to be a bit oversimplified. I agree with your comment overall, just shedding some insights on my thinking

You left out "after you get big, hire a senior regulator from the Obama era to leverage personal connections in Washington." It's so depressing. It's probably better to not know how this stuff works.

mkr-hn 5y ago

The government->business pipeline is older than any living president. It's not like all the companies who founded Silicon Valley on government contracts lucked into it.

chickenpotpie 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A... and the business->government pipeline when Eisenhower's advisors all used to work/currently work for The United Fruit Company
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  It seems like any sufficiently advanced business is indistinguishable from government.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    That's true, and IMO, it's pretty much entirely the function of size. Modern governments are what you get when you try to organize millions of people - so it's not really surprising that, as a company grows, it starts to look like a government from the inside. It couldn't be any other way.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    In particular, a sufficiently advanced business looks like an undemocratic, authoritarian, central-planning government. Basically, the problem with large corporations is that they are communist dictatorships.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      And here I thought that once you include boards and shareholders, you get something isomorphic to democracy :). If we're considering corporations to be "undemocratic, authoritarian, central-planning (...) communist dictatorships" inside, then so are all democratic governments. The "voice of the people" part of a democratic government is just a surface layer, the tip of an iceberg. Or, more charitably, a rudder of a ship - the part that sets the course, but is nevertheless insignificant in mass compared to the rest of the ship. The bulk of every government is a top-down hierarchical structure, because it can't really be any other way. You can't hold votes on whether a particular clerk is supposed to be in a particular building on Monday 09:00, and whether they're supposed to approve the form you're trying to submit.
      - frenchy 5y ago
        That would be an oligarchy, good sir. In a representative democracy you get a voice on who executes the orders regardless of whether you are rich or poor or smart or stupid or went to business school with who-knows-who.
      - imbnwa 5y ago
        Are they? Corporate shareholders have power of on-demand accountability and enough competency to grasp the goings on of a board meeting, that is not what a random _demos_ in a representative democracy is composed of and it changes the whole game, that's not a minor detail. Even besides the competency/knowledge problem, American citizens cannot, amongst themselves, zero external mediation, vote an elected official out of office as far as I'm aware. If we were in Plato's perfect Republic where all the uninitiated adults were purged from the polis and there were only citizens trained since childhood to seriously consider matters of state, now we'd be in the same sport, if not ballpark.
  - imbnwa 5y ago
    I'd put money on Amazon having sufficient power to control a number of desperate state governments at the least
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
navierstokes 5y ago
This is different from lobbying. How would you feel if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission soft-balled Mr. Burns, then one of its commissioners jumped ship to work at Springfield Nuclear? Even if that commissioner was an enlightened patrician of high moral character, it would create the appearance of corruption. And that alone is corrosive to the rule of law. People with less integrity, people downstream in industry, might interpret that as a signal that regulators are a joke. They may go on television and say things like "I don't respect the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >How would you feel if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission soft-balled Mr. Burns, then one of its commissioners jumped ship to work at Springfield Nuclear? If I'm from New Hampshire, Ohio, Maine, South Dakota or somewhere else government is still kinda sorta accountable I'm Outraged(TM). If I'm from Massachusetts, Louisiana, California, New York, or somewhere else government has been unaccountable for generations I shrug and move on with life.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  Part of the issue, IIRC, is that you want regulators who are experienced with what an industry does, and practically speaking the easiest way to get that is to hire from within the industry. We should probably keep that bit of the revolving door working. The bigger problem is the reverse; we should really have the government do something like finance's "garden leave", where leaving employees are paid while banned from industry employment, so that whatever competitive info you had is outdated by the time you can take a job in industry again.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

mrgordon 5y ago

Oh look, it’s a brand new account calling out people in the Obama administration for corruption and ignoring all of the much more recent corrupt Republicans. Alright, spam Hacker News with your throwaway accounts to push your political agenda. Sad to see you want to water down the community with this drivel.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> it’s a brand new account calling out people in the Obama administration for corruption and ignoring all of the much more recent corrupt Republicans To be fair, its possible that the poster was merely meaning that the template is “Hire the available ex-regulators of the party currently in power”, but was communicating that by applying the template to the current situation, where we are in the first year of an Administration, so the available supply of regulators meeting that description will generally be from the last Administration of the same party.
navierstokes 5y ago
I'm very sorry I gave you that impression. When Jamie Dimon discussed the warm relationship between Obama officials and tech in a public speech at Stanford, I assumed it was (1) common knowledge and (2) socially acceptable to discuss in public. I think the current administration has made excellent personnel choices in the regulatory agencies. I am hopeful for the future. But I don't think I "called out" anyone. I understand that expression to mean "seeking to direct reflexive mob anger toward a specific individual". It's the practice that's troubling, not the people. I actually believe that most of the people engaged in this practice (revolving door) have impeccable moral character.
- mrgordon 5y ago
  Thanks for the thoughtful response. Unfortunately many people call out Obama specifically as a way to take a partisan political jab at the left especially on forums. Trump’s White House was full of crooks who really were there based 100% on who they knew since many were otherwise unqualified. It makes going back a president feel like cherry picking an example but I see you could have done it as Biden would draw from Obama’s sphere more. I am not aware of the specific Dimon speech you mentioned. Ajit Pai had a close relationship with the ISPs and Telecommunications companies with all their attacks on net neutrality etc. so I do find that the argument that Democrats are so much cozier with tech to be a bit oversimplified. I agree with your comment overall, just shedding some insights on my thinking