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But the point of this is that it isn't the "government involved." As with other professional pursuits, the government says "we don't have the desire, expertise,

But the point of this is that it isn't the "government involved." As with other professional pursuits, the government says "we don't have the desire, expertise, or agility needed to make these decisions in-house, so we designate this organization to be our regulator of it." For example, here's the Professional Engineers Act in Ontario: https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/900941 https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/900941 None of it has anything to do with which tools or methods are used for the practice of engineering— it's all defining jurisdiction and constitutional meta-details about how the leadership is to be selected, term lengths, etc. So no one can achieve regulatory capture about what kind of concrete is to be used in bridges in Ontario by lobbying the Ontario government; you'd have to lobby the PEO. Maybe your argument is that they're effectively equivalent, but they're really not— the PEO is a pretty different kind of organization from just another government office.

dylan604 5y ago
>"we don't have the desire, expertise, or agility needed to make these decisions in-house, so we designate this organization to be our regulator of it." Yes, because this has stopped them doing dumb things before. The gov't will still be in charge of selecting the people in the regulator. The lobbiest will still have influence. There's just no way around it.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  Can you please supply examples from law, medicine, trades, engineering, etc where you feel that lobbying of the government has led to the kind of outcomes you're envisioning?
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Texas' ERCOT. It's a government appointed regulation body, not a branch of gov't. Are you really doubting that this is something that "might" happen? Edit: FAA allowing Boeing to self-certify 737MAX. FDA allowing/not allowing trials of drugs, or allowing a drug meant for one thing to be tried for something else totall untested (ex: AZT).
    - mikepurvis 5y ago
      I'm not doubting that it might happen and may even actually happen in some cases. I'm asserting that society and government is built on compromises and a principle of taking the path of least harm. We shouldn't avoid a 90% solution because we can imagine possible flaws in it, particularly if we have close analogues already deployed in the real world and those flaws don't largely seem to manifest. I don't know that bodies like FAA and ERCOT are really comparable to professional associations; the market conditions make them especially vulnerable to corruption because they both "oversee" such a small number of large players, so you end up with a revolving door. In any case, these are also odd examples to bring up, because in both cases their failure was not about market capture, it was about failure to protect the public. So it seems your argument is amounting to "the regulation provided by the FAA isn't perfect, so it shouldn't exist, just like regulation for security-critical software shouldn't exist." I specifically asked for examples from "law, medicine, trades, engineering", because those are cases that I feel are much more aligned to what it would be with a professional body overseeing practices for secure software development— they're cases where you have a large number of mostly small-time practitioners, and where the professional oversight mechanism is working in terms of enforcing safe and consistent practices, while also evolving those over time in response to changing conditions.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        >the regulation provided by the FAA isn't perfect, so it shouldn't exist This is far from what I'm suggesting. I'm just saying that if it is a gov't regulated anything, those regulations will incur wacky decision making due to the influence of outside money. Nobody likes to be regulated against, and if they are in the position to do so, they will use any mechanism available to them to keep the status quo. I'm also suggesting that any gov't regulation body is not always the panacea people may be dreaming it will be. Anytime a regulation body is proposed, I don't have rose colored glasses. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised that something turns out to be a good thing than having high expectations crushed.
        mikepurvis 5y ago
        But despite your cynicism about "any gov't regulation body", you would agree that professional associations have by and large been a success in protecting the public in areas like construction trades, engineering, law, and medicine?

dylan604 5y ago

>"we don't have the desire, expertise, or agility needed to make these decisions in-house, so we designate this organization to be our regulator of it." Yes, because this has stopped them doing dumb things before. The gov't will still be in charge of selecting the people in the regulator. The lobbiest will still have influence. There's just no way around it.

mikepurvis 5y ago
Can you please supply examples from law, medicine, trades, engineering, etc where you feel that lobbying of the government has led to the kind of outcomes you're envisioning?
- dylan604 5y ago
  Texas' ERCOT. It's a government appointed regulation body, not a branch of gov't. Are you really doubting that this is something that "might" happen? Edit: FAA allowing Boeing to self-certify 737MAX. FDA allowing/not allowing trials of drugs, or allowing a drug meant for one thing to be tried for something else totall untested (ex: AZT).
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    I'm not doubting that it might happen and may even actually happen in some cases. I'm asserting that society and government is built on compromises and a principle of taking the path of least harm. We shouldn't avoid a 90% solution because we can imagine possible flaws in it, particularly if we have close analogues already deployed in the real world and those flaws don't largely seem to manifest. I don't know that bodies like FAA and ERCOT are really comparable to professional associations; the market conditions make them especially vulnerable to corruption because they both "oversee" such a small number of large players, so you end up with a revolving door. In any case, these are also odd examples to bring up, because in both cases their failure was not about market capture, it was about failure to protect the public. So it seems your argument is amounting to "the regulation provided by the FAA isn't perfect, so it shouldn't exist, just like regulation for security-critical software shouldn't exist." I specifically asked for examples from "law, medicine, trades, engineering", because those are cases that I feel are much more aligned to what it would be with a professional body overseeing practices for secure software development— they're cases where you have a large number of mostly small-time practitioners, and where the professional oversight mechanism is working in terms of enforcing safe and consistent practices, while also evolving those over time in response to changing conditions.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      >the regulation provided by the FAA isn't perfect, so it shouldn't exist This is far from what I'm suggesting. I'm just saying that if it is a gov't regulated anything, those regulations will incur wacky decision making due to the influence of outside money. Nobody likes to be regulated against, and if they are in the position to do so, they will use any mechanism available to them to keep the status quo. I'm also suggesting that any gov't regulation body is not always the panacea people may be dreaming it will be. Anytime a regulation body is proposed, I don't have rose colored glasses. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised that something turns out to be a good thing than having high expectations crushed.
      - mikepurvis 5y ago
        But despite your cynicism about "any gov't regulation body", you would agree that professional associations have by and large been a success in protecting the public in areas like construction trades, engineering, law, and medicine?