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That many people find this acceptable is disconcerting. We have a revolving door system whereby the top regulator knows they will get a nice payout by the regu

That many people find this acceptable is disconcerting. We have a revolving door system whereby the top regulator knows they will get a nice payout by the regulated after their days of regulating end. Clinton’s Secretary of Treasury got a very high paying job after his repeal of Glass-Steagall and the Clinton’s themselves were richly rewarded by Wall Street. Therein lies one of the curses of wealth inequality. Humans compare themselves to those who are better off and strive for that level of enrichment. It’s a corrupting state of affairs. Too few people have too much money.

javajosh 4y ago
No, it's a personal failing. Janet Yellen could have told them to fly a kite.
- aqme28 4y ago
  When the system massively incentivizes personal failures, that is also a failure of a system
  - javajosh 4y ago
    The system always has and always will massively incentivize personal failures. That's why humans invented the concept of a "good person" -- it describes one who actively swims against the omnipresent tide. It's why people used to speak about "character" in politics. The tacit assumption is that once you're in power you are, by definition, unrestrained by external forces. The only one left who can restrain you is yourself. It would be wise to highlight these talks as examples of profound personal failures, both for the speakers and the participants. All have succumbed to greed and corruption, and have done so in the open. I think we should promote the ideals of self-restraint once again, and expect our public servants to enjoy a comfortable, upper-middle-class life, and no more. The single best thing we can do is to get money out of politics! The bottleneck to getting elected is, right now, money, and that's fundamentally anti-democratic. We should elect people based on their character, their ideas, their vision, their capacity for communication, and not their bank account. They should demonstrate that they value principle over loyalty, basically every time. In such a world Yellen's behavior would stick out like a sore thumb, and that's good.
    - aqme28 4y ago
      > The tacit assumption is that once you're in power you are, by definition, unrestrained by external forces. The only one left who can restrain you is yourself. I don’t understand. This is not some truth of all justice systems. It isn’t the case even in the US, except for a few limited cases. There are a lot of parts of our system that incentivize being a good person, so I don’t know what you’re on about here.
      - javajosh 4y ago
        >There are a lot of parts of our system that incentivize being a good person, so I don’t know what you’re on about here. I'm sorry, which is the system that keeps people good? Tripartite government with separation of powers? A constitution? Tell me: what are the rules can withstand a group of bad faith players? Any system can be undermined by bad actors, on both short (personal) and long (institutional) timescales, and there is always built in incentive to do so. To wit: bribes are great for both sides if you don't get caught. Bribes given in this way may feel and appear to be like capitalism. But the iron minds who spend these enormous sums for brief appearances of past and future judges, bureaucrats and princes, do not do so out of sentiment. Nor, I think, would they bother to argue that it is so. To claw our way back to the good Nash equilibrium we must open our eyes why the bad Nash equilibrium beckons to us all. Look around the world and see those nations that dwell, apparently permanently, in the bad equilibrium. Where everyone is backstabbing each other, demanding bribes, and so on. The rules forbid it, but they are helpless, just ink on paper. Once cheating starts, an avalanche soon follows.
        aqme28 4y ago
        We have laws and a justice system that disincentivizes bad behavior. The existence of holes in that system does not mean that an effective system is impossible. Plenty of bad person stuff is illegal and punishable. It should be illegal (and enforceable) for regulators to be so cozy with industry. It feels like you're suggesting we just throw our hands up and say "better things aren't possible."
    - cced 4y ago
- rcme 4y ago
  Good systems make bad things hard/impossible.
- tacker2000 4y ago
  If she doesn’t do it they will kick her out and just get the next person in line who could be “approachable”.
- syzarian 4y ago
  Yes. It is also a systemic failure. Wealth inequality tempts too many people in the penumbra of human morality that lies between those who are saints and those who are evil.
  - javajosh 4y ago
    It's a systemic failure because the public has lost clarity of thought and have forgotten entirely the importance of character in general, and self-restraint in particular, in leadership. A problem I think can be causally linked to Citizens United. Ironic that you can't get people to focus on fixing CU because CU engendered an environment that makes it hard to focus.
beeforpork 4y ago
That is all true. But who wants to be a politician when they are public figures that are beaten, accused, humiliated by opponents, the public, and everyone really. You cannot do it right and most people will probably hate you, regardless of what you do. It's not a pleasant job. Unless you get money for all of this unpleasantness. And then, some entities have more money to give than others (you said that in your last sentence). So this attracts exactly those people to be politicians that you might not want to be politicians. Of course, some are better than others (so do go vote for the right ones), but they all need a certain trait for this job. So how to break this unfortunate dependency? Give the 'right' entities comparably enough money to pay politicians? But how? Like climate vs. oil. OK, that's cheap, but anyway. You cannot expect the system to work with less money flow, I think. So how to change this?
- ramphastidae 4y ago
  We’ve know for decades - take money out of politics and make it about civil service. To do so requires campaign finance reform (limits on spending and sources of $) as well as making lobbying illegal
  - patrec 4y ago
    People like you are exactly the reason why we can't have competent politicians. Who apart from crazy ideologues, the crooked and those that can't hack it as anything else than demagogues do you expect to sign up for a job where you are a public punching ball on terrible pay and with limited ability to diverge from whatever party line or other contingencies dictate?
    - ramphastidae 4y ago
      Can you explain why? Obviously the current system isn’t producing competent ones either.
      - patrec 4y ago
        Sorry, I edited my comment to add some context. It seems very likely to me that if we could increase pay of politicians by a factor of 10 (say), we'd get much much better performance at lower effective cost than we already pay for the soft corruption of "speaking fees" and suchlike. Unfortunately that seems to be politically infeasible (not even competent autocratic regimes can get away with paying themselves above board).
stevespang 4y ago
[dead]
Overtonwindow 4y ago
It's not so much that people find it discerning, is that there are only two parties in America. Because one person brings up that she made millions, means that another person will defend her because of their political ideology and party choice. Bad behavior of politicians on both sides of the aisle should be deployed, but one person's corrupt politician is another persons freedom fighter.
- syzarian 4y ago
  Yes, the disconcerting thing is really the inability of too many voters to be consistent in their beliefs/views. Defense of "my" candidate takes precedence over applying, in a consistent way, one's moral beliefs. We have people who decry Trump's sexual deviancy whilst defending Bill Clinton's. Vice versa.

javajosh 4y ago

No, it's a personal failing. Janet Yellen could have told them to fly a kite.

aqme28 4y ago
When the system massively incentivizes personal failures, that is also a failure of a system
- javajosh 4y ago
  The system always has and always will massively incentivize personal failures. That's why humans invented the concept of a "good person" -- it describes one who actively swims against the omnipresent tide. It's why people used to speak about "character" in politics. The tacit assumption is that once you're in power you are, by definition, unrestrained by external forces. The only one left who can restrain you is yourself. It would be wise to highlight these talks as examples of profound personal failures, both for the speakers and the participants. All have succumbed to greed and corruption, and have done so in the open. I think we should promote the ideals of self-restraint once again, and expect our public servants to enjoy a comfortable, upper-middle-class life, and no more. The single best thing we can do is to get money out of politics! The bottleneck to getting elected is, right now, money, and that's fundamentally anti-democratic. We should elect people based on their character, their ideas, their vision, their capacity for communication, and not their bank account. They should demonstrate that they value principle over loyalty, basically every time. In such a world Yellen's behavior would stick out like a sore thumb, and that's good.
  - aqme28 4y ago
    > The tacit assumption is that once you're in power you are, by definition, unrestrained by external forces. The only one left who can restrain you is yourself. I don’t understand. This is not some truth of all justice systems. It isn’t the case even in the US, except for a few limited cases. There are a lot of parts of our system that incentivize being a good person, so I don’t know what you’re on about here.
    - javajosh 4y ago
      >There are a lot of parts of our system that incentivize being a good person, so I don’t know what you’re on about here. I'm sorry, which is the system that keeps people good? Tripartite government with separation of powers? A constitution? Tell me: what are the rules can withstand a group of bad faith players? Any system can be undermined by bad actors, on both short (personal) and long (institutional) timescales, and there is always built in incentive to do so. To wit: bribes are great for both sides if you don't get caught. Bribes given in this way may feel and appear to be like capitalism. But the iron minds who spend these enormous sums for brief appearances of past and future judges, bureaucrats and princes, do not do so out of sentiment. Nor, I think, would they bother to argue that it is so. To claw our way back to the good Nash equilibrium we must open our eyes why the bad Nash equilibrium beckons to us all. Look around the world and see those nations that dwell, apparently permanently, in the bad equilibrium. Where everyone is backstabbing each other, demanding bribes, and so on. The rules forbid it, but they are helpless, just ink on paper. Once cheating starts, an avalanche soon follows.
      - aqme28 4y ago
        We have laws and a justice system that disincentivizes bad behavior. The existence of holes in that system does not mean that an effective system is impossible. Plenty of bad person stuff is illegal and punishable. It should be illegal (and enforceable) for regulators to be so cozy with industry. It feels like you're suggesting we just throw our hands up and say "better things aren't possible."
  - cced 4y ago
rcme 4y ago
Good systems make bad things hard/impossible.
tacker2000 4y ago
If she doesn’t do it they will kick her out and just get the next person in line who could be “approachable”.
syzarian 4y ago
Yes. It is also a systemic failure. Wealth inequality tempts too many people in the penumbra of human morality that lies between those who are saints and those who are evil.
- javajosh 4y ago
  It's a systemic failure because the public has lost clarity of thought and have forgotten entirely the importance of character in general, and self-restraint in particular, in leadership. A problem I think can be causally linked to Citizens United. Ironic that you can't get people to focus on fixing CU because CU engendered an environment that makes it hard to focus.

beeforpork 4y ago

That is all true. But who wants to be a politician when they are public figures that are beaten, accused, humiliated by opponents, the public, and everyone really. You cannot do it right and most people will probably hate you, regardless of what you do. It's not a pleasant job. Unless you get money for all of this unpleasantness. And then, some entities have more money to give than others (you said that in your last sentence). So this attracts exactly those people to be politicians that you might not want to be politicians. Of course, some are better than others (so do go vote for the right ones), but they all need a certain trait for this job. So how to break this unfortunate dependency? Give the 'right' entities comparably enough money to pay politicians? But how? Like climate vs. oil. OK, that's cheap, but anyway. You cannot expect the system to work with less money flow, I think. So how to change this?

ramphastidae 4y ago
We’ve know for decades - take money out of politics and make it about civil service. To do so requires campaign finance reform (limits on spending and sources of $) as well as making lobbying illegal
- patrec 4y ago
  People like you are exactly the reason why we can't have competent politicians. Who apart from crazy ideologues, the crooked and those that can't hack it as anything else than demagogues do you expect to sign up for a job where you are a public punching ball on terrible pay and with limited ability to diverge from whatever party line or other contingencies dictate?
  - ramphastidae 4y ago
    Can you explain why? Obviously the current system isn’t producing competent ones either.
    - patrec 4y ago
      Sorry, I edited my comment to add some context. It seems very likely to me that if we could increase pay of politicians by a factor of 10 (say), we'd get much much better performance at lower effective cost than we already pay for the soft corruption of "speaking fees" and suchlike. Unfortunately that seems to be politically infeasible (not even competent autocratic regimes can get away with paying themselves above board).

stevespang 4y ago

[dead]

Overtonwindow 4y ago

It's not so much that people find it discerning, is that there are only two parties in America. Because one person brings up that she made millions, means that another person will defend her because of their political ideology and party choice. Bad behavior of politicians on both sides of the aisle should be deployed, but one person's corrupt politician is another persons freedom fighter.

syzarian 4y ago
Yes, the disconcerting thing is really the inability of too many voters to be consistent in their beliefs/views. Defense of "my" candidate takes precedence over applying, in a consistent way, one's moral beliefs. We have people who decry Trump's sexual deviancy whilst defending Bill Clinton's. Vice versa.