Comment by ElProlactin
18 hours ago
> ...what's inconvenient about it?
Putting aside the fact that a huge amount of regulation is designed by the most powerful companies to promote and defend their interests, the issue is that regulation, when not enforced, provides a way for corporations to inflict massive harm on individuals and discharge it for pennies on the dollar.
$18 billion was a paltry sum and represents about a month's worth of Meta's revenue. Let that sink in: a month's worth of revenue to discharge liabilities associated with years of massive harm to young people that some legal experts concluded could have reasonably resulted in damages in the high hundreds of billions of dollars, and possibly exceeding $1 trillion.
And as part of the settlement, Meta didn't even have to acknowledge any wrongdoing.
> Man, I love people on Internet making predictions that will be impossible to disprove for decades, and by that point nobody would care anyhow.
You're acting as if there's no precedent for what I stated when the evidence is overwhelming.
A handful of examples for you:
1. Eric Holder, former federal prosecutor, U.S. Attorney for D.C. and Deputy AG. He was a partner at Covington & Burling, where he represented Chiquita Brands in the case over its payments to a Colombian paramilitary group and also represented Uber and Airbnb.
2. Lanny Breuer, head of the DOJ's Criminal Division from 2009 to 2013. He didn't prosecute senior bank executives after the financial crisis and then went on to do white collar defense work as vice chair at Covington & Burling.
3. James Comey, U.S. Attorney for SDNY and Deputy AG. He became general counsel for Lockheed Martin and then Bridgewater Associates before he became FBI Director.
4. Mary Jo White, U.S. Attorney for SDNY. She defended financial institutions at Debevoise & Plimpton afterwards, then chaired the SEC between 2013 and 2017, and then went back to Debevoise.
5. Louis Freeh, federal prosecutor for SDNY, federal judge and FBI Director from 1993 to 2001. He went on to become general counsel credit card company MBNA and later represented Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was alleged to have received over £1 billion in bribes from BAE Systems for arms deals. In his defense, Freeh argued that the money was actually going into official Saudi government accounts so they weren't bribes. BAE later pleaded guilty to US charges related to false statements and export violations.
Revolving doors in the US have gold handles.
> And as part of the settlement, Meta didn't even have to acknowledge any wrongdoing.
So there are assholes who give up your birth right for a plate of lentils, and that makes you conclude there should be less regulation?
> Revolving doors in the US have gold handles.
That just requires some extra rules. No, I'm not being sarcastic.
If you read my comment carefully, I didn't argue for less regulation. I did suggest that more regulation wasn't the solution.
The quantity isn't the problem here; it's the quality. When the system has been completely corrupted, regulation stops doing what laypeople expect it to do.
Virtually none of the regulation people genuinely concerned about consumers, children, etc. would reasonably ask for will ever be enacted and enforced the way they'd want in today's broken system. The law isn't working for the masses; it's working for the asses.
Now that's one heck of a mixed metaphor. Kudos.
BREAKING NEWS: Attorneys that successfully reached the top of their fields, and have government experience, are in demand by people and corporations that have legal interactions with governments.
Who woulda thunk it?
BREAKING NEWS: it's widely-discussed that the revolving door creates potential conflicts of interest and helps facilitate regulatory capture, which is why many observers argue that it has a corrupting influence and is a corrosive threat to democratic society.
And then people wonder why a whole swath of society is for tearing down public institutions, buys into conspiracy theories and is willing to elect the most unqualified people.
There are indeed some revolving door issues, but there is also a lot of people going between government and industry that is perfectly legitimate and expected.
First, unless we are going to limit ourselves to hiring government lawyers for regulatory agencies fresh out of law school where else are we going to get lawyers with significant experience in the field that agency regulates?
Second, especially for political appointees, these government jobs are usually temporary. Where do you expect an experienced say antitrust lawyer working for the government to go when that gig ends?
It really isn't unusual for lawyers to work both plaintiff and defense in the same field. Major law firms often take cases from both plaintiffs and defendants in whatever fields their specialize in.
It might be possible to build a system where there is no switching, but it would have to be quite different. We'd need some way for you to go into government early in your career with assurances that you can stay there for the rest of your career. I can't see a reasonable way to do that.
Maybe dont have them written by companies then.
It's not that simple, it's very difficult to prevent that from happening.