Talk:Regulatory capture

wi-fi

re: A Modern Example

Is this really the appropriate place for promoting that screwball free wi-fi agenda? I'm deleting it. Come up with examples that have a more-than-tenuous relation to regulatory capture, and keep personal agendas out of it.

As if to illustrate the ideological motivation of Wikipedia article maintainers, the following message was sent to me after I pointed out the ridiculous insertion of "free wi-fi" agenda propaganda in this article:

Section deletion

Re: Regulatory capture

Section deletion without explanation can be considered vandalism.

Please do not add nonsense to Wikipedia; it is considered vandalism.

Good luck with your "free wi-fi" agenda, but be aware that you are actively turning Wikipedia into a grotesque sideshow. A reader comes to Wikipedia to learn more about regulatory capture and is instead greeted with pseudo-intellectual leftwing rhetoric about free wi-fi and net neutrality. Why not throw in "examples" about DRM and copyright law? It couldn't make this article any more clearly e-Leftist bullshit. Why not fire off intimidating messages to people who point this out?

As much as I don't like the tone above, I must agree with this anonymous user that this article carries an agenda pretty heavily. Certainly illustrive examples are helpful in encyclopedic articles, but it is not appropriate to go into so much detail on the example. There is more on net neutrality than on regulatory capture. Furthermore, I don't see the need for this specific example, given that there are already good examples above in the Department of Agriculture, etc.

As much as net neutrality seems like a good cause, this is not the proper format for it's promotion and I can't help but see its description here as a POV promotion of net neutrality.

Since I am not the only one who thinks this, I'm going to delete the section and paste it here for someone who can go through and figure out what, if any, of it is necessary for this article, from a neutral point of view.

Lobbying

This article really ought to make a bigger deal of it. Also the CIA is a regulatory agency, as it a has a great deal of autonomy in the subject of foreign policy. --85.76.85.231 (talk) 13:31, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Autonomy is not regulatory power. Tell me what the CIA regulates. All I know is that it collects and interprets information, conducts various operations consistent with a spy agency and advises governments. You or I may not like a lot of what it does, but that does not make it a regulatory agency. This article is about regulatory agencies, not spy agencies, no matter how corrupt. Marrante (talk) 14:46, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

From regulatory agency: "A regulatory agency is a public authority or government agency responsible for exercising autonomous authority over some area of human activity in a regulatory or supervisory capacity." --85.78.214.234 (talk) 16:46, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. You have proven with this definition what a regulatory agency is. It regulates. Here is what the CIA mission statement says it does (from the the CIA's own website), with a change in verb tense:

• Collect information that reveals the plans, intentions and capabilities of our adversaries and provides the basis for decision and action.

• Produce timely analysis that provides insight, warning and opportunity to the President and decisionmakers charged with protecting and advancing America’s interests.

• Conduct covert action at the direction of the President to preempt threats or achieve US policy objectives.

Not a word about regulating. Case closed. Marrante (talk) 17:05, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Let me guess: You typed ctrl-f and searched for the word "regulat". Thank you for your research, but why don't you actually read what you quoted: "achieve US policy objectives". What do you think this includes?

As a side note, the CIA's mission statement hardly constitutes a list of what it does. You should know that. Any of the points you listed could (and sometimes do) include influencing regulation. Assassinating a political figure who opposes certain regulation would fall under regulatory capture activity and is something that the CIA is known to do.71.65.244.201 (talk) 23:34, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

The Editing of Wikipedia itself is an example of capture

This just in from the department of not getting the irony:

The Editing of Wikipedia itself is an example of regulatory capture.

I'm not joking, and I'm not trolling, either.

That's a funny point. I was just noting to myself how large the Talk section of this article is. Seems like there are a lot of "entities" who care about what this article says. So I'm inclined to agree with you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.65.244.201 (talk) 23:37, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

The fundamental problem with examples

I've not put this in the article because its original research, but the fundamental problem with examples of regulatory capture is that it is always contentious (unless you can prove actual corruption, such as bribes):

• Lobbying by the regulated industry is perfectly legitimate; the agency must consider the impact of their decisions on the industry, and will therefore consult with the industry before making any decision.

• Political donations are a simple exercise of free speech.

• A revolving door is explained by the fact that the industry and the agency must necessarily hire from the same small pool of experts.

• Apparent disregard of the public interest in favour of industry interests is an illusion; the agency experts have the expertise and knowledge to make these judgments better than outsiders.

Thus any allegation of "regulatory capture" can be challenged as biased.

Rather than a list of examples, it might be better to have a list of mechanisms of regulatory capture. These can then be illustrated with concrete examples. For example revolving doors might be illustrated with an example of a head of a regulatory agency moving to a highly paid job as a consultant to a big company in the same industry. PaulJohnson (talk) 15:01, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

You seem to think that if regulatory capture is done the right way or for the right reasons, then it's not regulatory capture.71.65.244.201 (talk) 23:40, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Who "forgot" State capture??

After reading this fascinating article several times, and looking around, I've been wondering; What if regulatory capture gets even stronger? What if instead of laws being attacked, nations themselves were? ...a full merger between State and Corporations? We'd really be up Shit Creek. Corporatocracy? But what about when even the culture/society is assimilated? What if it becomes Orwellian?

....State capture is similar to regulatory capture but differs in the scale and variety of influenced areas and, unlike regulatory capture, the private influence is never overt.[5] The private influences cannot be discovered by lawful processes,[citation needed] since the legislative process, judiciary, electoral process, and/or executive powers have been subverted....

Nowhere in the article is State capture mentioned. (But it does have a "See Also.") It should be described, at least to differentiate it from regulatory capture. That would also better define the dividing lines and powers of regulatory capture.

Nobel Prize winning economist George Stigler suggests capture will become the norm for any regulatory agency. Doesn't that include the Wiki monitors and bots, etc? Should that be in the article? (Who remembers what Winston Smith's job was?) Cheers!
--2602:306:CFCE:1EE0:3044:A2C3:2683:987B (talk) 15:13, 8 November 2018 (UTC)Doug Bashford

What you describe as corporatocracy is already the norm if you live in a 1st-world country. The idea of "3rd-world" countries as poor is a corporatecentric framing used to justify why we need to make these "poor" countries as overregulated as 1st-world countries. Meanwhile people in 1st-world countries push for higher wages because they don't quite understand that the very regulations promised to make them safer are actually a form of bureaucratic bloat that make everything more expensive and, when wages are artificially increased, causes the currency to inflate.71.65.244.201 (talk) 23:56, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Edit warring

Two users appear to be edit warring over the inclusion of a list of examples. I personally think it's quite clear that there are too many examples -- they make up over half the length of the article -- and that they are too US-centric are speculative, but I'd prefer to see a consensus form than to just join the edit warring.

I'd like to see it cut down to five examples max. Thoughts? Smithereen (talk) 05:26, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Hello I am not a veteran Wikipedia editor or anything of the sort, but I have been following the developments on this particle article for several years, so I am very sorry if I am not formatting this correctly. I became interested in this article because I read it when it had the examples section and found it very informative, and when I went to find the article years later I not only found the examples section missing, but also found it very difficult to find modern examples of regulatory capture on the internet. To me the examples section is the most valuable section of the article, and it is difficult to find such a concise list of examples of modern regulatory capture on the web. I think that you are making this criticism in good faith. They are very United States centric examples, and they do form a considerable section of the article, however this example section is an invaluable resource for documenting and educating the public on examples of regulatory capture. I do hope that this section stays up and stays attached to this article so that there is an accessible log of examples of regulatory capture for the public.

If it is too wordy for this article then I think it would be better to move "Examples of Regulatory Capture" to it's own article, then to just remove it outright from the internet. I would still prefer it to stay intact with the article. I also believe that the tricky subject of a regulatory body, given that the regulatory body is assumed to be the most credible authority on what they are regulating, being captured and acting outside the regulatory intentions of the body, has inherent difficulties around being able to find official sources. For what it is worth I find the Examples section to be invaluable. I believe that due to the tricky subject matter any attempt to remove significant portions of the Example sections should be received with caution and skepticism, and reverted until it has been thoroughly reviewed that such revisions were put forward in good faith instead of vandalism. It is clear that you have reviewed the edits on this article, so I also hope you understand why I find mostly anonymous IPs and one editor repeatedly removing more than half of this article without proper justification, worthy of suspicion. 205.178.106.97 (talk) 23:48, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the general spirit of the above comment (of 12 May 2021 at 23:48). Another idea: how about a new article on regulatory capture in the US?NYCJosh (talk) 14:40, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

I also see this idea as a possible improvement, however it may be challenging to find consensus. Still, the potential for a much larger list of examples that span the globe doesn't sound uncalled for as long as there is a consensus of RS. DN (talk) 16:40, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the second commenter’s view that the list in extremely valuable and shouldn’t be pared down. JustinReilly (talk) 06:19, 7 January 2023 (UTC)