[slg]

I am in no way defending Pai, but I generally disagree with the idea that a regulator working in the industry before or after they are done serving publicly is definitive proof of corruption (which you seem to be implying).

That isn't to say that the revolving door nature of these regulators and private industry can't or even doesn't lead to corruption, but what are the alternatives? The regulators should obviously be experts in the industry they regulate. If you forbid anyone high up at the FCC from ever working in the communications industry, what experts are left? You would basically limiting these jobs so they can only be done by academics, which would introduce its own set of problems.

[tomdell]

A high-level representative of any industry is going to have personal connections in that industry and personal reasons for not wanting to regulate the industry as it should be regulated in the best interest of the people.

I don't see any benefit to someone in charge of regulating the communications industry having ever worked in communications. An intelligent person - and not necessarily an academic - a lawyer would be capable, for instance - with no personal connections to people high up in the industry is immensely preferable and has much less potential for corruption.

[jcranmer]

> I don't see any benefit to someone in charge of regulating the communications industry having ever worked in communications.

If you replace "communications" with "construction", you're advocating that the people regulating building codes should have absolutely no prior experience actually building things, and I imagine that is not a stance you would take. Why then is communication so different from construction?

The point of regulatory agencies is to take the aspirational goals of laws passed by the legislature and turn them into concrete, executable frameworks. This means you need people who are far more experienced on how companies are going to react to changes in regulation than the people who write the laws. Without personal experience, people are going to have rely a lot more on the corporate lobbying to make sense of what's going on, and they're going to have less basis to understand intentional misdirection in corporate responses.

[slg]

I think you are downplaying the complexities of these regulatory jobs if you think they can be adequately done by any intelligent person regardless of their knowledge of the industry. That admittedly may be less important for the FCC compared to other agencies, but would you be comfortable if the head of the FDA was a lawyer rather than a doctor or scientist?