[jessaustin]

No one who has read your link would then question whether the chief executive is a principal: of course not. In polities who aspire to representative government, agents are anyone in public employ. Principals are the rest of us. Our interests are not served by solving problems without oversight, as GP suggests.

[smcin]

But still unclear which among us is the Principal, in US-style democracy? Principals are only the tiny few among us who control election outcomes, through funding/ influencing/ lobbying or (rarely) affecting the outcome in one of the 8% of House seats that are still competitive [0]. Even if you believe it is all the rest of us, we certainly aren't equally influential principals.

> Our interests are not served by solving problems without oversight, as GP suggests.

Sure, that's a given. But many of us think the oversight is working on our behalf, yet isn't. (Compare e.g. the sham of the TikTok oversight hearings vs the not-very-effective Facebook ones.)

[0]: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/weekly-score/2023/02/27...