[epicureanideal]

Huge and positive in the direction of lawmakers making law, not regulatory bodies that are unelected. Similarly in favor of trials by jury and not by regulatory administrative courts.

A huge win for democracy and freedom that both major US parties and all citizens should celebrate.

[mywittyname]

So...bad.

I'm the person who prefers having regulatory bodies handle matters over a dysfunctional and ignorant congress who is political about everything.

[least]

Government agencies are similarly dysfunctional, though they do have the benefit of (at least hypothetically) hiring subject matter experts to guide policy, but that's kind of why we have committees in the legislative branch.

The other issue of course is that the people leading agencies are playing politics just like everyone else. Do people not remember the controversy surrounding Ajit Pai's leadership of the FCC?

The difference is you vote for your legislators directly and can hold them accountable for their actions. For federal agencies, you're at best indirectly voting for them through voting in a presidental election, but mostly there's no accountability.

[shrubble]

Are you familiar with the term "regulatory capture"?

[Gormo]

To borrow from Babbage, I can't rightly comprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that might lead one to complain about political institutions being political.

The entire purpose of the political (and judicial) process is to reconcile to competing interests and conflicting values of the wide variety of people who make up society.

It is a delusion to hold that the matters regulatory bodies are involved in are somehow entirely empirical questions with unambiguously correct answers -- in reality, there are normative questions, value judgments, trade-offs and conflicts of interest inherent in every decision point.

These decisions are political ones, and allowing regulatory bodies to make inherently political decisions for everyone else can only have the effect of entrenching one faction's interests and values at the expense of everyone else's.

[rsoto2]

our "regulatory bodies" (everyone's fav new word) allowed US companies to poison the blood of every child in the world and those companies and people responsible faced little consequence.

[vdqtp3]

A regulatory body who is not responsible or beholden to the citizenry, and who cannot effectively be balanced by another portion of government?

[justsocrateasin]

Why so much distrust for our civil servants? Have you met any of these people? I grew up in the DC area and both liberal and conservative civil servants are dedicated to truth, science, and the well being of the American people. Sure, there are exceptions, corruption is everywhere, etc. but by and large, the people who work in government agencies have our interests in mind. I say this as a liberal who briefly consulted for U.S. Customs and Border Protection - the people working at that agency understand immigration far better than I ever could. If you left it up to radical politicians to decide immigration, you'd be left with policies that swung too far in either direction every four years.

[Gormo]

> Why so much distrust for our civil servants?

What have they done to earn my trust? Why would I choose to outsource critical decisions pertaining to my own life and affairs to strangers who are not meaningfully accountable to me and have no direct understanding of my values or interests, regardless of how well-intentioned they may be?

What possible reason could there be to give civil servants authority to make decisions that materially impact us without any oversight or accountability?

[vdqtp3]

Yes, I was a government contractor for a significant portion of my career. This certainly didn't encourage me to trust elected officials or agency employees.

[stale2002]

Hey, you can have this position. Just realize that you've lost your future right to complain about project 2025 when that passes and every agency has all their civil servants replaced.

[intended]

Why would they have lost their right to complain?

[stale2002]

They would lose their right to complain because they are putting their faith in civil servants.

Therefore, when civil servants are put into place from the other side, they can't complain.

[kbolino]

The era of a bipartisan civil service is past. The civil service, at least those offices which are in and around DC, is heavily liberal and is trending more so over time. In 2020, DC went 92% for Biden, and Biden also handily won every county with significant government employment in Maryland and Virginia.

Though I couldn't easily find any hard statistics, which may not exist for Hatch Act reasons or otherwise, I'd rate the current composition of the DC-centered civil service at around 70-80% Democrats; defense and intelligence a little lower, health and social services a little higher. If current trends continue, this will reach 90% in many agencies within a decade.

Whether this is a problem or not is a different matter. It is obviously not representative of the country as a whole, though that is only based on a rather shallow and one-dimensional analysis. However, it explains at least part of why this is happening.

[iaw]

Wasn't this decision essentially made by the ultimate regulatory body in the country?

How is the supreme court beholden to citizenry? They have life appointments, they're beholden to no one (except exceedingly rich "friends" apparently)

[vdqtp3]

No, that's the core issue. They are overstepping the authority granted in legislation. If Congress passes an open-ended law saying "Agency X can administer Y in accordance with rules 1,2,3" then the agency should not be able to simply decide that rules 4,5,6 should also be created. This is what has been happening for decades, has been defended by Chevron, and is being forbidden by this decision.

[maximilianburke]

A regulatory body that is staffed by people who are well versed in the intracacies of the industries they are overseeing, rather than Representative Marge McCrazyPants who legitimately believes in the existence of space lasers owned and operated by certain religious adherents.

[Spivak]

First, that's not true. It's just a degree of separation from your vote that you're uncomfortable with.

But yes, the fact that 99% of our government is made up of these people who are a few layers separated from direct political bullshit is why it functions at all.

We are much better off when these agencies operate autonomously and elected representatives can intervene when necessary instead of making them go back to the meat grinder to do anything.

[Firaxus]

I don’t understand this take, because the elected officials could have always made any law regulating this stuff regardless of this ruling. The fact they haven’t tells us something.

And this ruling will result in a lot of the common good (limited resources like fish, air quality, etc) being trampled upon and becoming the profit of a couple companies, taking these goods away (sometimes irrevocably such as in the case of over fishing) for the generations of the future.

We need our regulatory bodies to be able to move faster because by the time congress might respond it will be too late.

[braiamp]

There's a very good reason why technocrats are better prepared to implement policy and enforce it. They usually have vantage points from which they know the intricacies of the field under their purview, understand where compromises must be made and conversely points where it _should not_ compromise. A good administrator needs to have abilities to administrate without second guessing by a third party, unless it's demonstrable that their general objective (which every state institution has) isn't congruent with the actions taken.

Someone made the example of a factory that sells products for ingestion. If the regulator (FDA) doesn't have the tools to effectively protect the public of insecure foodstuff, who will? Consumers? Consumers will eat excrement if the price is low enough, because that's what's is available to them. Consumer power isn't vested in the consumers, it is vested in the regulatory agencies, since these have resources and expertise to recognize unfair, unsafe, anti-competitive, anti-consumer, etc practices, because unlike consumers, these have an advantage point of view, rather than the individual trying to find others with their same condition.

[pavlov]

Nice in theory, but have you seen Congress…? They’re unable to even agree to pay their bills, much less legislate on this level.

[andyjohnson0]

> A huge win for democracy and freedom that both major US parties and all citizens should celebrate.

A huge win for corporations and corporate freedom that one major US party and all shareholders should celebrate.

[mcmcmc]

How is it a win when the US justice system is so incredibly broken? This is a win for rich people and greedy firms who can drown their victims in drawn out legal action by throwing money at them. Jury trials are a zero sum game and are not actually that great at achieving just outcomes. They make sense for individuals, but corporations are NOT people and should not be entitled to the same constitutional rights.

[dyauspitr]

Elected officials are idiots and at the whim of their constituencies. They can’t make reasoned, scientific regulations.

Some lawmaker is going to call for dumping all PFAS into the local river for example.

[AnimalMuppet]

Absolutely true.

But there's also a revolving door between the regulators and the companies they regulate. Sure, Congress is dysfunctional. But regulators are also flawed.

[dyauspitr]

At least that’s an expert, qualified person going astray which is an infinitely better situation than someone with no expertise succumbing to populist and corporate demands because their seat depends on it.

[intended]

We should further defang the SEC. We really need a new round of crypto and mortgage backed securities.

[EricDeb]

I could not disagree more

[iaw]

> A huge win for democracy and freedom that both major US parties and all citizens should celebrate.

You've said this elsewhere in thread but you're making an idealogical claim with no supporting information. Congress is virtually non-functional, the court voted on idealogical lines, it only benefits one party to put more responsibility into congress.

So maybe 50% of the country should be celebrating?

I for one see a lot of problems with this ruling and the secondary and tertiary consequences it will cause.

[ekelsen]

That's one take...