That said, i think there are much bigger problems these days unfortunately.
The legal community is largely responsible by abdicating their responsibility as officers of the law and tolerating concepts like "corporate personhood" and "lobbying" (legislator bribery). If those two tings could be eradicated, so many societal problems would be solved.
> The fight puts Pai at odds with the cable industry that cheered his many deregulatory actions when he led the FCC.
How does this fit into your world model? He's fighting against the groups he was a shill for in his role at FCC.
Lobbyists don't have to lobby for the same positions / organizations / goals their entire lives. They usually follow the money.
Or is it just the group that's willing to pay the most (and I guess Ajit Pai is the most expensive lobbyist)?
Because the article quotes from groups like Spectrum for the Future, which is an industry group funded by cable companies like Comcast, which are the former bad guys.
I just want to understand a coherent world model in which you can confidently draw an opinion on a complex subject base on the actions of one guy that was in the news 10 years ago.
https://www.ntia.gov/sites/default/files/spectrum-for-the-fu...
There was no value judgment made in the previous comment about which group is worst. The word 'mercenary' is pretty self explanatory here. It's a bit contrived and tedious to view any discussion of the news as an opportunity to invent each speakers' worldview in your head, before they even speak about it, eh?
Edit:
If you think politics is entirely about budgets and taxes and not human rights or a fundamental respect for democratic governance, then yes, they're close - in that sense, there's barely any difference between the Government of the UK and that of Hungary's Victor Orban, since they both provide universal healthcare to their people. However, there's obviously major differences between these governments that go well beyond the myopic lens of stated party policy positions.
I think the parent comment is trying to dispell the not entirely unpopular perception that the revolving door involves some sort of quid quo pro. The typical telling is that while working in government they'll enact policies that are favorable to some company, with the understanding that the company will give him a cushy job as a "lobbyist" in exchange.
Contrast this with actual public service.
See my other comment. If "public service" involves taking a job with mediocre pay, poor job security, and being barred from the field for 5 years, you'll only end up with rich partisan hacks and ideologues taking the post. All the competent people would be working at companies.
The idea of service is absent, and it is absent by design.
“We live in capitalism, and its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.”
You mean like every other employee on the planet?
Some people are willing to compromise their own economic status to pursue what they feel are larger, more important goals.
Some people have ethical and/or moral lines they will not cross no matter how much money they are offered.
So no, not like every other employee on the planet.
You would think he'd be lobbying for cable companies, but a new boogie man has entered, the mobile industry. And now cable companies are mad at him. Oh and also consumer advocates, which apparently has the same incentives now apparently.
At least they admit as much later:
> The fight puts Pai at odds with the cable industry that cheered his many deregulatory actions when he led the FCC.
But this is kind of weird considering the "revolving door" policy and the implicit promise of future rewards
A few paragraphs in you get to some substance:
> "During the first Trump administration, the US was determined to lead the world in wireless innovation—and by 2021 it did," Pai wrote. "But that urgency and sense of purpose have diminished. With Mr. Trump's leadership, we can rediscover both."
> Pai's op-ed drew a quick rebuke from a group called Spectrum for the Future, which alleged that Pai mangled the facts.
> "Mr. Pai's arguments are wrong on the facts—and wrong on how to accelerate America's global wireless leadership," the vaguely named group said in a May 8 press release that accused Pai of "stunning hypocrisy." Spectrum for the Future said Pai is wrong about the existence of a spectrum shortage, wrong about how much money a spectrum auction could raise, and wrong about the cost of reallocating spectrum from the military to mobile companies.
I still have no idea whats true, but I will note the Spectrum for the Future is a lobbyist group (including tech companies like Airspan, Celona, Federated Wireless and comm providers like Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications). But at least they have a better name!
The article doesn't actually explain any of the issues or complexity, it just tries to say "Pai is aligned with [group], and [group] is bad. The article relies heavily on other lobbyist groups, that now include big cable which are the good guys now.
I have no idea what to think but my collective understanding of this issue somehow dropped after reading this article.
The clothes we wear, the food we eat, where and how our children are schooled, the devices and services we have available, consumer rights for said devices and services, etc.
What a nice hole to shove your head in to ignore the world around you.
What would the ethics committee be considering?
>possibly barring him from working in a related field for eg 5 years
So anyone who wants to be a political appointee either has to be a total outsider in the field they're supposed to be regulating, or take a 5 year pay cut? Given that political appointees tend to be partisan hacks anyways, this is only going to make that problem worse. It basically invites a repeat of Musk and DOGE.
Its not just that. Its typical for lobbyist to go back into public service and influence policy on behalf of the companies they work for.
Think Dick Cheney + Halliburton and the Iraq War. Halliburton was guaranteed a great year, thanks to the former VP.
And business-friendly, anti-regulation regulators get regarded a but too handsomely at the expense of the US citizen that pays their salary. Example: Scott Gottlieb joining the board of directors at Pfizer after leading FDA. Don't forget that Pai worked for Verizon before joining FCC.
Wheeler was also once President of NCTA, which is the main trade group for cable companies. He did so well there that he was inducted into the Cable Television Hall of Fame, becoming the only person to be in both the cable and wireless halls of fame.
It's like any other specialized industry. Your skills are not always transferable and it makes the job pool quite narrow, and geographic.
This latest meme punctuation trend sucks...
I've been reading US english for about 60 years. This punctuation is not common outside of modern meme space.
A big part of what makes it suck, is it's lack of distinction from the hyphen. Apparently the big difference is that it's 0.3mm longer 8-/
I'd advocate a semicolon, or parenthesis, or anything else with spaces, because this punctuation sucks.
It's just more commonly used in literary writing than in technical writing.
A) This is just not the case, they've only become popular _because_ of the prevalence in LLM generated slop
B) Even if it were, it doesn't stop them from sucking
Semicolons have a space after them.
Parenthesis have spaces.
English (and most others) is a space delimited language (note the space demarcating that parenthetical statement from the rest of the sentence).
Along with the indistinguishable difference from a hyphen, this adds up to suck.
Let me quote from wikipedia:
In modern Wit all printed Trash, is Set off with num'rous Breaks⸺and Dashes—
This is probably why they mostly stopped appearing after the 1700s...
_I have a fantastic offer for you, that you won't want to miss!_
londons_explore•8mo ago