There are revolving doors between many private corporations and the agencies created to regulate them. Big Pharma. Big Tech. Big Ag. and especially Big Banks & investment firms.
All federal and state agencies must be audited every 2 years to ensure they’re serving their authorized missions to protect the public from abuse of corporate power. We must seek total transparency and meaningful public accountability.
One of the worst is the revolving door between Wall Street and the CIA. The CIA was essentially created by Wall Street. Read Whitney Webb’s One Nation Under Blackmail.
All revolving doors must be eliminated if we’re ever going to eliminate corruption of our institutions.
Absolutely agree, David. This was going to be my first policy post but happy to see someone already put it down. This is common sense. We can not have former regulators moving into the industry that they regulated. It is analogous to a police officer entering white collar crime. These industries are riddled with racketeering, blackmailing, murder etc.
I would even add the idea of avoiding anyone being grandfathered in with this law. Not sure if that would be possible. The issues being that let’s say someone just migrated into one of these private entities… well they still might be a head honcho for 25+ years. We need to find a way to hold those recent officials accountable as well.
Effective legislation in this regard is tricky business. Together with term limits (incredibly difficult to enact by the individuals it would limit), closing the revolving doors at regulatory agencies might be the most important reforms required in government. I would add random mandatory forensic accountancy of all elected officials and bureaucrats as part of their oath of office and contractual obligations as government employees.
Further to the above, a form of lifelong renunciation of extraordinary wealth would not be too much to ask of our public servants, would it? It is a privilege to be a doctor or a senator, not a way to get rich. Let that privilege and status be sufficient reward, perhaps enhanced by advisory positions with modest remuneration made available by the departments in which they have served with distinction.
A wealth cap gets in the way of the market and people who do well need to be eligible to succeed. I agree it should not come from elected positions as they are meant to be “public service” but a good doctor may accumulate wealth and that should not be controlled by the government.
Some of my thinking on how to help stop revolving doors would be that for a minimum of 5 years but possibly equal to however many yeara of service someone is in a regulatory position they should not be able to move to a position that would have been a conflict of interest from that regulatory system.
The only concern would be to ensure there are appropriate jobs in the inbetween. Would overseeing clinical trials be allowed? These regulations are important to fight cronyism but we must also ensure that we don’t screw everyone over in the process.