Tech will end up exactly the same way finance is (if it isn’t already there). Employees will work for the regulatory enforcement agency for around five years on shit pay learning how the system works from the inside and making contacts in the industry before leaving and being ushered into a tech firm with a nice six figure salary. Meanwhile, no regulations will really get enforced apart from the odd token case against a big company so the agency can continue to justify its existence and funding. The fine against the big company will be a complete drop in the ocean and will have already been accounted for well in advance by said company as a natural cost of doing business. No-one will go to prison for any wrong doing unless it’s a fraud case where someone’s tried to cheat the company and the regulators for their own individual gain in which case there’ll be made an example of to ensure all the other players stay in line and don’t rock the apple cart. Repeat until the end of the time.
Any attempts to appoint new leadership to reform the existing corrupt agencies will most likely end up being sabotaged from within by bureaucrats who gain from the system remaining dysfunctional. The only two ways you can effectively change it are:
- setting up complete new ‘start up’ agencies and appointing people to wind down and distract the power players in the existing ones.
- going full nuclear like Elon just did at Twitter and firing the majority of the workforce
So I first heard about it as a young man in the early 2010s when I encountered a woman who worked in the financial regulation sector in the UK who told me exactly what I just summed up in the first paragraph. Google “revolving door $INDUSTRY” and you’ll get a pretty good feel for how widespread it is. Naturally it’s downplayed by the official narrative such as in the last of the following three links:
If you’re based in the UK, buy an issue or two of Private Eye who will often name such people as well as the staggering amount of general corruption at play in UK politics.
As for the last paragraph, I recently heard some system thinkers express similar sentiments based on how FDR managed to enact real change and how most presidents have failed to achieve much in comparison since.
> During his first term, FDR quickly found that the federal bureaucracy, specifically at the Treasury and State Departments, moved too slowly for his tastes. FDR often chose to bypass these established channels, creating emergency agencies in their stead.
In time however, these new agencies become bloated bureaucratic nightmares themselves. In my opinion, the circle of life extends to organisations as well life forms. I view economic booms and busts as a “changing of the seasons”: old organisations that can no longer compete die and new ones take their place. The problems start occurring when government intervenes to keep zombie companies around because they’re “too big to fail”.
What leads you to think this will happen with privacy laws in the EU? Out of all jurisdictions they seem to be one of the ones you shouldn't fuck around with. They take time to pick up speed, but once they do, lord help you.
Wherever there is lots of money and power at stake there will be corruption to some degree. The EU might be better than most but it is absolutely still there.
Any attempts to appoint new leadership to reform the existing corrupt agencies will most likely end up being sabotaged from within by bureaucrats who gain from the system remaining dysfunctional. The only two ways you can effectively change it are:
- setting up complete new ‘start up’ agencies and appointing people to wind down and distract the power players in the existing ones.
- going full nuclear like Elon just did at Twitter and firing the majority of the workforce