>A certain amount of creative destruction is necessary...

This sounds truthy and even casts instability as somehow heroic, but it's an oversimplification and hides similar fallacies. It also implies that instability for the sake of instability is default-positive.

The best way to avoid capture is via law / regulation. There should be term limits, campaign finance reform, more regulation against lobbyists and the revolving door, etc. We can't have Citizens United then wonder how capture happened. And, no amount of instability will address that.

In fact, instability in this environment can serve as cover for increased capture, as there is no bulwark against reassignment of winners. This is likely what we're seeing with Musk right now.

Stability here doesn't mean nothing changes. It means things change in an orderly, reasoned manner to include thoughtfully preventing capture.

> The best way to avoid capture is via law / regulation. There should be term limits, campaign finance reform, more regulation against lobbyists and the revolving door, etc. We can't have Citizens United then wonder how capture happened. And, no amount of instability will address that.

On the contrary. We tried to reform and improve the system through the normal channels for decades. We failed. The system is evidently already captured and something a little more radical is warranted.

>On the contrary. We tried to reform and improve the system through the normal channels for decades

Did we though? I don't remember the last time campaign finance reform was on the national ballot or lobbying regulation or term limits. People aren't even talking about it.

The problem is that the majority of the voting public is easily distracted and not clamoring for these things that can bring about constructive change.

But, that distraction is not random. The people who push for and benefit most from this distraction (and subsequent failure to change) happen to also do things like donate $250M+ to help buy a president, then convince followers that something "a little more radical" is needed to help seal the deal.

Oh, and they happen to also have billions in government contracts.

But, they are eliminating capture? If ever there was a fox guarding the henhouse. "The Onion" couldn't make this up.

Without agreeing or disagreeing with you, that's irrelevant. The law is the law. If it specifies that a particular agency must exist, and how it should function, then that's what the executive is required to implement.

In theory, at least. If Trump and his minions decide to do something else, there isn't really anyone with the power to stop him, absent impeachment.

I was replying to someone who said "You could argue all you want about that, but stability is a desire feature of the state. It not only helps citizens to be able to have long term planning, but also saves the resources by not needing to figure out how things work constantly."

Legal questions aside, I think that's an overly simplistic take; a certain amount of stability is desirable, but it's possible to be too stable as well as too unstable.

The stability here comes from not having to wonder what the next guy is going to do wrt taxes, etc. because those need to pass a process that would be public in congress. Stability doesn't mean staleness. It means that things don't change willy nilly.

Right, and that level of process allows a certain amount of capture and exploitation. E.g. companies will game the tax code in the confidence that they'll get plenty of warning before any loopholes are closed. It's hard to imagine the 2017 change to how corporate repatriated income is taxed happening under any other president, and that rule change not only collected a bunch of revenue from companies that had been engaging in tax avoidance schemes, but also burned them enough to deter that kind of gamesmanship, at least for a couple of years.