Remember that Wheeler was a former cable industry lobbyist. Unlike Pai, he actually listened to non-industry voices during his proceeding and created rules based on inputs from many different sources. He did not give net neutrality advocates everything we wanted, but he did listen and did create something much better than what the industry has been demanding.

Not necessarily. An obvious conflict of interest would be someone who has a significant financial stake in the industry, or someone who is married to a CEO in that industry, etc.

Also consider this: who is actually qualified to regulate an industry? It is often the case that the only qualified candidates are people who have worked in the industry or who have worked against it (which is just as much of a conflict of interest). Someone who is clueless could be worse: they could be more susceptible to lobbying pressure, since they have no prior knowledge of the issues they are dealing with.

In theory the job of the Senate should be to determine whether or not a candidate will be able to serve the public instead of their former industry bosses. Such people definitely exist -- Tom Wheeler is a prominent example. We also have an impeachment procedure to deal with the possibility of failure i.e. the possibility of the Senate confirming a regulator who fails to serve the public; by now there is ample evidence that confirming Pai was a mistake, but with today's hyper-partisan Congress there is not much hope for impeachment.

Off the top of my head, economists and lawyers?

I don't think you need first-hand experience in an industry to regulate it. We need experts in regulation that can take input from industry and consider the public perspective.

I'm not convinced it's possible to have a career in a field and not have your opinion tainted by that experience. This is why neither industry insiders or opponents should be responsible for regulation.

Sure. In the abstract. But in practicality, it doesn't pass the smell test. Just like if I committed a crime and my mother was judge of the case, there isn't anything specifically wrong with it. But there are potential issues of conflict of interest and she should probably recuse herself from the case.

> in fact, good regulation should include the input of the regulated industries (failure to do so was a causative factor in the bankruptcy of railroads in the 60s and 70s).

Of course regulatory agencies need input from the industry. But there is a difference between providing input and leading the agency. I'm all for input. I'm not too keen on former Directors, CEOs, etc of banks, ISPs, etc leading agencies that regulate those companies. Especially when we have people going back and forth between regulatory agencies and companies.

If you have an ex-Verizon person they shouldn’t have any loyalty to the company. If they do, then there would be a conflict of interest.

Yes, and people should be good at all times and not lie.

For most industries, the only people who are interested enough to become legal/policy nerds are either people who work in the industry in legal/policy executive positions, or a small number of academics who specialize in those industries. The academics are usually a little too theoretical to deal with actually running an agency, and so that pretty much just leaves people from the industry.

It actually could be expected. He is not an elected official, so he can easily do the bidding of corporate masters, instead of serving the public, especially if he feels that legislative power is too dysfunctional to do anything about it. It can happen even with elected officials, even more so with appointed ones.

But Pai has tens of millions of people vehemently opposing him. He is probably recieving jeers and hate mail and rude gestures every time he goes out in public. And people have even started harassing his family - at what point does the money cease to be worth it? Most people would have given up under a hundredth of that backlash.

Pai digs in and fights back against racist death threats? Good for him. Shame on anyone expecting him to back down in the face of that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2QorHUU-Kg

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>You can't say "One thing that should remain Sacred is family, wife, and kids"... when there are families who make a living by working online. If this goes through MILLIONS of people will be fucked... I can assure you .. If this falls through, go into witness protection or some shit because you are gonna get killed. Period. 384 upvotes

>This twatwaffle needs to be burned at the stake. 301 upvotes

These are people promoting Net Neutrality. I don't support that. It is disgusting.

strawman: misrepresenting argument to make it easier to attack

ad hominem: attacking your opponent's character or personal traits instead of engaging with their argument

appeal to emotion: manipulating an emotional response in place of a valid or competing argument

texas sharpshooter: cherry-picking data clusters to suit an argument, or finding a pattern to fit a presumption

But you implied that don't support NN itself, not disgusting comments. So do you support monopolists?

If this guy is going to play dirty then I don't see why others shouldn't fight back.

This was all Ajit's fault, but he's been sacked from public office, rejoice!

Reminds me a story, where there was an official who had an arrangement to receive a payment for every day in prison (if he ever ended up there as a scapegoat for actual criminal overlords, whose crimes he was covering up).

If Verizon is bribing him, they certainly wouldn’t need a former employee to do so. They can just invest in PACs or lobbyists, or even straight up bribe any elected official.

Not necessarily direct employ, but serving their interest. They wouldn't be so stupid as to publicly employ him.

> they certainly wouldn’t need a former employee to do so

It was the path of least resistance for them. He was already in the FCC, and he was always backing the interests of ISP incumbents against the public, if you paid attention.

ethics have gone out the window for this presidency, shouldn't doesn't matter anymore