It's not something I've dreamed up personally. Economists have done a lot of work in this area (Public Choice Theory) in the last 60 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice

Of course, my post above is sharpened and overgeneralized to fit in an online forum. There are more nuances.

A current example in the news is Facebook asking congress to be regulated. This makes little sense from a conventional perspective. From the Regulatory Capture perspective it's an obvious play. Government regulation will be very costly to comply with, and only FB and a few other giants will be able to afford it, thus cementing FBs monopoly position for the foreseeable future.

https://www.insidesources.com/facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-asks...

It sounds like you are dreaming of it tough. To make such a strong statement. It is like saying all corporations end up like Theranos or Enron eventually. Economists do a lot of research and disagree with each other violently. So I will not take your links as any proof that regulatory capture is an inevitable end. Yes it is concerning that it happens but there is absolutely no reason to believe it is the fate of all.

Economists don't disagree on most things, but people who don't like to adjust their beliefs according to Economic science often like to think that.

To be fair, Public Choice theory is certainly on the more controversial half of the subfields.

And of course you shouldn't blindly take some random post on this forum as complete proof of how the world works. That would be a foolish gullibility. Then again, completely rejecting it isn't the wisest thing either. At least that's my view :)

'Economic science'?

When has economics ever been a science?

If all the economics you know of is Macroeconomics, I understand your question. It is an extremely difficult field to study, and we may never really understand it.

But that's a small part of Economics, and the field in general is as hard as any science outside of physics, and had given us an enormous amount of insights we lacked 200 years ago, and contributed immensely to the relative peace and prosperity the world enjoys today.

as much as psychology and history are sciences, depends who you ask.

They are humanities, not sciences.

regulatory capture is an event, threshold, inflection point, or whatever else you want to call it. it isn’t something that just poofs into existence as soon as a regulatory body is created. however, it does seem to be an end state or at least an evolutionary state of many agencies. for example, the faa in this case or the fcc.

just because a regulatory agency did its job by protecting the pulic’s interest doesn’t mean it will always work that way. so your example doesn’t negate the existence of regulatory capture, which is an actual thing and not some political propaganda.

My point is reverse also holds true just because some regulatory agencies was taken over or was allowed to be taken over corporations doe not mean that it is the end state of some sorts. Whe it becomes political propoganda is when you accept that it is the inevitable end state.

I owned a Volkswagen. Why wouldn’t regulatory capture be a thing everywhere?

Why is corruption in some countries is more than others? I dont know the answer but it is.

If anything corruption seems more common in countries with fewer regulations, if anything (not that I have any data to back this up).

Many - not all, but perhaps most - of those who get corrupted are regulators.

So without regulations, there are fewer people to corrupt.