Not many people are anti-science. It's just when opinion gets passed for science that we should be worried because opinions are instructed by agenda. And if there is a funding motive behind that agenda, well, your gonna have problems with corruption.
From what I've seen, most people are pro-sciencism, not science. Science is difficult and rarely provides easy answers. If it does not affect them, sure---nobody really cares about the big bang, dark matter, etc., and astronomy provides pretty pictures---but if the question interacts with their jobs, cultures, or lifestyles then they are very happy picking the result that agrees with them and ignoring any nuance or counter-evidence.
Would you or the parent have any specific examples? The only thing I can think of is the different values assigned to human life by different agencies.
Write a law that makes penalties for speeding without directly defining the speed limit on every road. Then write a law giving the department of motor vehicles the ability to define a different speed limit for each stretch of road.
As such government agencies aren’t actually creating laws, but the laws are written to give their choices legal weight.
Assuming agencies only have advisory capabilities and that regulation itself is handled by lawmakers directly. The determination of what is safe or not becomes a matter of who has the best lobbyists; any actual damages will occur years down the line, will be visible only in statistical terms (i.e. a higher rate of leukemia), and will only affect people without significant political power. This is a textbook description of an issue which democratic institutions are spectacularly bad at handling: expert knowledge is required to understand the issue, there is no immediacy, and the consequences are delayed while the costs are up-front. Consider climate change---it will cost a shit-ton of money, cause a crap-load of damage, and yet humanity has collectively done essentially nothing to prevent it in something like 40 years.
Now, it's possible that legislative regulation could work, if the legislators essentially rubber-stamp the advisories from the agency, but still allows political influence in the issues. Consider PVC and cigarettes.
The approach, then, is for the legislature to delegate authority for regulation, within specific parameters, to an executive agency. The agency then sets the regulations, which the legislature can override with exactly the same ease as they would regulate them in the parent's model.
I am unaware of any country that relies on legislative regulation and is regarded in any sense as successful. In fact, political interference in regulations is almost universally regarded as a bad thing.
Anybody have a specific example of regulatory excesses?
[At one point I got trapped in a conversation with a cousin's husband, who had recently gotten fined by OSHA or the state equivalent because he had diesel stored in the correctly color-coded container, but it did not have "diesel" written on it. I thought about mentioning people who didn't know the color codes (Red = gasoline, yellow = diesel, blue = kerosene, and green = oils) or about the color-blind, but I prefer to avoid arguments.]
The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Procedure_Act...
Technically, in the US, executive branch agencies do two things: (1) sponsor actual science (either directly by employees, or by grant to third parties), (2) decide on how to apply scientific results.
"The EPA" is more of a body concerned with "What do we do about scientific results?" than "What is scientific truth?"
It often conducts research, usually in areas where private industry has no incentive to do so, but that's not why it exists.
And historically the dichotomy between science and policy has been reflected in the organization: scientists were highly discouraged from advocating policy positions in their research results, and policymakers were highly discouraged from influencing science.
You are talking about the scientific method.
Science is generally used as a broader term that includes how practice of the scientific method relates to society.
If the rest of law enforcement is any indication then this should work out quite well and align the enforcers with what people actually want.
Look at poor city police departments. This is basically what they do. They prioritize the crimes that get their bosses yelled at by the politicians. It certainly isn't great for the officers who have to work in it but it's a great way to ensure resource allocation at least kinda sorta reflects the will of the people.
The FBI and EPA have no shortage of "you spent your resources doing what?" themed missteps. There needs to be some way to get them to do what people actually want them to do.
Which is ... nothing, in regards to regulatory matters, at least. Until it begins to affect them, in which case it becomes a crisis requiring immediate and massive changes, if the people in question have enough political clout.
Mass marginal murderers versus highly concentrated murderers. ;)
Say Congress writes a law saying it’s illegal to dump toxic waste in a river. Pretty clear cut, right?
Well, law rolls out, and now you have an enforcement problem with all the edge cases. For instance, what counts as a river? Does the drainage ditch behind the building count? Does the creek? Does it matter if it has water in it right now, or will have water in it later?
Also, what counts as toxic waste? If a substance is poisonous at say 100ppm and considered toxic - what happens if we dilute it so it’s 100ppb. Still toxic waste? What if the background level in the tap water in the area is 100ppb?
Is it dumping if a building containing the waste catches on fire and falls in the river? Does it have the same penalties? What if it was arson?
These edge cases come up during the regular course of enforcing these laws, and at some point someone has to decide what the right thing to do is. Situations can change too - say a dry river wasn’t considered a river - until a massive conglomerate used that ‘loophole’ and started dumping massive amounts of toxic waste into dry river beds, that then flooded and poisoned a bunch of people. Do you want to wait for congress to get it’s act together, or do you want an agency to step in and follow the intent of the law, clarifying the prior ‘dry rivers are not rivers’ stance to ‘a channel that has, or will have, predictable seasonal water flow’?
The rule making process is designed to give visibility, and predictability into this process. It used to be people would just do whatever and never formalize these decisons, or formalize them internally and never publish them so people could challenge them.
Congress can always override the agency if needed. If you think congress is incapable of oversight then you are just for complete deregulation.
Federal laws should be simple and straight forward enough that most people agree with them. The only way to achieve that is to have some accountability to those people.
And that seems obvious enough that it really does just sound like you're wanting deregulation.
And if not, then it sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it too.
This is not true, most people don't really care. They might have a team they root for, but even those seemingly braindead people that are posting on the internet towing their party line are just looking for a way to fit in. They are all capable of thinking for themselves, and most of them will have a reasonable conversation with you if you run into them in the real world.
Seriously all I am saying is that regulation should be slow to change, and be approved by elected officials. I also think there should be way more congressional districts, and senators. Currently there is way too small of a sample size to be representative of the population. Basically I'm in favor of more democracy not less. Honestly if it wasn't such a waste of time I would be ok with replacing congress with open voting on every issue.
I think the burden of proof is on you to show why you think congress is capable of oversight.
Selection bias, etc, but when I reflect on this I can think (and quickly find) dozens of instances, large and small, where congress has demonstrated "oversight incompetence".
They need to show that congress is capable of that.
It is inevitable to have some sort of policy-making involved, even for an agency, because the very strategy they choose to reach a certain goal (set by politicians) or enforce a law (set by politicians) may itself be a choice between political alternatives.
However, your idea of agencies not writing policies... is not gonna last long. Congress is already ineffective and broken and there is not much on the horizon to change the reasons behind its dysfunctionality. There's a sad reason for the steady expansion of executive rights, and as long as this isn't fixed it is foolish IMO to force the executive to rein these in.
Edit: not to mention that, unlike government agencies, Congress is extremely corrupt. What is to prevent polluters from simply buying off Congress?
Why would they be any less corrupt? What is the DEA's stance on cannabis again? No person or group is above being paid off, or acting in their own interests over those of the country. Which is why power should be spread out as much as possible, to mitigate the risk.
Government agencies have historically proven themselves to be largely immune to the wild flip-flop at the political top. This is the kernel of truth behind the Trumpists' claim of the "deep state" conspiracy.
> What is the DEA's stance on cannabis again?
The same unfounded-in-science crap it was many decades ago, which further proves my point: it is incredibly hard to change the course of a government agency away from its mandate.
I have a bit of experience in working with a financial industry group that coordinated with regulators in different nations (US, EU, UK, Japan, Brazil, Singapore, etc.) in finalizing the details of rules for a fairly esoteric area of finance. None of this stuff is taught in schools except in the most general/theoretical terms. It's very complex and tough to understand without being well versed in: financial markets, stochastic calculus, derivatives, risk models, monte-carlo simulations, trade execution, inter-institution asset liabilities, etc, etc, etc. It's literally impossible to even know half this stuff the regulations covered exists without having worked in the industry for an extended period of time. Much less understand the implications of rules changes.
From the various calls I sat in on, a few things that became clear to me was that:
1) while industry did have a significant say in how the rules were eventually setup, the overriding goal was a) clarity and b) uniformity across jurisdictions. the exact details were (usually) not quite as important.
2) while regulators (i.e. government) left much of the details to the industry group, they a) set the broad goals and guidelines and b) did sometimes make decisions that nearly everyone on the industry side did not like. But those decisions were always accepted in the end (often with lots of offline complaining) -- industry didn't really have a choice.
3) regulators clearly had authority over industry even though the people there were ex-industry. They knew it and everyone in industry clearly knew it.
Essentially, it was regulators off-loading a bunch of work on industry. If they had to pay for it themselves, it would have cost a silly amount of money to set the rules for an sub-industry 99% of people have never even heard of.
Where corruption comes into play is what those "broad goals and guidelines" are. And that's decided at the legislative level, not at the bureaucratic level. Perhaps things are different for the EPA and manufacturing. I can't say as I don't have any experience interacting with the EPA.
I... what? I’m glad I don’t live in that dystopia.
Environmental pollution directly results in increased human death (due to cancers/etc), and GP wants the people responsible to be liable for those deaths. Under this scheme, accidental pollution would then be the equivalent of manslaughter, and intentional pollution would be the equivalent of murder. I'm personally not a fan of executing murderers, but many states in the US execute them.
But even setting that aside, we are talking about capital punishment for a crime, the evidence for which is statistical and divorced from the actual crime itself. The managers who make the decision to pollute aren't on the scene leaving their fingerprints. As this is not something for which there is a smoking gun proof of culpability, which makes it ripe for abuse. Do you really think the people who called the shots are going to be the one on the executioner's block, or will it be some mid-level fall guy? And what about manufactured controversy? How difficult would it be to make a spurious connection between some unlikeable business and an environmental disaster, getting a jury to give that business' managers the death penalty? What an upgrade to cancel culture: now you can get your opponents legally murdered.
Finally, the actual suggestion here is that C-level leadership and board members be executed for crimes their company commits. Note this means that someone lower down in the organization could commit a crime which causes the CEO or board members to be executed. So we're talking about killing people who might not even have been involved in the decision at all!
I stand by my prior description of this proposed society as dystopia.
My cable company doesn't have to go through Congress to pass legislation to have me comply in paying my bill. They can choose to give me late fees and ultimately cut my service, incentivizing me to comply. Does that mean that corporate middle managers, who were not democratically appointed, are regulating my behavior on par with the governing body of the US? This may seem like a dissimilar comparison, but corporate entities establish policies that effect consumer behavior all the time. Most decisions in general aren't made democratically, given the need for specialized knowledge and effective/time-sensitive execution for many decisions. Congress still makes the laws, agencies, and pretty much every private/public organizations, make policy. The assumption Congress would be better because they'd "balance all other concerns" has no bearing on reality.
If your goal is to freeze all environmental law at where it is today, I agree, neutering the EPA is the best way to accomplish that.
If your goal is to have democratic oversight over the EPA, you already have that - by virtue of voting for the executive. You're essentially grousing that the executive has more power than you'd like them to have in a scenario where their main check-and-balance - the legislature - is busy playing golf and arguing over suit colors. Okay, sure, that's definitely an argument you can make, but that's not going to change as long as the legislature remains deadlocked, and unwilling to legislate.
If the legislature wanted to, it could trivially overturn policies, by passing new laws. It doesn't, though. Your democratic oversight is already here - its just that the representatives you voted for disagree with you on whether or not they should do anything.
In a battle between regulatory policy and regulatory law, law will win nine times out of ten. Your lawmakers aren't fighting that battle, though. This is not a problem with your system, this is a problem with your lawmakers. Democracy is giving us exactly what we've asked for.