and the business->government pipeline when Eisenhower's advisors all used to work/currently work for The United Fruit Company
If we're considering corporations to be "undemocratic, authoritarian, central-planning (...) communist dictatorships" inside, then so are all democratic governments. The "voice of the people" part of a democratic government is just a surface layer, the tip of an iceberg. Or, more charitably, a rudder of a ship - the part that sets the course, but is nevertheless insignificant in mass compared to the rest of the ship.
The bulk of every government is a top-down hierarchical structure, because it can't really be any other way. You can't hold votes on whether a particular clerk is supposed to be in a particular building on Monday 09:00, and whether they're supposed to approve the form you're trying to submit.
In a representative democracy you get a voice on who executes the orders regardless of whether you are rich or poor or smart or stupid or went to business school with who-knows-who.
If we were in Plato's perfect Republic where all the uninitiated adults were purged from the polis and there were only citizens trained since childhood to seriously consider matters of state, now we'd be in the same sport, if not ballpark.
How would you feel if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission soft-balled Mr. Burns, then one of its commissioners jumped ship to work at Springfield Nuclear?
Even if that commissioner was an enlightened patrician of high moral character, it would create the appearance of corruption. And that alone is corrosive to the rule of law.
People with less integrity, people downstream in industry, might interpret that as a signal that regulators are a joke. They may go on television and say things like "I don't respect the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."
The bigger problem is the reverse; we should really have the government do something like finance's "garden leave", where leaving employees are paid while banned from industry employment, so that whatever competitive info you had is outdated by the time you can take a job in industry again.
If I'm from New Hampshire, Ohio, Maine, South Dakota or somewhere else government is still kinda sorta accountable I'm Outraged(TM).
If I'm from Massachusetts, Louisiana, California, New York, or somewhere else government has been unaccountable for generations I shrug and move on with life.
To be fair, its possible that the poster was merely meaning that the template is “Hire the available ex-regulators of the party currently in power”, but was communicating that by applying the template to the current situation, where we are in the first year of an Administration, so the available supply of regulators meeting that description will generally be from the last Administration of the same party.
When Jamie Dimon discussed the warm relationship between Obama officials and tech in a public speech at Stanford, I assumed it was (1) common knowledge and (2) socially acceptable to discuss in public.
I think the current administration has made excellent personnel choices in the regulatory agencies. I am hopeful for the future.
But I don't think I "called out" anyone. I understand that expression to mean "seeking to direct reflexive mob anger toward a specific individual". It's the practice that's troubling, not the people.
I actually believe that most of the people engaged in this practice (revolving door) have impeccable moral character.
Unfortunately many people call out Obama specifically as a way to take a partisan political jab at the left especially on forums. Trump’s White House was full of crooks who really were there based 100% on who they knew since many were otherwise unqualified. It makes going back a president feel like cherry picking an example but I see you could have done it as Biden would draw from Obama’s sphere more.
I am not aware of the specific Dimon speech you mentioned. Ajit Pai had a close relationship with the ISPs and Telecommunications companies with all their attacks on net neutrality etc. so I do find that the argument that Democrats are so much cozier with tech to be a bit oversimplified.
I agree with your comment overall, just shedding some insights on my thinking
It's so depressing. It's probably better to not know how this stuff works.