You know your agency is pathetic at its job when Tea Party Republicans tell you to go harder on industry — especially in a Republican Administration that makes deregulation an end in itself and where despising government interference in “the market” is religious orthodoxy. So it was quite noteworthy to see Freshman Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) tear the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) a new one for its failure to do anything about how tech companies generally (and Google and Facebook specifically) vacuum up everyone’s personal information, crush competition, swear general allegiance to Gellert Grindelwald and sell us out to the Kree. “The approach the FTC has taken to these issues has been toothless,” Hawley accused in his letter (apparently not meaning this adorable night fury over here).
I’m not going to argue with Senator Hawley’s characterization of the FTC. But since he is new in town I think it is important for him to understand why the FTC (and other federal agencies charged with consumer protection) have generally gone from fearsome growling watchdog to timorous toothless purse dog with laryngitis. Short answer, Congress has spent the last 40 years training agencies to not do their job and leave big industry players with political pull alone by abusing them at hearings, cutting their budgets, and — when necessary — passing laws to eliminate or massively restrict whatever authority the agency just exercised. Put another way, Congress has basically spent the last 40 years conditioning consumer protection agencies to think about enforcement in much the same way Alex DeLarge was conditioned to think about violence in A Clockwork Orange, keep applying negative stimulus until the very thought of trying to enforce the law against any powerful company in any meaningful way makes them positively ill.
I explain all this, and the problem with “public choice theory” as applied here in Policyland, below . . .