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Comment by paulmd | Hacker News Reader

What makes this decision arbitrary or capricious? The administration and the FCC see a policy objective in deregulating the internet, just because you disagree with it doesn't make it arbitrary.

It's going to have definite winners (telcoms) and losers (tech companies) but that is true of literally every type of regulation.

There are respects in which, say, fracking is not the best thing for the public either (lighting your tap water on fire, etc). The party in charge gets to decide what the best interests of the public are, and what policies to use to achieve them.

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What makes this decision arbitrary or capricious?

Note that 'Arbitrary or capricious' is a legal standard of review for a government agency's decisions[0].

"In administrative law, a government agency's resolution of a question of fact, when decided pursuant to an informal rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), is reviewed on the arbitrary and capricious standard. Arbitrary and capricious is a legal ruling where in an appellate court determines that a previous ruling is invalid because it was made on unreasonable grounds or without any proper consideration of circumstances. This is an extremely deferential standard."

It's a pretty low bar, but it exists.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_review#Arbitrary_a...

Sounds a lot like rational-basis but for administrative rulemaking (vs laws). i.e. the lowest possible bar the courts can impose. All you need is a reason this would accomplish some valid goal - doesn't have to be a good reason, doesn't have to have any basis in fact, it certainly doesn't have to be one you agree with. Just, "can you give me a reason for this law".

So, the reason here is "promoting competition". No need to demonstrate that this rule actually does it (in fact it does not, but that doesn't matter).

Courts ain't gonna do shit on this, sorry.

> What makes this decision arbitrary or capricious?

Disregard of the integrity of the legally-mandatory public comment process is, in and of itself, strong evidence that there is a violation of procedural rules governing regulation.

The public comment process is not an opinion poll, it's a mechanism to make sure the FCC has all the relevant information at its disposal. They are under no obligation to favor any viewpoint just because it's popular.

You've actually got it backwards. If this were a case of an Executive Branch run amok, the proper move at this point would be for Congress to pass a law and fix it. And Congress itself is definitely an opinion poll, we call them 'elections'.

Elections have consequences, and administrators have a large amount of leeway in how their departments get run.

> The public comment process is not an opinion poll, it's a mechanism to make sure the FCC has all the relevant information at its disposal. They are under no obligation to favor any viewpoint just because it's popular.

Which is a straw man, as I did not argue anything about failing to treat the public comment process as a poll.

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