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Comment by kchoudhu | Hacker News Reader

If Zuckerberg has any game at all, he will welcome this investigation, 'educate' the regulators, and then build a regulatory moat around Facebook that no one can breach.

The big four banks did this after 2009, and they are even more entrenched and systematically important than they were before. Expect Facebook to borrow liberally from their playbook.

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This is called regulatory capture if anyone wants to read up more on it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Can you elaborate on exactly how "big four banks" built a regulatory moat that no one can breach?

The regulatory costs of running a bank are much higher now than before the financial crisis. This means that the chance of an upstart challenging the big players has actually gone down, even though some of the regulation was meant to address concerns of "too big to fail".

Oh but that regulation is on the chopping block right now:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/10-years-aft...

Which is the Trump administration is trying to change that to give smaller regional banks a fighting chance. It's weird tat people are against this.

I agree. The tribalism in the current political climate of the US is really damaging on all sides. Trump has done more than a handful of good things and a lot of my friends/family don't want to hear it. Just like my Dad (Fox News watcher, Limbaugh fan, etc...) almost foams at the mouth when you mention Obama/Clinton; it's crazy. He's been conditioned. It reminds of the effects of the two minutes hate from 1984[0]. Too many citizens are completely disengaged from the political process and too many of those that are have bought into these cults of personality.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate

Zuckerberg did an interview on CNN last week and basically alluded to what you are saying: http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/22/technology/regulation-politi...

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