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Comment by ceilingcorner | Hacker News Reader

It is normal for someone so young to be put in a high position of power purely to address one issue? (Tech monopolies)

From what I understand, Ms. Khan wrote some influential papers against tech monopolies. Congress, wanting to address these monopolies, put her in charge of the FTC purely for this reason, as she has very little experience in anything I would assume to be necessary for running a massive government office.

It seems odd to me, but I don’t really follow the FTC. Am I just being cynical? I don’t get this move and it feels very one-dimensional to me.

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Yes, though the age is a red herring: they are colloquially known as "patsies" or "fall guys" [1]. When faced with a problem with an obvious but costly solution, a common strategy is to find a popular but incompetent/inexperienced individual to put in charge of fixing it. Their incompetence/inexperience leads to an inevitable worsening of the problem until everyone is willing to pay the cost of the obvious solution, at which point the fall guy/gal's popularity is used to create The Downfall distraction. Meanwhile unpopular politicians implement what they wanted to all along while scoring political brownie points for saving the day and ammunition for next time.

My mom says I should have been a politician...

Edit: I'm not saying that's what's happening now. I have no idea whether Lina Khan is qualified or not

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_guy

While it is really more of a mid-size agency at 1000-ish folks, there are typically also a number of career execs managing each of the divisions to help assist the executive in delivering on their vision for the organization. Further, the FTC is a commission, so while the Commissioner is technically the head of the org, all of the other commissioners also have their roles day to day.

Personally, I think 32 is an OK age for such an appointment, especially if you have background in relevant subject matter. For many of these appointments you're looking for someone to set direction / mission, rather than micromanagement if the org is already functioning at a relatively high level (FTC is #2 ranked employer for mid-sized agencies which tells me they're doing OK by that standard).

The FTC certainly has been slow about dealing with Qualcomm/Google/Apple WRT phones. That may sound like a silly complaint but phones have almost completely replaced personal computers for most people along with almost every form of communication (both n to n and 1 to n.) Phone OS vendors abusing their position as monopolists on user's access to information is a serious threat to democracy and it's not something that can be just ignored.

If you read her writing or listen to her speak it will quickly become clear that she's a highly intelligent and measured individual that has a nuanced understanding of these issues. IMO she is eminently qualified for the position.

Given that our society idolizes 20-something billionaire tech founders without questioning their capacity to run massive billion-dollar companies, why is it such a stretch to envision a 30-something running a government office?

I don’t know why people keep making this comparison. Billionaire founders become billionaire founders because they build companies and manage people. No one appoints them to the office of CEO of a completely unrelated company at age 25.

The main function of a federal agency head is navigating the political landscape; they're the bureaucratic janitors tasked with maintaining the organization so its subject matter experts can make better decisions. She has demonstrated that she has political capital by getting the appointment and confirmation, just like billionaire founds have demonstrated they have financial capital.

This is probably the most viable take. It doesn’t exactly make our government leaders look too bright, though...

Thanks for the comment.

I don’t know why you have a problem with one 20-something managing a ton of people because the market rewarded his idea while you have a problem with a different 30-something managing a ton of people.

To argue that young founders that run big companies are capable while questioning if young bureaucrats are is purely ageist.

This line of reasoning makes no sense.

A founder CEO is there because it’s his/her company. They built it up, they grew the company and grew with it. That’s how a business works.

This is not the same thing as a person with little or no managerial experience being appointed to one of the the highest offices available.

Your comparison would make sense if young businesspeople with little experience were made CEOs at blue chip companies. This obviously doesn’t happen very often.

32 doesn't seem "so young" to me, given that you only need to be 35 to be president.

That is an interesting comparison in theory only; in reality, the youngest president elected was 42 (JFK). The median age at inauguration is 55.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_Unit....

What was life expectancy back in 1776? A quick search suggests 54 for men.

As the sibling notes, the current median age for a US president at inauguration is 55. Most people weren't expected to even live to 55 back then.

(Although, you can make the argument that life expectancy figures can be skewed downward by high infant mortality to the point where they're not that useful a measure anymore.)

a talk that explains her stance on things https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XujlefsuTS0

American politics is a sequence of issues left to fester followed by severe overreactions.

Mark Zuckerberg is 37. How are we deciding who has power? Is he the right person for that massive office?

Mark Zuckerberg is an entrepreneur that started a business 15 years ago. He isn’t in a governmental office.

I agree he probably shouldn't have had such power at 22 either. Why are we talking about her age? Who benefits?

We're talking about it because it's in the headline of the article. Why is it there? Presumably an editor (or the original author) thought that the age was either the most newsworthy fact here, or the one that would attract the most clicks. Given your question, I assume you don't think it's newsworthy, so it must be the latter explanation.

Who benefits? The BBC benefits from running clickbait headlines, since they carry ads.

Happy to help!

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