Yes, precisely. Churchill was right in 1947 and he's still right today. Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other ones.
I think a better solution to the problems Spengler pointed out (see below) would be good old-fashioned torts. We have plenty of under-employed ambulance chasers. If only a few of them manage their way to the middle of the big-tech tootsie-roll pop, that would be one hell of a message, and far more effective at improving practices than the occasional $150M slap on the wrist.
PS> Churchill was a fat drunk who went into the war against methed-out nazis with an empire upon which the sun never set, and came out of it only by the skin of his teeth despite plenty of help. The Greeks & Romans will still be quoted long after he has (rightfully, mercifully) been forgotten.
I've seen a small time civil case pertaining to a dispute totalling sub-$50k drag out for 10 years and cost more than the damages. It doesn't work empirically for everyday disputes because it puts the onus and burden onto the small time victim, which is net unprofitable given all the frictions, leading to persistence of externalities.
You also don't solve the root problem of corruption by moving to a torts only system. Torts as a solution would rely on property laws that are themselves free of moneyed corruption. It also would rely on a judiciary that can't be bought. So it's shifting the same problem we have now (corporatocracy and entrenched interests) to a stunted and less competent system of enforcement.
"My point is that administrative law has failed."
Small infractions by small operators, perhaps so. Small infractions by big operators, hell no. Thanks to class action, civil suits are perpetual hearburn & lost sleep for them. There's always a batch of aggressive trial lawyers ready to take the case on contingency, and even if the original plaintiff's damages are very small, it still adds up to big money when you include payouts to the rest of the class, & of course, punitive damages--which can exceed the damages by orders of magnitude.
> It also would rely on a judiciary that can't be bought
Buying off judges and juries is a costlier & dangerously more sensitive task than promising a comfy board position to an agency head over drinks and a meal at a restaurant in DC.
> It hasn't failed.
The microplastics in our bloodstreams and the glyphosate in our cheerios say otherwise.
Hell yes.
The large majority of infractions, perpetrated by both small and large companies, are infeasible to address via courts, for a multitude of reasons. Either the frictions exceed the benefit to a class action, or the cost is too diffuse.
Consider global warming. In a torts system, how can I hold an industrial farm or a car manufacturer to account for the role they're playing? You can't, because the cost is too diffuse.
Consider social media. In a torts system, how can I hold a social media company to account for the role they play in an uptick of stochastic terrorism? You can't, because the cost is too diffuse and the burden of proof makes it difficult to draw causal links in single cases.
Consider fast food. In a torts system, how can you address the downstream negative externalities of obesity on society by mass producing unhealthy, unhappy people, which has downstream impacts on the polity, health system, and so on? You can't.
Centralized regulation is the only pragmatic solution to certain problems.
Besides, even if all large-scale infractions were addressable (they're not, as the above examples show), it's still a massive hole in your system to simply allow all small-scale infractions to persist.
> The microplastics in our bloodstreams and the glyphosate in our cheerios say otherwise.
This is the binary bias. Failure isn't a binary switch. We've had a degree of good success (leaded petrol, ozone layer) and a degree of failure (microplastics, carbon pollution).
You also unjustifiably blame all failures on the administrative system, which conveniently leaves out that we actually do also have a torts system in place now. Our system is mixed. So, both your hated system and your desired system are simultaneously failing, but you post hoc attribute all failures to the former.
> Buying off judges and juries is a costlier & dangerously more sensitive
Even if I accepted that bribing a judge is riskier than bribing an agency head, you still have no good solution to buying off lawmakers under a torts-only system, or to costs imposed by operators that aren't pragmatically addressable in a court.