Ask HN: Why do lawyers run the FCC? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why do lawyers run the FCC?

5 pointsryao7 comments

I just learned that all FCC commissioners are lawyers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Communications_Commission#Commissioners_2

In addition to their law degrees, 4 have B.A. degrees and 1 has a B.M. degree. I imagine if you asked them basic networking questions (e.g. how do you determine the maximum transfer speed between two points in a network based on diagrams showing the transfer rates of all network segments), they would have no idea how to answer them, yet you would think people appointed to make regulatory decisions would be required to understand the thing they are regulating. It is plainly obvious that they do not understand these things given the recent “coffee” analogy. It is also obvious to me that even the ones who do not back the “coffee” analogy have no idea what they are doing given that any engineer should have considered data transfer caps to be a top issue, yet they are only getting to it now, even though the current FCC chair has been with the FCC since before data transfer caps existed. That brings me to my question:

Why are lawyers and not engineers running an agency that regulates telecommunications? Also, why does nobody talk about this?

Lawyers run everything, not just the FCC. All the politicians are lawyers.

https://www.economist.com/business/2024/06/27/why-everyone-s... was a recent article about this.

Its pretty fundamental that all lawyering is actually about something else (be it injury, crime, real estate, divorce, etc), so lawyers get the idea of learning the basic / important parts of the subject matter, using an expert witness when necessary, etc.

It's the same with any senior management, they don't know the specifics of anything, that's what graduates/juniors are for, what they know about is products, politics, policy, relationships, etc.

I think that may be a mostly US bias. I don't think it is true more broadly. E.g. take UK, China, Japan, Russia, France, Germany as an example.

Agency regulations are written in legalese, and lawyers speak legalese natively.

Yes but the regulations are about subject matters which are not themselves law. You would think that a regulatory body concerning itself with regulating X would have some experts in X at the highest level of decision making, not just as consultants.

But what the FCC is charged with is political/legal, not technical, decisionmaking. It makes sense to me that this means the main skill required is political/legal, and consulting with subject matter experts where required.

It is fine in theory, but isn't it a problem that if you have some political stance, you can easily go through a roster of powerless experts until you find someone who agrees with you?

Ahhh...the woes of regulatory capture. :/

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