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Comment by djrogers | Hacker News Reader

Setting aside the ultimate politics and ramifications of this, it is interesting (and kind of scary) to watch the fight between a non-elected bureaucracy and our elected house of representatives to regulate the internet.

Congress seems to be completely incapable of doing more than grandstanding, while the bureaucrats may wind up dramatically increasing their own power with a single stroke of their unelected pens.

It's no wonder we have many times more regulations than laws in this country... If I got to 'regulate' who I had power over on a regular basis, there are a lot of people who would suddenly find themselves inexplicably under Title Darren. Human nature.

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It's worth noting that these "unelected bureaucrats" are nominated by a President for limited terms and confirmed by the Senate, and that all powers they have are bestowed upon them by Congress and can be revoked, and that their regulations have to fit within restrictions that are defined and may be revised by Congress.

It's certainly not pretty, but it's not unaccountable, and it seems to be moving things in the generally correct direction. We can hope, anyway.

(Note: I support the move. However I believe you may be overstating your case a bit.)

Accountable in what way? Based on either 1) Doing something so horrendous that would require direct Congressional intervention, which has never (?) happened before? 2) Waiting until a completely new Senate or president is elected, which is basically a 4-8 year cycle?

In theory all of these folks are accountable, sure, but in actuality the entire gimmick here is that the bureaucrats can make all the tough choices while Congress grandstands and makes speeches. That way the work gets done and there's nobody really to blame.

Some parts of that system are pretty good! Some parts are not. But it's only accountable in the strictest sense. There is only an infinitesimal chance that any citizen could have any influence at all over these types of machinations.

>> their regulations have to fit within restrictions that are defined and may be revised by Congress

This is only notionally true, and history is replete with examples of federal agencies declaring their own authority over things which were obviously not envisioned so. While congress could act to change that, they don't, so power collects.

That's usually because Congress doesn't object. You may as well say Congress is unaccountable because of public apathy.

They largely are. Congress has what, a 93% re-election rate?

That's because of (1) limited real choices (yay FPTP elections) and (2) most people are negative about Congress, but that's mostly about the members of Congress that don't represent them; people tend to have a lot higher support for their members of Congress (in both Houses) than for Congress as a whole.

and history is replete with examples of federal agencies declaring their own authority over things which were obviously not envisioned so

What about in this case? Would you argue the Title 2 declaration is within or not within the FCC's mandate? If you agree it is within the mandate, then bringing up unrelated assumptions of authority is not relevant.

Oftentimes Congress lets this happen -on purpose- so they don't have to publicly take a stand on something.

Fwiw, the reason we have more regulations than laws is because Congress likes to enact laws dictating things in a somewhat general manner and delegates authority for implementing those concepts to experts. Naturally, the specific regulations are more numerous than the general guidance.

While there may be too many regulations, it's a red herring to claim that simply because there are more, this is a sign of dysfunction.

Yes yes, it would be terrible if US had actual consumer oriented regulation. Nothing says communism like $16 300Mbit Internet (http://giga-kablowka.pl this offering is possible directly because of tight regulation) in some ex soviet shithole of a country in middle/east Europe.

Except they were given the power of Title II by congress. And there's nobody that can tell you with a straight face that internet access shouldn't be subject to Title II regulations.

This is just a replay of the idiots who decided to deregulate the banking industry. "The regulations are working so well, we don't need them anymore!!11" Cable internet service and "next generation broadband" should've been classified as Title II out of the gate. The exemption was idiotic, and is playing out exactly as everyone said it would when it was first proposed. Consumers get less choice, and poorer service for a higher fee because of it.

BRILLIANT LOGIC!

I kind of like that they are unelected. At least that means they don't rely on political donations for their next election battle.

This is a clear case of the checks and balances.

The Congress would win if they could override a veto. They would also win if the president decided not to veto.

So in this case it's the President vs. a divided congress and not a non-elected bureaucracy overstepping their authority.

You're complaining about the system... in response to a powerful instance of the system working correctly? What?

Yes, perhaps one instance, but the system hasn't finished its work yet.

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