Regulatory capture is how fascism hits your doorstep

American Thinker ^ | 4 Jun, 2023 | John Dale Dunn

[MtnClimber]

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has raised the issue of regulatory capture in the matter of pharmaceutical company "capture" of the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, all powerful agencies in the public health sphere. He always reminds us of the financial entanglements and the resultant political relationships that are combined to make regulatory capture, a cooperative relationship that approaches collusion and the appearance of an old enemy of our representative Republic: fascism. He says it is destroying American freedoms and even economic vitality and must be extinguished.

That administrative state is even more of a problem for the citizens because of regulatory capture — the control of agency activities created by the industries or non-governmental agencies that influence agency regulatory activity to the disadvantage of the citizen-consumer.

The sham appearance of agency review by supposedly independent adviser experts is akin to regulatory capture, but there is a lot more discussed in an article by Jeffrey Tucker, founder of the Brownstone Institute and regular columnist for the Epoch Times.

Mr. Tucker starts his essay with examples of how small businesses and farmers and general activity are impaired and made more expensive by the administrative/regulatory state. The regulatory state has its allies in the regulated areas. The trend to mergers and acquisitions makes for large entities that have the ability to influence government much more than the middle-class person, professional, or small business–owner. Mr. Tucker provides some detail:

- The production, processing, transportation, and sale of food are heavily regulated, and that results in large interests controlling food with quasi-monopolistic power.

- The Food and Drug Administration is heavily dependent on the pharmaceutical companies for its budget. That means the Pharma dog wags the FDA tail on many matters....

[knarf]

WE haf'ta' get on the school boards and just say no to governmental spending.

They do what they do because they can . . . they're allowed.

Every adult in America started as a child in America, whom, 96% of which went to public school.