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Comment by jknoepfler | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure why this is being downvoted, other than that it isn't precise. I'm general you can't trust regulators or legislators at the federal level.

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If you take this argument to its logical conclusion there is no point arguing about the law in the first place.

Their criticism wasn't of the law but of the undue influence of lobbyists in the American political system.

If you "cannot trust regulators or legislators at the federal level" how can you trust the laws? Who writes them, and who enforces them, if not legislators and regulators, respectively?

Right but they're not saying they don't trust regulators and legislators as a concept, they're saying they don't trust them when they're basically writing what lobbyists tell them to. It's right they don't trust the law, but their criticism isn't of law and regulation. It's of lobbyists.

But I mean if they're really completely compromised then it doesn't much matter. I share the OP's concerns but I think he goes too far in his claims.

We better pay attention to his "too far in claims" before it becomes too far in damage and deaths.

Legislators tend to not write the laws anymore. They just take the copy the lobby groups have prepared in advance and submit it as a bill. Congressmen don't even bother to read the laws they vote for.

They do not literally write the laws in most cases but I don't see how that affects the argument.

Maybe you can’t trust them with novel pathogens designed to kill people.

The regulatory agencies responsible for ensuring compliance with safety and health standards in the USA have a rich history of being cozy with industry (see the fallout after the gulf oil spill, for example). These agencies are overseen by political appointees who are not reliable, and may even oppose the mission of the agency (see the current EPA). Creating an approval channel creates a path to false- positive legality that I don't think should exist. There's a substantive distinction between keeping the whole enterprise strictly verboten and creating an exploitable legal grey area.

I'd prefer if drilling for oil in the gulf were illegal, not legal with regulatory oversite, for example. I don't think a pessimistic outlook on the reliability of federal oversight is unwarranted, given my (admittedly dim) view of how the process has worked in the past.

To be more constructive: I'm up for substantive suggestions for ensuring more transparent and reliable oversite than exists today.

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