Regulatory Capture Quotes & Sayings

Sociologists of regulation - such people exist - talk about something called 'regulatory capture'. This is the process whereby a state regulator ends up promoting the interests of the industry it is supposed to monitor, at the expense of the public interest. It can happen for a number of reasons, and many of them are very human. For example, if you work in the technical business o f drug approval and pharmacovigilance, who can you chat to about your day's work? To your partner, it's all baffling and pedantic; but to the people in the regulatory affairs division of the companies you work with every day, they understand. You have so much in common with them. So industry bodies - not even necessarily the pharmaceutical companies themselves - might offer things as intangible as friendship, and opportunities to socialize. — Ben Goldacre

If the power to tax is the power to destroy, the power to regulate is no less so. — Markham Shaw Pyle

There's been so much corruption and so much cronyism in the taxi industry and so much regulatory capture, that if you ask for permission upfront for something that's already legal, you'll never get it. — Travis Kalanick

There are consequences to our insatiable demands for energy and there are no easy answers for how to capture that energy safely. But even more pressing, since we are currently using nuclear power across the country and the globe, nuclear power plants must be regulated, and we need to be certain that our regulatory bodies are not compromised by their relationships with industry. — Ivy Meeropol