El Financial Times trae una excelente columna de John Kay sobre captura regulatoria y las ventajas de un sistema judicial separado de la industria para juzgar casos de la industria regulada. Comienza mostrando como a los sectores potencialmente regulados les encanta serlo. Para ello usa el ejemplo del apoyo a la regulación de la industria de ferrocarriles en los 1880, frente a las protestas de campesinos e industriales por los precios cobrados por los robbber barons. El Presidente de una de las líneas ferroviarias más importantes declaró a sus colegas:
“What is desired,” he wrote, “is something having a good sound, but quite harmless, which will impress the popular mind with the idea that a great deal is being done, when, in reality, very little is intended to be done.”
On the whole, he got what he wanted. The Interstate Commerce Commission established by the act was chaired by a lawyer with experience of the railroad industry – acquired, naturally, by acting on behalf of his railroad clients. When, a decade later, the Supreme Court ruled that a rate-fixing agreement between railroads was illegal, the ICC was crestfallen: surely, the commission said, it should not be unlawful to confer, to achieve what the law enjoins – the setting of just and reasonable rates. Soon after, Congress approved legislation making it a criminal offence to offer rebates on tariffs the ICC had approved, and the commission thereafter operated as the manager of a railroad cartel.
Kay muestra que las dificultades no siempre son de captura regulatoria estándar, es decir corrupción, sino de un problema más sutil, de captura intelectual:
Every regulatory agency is dependent for information on the businesses it regulates. Many of the people who run regulated companies are agreeable, committed individuals who are properly affronted by any suggestion that their activities do not serve the public good.[…]
It requires a considerable effort of imagination to visualise that any industry might be organised very differently from the way that industry is organised now. So even the regulator with the best intentions comes to see issues in much the same way as the corporate officers he deals with every day. You require both an abrasive personality and considerable intellectual curiosity to do the job in any other way.
Es por ello que la justicia normal, independiente del sector regulado, es útil. puede juzgar en forma menos informada,y a menudo errónea, pero tiene la ventaja de ver las cosas desde fuera, sin las preconcepciones de quiénes trabajan en ella. Es un muy buen punto. Implícitamente esto representa una crítica a nuestro nuevos sistema de Paneles de Expertos, que tiene una visión sofisticada de la industria, pero que usan la óptica de ésta. Afortunadamente Paneles de Expertos como el del sector eléctrico tienen una jurisdicción extremadamente limitada, lo que reduce el impacto de esta crítica, ya que cualquier problema regulatorio que tenga un alcance mayor pasa a órganos jurisdiccionales de índole general.
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