> The whole inefficiency argument is futile if it's just a ruse to cut bluntly.

Not necessarily.

Suppose you have a slew of programs and 50% of them aren't worthwhile. You cut all of them. This is bad in the sense that the other 50% of them were worthwhile, but the net effect of this is actually zero because eliminating the benefit of the good half is canceled by eliminating the losses from the bad half.

Meanwhile the good programs get reintroduced again over time, if they can be justified. But then they have to go through the process again and get subject to a reevaluation that they wouldn't if they all just continued on through inertia, which allows the bad ones to be filtered out. Then the short-term result is a wash and the long-term result is net positive because the worthwhile programs come back and the unjustifiable ones get filtered out.

This becomes net positive not just over time but immediately if you can produce even a slight bias toward removing net-negative programs over net-positive ones.

> Your point on the CFPB is moot, anti-trust and regulation are two sides of the same coin, the point is to level the playing field.

"Level the playing field" means that each competitor is on equal footing, instead of rules that e.g. favor incumbents or larger companies.

Most "consumer protection" laws like that are actually either Faustian bargains or bad trade offs with high memetic fitness. The rule sounds good because it's presented as a free lunch rather than a trade off against an undisclosed cost.

This is a Faustian bargain when it's an attempt to mitigate the consequences of an uncompetitive market without actually restoring competitiveness, because leaving the market uncompetitive is going to cause the consumer to get screwed in a hundred other ways regardless of what rule you pass. In that case you need to restore competitiveness rather than trying to mitigate uncompetitiveness. The mitigation -- purposely -- erodes support for the actual solution by making the abuses just tolerable enough to stymie a revolt, while still being worse than the actual solution.

It's a bad trade off when the market is competitive, companies are offering both alternatives and some consumers are willingly choosing that option because of some countervailing benefit like lower prices or better interest rates. The market was already providing both alternatives and some consumers were willingly, purposely choosing that option for a reason, so prohibiting it is a harm.

> This is not how government is intended to work, there are checks and balances intentionally. You cannot cut off and investigate, you investigate then cut off or else this process can be abused.

Checks and balances are generally about preventing the government from doing something unless there is broad consensus, because the government is a monumentally dangerous beast and having it do nothing is far less dangerous than having it do something bad. "A major part of the government doesn't want to do this, therefore it doesn't happen" is checks and balances.

> The current evidence already indicates this may not be in good faith (see Verizon contract cancellation).

There is obviously a potential conflict of interest when the government changes suppliers and the new supplier is associated with a government official, but that isn't the end of the investigation. The next question is, what are the terms? Is the government paying Starlink more or less than they were paying Verizon? If it's more, now you have a real objection. If it's not more, what's the problem? In that case they would be saving the taxpayer money, which is what they're supposed to be doing.

> You're being very generous to them, a good analogy they have catchy marketing materials with great use of jargon and theoretical whitepapers, but client experience with the product is very different.

They're humans. Humans are imperfect and reality is complicated. A lot of people want them to fail, which is ridiculous. Let them succeed if they can manage it. Maybe they won't, but they're the ones who won the last election so they're the ones who get to make the attempt right now.