Thanks for posting this. That Nilay Patel essay in the first link is straight fire. Love the software brain/lawyer brain aspect.
Nilay probably didn't intend to set off my pedantic tendencies here, but the last sentence in the screenshot, in my reading, conflates what makes it possible vs why people do it. Ambiguity in the law is what makes these career moves possible. But what might motivate a prosecutor to become a defense attorney is not what motivates a regulator to go work for the regulated. One of these moves is highly, unignorably lucrative, and the other is not.
I was mistaken. Both of these are moving from government salaries to private business salaries which usually pays better, so they are more alike than I thought they were.
Nilay probably didn't intend to set off my pedantic tendencies here, but the last sentence in the screenshot, in my reading, conflates what makes it possible vs why people do it. Ambiguity in the law is what makes these career moves possible. But what might motivate a prosecutor to become a defense attorney is not what motivates a regulator to go work for the regulated. One of these moves is highly, unignorably lucrative, and the other is not.