a) Previous government experience is highly valuable in private sector employees
b) Government pay is less than this value
b) affects regulatory capture in two ways: it allows civil servants the opportunity to get massive raises by going private (and incentivises them to be nice to future employers) and cripples the recruitment of highly talented individuals who are less dependent on industry advice. I don't think attacking a) is feasible in a modern regulatory state, but b) is readily doable if a government is willing to significantly deviate from standard salary scales for high-value industries. For example, SEC salaries would have to be much, much higher than Department of the Interior salaries. AFAIK, Singapore already does this and has very high talent retention rates. Even within the US government, it isn't entirely unprecedented, since an E-3 Navy special forces operator probably makes 8x the salary of an E-3 Army public relations specialist.
>Materialist capture, also called financial capture, in which the captured regulator's motive is based on its material self-interest. This can result from bribery, revolving doors, political donations, or the regulator's desire to maintain its government funding. These forms of capture often amount to political corruption. Non-materialist capture, also called cognitive capture or cultural capture, in which the regulator begins to think like the regulated industry. This can result from interest-group lobbying by the industry. Another distinction can be made between capture retained by big firms and by small firms.[11] While Stigler mainly referred, in his work,[12] to large firms capturing regulators by bartering their vast resources (materialist capture) - small firms are more prone to retain non-materialist capture via a special underdog rhetoric.[11]
