Accountability and the Architecture of Concentrated Power

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — February 27, 2026

Concentrated power that continues to produce harm without proportionate correction does not merely fail. It signals design tolerance.

That statement is not an emotional outburst. It is a structural observation.

When large institutions—financial, educational, political—repeatedly externalize risk downward while protecting capital upward, and when those patterns persist after documentation, litigation, journalism, and public debate, the question shifts. The issue is no longer whether harm occurred. The issue becomes whether the system is structured to absorb harm without self-correction.

Documented Harm and Institutional Oversell

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, students were encouraged to enter high-demand technical and telecommunications fields. Political leaders emphasized the permanence of the information economy. Educational institutions marketed placement assistance and durable career pathways. Federal loan structures enabled access to that promise (Cellini & Goldin, 2014).

When market contractions followed the dot-com collapse and subsequent downturns, many graduates found their roles compressed, reclassified, or eliminated. Technical support became “customer service.” Wage scales narrowed while debt obligations remained fixed. The risk of volatility was borne primarily by the individual borrower (Deming, Goldin, & Katz, 2012).

The loans did not contract when opportunity did.

Risk Externalization as Structural Pattern

The dynamic is not unique to education.

During the housing bubble and financial crisis, risk was packaged, distributed, and obscured through complex financial instruments. When collapse occurred, losses were socialized while many institutional actors avoided criminal liability (Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission [FCIC], 2011).

Similarly, corporate decision-making has historically calculated liability exposure against cost of corrective action. The Ford Pinto case demonstrated how internal cost-benefit analyses weighed potential settlements against engineering redesign (Grimshaw, 1987).

In each example, harm was documented. Public record exists. Yet systemic redesign was partial.

When downward risk transfer becomes normalized, it ceases to look accidental.

Regulatory Capture and Political Shielding

Political science literature has long examined regulatory capture—the phenomenon in which agencies tasked with oversight become aligned with the industries they regulate (Stigler, 1971; Carpenter & Moss, 2014).

Short election cycles, lobbying structures, and revolving-door employment patterns create incentives for minimal disruption. Reform efforts emerge episodically but often stall or dilute.

This is not secret conspiracy theory. It is incentive structure.

When concentrated power benefits from existing arrangements, and correction threatens incumbency or capital, resistance is predictable.

The Accountability Gap

Accountability does not require spectacle. It requires symmetry.

Symmetry would mean:

• Shared institutional liability for federally backed loans tied to documented employment outcomes.
• Transparent long-term earnings data by degree program.
• Automatic discharge mechanisms when misalignment between marketing and market durability is demonstrated.
• Independent audits of placement assistance claims.
• Enforcement mechanisms that impose meaningful cost on misrepresentation.

Without such symmetry, harm becomes normalized.

Justice delayed is frustrating.

Justice denied erodes legitimacy.

Disruption Without Violence

Concentrated power should be disrupted when it allows preventable harm without consequence. Disruption, however, need not be violent. Historical mechanisms include antitrust enforcement, labor organization, electoral turnover, market competition, and transparency mandates.

The central question is not whether harm occurred. It is whether institutional architecture is redesigned once harm is known.

If redesign consistently fails to materialize, citizens are left to conclude that preservation of concentrated power outweighs correction of systemic injury.

That is not radical rhetoric.

It is structural inference.

The Record Matters

This essay does not argue that all actors operate with malicious intent. It argues that incentive structures can produce repeatable harm absent proportional correction.

Documentation serves two purposes: it prevents historical amnesia, and it preserves analytical clarity for future reform cycles.

The architecture of concentrated power is not immutable.

But it will not self-disrupt.

If accountability is to exist, it must be engineered.

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References

Carpenter, D., & Moss, D. A. (2014). Preventing regulatory capture: Special interest influence and how to limit it. Cambridge University Press.

Cellini, S. R., & Goldin, C. (2014). Does federal student aid raise tuition? New evidence on for-profit colleges. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 6(4), 174–206. https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.6.4.174

Deming, D. J., Goldin, C., & Katz, L. F. (2012). The for-profit postsecondary school sector: Nimble critters or agile predators? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 26(1), 139–164. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.26.1.139

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. (2011). The financial crisis inquiry report: Final report of the national commission on the causes of the financial and economic crisis in the United States. U.S. Government Printing Office.

Grimshaw, M. (1987). Ford Pinto. In R. De George (Ed.), Business ethics (3rd ed.). Macmillan.

Stigler, G. J. (1971). The theory of economic regulation. The Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science, 2(1), 3–21.