The legislature (US Congress) has specifically given the FTC the legal authority to regulate and prevent unfair and anti-competitive practices by corporations, employees, etc., including by banning those practices, fining the entities involved, and so on. The FTC is acting on Congress' direct instructions to act.
There are a ton of federal agencies that have the power to make regulations and then enforce them. This power is specifically delegated by Congress. It’s hard to imagine a functioning government without this. For example, Congress recognizes it is not a subject matter expert at radio signals, so it delegates the technical details of regulating the electromagnetic spectrum to the FCC. Same thing for the FDA. Congress isn’t an expert on how clinical trials should be designed so it delegates that to the FDA. A huge one is the DEA, which can both determine how drugs are scheduled and can also enforce it. Congress has the power to overrule the agency when it sees fit.
That being the structure for a ton of agencies doesn't mean it should be the structure.
There are options besides "congress must decide every little minutiae" and "The FCC gets to be judge, jury, and executioner for things in their purview". Because that is effectively what we have at the moment. They get to be the judge (deciding what is or isn't allowable), jury (deciding whether you've violated their standard), and executioner (levying fines and other punishments).
The point I was trying to make in my original comment is that there is a conflict of interest / misaligned incentives when you allow the same org do both. We've already seen this play out with various federal agencies in various contexts. For example, those agencies are not incentivized to provide clarity of policy, because they don't need it to justify their enforcement. They can say "you violated this thing because we say so here is a fine". Whereas, if you were to split this power into two separate agencies (let's say the "Federal Communications Commission" and the Federal Communications Enforcement Agency"), the former would need to provide clarity to the latter (and everyone else) before the latter could enforce anything. This type of transparency is: 1. good, 2. something we don't currently have, 3. hard to promote with the current structure.
