licensing – Technology Liberation Front https://techliberation.com Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology Thu, 03 Apr 2025 23:20:10 +0000 en-US hourly 1 6772528 Running List of My Research on AI, ML & Robotics Policy https://techliberation.com/2022/07/29/running-list-of-my-research-on-ai-ml-robotics-policy/ https://techliberation.com/2022/07/29/running-list-of-my-research-on-ai-ml-robotics-policy/#respond Fri, 29 Jul 2022 12:51:54 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=77020

[last updated 4/3/2025 – Check my Medium page for latest posts]

This a running list of all the essays and reports I’ve already rolled out on the governance of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotics. Why have I decided to spend so much time on this issue? Because this will become the most important technological revolution of our lifetimes. Every segment of the economy will be touched in some fashion by AI, ML, robotics, and the power of computational science. It should be equally clear that public policy will be radically transformed along the way.

Eventually, all policy will involve AI policy and computational considerations. As AI “eats the world,” it eats the world of public policy along with it. The stakes here are profound for individuals, economies, and nations. As a result, AI policy will be the most important technology policy fight of the next decade, and perhaps next quarter century. Those who are passionate about the freedom to innovate need to prepare to meet the challenge as proposals to regulate AI proliferate.

There are many socio-technical concerns surrounding algorithmic systems that deserve serious consideration and appropriate governance steps to ensure that these systems are beneficial to society. However, there is an equally compelling public interest in ensuring that AI innovations are developed and made widely available to help improve human well-being across many dimensions. And that’s the case that I’ll be dedicating my life to making in coming years.

Here’s the list of what I’ve done so far. I will continue to update this as new material is released:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021 (and earlier)

]]> https://techliberation.com/2022/07/29/running-list-of-my-research-on-ai-ml-robotics-policy/feed/ 0 77020 Needed: A ‘Fresh Start Initiative’ to Address Rules Suspended during the Crisis https://techliberation.com/2020/04/16/needed-a-fresh-start-initiative-to-address-rules-suspended-during-the-crisis/ https://techliberation.com/2020/04/16/needed-a-fresh-start-initiative-to-address-rules-suspended-during-the-crisis/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2020 20:52:23 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=76688

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has just released a new paper by Patrick A. McLaughlin, Matthew D. Mitchell, and me entitled, “A Fresh Start: How to Address Regulations Suspended during the Coronavirus Crisis.” Here’s a quick summary.

As the COVID-19 crisis intensified, policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels started suspending or rescinding laws and regulations that hindered sensible, speedy responses to the pandemic. These “rule departures” raised many questions. Were the paused rules undermining public health and welfare even before the crisis? Even if the rules were well intentioned or once possibly served a compelling interest, had they grown unnecessary or counterproductive? If so, why did they persist? How will the suspended rules be dealt with after the crisis? Are there other rules on the books that might transform from merely unnecessary to actively harmful in future crises?

Once the COVID-19 crisis subsides, there is likely to be considerable momentum to review the rules that have slowed down the response. If policymakers felt the need to abandon these rules during the current crisis, those same rules should probably be permanently repealed or at least comprehensively reformed to allow for more flexible responses in the future.

Accordingly, when the pandemic subsides, policymakers at the federal and state levels should create “Fresh Start Initiatives” that would comprehensively review all suspended rules and then outline sunsetting or reform options for them. To this end, we propose an approach based on the successful experience of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission.

Read the entire paper here to see how it would work. This is our chance to finally do some much-needed spring cleaning for the regulatory state.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2020/04/16/needed-a-fresh-start-initiative-to-address-rules-suspended-during-the-crisis/feed/ 2 76688 Reforming Licensing Rules to Help Fight the Pandemic https://techliberation.com/2020/03/23/reforming-licensing-rules-to-help-fight-the-pandemic/ https://techliberation.com/2020/03/23/reforming-licensing-rules-to-help-fight-the-pandemic/#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2020 13:19:12 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=76682

In a new essay in The Dallas Morning News (“Licensing restrictions for health care workers need to be flexible to fight coronavirus“),  Trace Mitchell and I discuss recent efforts to reform occupational licensing restrictions for health care workers to help fight the coronavirus.  Trace and I have written extensively about the need for licensing flexibility over the past couple of years, but it is needed now more than ever. Luckily, some positive reforms are now underway.

We highlight efforts in states like Massachusetts and Texas to reform their occupational licensing rules in response to the crisis, as well as federal reforms aimed at allowing reciprocity across state lines. We conclude by noting that:

It should not take a crisis of this magnitude for policymakers to reconsider the way we prevent fully qualified medical professionals from going where they are most needed. But that moment is now upon us. More leaders would be wise to conduct a comprehensive review of regulatory burdens that hinder sensible, speedy responses to the coronavirus crisis.

If nothing else, the relaxation of these rules should give us a better feel for how necessary strict licensing requirements truly are. Chances are, we will learn just how costly the regulations have been all along.
]]> https://techliberation.com/2020/03/23/reforming-licensing-rules-to-help-fight-the-pandemic/feed/ 1 76682 Occupational Licensing Reform is Not a Partisan Issue https://techliberation.com/2019/09/26/occupational-licensing-reform-is-not-a-partisan-issue/ https://techliberation.com/2019/09/26/occupational-licensing-reform-is-not-a-partisan-issue/#comments Thu, 26 Sep 2019 19:01:59 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=76599

by Adam Thierer and Trace Mitchell

This essay originally appeared on The Washington Examiner on September 12, 2019.

You won’t find President Trump agreeing with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on many issues, but the need for occupational licensing reform is one major exception. They, along with many other politicians and academics both Left and Right, have identified how state and local “licenses to work” restrict workers’ opportunities and mobility while driving up prices for consumers.

Of course, not everybody has to agree with high-profile Democrats and Republicans, but let’s at least welcome the chance to discuss something important without defaulting to our partisan bunkers.

This past week, for example, ThinkProgress published an article titled “Koch Brothers’ anti-government group promotes allowing unlicensed, untrained cosmetologists.” Centered around an Americans for Prosperity video highlighting the ways in which occupational licensing reform could lower some of the barriers that prevent people from bettering their lives, the article painted a picture of an ideologically driven, right-wing movement.

In reality, it’s anything but that.

Occupational licensing has expanded significantly in the past several decades. It began as a relatively uncommon regulatory approach aimed at ensuring public safety and reserved for only those occupations that pose the greatest risk of harm or abuse. Now, it’s a fairly standard means of regulating all kinds of industries.

In the 1950s, around 5% of workers needed a license to perform their jobs. Today, it’s over 30%. This drastic change has raised concerns from people at virtually every point along the political spectrum.

In fact, one of the most crucial reports on occupational licensing was created by the Obama administration. It found that while occupational licensing can lead to higher quality services for consumers, “by making it harder to enter a profession, licensing can also reduce employment opportunities and lower wages for excluded workers, and increase costs for consumers.”

Last year, the independent Federal Trade Commission followed suit, releasing a report highlighting the negative effects of occupational licensing and proposing ways to combat them by making worker licenses more portable across state lines.

Hillary Clinton has also expressed support for targeted occupational licensing reform. In 2016, she released a set of policy proposals aimed at helping small businesses which included a goal to “streamline unnecessary licensing to make it less costly to start a small business.”

Fellow Democrat Joe Biden has talked about overly burdensome occupational licensing. In his words, “They’re making it harder and harder in a whole range of professions, all to keep competition down.”

In addition, groups across the ideological spectrum, including the Brookings Institution and the American Civil Liberties Union, have expressed concern over the costs of burdensome work requirements.

President Trump, a critic of the Koch brothers, has also shown support for occupational licensing reform. He recently praised Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey for his state’s new approach, saying, “We hope that other states are going to follow Arizona’s lead.”

Why are all of these people and organizations, with fairly distinct perspectives and goals, concerned about the same issue? Because occupational licensing is really costly, and those costs often fall upon the most vulnerable and disadvantaged Americans.

The report issued by the Obama administration found that occupational licensing serves as a hidden tax on consumer goods and services, increasing prices by anywhere between 3 and 16%. The report went on to assert that these costs fall disproportionately on certain segments of the population: immigrants, military spouses, and reformed convicts. Other research supports these findings.

Economist Morris Kleiner found that “restrictions from occupational licensing can result in up to 2.85 million fewer jobs nationwide, with an annual cost to consumers of $203 billion.” Once again, these costs are not evenly distributed: Our colleague Matt Mitchell looked at the effect of occupational licensing on the poor and disadvantaged, finding that it can “disparately affect ethnic minorities and other specific populations.” Forcing barbers to obtain a license “reduces the probability of a black individual working as a barber by 17.3%.”

Propelled by the weight of the evidence, policymakers are starting to work together. It isn’t ideological; it’s just good policy. Isn’t that what we want?

]]> https://techliberation.com/2019/09/26/occupational-licensing-reform-is-not-a-partisan-issue/feed/ 3 76599 Addressing the Growing Problem of Regulatory Accumulation https://techliberation.com/2019/05/28/addressing-the-growing-problem-of-regulatory-accumulation/ https://techliberation.com/2019/05/28/addressing-the-growing-problem-of-regulatory-accumulation/#comments Tue, 28 May 2019 20:06:23 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=76492

[This essay originally appeared on the AIER blog on May 23, 2019 under the title, “Spring Cleaning for the Regulatory State.”]

Spring is in full blossom, and many of us are in the midst of our annual house-cleaning ritual. A regular deep clean makes good sense because it makes our living spaces more orderly and gets rid of the gunk and grime that has amassed over the past year.

Unfortunately, governments almost never engage in their own spring-cleaning exercise. Statutes and regulations continue to accumulate, layer by layer, until they suffocate not only economic opportunity, but also the effective administration of government itself. Luckily, some states have realized this and have taken steps to help address this problem.

Mountains of Regulations

First, here are some hard facts about regulatory accumulation:

  • Red tape grows: Since the first edition of his annual publication Ten Thousand Commandments in 1993, Wayne Crews has documented how federal agencies have issued 101,380 rules. Other reports find agency staffing levels jumped from 57,109 to 277,163 employees from 1960 to 2017, while agency budgets swelled in real terms from $3 billion in 1960 to $58 billion in 2017 (2009$).
  • Nothing ever gets cleaned up: A Deloitte survey of U.S. Code reveals that 68 percent of federal regulations have never been updated and that 17 percent have only been updated once. If a company never updated its business model, it would fail eventually. But governments get away with doing the same thing without any fear of failure. “If it were a country, U.S. regulation would be the world’s eighth-largest economy, ranking behind India and ahead of Italy,” Crews notes.
  • The burden of regulatory accumulation is getting worse: “The estimate for regulatory compliance and economic effects of federal intervention is $1.9 trillion annually,” Crews finds, which is equal to 10 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product for 2017. When federal spending is added to regulatory costs are added to federal spending, Crews finds, the burden equals $4.173 trillion, or 30 percent of the entire economy. Mercatus Center research has found that “economic growth in the United States has, on average, been slowed by 0.8 percent per year since 1980 owing to the cumulative effects of regulation.” This means that “the US economy would have been about 25 percent larger than it actually was as of 2012” if regulation had been held to roughly the same aggregate level it stood at in 1980.

In sum, the evidence shows that the red tape is growing without constraint, hindering entrepreneurship and innovation, deterring new investment, raising costs to consumers, limiting worker opportunities/wages, and undermining economic growth.

Regulations accumulate in this fashion because the administrative state is on autopilot. Legislatures pass broad statutes delegating ambiguous authority to agencies. Bureaucrats are then free to roll the regulatory snowball down the hill until it has become so big that its momentum cannot be stopped.

The Death of Common Sense

Policy makers enact new rules with the best of intentions, of course, but we should not assume that the untrammeled growth of the regulatory state produces positive results. There is no free lunch, after all. Every regulation is a restriction on opportunities for experimentation with new and potentially better ways of doing things. Sometimes such restrictions make sense because regulations can pass a reasonable cost-benefit test. It would be foolish to assume that all regulations on the books do.

Spring cleaning for the regulatory state, therefore, should be viewed as an exercise in “good governance.” The goal is not to get rid of all regulations. The goal is to make sure that rules are reasonable and cost-effective so that the public can actually understand the law and get the highest value out of their government institutions.

Philip K. Howard, founder and chair of the nonprofit coalition Common Good and the author of The Death of Common Sense, has written extensively about how regulatory accumulation has become a chronic problem. “Too much law,” he argues, “can have similar effects as too little law.” “People slow down, they become defensive, they don’t initiate projects because they are surrounded by legal risks and bureaucratic hurdles,” Howard notes. “They tiptoe through the day looking over their shoulders rather than driving forward on the power of their instincts. Instead of trial and error, they focus on avoiding error.”

In such an environment, risk-taking and entrepreneurialism are more challenging and economic dynamism suffers. But regulatory accumulation also hurts the quality of government institutions and policies, which become fundamentally incomprehensible or illogical. “Society can’t function when stuck in a heap of accumulated mandates of past generations,” Howard concludes. This is why an occasional regulatory house cleaning is essential to unleash economic opportunity and improve the functioning of our democratic institutions.

Regulatory House Cleaning Begins

Reforms to address this problem are finally happening. In a series of new essays, my colleague James Broughel has documented how several states — including Idaho, Ohio, Virginia, and New Jersey — are undertaking serious efforts to get regulatory accumulation under control. They are utilizing a variety of mechanisms, including “regulatory reduction pilot programs” and “red tape review commissions.” Recently, Idaho actually initiated a sunset of its entire regulatory code and will now try to figure out how to clean up its 8,200 pages of regulations containing 736 chapters of state rules.

Meanwhile, other states are undertaking serious reform in one of the worst forms of regulatory accumulation: occupational licenses. The Federal Trade Commission notes that roughly 30 percent of American jobs require a license today, up from less than 5 percent in the 1950s. Research by economist Morris Kleiner and others finds that “restrictions from occupational licensing can result in up to 2.85 million fewer jobs nationwide, with an annual cost to consumers of $203 billion.” And many of the rules do not even serve their intended purpose. A major 2015 Obama administration report on the costs of occupational licensing concluded that “most research does not find that licensing improves quality or public health and safety.”

Arizona, West Virginia, and Nebraska are among the leaders in reforming occupational-licensing regimes using a variety of approaches. In some cases, the reforms sunset licensing rules for specific professions altogether. Other proposals grant workers reciprocity to use a license they obtained in another state. Finally, some states have proposed letting most professions operate without any license at all but then requiringall, but then require them to make it clear to consumers that they are unlicensed.

The Need for a Fresh Look

Sunsets are not silver-bullet solutions, and the recent experience with sunsetting and “de-licensing” requirements at the state level has been mixed because many legislatures ignore or circumvent requirements. Nonetheless, sunsets can still help prompt much-needed discussions about which rules make sense and which ones no longer do.

Sunsets can be forward-looking, too. I have proposed that when policy makers craft new laws, especially for fast-paced tech sectors, they should incorporate a clause that what we might think of as “the Sunsetting Imperative.” It would demand that any existing or newly imposed technology regulation should include a provision sunsetting the law or regulation within two years. Reforms like these are also sometimes referred to as “temporary legislation” or “fresh look” requirements. Policy makers can always reenact rules that are still relevant and needed.

By forcing a periodic spring cleaning, sunsets and fresh-look requirements can help stem the tide of regulatory accumulation and ensure that only those policies that serve a pressing need remain on the books. There is no good reason for governments not to clean up their messes on occasion, just like the rest of us have to.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2019/05/28/addressing-the-growing-problem-of-regulatory-accumulation/feed/ 1 76492 Mercatus essays on innovation, entrepreneurialism & technological governance https://techliberation.com/2018/09/28/mercatus-essays-on-innovation-entrepreneurialism-technological-governance/ https://techliberation.com/2018/09/28/mercatus-essays-on-innovation-entrepreneurialism-technological-governance/#respond Fri, 28 Sep 2018 15:40:52 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=76387

In recent months, my colleagues and I at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University have published a flurry of essays about the importance of innovation, entrepreneurialism, and “moonshots,” as well as the future of technological governance more generally. A flood of additional material is coming, but I figured I’d pause for a moment to track our progress so far. Much of this work is leading up to my next on the freedom to innovate, which I am finishing up currently.

 

Some older essays on related topics

]]> https://techliberation.com/2018/09/28/mercatus-essays-on-innovation-entrepreneurialism-technological-governance/feed/ 0 76387 Thoughts on FTC Economic Liberty Task Force Report & Occupational Licensing Reform https://techliberation.com/2018/09/25/thoughts-on-ftc-economic-liberty-task-force-report-occupational-licensing-reform/ https://techliberation.com/2018/09/25/thoughts-on-ftc-economic-liberty-task-force-report-occupational-licensing-reform/#respond Tue, 25 Sep 2018 19:47:37 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=76385

Over at the Mercatus Center Bridge blog, Trace Mitchell and I just posted an essay entitled, “A Non-Partisan Way to Help Workers and Consumers,” which discusses the new Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Economic Liberty Task Force report on occupational licensing.

We applaud the FTC’s calls for greater occupational licensing uniformity and portability, but regret the missed opportunity to address root problem of excessive licensing more generally. But while FTC is right to push for greater occupational licensing uniformity and portability, policymakers need to confront the sheer absurdity of licensing so many jobs that pose zero risk to public health & safety. Licensing has become completely detached from risk realities and actual public needs.

As the FTC notes, excessive licensing limits employment opportunities, worker mobility, and competition while also “resulting in higher prices, reduced quality, and less convenience for consumers.” These are unambiguous facts that are widely accepted by experts of all stripes. Both the Obama and Trump Administrations, for example, have been completely in league on the need for comprehensive  licensing reforms.

Trace and I argue that we need serious occupational reforms built on the idea of the “right to earn a living” that must pass this test: “All occupational regulations shall be limited to those demonstrably necessary and carefully tailored to fulfill legitimate public health, safety, or welfare objectives.”  Also, all licensing authorities should be put on the clock and be required, within one year, to reassess the wisdom of all existing licenses to ensure they meet that test. If not, they are repealed or reformed.

In recent testimony in Texas, our Mercatus Center colleague Matthew Mitchell has also discussed other reform options, including the “Occupational Board Reform Act,” which recently passed in Nebraska. The goal of the law is to “protect the fundamental right of an individual to pursue a lawful occupation;.” They key provision of the Act demands that state actors:

use the least restrictive regulation which is necessary to protect consumers from undue risk of present, significant, and substantiated harms that clearly threaten or endanger the health, safety, or welfare of the public when competition alone is not sufficient and which is consistent with the public interest;

That’s an excellent approach to reform and when combined with the Right to Earn a Living Act, policymakers can begin to reverse the protectionist, anti-competitive licensing schemes that encumber entrepreneurs and workers across the land.

In forthcoming work, I hope to more fully develop the connection between the right to earn a living, the need for comprehensive licensing reform, and the freedom to innovate more generally. In the meantime, hop over to The Bridge to read our new essay on how the FTC report helps advance this cause..

]]> https://techliberation.com/2018/09/25/thoughts-on-ftc-economic-liberty-task-force-report-occupational-licensing-reform/feed/ 0 76385 Important New White House Report Documents Costs of Occupational Licensing https://techliberation.com/2015/07/29/important-new-white-house-report-documents-costs-of-occupational-licensing/ https://techliberation.com/2015/07/29/important-new-white-house-report-documents-costs-of-occupational-licensing/#comments Wed, 29 Jul 2015 22:25:37 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=75633

Yesterday, the White House Council of Economic Advisers released an important new report entitled, “Occupational Licensing: A Framework for Policymakers.” (PDF, 76 pgs.) The report highlighted the costs that outdated or unneeded licensing regulations can have on diverse portions of the citizenry. Specifically, the report concluded that:

the current licensing regime in the United States also creates substantial costs, and often the requirements for obtaining a license are not in sync with the skills needed for the job. There is evidence that licensing requirements raise the price of goods and services, restrict employment opportunities,  and make it more difficult for workers to take their skills across State lines. Too often, policymakers do not carefully weigh these costs and benefits when making decisions about whether or how to regulate a profession through licensing.

The report supported these conclusions with a wealth of evidence. In that regard, I was pleased to see that research from Mercatus Center-affiliated scholars was cited in the White House report (specifically on pg. 34). Mercatus Center scholars have repeatedly documented the costs of occupational licensing and offered suggestions for how to reform or eliminate unnecessary licensing practices. Most recently, my colleagues and I have explored the costs of licensing restrictions for new sharing economy platforms and innovators. The White House report cited, for example, the recently-released Mercatus paper on “How the Internet, the Sharing Economy, and Reputational Feedback Mechanisms Solve the ‘Lemons Problem,’” which I co-authored with Christopher Koopman, Anne Hobson, and Chris Kuiper. And it also cited a new essay by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok on “The End of Asymmetric Information.”

Moreover, along with Christopher Koopman and Matt Mitchell, I recently submitted comments to the Federal Trade Commission for a sharing economy workshop. In those comments, as well as a recent paper on the same subject, we documented how occupational licensing rules were often “captured” by affected interests and are then used to discourage new forms of competition and innovation. This harms both consumers and workers by depriving them of new and better options. Many sharing economy operations are having great success in breaking down these barriers and proving that consumers and workers do better in an environment free of unnecessary and costly licensing restrictions. This suggests that consumer welfare would be improved even more by reforming other licensing regimes.

Mercatus has published dozens of other things related to this issue, many of which I have listed down below. Just recently, in fact, we published a new paper on “Breaking Down the Barriers: Three Ways State and Local Governments Can Improve the Lives of the Poor,” by economist Steven Horwitz. The report begins by documenting how “occupational licensure laws disproportionately burden the poor by requiring them to spend significant resources just to enter a market.” This is consistent with the findings from other Mercatus reports and other academic publications.

Anyway, check out the new White House report and, if you are serious about studying the issue of occupational licensing in more detail, you’ll want to take a closer look at some of these other Mercatus Center publications on the issue. The case for occupational licensing reform is strong and non-partisan, as the release of this White House report makes clear.

Mercatus Center publications and related material on occupational licensing & barriers to entry 

]]> https://techliberation.com/2015/07/29/important-new-white-house-report-documents-costs-of-occupational-licensing/feed/ 2 75633 Robert Graboyes on What the Internet Can Teach Us about Health Care Innovation https://techliberation.com/2014/11/10/robert-graboyes-on-what-the-internet-can-teach-us-about-health-care-innovation/ https://techliberation.com/2014/11/10/robert-graboyes-on-what-the-internet-can-teach-us-about-health-care-innovation/#respond Mon, 10 Nov 2014 18:56:06 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=74900

Robert-GraboyesI want to bring to everyone’s attention an important new white paper by Dr. Robert Graboyes, a colleague of mine at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University who specializes in the economics of health care. His new 67-page study, Fortress and Frontier in American Health Care, seeks to move away from the tired old dichotomies that drive health care policy discussions: Left versus Right, Democrat versus Republican, federal versus state, and public versus private, and so on. Instead, Graboyes seeks to reframe the debate over the future of health care innovation in terms of “Fortress versus Frontier” and to highlight what lessons we can learn from the Internet and the Information Revolution when considering health care policy.

What does Graboyes mean by “Fortress and Frontier”? Here’s how he explains this conflict of visions:

The Fortress is an institutional environment that aims to obviate risk and protect established producers (insiders) against competition from newcomers (outsiders). The Frontier, in contrast, tolerates risk and allows outsiders to compete against established insiders. . . .  The Fortress-Frontier divide does not correspond neatly with the more familiar partisan or ideological divides. Framing health care policy issues in this way opens the door for a more productive national health care discussion and for unconventional policy alliances. (p. 4)

He elaborates in more detail later in the paper:

the Frontier encourages creative destruction and disruptive innovation. Undreamed-of products arise and old, revered ones vanish. New production processes sweep away old ones. This is a place where unknown innovators in garages destroy titans of industry. The Frontier celebrates and rewards risk, and there is a brutal egalitarianism to the creative process. In contrast, the Fortress discourages creative destruction and disruptive innovation. Insiders are protected from competition by government or by private organizations (such as insurers and medical societies) acting in quasigovernmental fashion. In the Fortress, insiders preserve the existing order. Innovation comes from well-established, credentialed insiders who, it is presumed, have the wisdom and motives and competence to identify opportunities for innovation.

In framing the debate in this fashion, Graboyes hopes that we will start paying more attention to the supply side of health care policy debates:

The debate over coverage (and over related issues concerning how health care providers are paid) has focused attention almost exclusively on the demand side of health care markets—who pays how much to whom for which currently offered services. The debate underplays questions of supply—how innovation can alter the very nature of the health care delivery system. (p. 3-4)

This is where Graboyes brings the Internet and information technology into the story to illustrate a powerful point: We could unlock many important life-enriching and potentially life-saving innovations by embracing the same vision we applied to the Internet and IT sectors. Graboyes is kind enough to cite my work on permissionless innovation and the importance of not letting public policy be dictated by excessive fear of worst-case scenarios regarding new technological innovations. As I noted in my book on the topic, “living in constant fear of worst-case scenarios—and premising public policy upon them—means that best-case scenarios will never come about. When public policy is shaped by precautionary principle reasoning, it poses a serious threat to technological progress, economic entrepreneurialism, social adaptation, and long-run prosperity.”

Had fear of potential worst-case outcomes driven policy for the Net, we might have never seen many of the life-enriching innovations that we enjoy today, as Graboyes explains eloquently in this passage:

Knowing what we know today, it would not be hard to persuade a cautious observer in 1989 to radically slow the pace of IT innovation. IT arguably poses personal risks as grave as those that health care poses. Cell phones have been essential components of improvised explosive devices in war zones. The 9/11 atrocities would have been difficult or impossible to carry out without cell phones. Thieves have used the Internet to steal. Stalkers have used the Internet to terrify their prey. Child predators find their victims on the web. People have been murdered by strangers they met in chatrooms. IT has allowed individuals and governments to violate others’ privacy in countless ways. Drug dealers and terrorist networks organize their efforts via cell phone and Internet. The Internet has greatly reduced the cost of destroying another’s reputation, and news accounts tell of suicides following cyberbullying. Our laws demand terribly high standards of safety and efficacy for drugs. We require no such standards for computers, cell phones, and software, but given the nefarious uses to which they are sometimes put, decades ago one could easily have argued for doing so. Had we done so, we would now be living in a much poorer, less interesting world—and perhaps one with even greater risks to life and limb than we have now. No online predators or improvised explosive devices, but also no OnStar to save you after an automobile crash or smartphone to alert police to your life-threatening situation and geographic location. (p. 41)

In other words–and this is another lesson I stress at length in my work–precautionary policies create profound trade-offs that are not always well understood upon enactment of new laws or regulations. As I noted in my book, “When commercial uses of an important resource or technology are arbitrarily prohibited or curtailed, the opportunity costs of such exclusion may not always be immediately evident. Nonetheless, those ‘unseen’ effects are very real and have profound consequences for individuals, the economy, and society.”

What Graboyes does so well in his new paper is prove that these trade-offs are already at work in the American health care system and that we had better get serious about acknowledging them before real damage is done. And what makes Fortress and Frontier such an enjoyable read is that Graboyes is a gifted story-teller who explains in clear terms how expanded health care innovation opportunities could improve the lives of real people. It’s not just abstract, textbook talk. We hear stories of real-world innovators and the patients who need their inventions. For example, Graboyes tells of “an unheralded doctor who pioneered stem-cell therapy in a small-town hospital, a carpenter and puppet-maker who invented functional prosthetic hands costing one-thousandth the price of professionally made devices (aided by an evolutionary biologist who started a worldwide consortium of amateur prosthetists), and college students who devised a low-cost treatment for clubfoot.” (p. 4) And much, much more.

“The most important thing to understand about disruptive innovation is that it often comes (perhaps usually comes) from strange and unexpected places,” Graboyes notes. (p. 20) “[A] shift from Fortress to Frontier would benefit the health and finances of Americans,” he argues, and “the task begins by easing limits on the supply of health care services, thereby clearing the way for innovators to take health care in directions we cannot yet imagine.” (p. 39)

Importantly, Graboyes also offers another reason why America should embrace the “frontier” spirit: Our global competitive advantage in this space is at risk if we don’t:

Moving health care from the Fortress to the Frontier may be more a matter of necessity than of choice. We are entering a period of rapid technological advances that will radically alter health care. Many of these advances require only modest capital and labor inputs that governments cannot easily control or prohibit. If US law obstructs these technologies here, it will be feasible for Americans to obtain them by Internet, by mail, or by travel. (p. 41-2)

He highlights several areas in which this debate will play out going forward including (and notice the intersection with the modern digital technologies and tech policy debates we often discuss here): genomic knowledge and personalized medicine, 3-D printing, artificial intelligence, information sharing via social media, wearable technology, and telemedicine.

To make sure that America can capitalize on the same innovative spirit that gave us the Information Revolution, Graboyes concludes his study with a laundry list of needed policy reforms. These include:

  • reform of FDA drug & device approval process to expedite reviews.
  • ensure that Americans have a “right to know” about themselves and their health (i.e., that individuals have a right to possess their own genetic information and to receive information about how to interpret the results.)
  • abolish state certificate-of-need laws, which unnecessarily “require that hospital developers obtain government permission before building a new facility, or expanding an existing one, or even adding a specific piece of medical equipment.”
  • reform state-based licensing laws, which “put barriers in the way of doctors moving from other states” and create physician shortages. Also need to reform state laws to allow nurse practitioners, optometrists, and others to practice independently of physicians.
  • reform tort law by capping noneconomic damages, instituting a “loser pays” rule to discourage frivolous lawsuits, establishing safe harbors for vaccine developers, and more.
  • revising tax laws to make sure medical devices are not hit with discriminatory tax burdens that discourage innovation, and then also revising other taxes that skew incentives in the health insurance marketplace.

Graboyes itemizes dozens of other potential reforms to give policymakers a smorgasbord of options from which to choose. It is unlikely that all the reforms he lists will be adopted, but even if policymakers would just pick a few of those proposed action items, it could provide a real boost to medical innovation in the short term. Importantly, most of these proposed reforms could be implemented without stirring up contentious debate over the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Needless to say, I highly recommend Fortress and Frontier and I very much hope that the vision that Graboyes articulates in it comes to influence public thinking and future policymaking in the health care arena. In a follow-up post, I will also discuss how Fortress versus Frontier provides us with another “innovation paradigm” that can help us frame future innovation policy debates in many other contexts.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2014/11/10/robert-graboyes-on-what-the-internet-can-teach-us-about-health-care-innovation/feed/ 0 74900 New Paper on “A History of Cronyism & Capture in the Information Technology Sector” https://techliberation.com/2013/07/02/new-paper-on-a-history-of-cronyism-capture-in-the-information-technology-sector/ https://techliberation.com/2013/07/02/new-paper-on-a-history-of-cronyism-capture-in-the-information-technology-sector/#comments Tue, 02 Jul 2013 13:48:02 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=45048

WP coverThe Mercatus Center at George Mason University has just released a new paper by Brent Skorup and me entitled, “A History of Cronyism and Capture in the Information Technology Sector.” In this 73-page working paper, which we hope to place in a law review or political science journal shortly, we document the evolution of government-granted privileges, or “cronyism,” in the information and communications technology marketplace and in the media-producing sectors. Specifically, we offer detailed histories of rent-seeking and regulatory capture in: the early history of the telephony and spectrum licensing in the United States; local cable TV franchising; the universal service system; the digital TV transition in the 1990s; and modern video marketplace regulation (i.e., must-carry and retransmission consent rules, among others.

Our paper also shows how cronyism is slowly creeping into new high-technology sectors.We document how Internet companies and other high-tech giants are among the fastest-growing lobbying shops in Washington these days. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, lobbying spending by information technology sectors has almost doubled since the turn of the century, from roughly $200 million in 2000 to $390 million in 2012.  The computing and Internet sector has been responsible for most of that growth in recent years. Worse yet, we document how many of these high-tech firms are increasingly seeking and receiving government favors, mostly in the form of targeted tax breaks or incentives.

We argue that the creeping cronyism could have two major negative ramifications. First, it could dull entrepreneurialism and competition in this highly innovative sector since time and resources spent on influencing politicians and capturing regulators cannot be spent competing and innovating in the marketplace. Cronyism will also negatively impact consumer welfare by denying consumers more and better products and services. Additionally, consumers might end up paying higher prices or higher taxes due to government privileges for industry.

Second, cronyism also raises the specter of greater government control of the Internet and of the digital economy. When policymakers dispense favors, they usually expect something in return. They also become accustomed to having greater informal powers over the sector receiving favors, and contribute to DC’s infamous “revolving door” problem.

High-tech America’s recent embrace of Washington could take it down the familiar path followed by the agriculture, telecommunications, and automotive sectors (among many others), with government becoming both protector and punisher of industry. Today’s dynamic tech industries will increasingly come under the “Mother, may I?” permission-based regulatory regime that encumbered the older information technology sectors.

Tech Lobbying sectoral breakdown

Finally, this paper offers strategies for stalling and diminishing the cronyism already taking root in the high-tech sector. We suggest several targeted reforms to limit or undo cronyism. Generally speaking, however, we note that, as economist David R. Henderson argued in an earlier Mercatus Center report, “There is only one way to end, or at least to reduce, the amount of cronyism, and that is to reduce government power.”

The paper can be downloaded from the Mercatus website, SSRN, or Scribd. The Scribd version is embedded down below. (Also, here’s some coverage of the paper over at the Washington Post’s “Wonkblog” from our old colleague Tim Lee. Here’s more coverage from Bloomberg Businessweek and the San Francisco Chronicle. And here’s a U.S. News oped that Brent and I wrote condensing our paper into just 600 words. Finally, a short 3-minute video of me discussing the problem of tech cronyism is also embedded below.)

A History of Cronyism and Capture in the Information Technology Sector [Thierer and Skorup – July 2013] by Adam Thierer

]]> https://techliberation.com/2013/07/02/new-paper-on-a-history-of-cronyism-capture-in-the-information-technology-sector/feed/ 1 45048 DoJ Greenlights Ticketmaster-Live Nation Deal, With Conditions https://techliberation.com/2010/01/27/doj-greenlights-ticketmaster-live-nation-deal-with-conditions/ https://techliberation.com/2010/01/27/doj-greenlights-ticketmaster-live-nation-deal-with-conditions/#respond Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:45:33 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=25478

The Ticketmaster-Live Nation antitrust saga has come to a bittersweet end. Earlier this week the Justice Department finally approved the merger between the two firms, just shy of one year after it was announced.

While a number antitrust experts had speculated that the Justice Department might seek an injunction to block the deal outright, the DoJ ultimately opted to approve the deal while subjecting Ticketmaster-Live Nation to several conditions that are supposed to promote competition in the events marketplace. Under the terms of the consent decree, the combined firm will be required to license its ticketing software to competitor Anschutz Entertainment Group and divest Paciolan, a ticketing subsidiary of Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster-Live Nation also faces ten years of monitoring by antitrust officials to “prevent anticompetitive bundling of services.”

Ticketmaster has long been a controversial firm among concertgoers, frequently drawing consumers’ ire for charging hefty “convenience” fees and offering customer service that’s not exactly stellar. But it’s important to remember that today’s entertainment market is more fragmented than ever, and consumers have a huge array of choices for listening to music and viewing live events. Even YouTube is getting into the business of airing live events. The video site has broadcast several live events already, including U2’s Rose Bowl performance in October 2009, and is eyeing the pay-per-view live streaming market as well.

So it’s not hard to see why consolidation is taking place in the event ticketing and promotion markets. Economists have demonstrated that vertical integration, done properly, often results in sizable efficiencies, translating into overall welfare gains for consumers. Together, Ticketmaster and Live Nation are in a stronger position than before to offer value to event venues and promote concerts and shows. And as much we all hate service fees, in industries characterized by high fixed costs and declining marginal unit costs – like ticketing – big per-unit “markups” are often necessary to induce businesses to compete and innovate. While Ticketmaster may not be the most innovative company in the world, the firm faces an uncertain future as its contracts with venues come up for renewal. If Ticketmaster really is harming concertgoers – and by the way, there’s no clear evidence that it is – it will be disciplined not only by concert lovers, but by venues and artists as well. Derailing a potentially efficient business arrangement simply because it might not work out, whether in the event ticketing market or the cable television market, results in harm to consumers.

Interestingly, Susan Crawford, a law professor and former White House Special Assistant for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy, tweeted yesterday, “Notice [the] unbundling conditions on [the] Ticketmaster merger.” It’s curious that Crawford chose the term ‘unbundling,’ which typically refers to essential facilities regulation whereby government forces utilities to share their last-mile facilities with competitors. Crawford happens to be a staunch advocate of local loop unbundling, which requires incumbent telecom providers to share their local facilities with competitive carriers at “just and reasonable” prices – as determined by regulators, of course. (The 1996 Telecom Act imposed local loop unbundling rules in the U.S., although subsequent FCC rulings relaxed unbundling requirements to a significant extent.)

Despite the seeming similarities between the Ticketmaster conditions and unbundling regulations, the two rules are rooted in distinct regulatory frameworks. Ticketmaster is only required to share a peripheral element of its business, ticketing software, with a single rival for ten years. But U.S. telecom firms governed by local loop unbundling rules must sell a core element of their business, last-mile access, to all comers, at rates that regulators deem reasonable. Ticketmaster acquired its market share by competing in the free market and, to a lesser extent, by acquiring smaller firms. Telecom incumbents have significant market share in no small part thanks to nationwide infrastructure established long ago by the long-dissolved Ma Bell monopoly. Moreover, forced unbundling of essential facilities is a network regulation, rather an antitrust regulation. U.S. antitrust laws are deeply flawed, but thanks in large part to the courts, at least antitrust regulation is fundamentally rooted in actual economics and aims to maximize consumer welfare. The FCC, on the other hand, assesses policies using the “public interest” standard, an ambiguous, arbitrary framework that incorporates economics only when convenient.

The legitimacy of merger licensing conditions is independent from the legitimacy of local loop unbundling. More to the point, bad antitrust laws are no justification for bad communications laws.

The Ticketmaster-Live Nation antitrust saga has come to a bittersweet end. Earlier this week the Justice Department finally approved the merger between the two firms, just shy of one year after it was announced.

While a number antitrust experts had speculated that the Justice Department might seek an injunction to block the deal outright, the DoJ ultimately opted to require Ticketmaster-Live Nation to agree to several conditions that supposedly will promote competition in the events marketplace. Under the terms of the consent decree, the combined firm will be required to license its software to competitor Anschutz Entertainment Group and divest ticketing subsidiary Paciolan. Ticketmaster-Live Nation also faces ten years of scrutiny by antitrust officials to “prevent anticompetitive bundling of services.”

Ticketmaster has long been a controversial firm, frequently drawing consumers’ ire for its maligned “convenience” fees and customer service woes. But it’s important to remember that today’s entertainment market is more fragmented than ever, and consumers have a huge array of choices for listening to music and viewing live events. Even YouTube is getting into the business of airing live events. The video site has broadcast several live events already, including U2’s Rose Bowl performance in October 2009, and is eyeing the pay-per-view live streaming market as well.

So it’s not hard to see why consolidation is taking place in the event ticketing and promotion markets. Done properly, vertical integration can result in sizable efficiencies, translating into overall welfare gains for consumers. Together, Ticketmaster and Live Nation are in a stronger position than before to offer value to event venues and promote concerts and shows. And as much we all hate service fees, in industries characterized by high fixed costs and declining marginal unit costs – like ticketing – big “markups” are often necessary to induce businesses to compete and innovate. While Ticketmaster may not be the most innovative company in the world, the firm faces an uncertain future as its contracts with venues come up for renewal. If Ticketmaster truly is engaging in anti-consumer behavior – and it’s not at all clear that it is – it will be disciplined not only by concert lovers, but by venues and artists as well. Derailing a potentially efficient business arrangement simply because it might not work out is bad for consumers, whether in the event ticketing market or the cable television market. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/01/cricket-youtube.html

Susan Crawford, former White House Special Assistant for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy, tweeted yesterday, “Notice [the] unbundling conditions on [the] Ticketmaster merger.” It’s curious that Crawford chose the term ‘unbundling,’ which typically refers to essential facilities regulation whereby government forces utilities to share their last-mile facilities with competitors. Crawford happens to be a staunch advocate of local loop unbundling, a regulation that requires incumbent telecom providers to share their local facilities with competitive carriers at “reasonable and just” prices. (The 1996 Telecom act imposed local loop unbundling in the U.S., although subsequent FCC rulings relaxed unbundling requirements to a significant extent.)

Despite the seeming similarities between the Ticketmaster conditions and unbundling regulations, the two rules are rooted in distinct regulatory frameworks. Ticketmaster is only required to share one element of its business, ticketing software, with a single rival for ten years. But U.S. telecom firms governed by local loop unbundling rules must sell last-mile access to all comers at rates that regulators deem reasonable. Ticketmaster acquired its market share by competing in the free market and, to a lesser extent, by acquiring smaller firms, while telecom companies have high market share in large part because of decades-old government grants. In addition, forced unbundling of essential facilities is a network regulation, rather an antitrust regulation. U.S. antitrust laws may be flawed, but at least they’re fundamentally rooted in actual economics and consumer welfare-maximization. The FCC, on the other hand, assesses policies using the “public interest” standard, an ambiguous, ever-changing framework that incorporates economics only when convenient.

The legitimacy of merger licensing conditions is independent from the legitimacy of local loop unbundling. More to the point, bad antitrust laws are no justification for bad communications laws.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2010/01/27/doj-greenlights-ticketmaster-live-nation-deal-with-conditions/feed/ 0 25478 Video Presentation: “America’s First Amendment Twilight Zone” https://techliberation.com/2009/03/12/video-presentation-americas-first-amendment-twilight-zone/ https://techliberation.com/2009/03/12/video-presentation-americas-first-amendment-twilight-zone/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:12:30 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=17393

Today, it was my great privilege to guest lecture at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy. Under the leadership of Ed Felten, who also runs the excellent “Freedom to Tinker” blog, the CITP has quickly become one of America’s premier institutions in the field of IT policy matters. David Robinson, who some of you will remember from his days as an editor at The American, serves as associate director of the CITP program and was kind enough to invite me to speak.  And our own Tim Lee is currently studying there as well.  I wish I was smart enough to get into that program!

The topic of my talk was “The Future of the First Amendment in an Age of Technological Convergence” and I used the opportunity to create a narrated video of this presentation, which I have made to several other groups through the years. In this presentation, I talk about “America’s First Amendment Twilight Zone,” which refers to the fact that identical words and images are being regulated in completely different ways today depending on the mode of transmission. This illogical and unfair situation could eventually threaten the Internet, video games, and all new media with many of the misguided regulations that have long been imposed on broadcast television and radio operators. In my presentation, which you can watch below, I make the case for changing our First Amendment regime to ensure “bit equality”; all speech and media platforms should be accorded the gold standard of First Amendment protection.

http://www.youtube.com/v/xJo3tVMScyI&hl=en&fs=1

The presentation is based upon several other essays, court filings, and law review articles I have written on the topic, including:

]]> https://techliberation.com/2009/03/12/video-presentation-americas-first-amendment-twilight-zone/feed/ 133 17393 Microsoft Licenses ActiveSync for Google Sync https://techliberation.com/2009/02/21/microsoft-licenses-activesync-for-google-sync/ https://techliberation.com/2009/02/21/microsoft-licenses-activesync-for-google-sync/#comments Sat, 21 Feb 2009 16:53:44 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=16970

It’s good to see Google and Microsoft playing nice (for once):

Microsoft has licensed the Exchange ActiveSync protocol to several other mobile communications players, including Apple. Horacio Gutierrez, a top Microsoft intellectual property and licensing executive, said in a statement that Google’s licensing of the patents related to the protocol “is a clear acknowledgement of the innovation taking place at Microsoft.” He said it also exemplifies the company’s “openness to generally license our patents under fair and reasonable terms so long as licensees respect Microsoft intellectual property.”

Check out Google’s new service.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2009/02/21/microsoft-licenses-activesync-for-google-sync/feed/ 9 16970 Podcast of Fairness Doctrine Discussion on Jim Bohannon Show https://techliberation.com/2008/12/03/podcast-of-fairness-doctrine-discussion-on-jim-bohannon-show/ https://techliberation.com/2008/12/03/podcast-of-fairness-doctrine-discussion-on-jim-bohannon-show/#comments Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:32:20 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=14661

Last night, I appeared on the Jim Bohannon radio show for 30 minutes and discussed the past, present, and future of the Fairness Doctrine and broadcast industry regulation in general. More specifically, we got into efforts to drive Fairness Doctrine-like regulations back on the books via backdoor efforts like “localism” mandates, community oversight boards, and other public interest requirements. These are issues that Brian Anderson and I discuss in our new book, A Manifesto for Media Freedom, which I blogged about here when it was released in October.

If you’re interested, you can listen to the entire show by clicking here.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2008/12/03/podcast-of-fairness-doctrine-discussion-on-jim-bohannon-show/feed/ 2 14661 Nice to Be Wanted https://techliberation.com/2008/11/23/nice-to-be-wanted-2/ https://techliberation.com/2008/11/23/nice-to-be-wanted-2/#comments Sun, 23 Nov 2008 07:02:01 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=14394