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 writtenextensively 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.
The race for artificial intelligence (AI) supremacy is on with governments across the globe looking to take the lead in the next great technological revolution. As they did before during the internet era, the US and Europe are once again squaring off with competing policy frameworks.
It seems the EU basically wants to have its cake and eat it too by marrying up an ambitious industrial policy with a precautionary regulatory regime. We’ve seen this show before. Europe is doubling down on the same policy regime it used for the internet and digital commerce. It did not work out well for the continent then, and there are reasons to think it will backfire on them again for AI technologies. Continue reading →
This week, the Trump Administration proposed a new policy framework for artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that attempts to balance the need for continued innovation with a set of principles to address concerns about new AI services and applications. This represents an important moment in the history of emerging technology governance as it creates a policy vision for AI that is generally consistent with earlier innovation governance frameworks established by previous administrations.
Generally speaking, the Trump governance vision for AI encourages regulatory humility and patience in the face of an uncertain technological future. However, the framework also endorses a combination of “hard” and “soft” law mechanisms to address policy concerns that have already been raised about developing or predicted AI innovations.
AI promises to revolutionize almost every sector of the economy and can potentially benefit our lives in numerous ways. But AI applications also raise a number of policy concerns, specifically regarding safety or fairness. On the safety front, for example, some are concerned about the AI systems that control drones, driverless cars, robots, and other autonomous systems. When it comes to fairness considerations, critics worry about “bias” in algorithmic systems that could deny people jobs, loans, or health care, among other things.
These concerns deserve serious consideration and some level of policy guidance or else the public may never come to trust AI systems, especially if the worst of those fears materialize as AI technologies spread. But
how policy is formulated and imposed matters profoundly. A heavy-handed, top-down regulatory regime could undermine AI’s potential to improve lives and strengthen the economy. Accordingly, a flexible governance framework is needed and the administration’s new guidelines for AI regulation do a reasonably good job striking that balance. Continue reading →
“Rent-Seeking Consultants, Inc.,” a subsidiary of the Strategies and Tactics to Annoy Neighbors (SATAN) Group, is pleased to announce its latest product for clients looking to exploit well-intentioned regulation to serve their own ends. Our new report, “Raising Rivals’ Costs Using the GDPR: A Strategic Guide to Thwarting Competition, Expanding Market Share & Enhancing Profits with Minimal Effort,” is available for immediate download for just $1,999 (discounted to just $999 for our loyal “Dante’s Ninth Circle” club members).
Over the last three decades, our experts at Rent-Seeking Consultants have dedicated themselves to the mission of advancing narrow interests at the expense of public welfare. We have done so by creatively exploiting laws and regulations that — while often implemented with the very best of intentions in mind — we recognized could be converted into a tool to advantage the few at the expense of the many.
Our motto:
Where others see good intentions, we see good opportunities!
Our “Raising Rivals’ Costs Using the GDPR” report continues our latest line of new products, which aim to take Europe’s bold new privacy regulatory regime and convert it into a rent-seeker’s paradise. Our previous report outlined, “How to Pretend Compliance Costs Will Destroy Your Big Company, While Also Letting Your Shareholders Know It is Actually an Amazing Way to Crush the Competition.” Continue reading →
This essay originally appeared on The Bridge on September 25, 2019.
It is quickly becoming one of the iron laws of technology policy that by attempting to address one problem (like privacy, security, safety, or competition), policymakers often open up a different problem on another front. Trying to regulate to protect online safety, for example, might give rise to privacy concerns, or vice versa. Or taking steps to address online privacy through new regulations might create barriers to new entry, thus hurting online competition.
In a sense, this is simply a restatement of the law of unintended consequences. But it seems to be occurring with greater regularity in the technology policy today, and it serves as another good reminder why humility is essential when considering new regulations for fast-moving sectors.
Consider a few examples.
Privacy vs security & competition
Many US states and the federal government are considering data privacy regulations in the vein of the European Union’s wide-reaching General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR). But as early experiences with the GDPR and various state efforts can attest, regulations aimed at boosting consumer privacy can often butt against other security and competition concerns. Continue reading →
Imagine a competition to design the most onerous and destructive economic regulation ever conceived. A mandate that would make all other mandates blush with embarrassment for not being burdensome or costly enough. What would that Worst Regulation Ever look like?
Unfortunately, Bill de Blasio has just floated a few proposals that could take first and second place prize in that hypothetical contest. In a new Wired essay, the New York City mayor and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate explains, “Why American Workers Need to Be Protected From Automation,” and aims to accomplish that through a new agency with vast enforcement powers, and a new tax.
Taken together, these ideas represent one of the most radical regulatory plans any America politician has yet concocted.
Politicians, academics, and many others have been panicking over automation at least since the days when the Luddites were smashing machines in protest over growing factory mechanization. With the growth of more sophisticated forms of robotics, artificial intelligence, and workplace automation today, there has been a resurgence of these fears and a renewed push for sweeping regulations to throw a wrench in the gears of progress. Mayor de Blasio is looking to outflank his fellow Democratic candidates for president with an anti-automation plan that may be the most extreme proposal of its kind. Continue reading →
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) recently delivered remarks at the National Conservatism Conference and a Young America’s Foundation conference in which he railed against political and academic elites, arguing that, “the old era is ending and the old ways will not do.” “It’s time that we stood up to big government, to the people in government who think they know better,” Hawley noted at the YAF event. “[W]e are for free competition… we are for the free market.”
That’s all nice-sounding rhetoric but it sure doesn’t seem to match up with Hawley’s recent essays and policy proposals, which are straight out of the old era’s elitist and highly paternalistic Washington-Knows-Best playbook. Specifically, Hawley has called for a top-down, technocratic regulatory regime for the Internet and the digital economy more generally. Hawley has repeatedly made claims that digital technology companies have gotten a sweetheart deal from government and they they have censored conservative voices. That’s utter nonsense, but those arguments have driven his increasingly fanatic rhetoric and command-and-control policy proposals. If he succeeds in his plan to empower unelected bureaucrats inside the Beltway to reshape the Internet, it will destroy one of the greatest American success stories in recent memory. It’s hard to understand how that could be labelled “conservative” in any sense of the word. Continue reading →
My latest AIER column examines the impact increased lobbying and regulatory accumulation have on entrepreneurialism and innovation more generally. Unsurprisingly, it’s not a healthy relationship. A growing body of economic evidence concludes that increases in the former lead to much less of the latter.
This is a topic that my Mercatus Center colleagues and I have done a lot of work on through the years. But what got me thinking about the topic again was a new NBER working paper by economists Germán Gutiérrez and Thomas Philippon entitled, “The Failure of Free Entry.” Their new study finds that “regulations and lobbying explain rather well the decline in the allocation of entry” that we have seen in recent years.
Many economists have documented how business dynamism–new firm creation, entry, churn, etc–appears to have slowed in the US. Explanations for why vary but Gutiérrez and Philippon show that, “regulations have a negative impact on small firms, especially in industries with high lobbying expenditures.” Their results also document how regulations, “have a first order impact on incumbent profits and suggest that the regulatory capture may have increased in recent years.”
In other words, lobbying and cronyism breed a culture of rent-seeking, over-regulation, and rule accumulation that directly limit new startup activity and innovation more generally. This is a recipe for economic stagnation if left unchecked. Continue reading →
I have been covering telecom and Internet policy for almost 30 years now. During much of that time – which included a nine year stint at the Heritage Foundation — I have interacted with conservatives on various policy issues and often worked very closely with them to advance certain reforms.
If I divided my time in Tech Policy Land into two big chunks of time, I’d say the biggest tech-related policy issue for conservatives during the first 15 years I was in the business (roughly 1990 – 2005) was preventing the resurrection of the so-called Fairness Doctrine. And the biggest issue during the second 15-year period (roughly 2005 – present) was stopping the imposition of “Net neutrality” mandates on the Internet. In both cases, conservatives vociferously blasted the notion that unelected government bureaucrats should sit in judgment of what constituted “fairness” in media or “neutrality” online.
Many conservatives are suddenly changing their tune, however. President Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, for example, have been increasingly critical of both traditional media and new tech companies in various public statements and suggested an openness to increased regulation. The President has gone after old and new media outlets alike, while Sen. Cruz (along with others like Sen. Lindsay Graham) has suggested during congressional hearings that increased oversight of social media platforms is needed, including potential antitrust action.
Meanwhile, during his short time in office, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has become one of the most vocal Internet critics on the Right. In a shockingly-worded USA Today editorial in late May, Hawley said, “social media wastes our time and resources” and is “a field of little productive value” that have only “given us an addiction economy.” He even referred to these sites as “parasites” and blamed them for a long list of social problems, leading him to suggest that, “we’d be better off if Facebook disappeared” along with various other sites and services.
Hawley’s moral panic over social media has now bubbled over into a regulatory crusade that would unleash federal bureaucrats on the Internet in an attempt to dictate “fair” speech on the Internet. He has introduced an astonishing piece of legislation aimed at undoing the liability protections that Internet providers rely upon to provide open platforms for speech and commerce. If Hawley’s absurdly misnamed new “Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act” is implemented, it would essentially combine the core elements of the Fairness Doctrine and Net Neutrality to create a massive new regulatory regime for the Internet. Continue reading →
Slate recently published an astonishing piece of revisionist history under the title, “Bring Back the Golden Age of Broadcast Regulation,” which suggested that the old media regulatory model of the past would be appropriate for modern digital media providers and platforms. In the essay, April Glaser suggests that policymakers should resurrect the Fairness Doctrine and a host of old Analog Era content controls to let regulatory bureaucrats address Digital Age content moderation concerns.
In a tweetstorm, I highlighted a few examples of why the so-called Golden Era wasn’t so golden in practice. I began by noting that the piece ignores the troubling history of FCC speech controls and unintended consequences of regulation. That regime gave us limited, bland choices–and a whole host of First Amendment violations. We moved away from that regulatory model for very good reasons.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.