Generally, people later come to regret things they say or write things when they’re having a temper tantrum. “That’s not who I really am, or who I mean to be,” they think.
Policy thought leadership, however, is a considered process, not a temper tantrum. There is research, evaluation, definition of terms, statistical or quantitative analysis, and consideration of tradeoffs. There is a review and an editorial process.
Mainly, though, there are long-held principles by which policy thinkers approach problems, propose solutions, and evaluate tradeoffs.
That’s why it was frankly shocking to see a paper released this week by the Heritage Foundation that violates all of these hallmarks of sound policy analysis. It’s a very unHeritage-like paper, or at least very much unlike Heritage’s hard-won reputation as a leader of conservative policy thought.
The paper’s author, Kara Frederick, is clearly angry with the tech industry. But seeing the Heritage Foundation take up her offence and institutionalize it is a mistake with potentially enormous consequences.
What’s worse is that Heritage knows better. Just over a year ago Heritage published a paper with a much different analysis and set of recommendations for exactly the same problems. The issue hasn’t changed, so why has Heritage’s position changed so quickly and dramatically?
You know immediately that something has gone wrong from the extreme, hyperbolic and imprecise language, which is odd in a policy paper. “Big Tech is the enemy of the people” it insists, using a phrase historically used almost exclusively by authoritarians to demonize their opponents, most notably by Joseph Stalin and Robespierre.
But Heritage is quite willing in this case to demonize an entire industry where the United States is globally dominant and which has delivered unimaginable benefits to consumers. These tech companies thrive and are successful because they deliver value to consumers, which is the way a conservative, free market think tank normally views business success in any other industry.
The hyperbole and demonization continues with the title phrase “Big Tech Totalitarianism.” Really?
There really is such a thing as totalitarianism, and Amazon ain’t doing it. This defining down of totalitarianism is a surprise from an organization that championed a strong stand against real totalitarianism over the last several decades.
In a totalitarian system the government can with little or no justification break down your door, shoot your dog, take your children away and haul you off to jail with no recourse to due process. Does Big Tech do that? Or do consumers willingly choose or choose not to patronize their businesses or platforms, just as they do any other business or industry in a free market? When is the last time Etsy dragged someone off to the Netflix gulag?
Blurring the distinction between government power and market power is one of the most disturbing aspects of the Heritage paper. Acknowledging government’s unique power to use force and coercion is a bedrock concern for those who believe in limited government. Companies in every industry make mistakes all the time, and they are disciplined by the market response in proportion to the degree of consumer dissatisfaction. Government is much different, and blurring the distinction between government power and market power is a deep philosophical mistake that, if embraced, won’t remain siloed to Big Tech.
Quantification and empirical analysis is skipped in the paper. Antitrust enforcement against companies like Netflix which faces significant competition from Disney, Hulu, and other streamers? Why? The author insists on aggressive antitrust investigations and enforcement—actions conservatives historically haven’t supported—without making any attempt to quantify how to evaluate market power. Besides, antitrust is an entirely inappropriate solution for the social and content moderation complaints of the author, especially her argument retrospective scrutiny of past mergers. General opposition to mergers is a highly problematic position for an organization that claims to believe in free markets.
Here be dragons. The author completely misrepresents and misconstrues Section 230, which is tough to do seeing how it consists of only 26 words. The author clearly doesn’t understand First Amendment protections against government compelled speech, and why the approaches she champions could just as easily be used to force Colorado baker Jack Phillips to host speech on his platform: his cakes.
Explaining every problem with the paper would require a paper of equal length, but the Cato Institute has done a good first pass at all the problems.
Embracing populist anger and grievance politics over principled policy analysis, trading principles for preferred outcomes, ignoring First Amendment protections, encouraging states to regulate interstate commerce, creating new forms of intermediary legal liability that will be a boon to trial lawyers, seeing government power as the solution to disliked market outcomes—these are but a few of the policy disasters contained in this Hall of Policy Atrocities.
Sometimes even good conservative think tanks make mistakes, such as when Heritage invented and championed the individual mandate for health insurance. This paper is another mistake, and Heritage should retract this position as well.