Facebook. Uber. Venmo. Until the 21st century, these words were meaningless. Today, they mean connecting with friends, traveling to meet them, and paying them back without opening your wallet. They are examples of creative disruption producing new, more convenient services at lower costs. They are instrumental to a more connected, faster paced, and more democratized society.
And it all happened without asking a single bureaucrat for permission.
Unfortunately, this kind of dynamic, permissionless innovation is under attack from unelected bureaucrats in Washington who are using decades-old laws to regulate the technologies of the future. For instance, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) claims that the Communications Act of 1934 — written just seven years after the first transatlantic telephone call was completed — gives the federal agency the power to police the Internet with their new so-called “net neutrality” regulations. Even the most recent update of this 82-year-old law, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, was enacted when cell phones looked like bricks and cost upwards of $1,000.
The problem isn’t simply that these laws are old, but that they grant broad, discretionary powers to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats to write sweeping regulations via a decision-making process that is opaque and untethered from economic reality. This creates a venue that is highly susceptible to undue influence by large, incumbent firms who can leverage their well-connected lobbyists to gain access to the federal regulatory apparatus and shut out entrepreneurs and innovators.
By cutting out the 535 elected representatives in Congress — the government officials who are constitutionally responsible for making the laws — the regulatory process ensures that the American people have little say over the rules and regulations governing communications and information technology and no way to vote out of office the authors of those policies when they drive up their monthly cable and cell phone bills. And it enables congressional lawmakers to duck the accountability associated with making tough policy decisions, fostering a political culture in which a strongly worded letter from a Senator or Representative to the head of a bureaucratic agency to protest unpopular, costly regulations becomes the standard of “bold” action by the Legislative Branch.
The technological and economic consequences of this dysfunctional status quo are enormous. Instead of vibrant competition in an open marketplace, directed by clear rules of the road, technological pioneers are smothered by onerous rules written by backwards-looking bureaucrats, stifling innovation and impeding economic growth.
But it doesn’t need to be this way. Instead of allowing a select few regulators and lobbyists to shape, direct, and constrain the future of technology according to their narrow interests and preferences, 21st century America deserves reform that prioritizes innovation and consumer protection above all else.
For this reason, I have begun to craft a legislative reform agenda to rein in the power of unaccountable bureaucrats and put Congress back in control of addressing the technological challenges of our time. My 21st century technology policy plan, or 21st Century Tech, will advance two key objectives: promoting competition and protecting consumers.
Promoting competition begins with sweeping away barriers to entry and establishing rules that everyone — from the smallest startups to the largest incumbents — can understand and are obliged to follow. This includes eliminating the artificial — and technologically nonsensical — distinctions between technologies, which serve to protect incumbent interests from disruptive innovation. Likewise, antitrust and merger decisions should be grounded in clear economic and competition analysis. And worn-out video regulations from an era of black-and-white screens and rabbit ear antennas should be replaced with simple guidelines that preserve and grow today’s Golden Age of video content across cable, satellite, and the Internet.
Physical and technical barriers to entry are just as important as regulatory ones. So my 21st Century Tech agenda will promote a “Dig Once” policy for federal highway projects and other reforms aimed at simplifying right-of-way practices on federal property, thereby minimizing infrastructure costs. We should also encourage states and local governments to follow suit — by opening up access to cable conduits, telephone poles, and other forms of infrastructure, for example — in order to stimulate competition between larger firms and smaller startups. Likewise, we should advance reforms that increase the efficiency of wireless-spectrum use, which will improve speeds and drive down costs as more and more Americans will be able use mobile data to stay in touch with family, do work, and stay informed.
Promoting competition will benefit consumers by inducing companies to provide better services at lower prices. But market-driven competition must be guided by the second principle of my 21st century technology agenda: protecting consumers. To ensure that consumers are well informed about the technology they use and protected from predatory practices before they occur, we need new legislation that establishes consistent standards for privacy, security, and transparency based on the experiences and best practices of a wide array of stakeholders.
We also need to adapt corrective legal processes that can quickly identify and end unfair or deceptive practices. A uniform process of investigation will guarantee both transparency and justice, and appropriate legal recourse offers consumers the peace of mind that they will be protected amidst the waves of innovation and creative disruption. Finally, we need to ensure that adjudication within the judicial system establishes precedent for future cases, which will benefit both consumers and the companies that hope to serve them.
Since our earliest days as a nation, the United States has been driven by experimentation and innovation. In the 20th century alone, two brothers launched and landed the first human flight, NASA put a man on the Moon, and some college dropouts developed the personal computer. Here at the start of the 21st century, we see technologies that connect distant peoples from across the globe, educate and give voice to those without power or influence, and improve the lives of everyday families in countless ways. The dawn of this new era has been bright, and the future appears even brighter, so long as it’s defined by the creativity, ingenuity, and entrepreneurial spirit of the American people, not unelected federal bureaucrats stuck in the status quo of yesterday.
This is a tall order after decades of business-as-usual. That’s why I call on my colleagues in Congress, from both sides of the aisle, to work with me on this important project. With their help, and the endless supply of enterprising optimists and inspired innovators across the country, I am confident that Facebook, Uber, and Venmo are just the beginning of what we can create together in the 21st century.
