Municipal Antitrust: Taming Disruptive Competition Through Fair Regulatory Redesign
Oh, the papers I must write! Below is an abtract as paper proposal for a piece that I will co-author this spring.
Cities and municipalities are leading the way in creating new policies to adapt to the technical revolution, mirroring the decentralized, innovative nature of the current economic change. Large institutions — Congress, federal agencies, and most large companies — are too siloed, sclerotic and slow to react while the combination of new technology, corporate overreach, and economic dislocation overtakes the economy. Thus cities are at the forefront. Cities must entirely restructure government to match the patterns of the “sharing” economy, because economic change cannot be stopped or led, but it can be channeled towards better ends. It also should be managed to forestall the real and inequitable fall out from a shift as earthshaking as the industrial revolution was a century ago.
A new form of American competition law is the answer.
Washington DC is better poised to do so than any other American city given its unique posture as both city and state. Major, multi-disciplinary, inclusive reform is possible, but it must be community-based, evidence-driven, and pro-competitive. A new form of American competition law is the answer. America invented antitrust, and now it must reinvent it and its sisters — consumer protection, privacy, and regulation. Building on the example of regulatory reform of DC taxicabs, and providing a structure for the entire form of housing and business regulation, this paper would outline how cities can manage the change and better support vulnerable populations using light-handed competition principles.
Centrally, new regulatory schemes must manage a deregulatory approach to slashing government-erected barriers to market entry, including a reexamination of professional licensing, while reinforcing government’s ability to intercede to correct harms to health, safety, the environment, and market fairness. Through basic business and related regulation, local governments must reshape and support new business and labor models and patterns. But to manage effective change, municipal government not only needs new laws and regulations, but the ability to adapt government workforces to a paradigm shift and to advocate for fair and appropriate new regulations through public education in the face of powerful and influential local stakeholder interests.
