Federal Newswire:
When did you first become interested in regulatory reform?
Shoshana Weissmann:
Federal Newswire:
Are you familiar with occupational licensing, particularly DC's regulations on Shoe Shine stands? The shoe shiner at the Capitol Hill Club, Ego Brown, was the plaintiff in a case the Institute for Justice filed on his behalf.
Shoshana Weissmann:
I didn't know that was Ego Brown. I definitely have to go and talk to him because I've never had my shoes shined before, so I never ended up talking to him.
But yes, I remember a talk at Reason about licensing reform by Clark Neely, who's now VP at Cato.
He was the one who told me about the florist license and to dig in further. So not only did you have to pass an exam, but the court struck down the floral arrangement requirement. You had to arrange flowers to the liking of other licensed florists. The pass rate for that exam for florists in Louisiana was lower than the pass rate for the Louisiana Bar Exam.
Federal Newswire:
Is this “guild protectionism?”
Shoshana Weissmann:
Yeah, and if I recall correctly, Louisiana has a low bar pass rate. So knowing that the pass rate was lower than that, it's just protectionism. There's no harm that can be done by flowers.
It's not just florists, it's electricians who I'd be open to licensing. But studies show that when you license electricians, rates of harm go up because people try their hand at home as prices go up.
I'm okay with licensing doctors. But they try to stop nurses from practicing on their own to be able to help people at a low level where needed. So healthcare prices go up. Sometimes nurses try to stop pharmacists from doing more. There's all these tiers.
People can't work across state lines. Immigrants can't work because their credentials don't transfer. Veterans can't work because of licensing boards, it doesn't matter if you have veteran experience.
Federal Newswire:
Does occupational licensing harm the folks at the lowest end of the economic spectrum?
Shoshana Weissmann:
Yes. Even when you have expensive medical care, the problem still goes down to the poorest. When you're licensing the lower level professions, it's people who want their first step up out of poverty or their next step up to go in a good direction and get them to do things they want to do. Rich people can get by…it really does fall hardest on the poorest.
Federal Newswire:
Are you familiar with the equine massage case out of Maryland?
Shoshana Weissmann:
[Yes]. You have to be licensed to massage horses. I [thought] I don't know why this needs to be licensed.
If your horse hurts after a massage…I don't know how to tell if a horse hurts, but if you own a horse, you probably know if the horse isn't feeling great. So if someone gives your horse a bad massage, you can go hire someone else to massage your horse. You massage your dog all the time. You can play with goats, give them a little massage if you want.
Federal Newswire:
What are some other cases in other states?
Shoshana Weissmann:
If you're looking for ridiculous ones, almost every state licenses auctioneers. I feel like this can be worked out by itself. You don't need a special license. One of my favorites is taxidermy, because you wouldn't want someone to harm a dead animal. That's a real danger. Upholsterers, like sewing. I sew all the time. I'm learning upholstery. I feel like I can work it out myself.
Federal Newswire:
You need a license to sew things like pillows?
Shoshana Weissmann:
Yeah. I haven't read the definition of upholstery. I'm not sure if it's limited to couches or stuff you're sewing onto something because with pillows you could just stuff the pillow. You never know.
Sometimes the definitions are super broad and you're not statutorily allowed to do it for yourself, even though no one's going to enforce it. But in this case, I'm not sure if pillows are covered. It could range to the randomest thing.
I was arguing with someone a while back about cutting hair in New Hampshire. The old statute was saying, if you cut your own hair here [it’s] in violation of this law.
Federal Newswire:
What does the R Street Institute do?
Shoshana Weissmann:
We brand ourselves as free market and real solutions. Cato, Heritage, AEI, and some of the bigger think tanks do broad philosophy, which is important. That's work that needs to be done. But we do the mini stuff. We [want] to change this one thing and this solves a lot of the problem. Or here's something actionable that we think can get support [for, and] that you can do to fix a thing.
I really like seeing the solutions in action. We do everything from electricity policy and energy policy to flood insurance reform, all kinds of criminal justice reform. A lot of that is you change a little thing and you solve a lot.
A lot of it is tiny changes in statute that can make a lot of difference. [We do] over the counter birth control, everything tech policy, from AI to section 230 and anti-trust broadband.
My favorite thing is when a politician talks to us and says, "Oh my gosh, yeah, we can just fix that. Why don't we just fix that?"
Federal Newswire:
Where do you find balance between private platforms and the government in terms of how content is moderated?
Shoshana Weissmann:
It's not appropriate for government to tell platforms what to do, no matter what. Because the Right used to yell at Twitter for being biased, and now they say, "Oh no, don't yell at Twitter for being biased. It's ours now. It's Elon's." Which is fine.
But these people who wanted to come in and regulate a thing are now happy with it. If government had come in and regulated it, Elon probably wouldn't have taken it over. It's pretty hypocritical from my view.
Also imagine government enforcing neutrality. Do you think that's going to work? You're complaining that it's liberal government, liberal agencies, even Roman Republicans are in office. So let's have liberal agencies come in and mandate neutrality. That wouldn’t work.
It's not a serious point of view to me. I understand the frustration with bias. I'm not saying that's not a thing, but the solutions are far worse than the problem. Also it's free speech of platforms to moderate as they see fit and platforms come and go. Facebook is kind of on the decline right now, and some people are leaving Twitter.
People will come and go to different platforms but a lot of the regulations wouldn't do the things they want to do. They put in regulatory cliffs that would say, ZocDoc cannot moderate political views, which is silly.
It's like they're not focused on how the regulations actually affect things. One problem in all of this is government… where a Republican congressman says, "Your employees were mean to me at Facebook, that's not okay." That's not okay for him to say. As well as Biden putting pressure on platforms or agencies.
So I'm very open to legislation that has transparency for government trying to moderate content through platforms.
There is legislation that needs work… it has a transparency angle, but it also has bans. I think the bans creep into First Amendment territory.
I'm not one to defend government a lot, but there are things that I think extend past First Amendment protections, which worry me. I like the overall concept saying don't moderate content through government. So I think it's a good idea, but it needs to be tight.
Federal Newswire:
Are you familiar with shadowbanning where people say their content is being throttled? Does the FTC need to come in and review these practices?
Shoshana Weissmann:
Facebook's been on the target of FTC enforcement actions because of fraud of inflating video views. If you're paying money and they're not giving you the results that are coming from comparable ads, that's illegal already, so that part is taken care of.
But with promoting some people's stuff with bias, bias is legal. It's First Amendment-protected. It hurts a lot of people, but it's fully protected. If we involve government, imagine what they'll think bias is. They'll support everything that supports government and go against everything that criticizes them.
Federal Newswire:
Does Twitter have a responsibility to disclose that they manage with a political bias? How would you go about enforcing that?
Shoshana Weissmann:
Yeah, but what would that solve? If everyone already thinks they're biased, it doesn't solve a problem.
Everyone already sees it as left-leaning, which is I think a problem for them as a business. It's not a great thing for the platforms themselves. But right now, Twitter's being run by Elon and people are still saying there's lots of anti-conservative bias, which I think is kind of funny that Elon can step in lots of different spots.
Federal Newswire:
Some people claim after they lock down their Twitter accounts they are able to get greater exposure to their followers, have you heard of this?
Shoshana Weissmann:
I've heard of it. I actually think it's a glitch. I might be wrong, but I genuinely think a glitch has happened because he's been messing with Twitter a lot. Some ways that I think are good, but in many that I think are actually just bad from a functionality standpoint, [such as] “my app doesn't work right anymore.”
Federal Newswire:
What are your views of TikTok?
Shoshana Weissmann:
I'm kind of nuanced here. I haven't fully made up my mind because there's First Amendment issues with banning TikTok. From the foreign policy angle, I just don't know enough. A lot of people think it's really bad and I would just need to see evidence.
If we had to ban it as a security risk, I'd be open but I wouldn't want it to just be TikTok. I'd want it to be a set of practices instead of rules to say that your website cannot operate in the US because it's a security risk. It would have to be more than TikTok because TikTok is not going to be the first or the last of these security risks.
Federal Newswire:
Recently the Google Play store created a rule limiting how digital content is sold in apps, so readers can no longer buy books on Kindle through the Kindle app, for example. Is there a role for government in this rule?
Shoshana Weissmann:
We don't need the government micromanaging app stores. There's actually been a push to do that. The funny thing is, the push has been led primarily by the maker of Fortnite, which was just fined millions of dollars by the FTC for tricking kids into buying stuff.
So there are no angels on the other side either. I get the frustrations with how some app stores work. I'm also sympathetic to the app stores, but any solution by government is going to be just so much worse and so micromanaged.
Federal Newswire:
Should we open certain aspects of law practice to people other than lawyers? Should people have to pay somebody a thousand dollars to do something that good software can do for a hundred dollars?
Shoshana Weissmann:
Exactly. AI is really exciting. They write contracts on lawsuits through OpenAI. I had it write a class action lawsuit against the Pokemon Master for detaining Pokemon. It read so well and it’s funny.
Federal Newswire:
Could the same approach apply to doctors?
Shoshana Weissmann:
[Yes.] Certificate of need exists not only in medicine, but it's obviously the worst in medicine, both from a moral perspective and also there's a lot of it.
Basically you need approval from your competitors and/or the government in order to open new medical facilities. So whether it's a hospital or an MRI clinic, your economic competitors have to say, "Yeah, that's ok." Or the government has to say, "Yeah, we decide we need this."
If [a new facility opens] and they can't support themselves, and if they don't get the business they need, they fail.
Federal Newswire:
LASIK eye surgery was once $15,000 and now it’s down to $1,500 as a result of being in the open market. Could this be applied across the board to other kinds of medicine?
Shoshana Weissmann:
Yeah. Just let more places open up and more people who are qualified try to serve more [patients]. It happens in other industries.
