An approach to manage “big tech,” food labels and even rising prices is to assume imposing new government rules works best. The result is bans on ingredients, tighter speech rules online, and limits on what families can buy. Tirzah Duren of the American Consumer Institute, says the better approach is to increase consumer choice and rely on evidence-based rules. She believes this is the path to deliver the best results for American health, wallets, and markets.
Duren is president and CEO of the nonprofit, which was founded in 2007 and provides policy research on matters of health, energy, tech, transportation, insurance, finance, and antitrust. The Institute applies a human-needs lens, according to Duren. This is consistent with her own approach. “I really became interested in what facilitates opportunities for prosperity and human flourishing,” she says.
She describes the approach as “work to maximize consumer welfare across informed public policy and agency decision making.” On welfare, for example, she describes the work as “making sure goods and services are available, affordable, reliable,” or “enhancing human flourishing through better access.”
All properly structured markets, she says, correct more often than they exploit. She points to the “power of consumer choice” in guiding marketplace behaviors of companies. “We’re not saying there isn’t a role for certain protections,” she says, and adds ”but we see that as the exception.”
She argues that the same approach works for every industry, including technology. “There’s a narrative that big tech is unregulated, which is not the case,” she says. The FTC has a role enforcing terms of service under unfair or deceptive practices, and that covers what companies advertise to consumers and to advertisers.” But consumers ultimately determine whether tech companies and their platforms survive.
She cautions against quick government action to tighten rules, and points to emerging rules around food and nutrition. “We are seeing a shift toward more health-conscious options and increased ability of the market to meet needs for gluten-free or lactose-intolerant diets,” she says. “A lot of the foods that people need to live healthier or meet conditions would fall under an ‘ultra-processed’ category.”
She says we should not arbitrarily ban ingredients without a clear standard. “We really need to go back to basics—evidence-based regulation,” she says, because “ nutrition has moving goalposts.” Any rules should allow for “individual preference and lifestyles.”
On food in particular, she believes consumers should lead. “These decisions are very personal,” she says. “Price, time, and taste all factor in.” That means consumers will ultimately choose anyway. “We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that just because we pass a regulation to make things ‘healthier’ that eliminates trade-offs for people who are very vulnerable,” she says.
Programs like SNAP work best when they respect choice, she says. “It gives people purchasing power and allows signals in the marketplace.”
She even applies supply-and-demand realism to ticket purchases, such as for live events. Consumers routinely express frustration over middle-man markups and secondary market distortions. But Duren’s perspective is that the markets “help balance out supply and demand.” That can mean prices dip for weak events and rise when primary sellers underprice hot shows. The solution, in her view, is competition across primary and secondary marketplaces rather than rules that lock in scarcity.
The worst policy distortions come, according to Duren, when officials “chase villains” instead of constraints. “We can look around and see that housing costs have gone up,” she offers as another example. “A lot of that, specifically in dense areas, is a supply-and-demand issue,” she says.
The problem, according to Duren is government regulations that are restricting the supply of housing. “If you can get the supply up, then consumers have better choices—buy a home, buy a condo, continue to rent,” she says.
