(((My Fellow Americans))) #97: Eric Peterson

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i’ll be buried in my grave before i become a slave yes that is [Music] but it seems like since that day yeah we have solely changed [Music] [Music] that is [Music] but it seems like since that day we have sorely changed [Music] [Applause] [Music] myrtle beach south carolina you’re watching my fellow americans with your host spike cullen yes yes it’s me i’m back it’s been a week keep clapping clap for the miracle clap for the i survived alaska miracle how would we know that you’re happy that i survived my time in alaska if you didn’t keep clapping welcome to my fellow americans i am literally spike cohen folks we have a really cool episode today we’re going to be talking about net neutrality something that really hasn’t been talked a lot about in the media uh it was talked about a while back but they haven’t really been talking about it much been kind of quietly happening under the under the radar even though it could potentially affect the entire internet in a bad way well that was a spoiler alert i was gonna wait to say whether it was good or bad but anyway thanks so much for joining us this is a muddied waters media production check us out on facebook youtube instagram anchor all the podcasting platforms we’re on twitter periscope we’re on everything check us out everywhere go to anchor dot fm slash muddy waters to leave us messages that we answer on tuesday nights uh go to uh and you can you can donate money to us there if you want to until you had to but you can uh check us out everywhere and go to muddywatersmedia.com follow all of our episodes and be sure to like this share this follow it subscribe to it whatever it is that you are watching or listening to this on be sure to let everyone know just how much you appreciate and enjoy it uh big tech does not want you to see this i don’t know if that’s true but i’m going to say it because that might make you more likely to share it so share it because the last thing i want is for you and your loved ones to miss out on a roughly hour-long libertarian podcast on a wednesday evening give the gift of spite cohen today kids love it this episode of course is brought to you by the libertarian party waffle house caucus the fastest growing waffle related caucus in the libertarian party or any other party in any other country actually i haven’t checked that but it has to be true become a member today by going to the facebook group libertarian party waffle house caucus uh and you become a duly seated voting member whatever that means by going to muddywatersmedia.com store and buying either a waffle house caucus button or a waffle house caucus hat i think we have a shirt actually i don’t remember if we have a hat now but we have a shirt and we have a and a button so be sure to do that today this episode is also brought to you by the gravy king and it’s brought to you by nug of knowledge smokable cbd products nug of knowledge is not your everyday cbd supplier because a portion of the profits go to help end the war on drugs they also have a compassionate use program that donates medicinal hemp products to veterans and people with disabilities who cannot afford these natural remedies many people who say it who use it say that it helps with joint pain stress relief or even a much-needed pick-me-up so if you uh if you uh went through all of your smokable cbd supplies yesterday for that day that special holiday then be sure to go to nug of knowledge.com to buy some more smokable cbd and use checkout code spike for 10 off smokable cbd that’s what we call it now this episode is also brought to you by joe soloski running for pennsylvania governor joe soloski is the key to pennsylvania’s success and if you want to help him in his run as a libertarian for governor of pennsylvania you can go to joe soloski j-o-e-s-o-l-o-s-k-i dot com and uh and see how you can help him he’s a fantastic guy um and this episode is also brought to you by the where’s the other thing oh chris reynolds personal injury attorney chris reynolds attorney at law if you find yourself personally injured in florida i’m so sorry but you might be able to sue them and if you think that that’s something you’d like to do it’s your personal opinion you can certainly do it go to chrisreynoldslaw.com and when you wake up from whatever they did to you uh chris will be there waiting um well i don’t know if he’ll be physically there in your hospital room or whatever but he’ll be there waiting somewhere for you and uh he will help you get the money that you need and deserve chrisreynoldslaw.com by the way i make no guarantees that he’ll be able to get you money but if anyone can it’ll be him the intro and outro music to this and every single episode of my fellow americans comes from the amazing and talented mr joe davey that’s j-o-d-a-v-i check him out on facebook check him out on his soundcloud go to his band camp at joedaveymusic.bandcamp.com by his entire discography he is an incredibly talented musician it’s like 25 bucks for the discography go buy it it’s great all the great music that you could ever listen to uh thank you so much mr joe davey i’d like to thank le blue purified drinking water for this we already determined in the last episode that i’m very wrong about hydrogen and oxygen i thought it was 33 hydrogen and 66 oxygen and it turns out that’s not how that’s not how chemistry works but this is the correct proportions of hydrogen and oxygen which i’m relieved to know because i’ve been drinking it for years there’s nothing wrong with this this is not gmo water it’s actually very good water thank you so much to the blue bulavanaka i should open this at a time shout out to tehran turks and turks’s momentum as always folks my guest tonight is the director of technology and innovation policy for the pelican institute for public policy which is a free market think tank uh based out of louisiana that advocates for things like government transparency school choice lower taxes and much more all stuff we like uh he is a political economics major from tulane university uh he has written quite a bit extensively about everything from occupational licensing reform to government regulation of social media he’s here with us today to share his expertise on net neutrality and on the biden administration kind of quietly planning to bring it back and what that means for us so ladies and gentlemen my fellow americans without any further ado please join me in welcoming my guest tonight my guest in york is your guest too tonight mr eric peterson eric thanks so much for being on the show yeah thanks uh for the great interest mike i gotta ask you a question right off the bat you talked a little bit about uh donations can i donate my dogecoin to you yes you can convert it to us dollars and donate it to me i actually so i want to buy every every time on my list of things to do on the not important part i always have buy a hundred dollars worth of dogecoin and i still haven’t done it and every time it goes up i’m like i should have done that but yes if you i will certainly i will make a dogecoin wallet just so you can donate if you’d like but thanks so much for coming man yeah i’m like i’m excited to be here uh you know long time listen to the show first time uh participant right yeah i know this is awesome and folks uh be sure uh to comment with your thoughts and questions and eric and i will tell you if you are right or wrong now eric before we get started i’m interested to know that i i had heard of the pelican institute but i didn’t know a lot about them obviously prior to the show i’ve been reading up on them and on what you’ve been doing with them i think you’re doing some fantastic stuff tell me what is you tell us the genesis story of how you got in involved in the pelican institute and what you’re doing over there yeah i mean i’m sure a lot of your listeners are like familiar with uh dc thinking tanks right like the cato institute or you know heritage nation there’s actually a great network of state-based free market think tanks around the country who are in state capitals every day fighting for free market policies from like you said school choice lower taxes we’re really fighting down our tax code right here the pelican institute is just one of these great organizations but they’ve given me a great opportunity to do something a little different that a lot of think tanks are getting into but haven’t gotten into yet which is technology policy we know how important innovation is to the well-being of all americans uh but you know louisiana is kind of lagging behind so it is my goal to make louisiana a place that is more friendly to innovation maybe we can talk a little bit about that we just passed some great uh legislation out of the house um on real broadband on something called regulatory sandboxes that’s going to make it easier for me to donate to your campaign in dogecoin but maybe we’ll say that for the end but that is what we’re doing down here at the uh the pelican institute fighting for uh freedom every day in the fine state of louisiana i actually would like to talk about that more if time allows um i uh i’d like to one cool thing that happened last year in this is going around campaigning and even after the campaign um i don’t know if you know i ran for vice president last year’s little thing about the side project um but uh when i was doing that i got to meet all these really cool people that were part of these think tanks and lobbying groups and stuff based out of like in this individual states and so it was really cool because like you said we’ve all heard of cato we’ve all heard of the heritage foundation we’ve all heard of these like you know dc based uh think tanks and lobby groups some are good many are not good but we’ve heard of them but yet we’re actually much more likely to be acutely affected by local and state policy than we are by federal policy sometimes the federal policy trickles down to the state and local level but at the end of the day it’s what is happening locally that that matters a lot more so it’s good to see that there are folks like you all that are that are doing this kind of stuff and if again if time allows i’d certainly love to dive into what you guys are doing there because uh i think it’s great uh everything that like i said my very brief perusal of the pelican institute i i really couldn’t find anything i didn’t like but um getting back to uh to this issue with net neutrality now the the very very quick primer is net neutrality is a regulation it was introduced uh under the obama administration through the fcc it was repealed uh by the during the trump administration by the fcc and now there is increasing talk of it uh being reintroduced at the federal level and in the meantime california and possibly some other states introduced it during the time uh at the state level during the time that uh that it was not in the federal level but let’s talk about that what exactly is net neutrality because we we hear a lot of emotional uh responses on both sides especially on the pros side um but let’s you know give us a little brief rundown what exactly is net neutrality what was the purpose behind it what did it end up leading to talk to us about that yeah net neutrality is probably one of the least understood policy areas that most people have probably heard about um net neutrality isn’t actually a policy that was passed by the fcc at all net neutrality is is a theory uh put forth uh by tim wu who is i believe now uh just got onto the ftc or that process is going through and it’s a pretty simple concept all it says is when a carrier whether it’s comcast att with you know starlink is moving internet traffic that they treat all that internet traffic equally so this stream right now that is going out to all the people is treated the same as somebody streaming from netflix same as sending an email uh watching youtube et cetera et cetera um so it’s sort of this theory about how the internet should work right they they sort of call that like the dumb pipe theory right that the internet carrier doesn’t know what’s going on um this is really similar to telephone services right uh you know kind of back in the day you and i are old enough to remember landline telephones maybe some people watching here aren’t um you know depressing there are adults who don’t remember what landline telephones are like but yes go ahead that is uh that is communications technology is moving uh absolutely uh yeah they probably don’t remember my bell or you know this stuff being broken up or dial tones or any of that crazy stuff um but that that’s how uh you know telephone services are treated right common carriers uh that if you and i are having a conversation on phone line that um you know it’s not giving any sort of priority access over um you know your mom and my mom talking about watching us right now on facebook and who’s uh doing a better job and who’s more handsome and all that good stuff right right right um so that that’s that’s sort of that um what actually happened in 2015 is something uh known as title ii regulation of the internet um and that is that that kind of common carrier provision uh that says that we’re gonna treat the internet service like your electricity like the telephone uh like like you know like your water like it is gonna be treated as utility you know part of that is like the net neutrality you know part of it of how you treat data moving over that but is far more than just passing a law that’s saying you have to treat all internet traffic equally which is what people think it is if they have any sort of insight into the policy at all if they kind of looked into it okay so title so that’s where i was hoping you would get at is net neutrality is the idea that all packets of data that are going through the internet should be treated the same which correct me if i’m wrong that’s how it has been i mean that there hasn’t ever been a a widespread example of data being treated substantively differently am i incorrect in that so yeah i mean we can get into whether or not it’s just it’s throttling or something like that but i think a bigger question like do we want all like data packets to be treated equally right we were just got out of a pandemic or getting out of a pandemic right where kids are like virtual schooling um telehealth like maybe that needs to take slight like micro second level priority over things like streaming netflix being on youtube uh you know this stream is sending an email uh that’s sort of like basic network management right it’s making sure like the important things go through first and the things that can wait a half second to your email uh kind of go after that um the sort of concern about net neutrality right is that um if you would have certain companies like throttling content meaning that facebook would load slower youtube would work low slower netflix would load slower because they had some sort of financial incentive to prioritize some content over the others as far as that goes uh there’s like maybe one example that happened in 2007 that people sort of go back to but if you want to talk about how much the internet has changed since 2007 right it is a significant amount um then there’s sort of no uh you know big smoking gun for throttling that you know these internet carriers can’t be trusted with our content and they’re gonna destroy the open internet as we know it today well and also i mean keep in mind like you said the last big you know example happened 14 years ago so this isn’t exactly like a a a long-running issue or an issue that’s you know a chronic issue but also you you mentioned you know microsecond differences this is not the difference between something streaming in a matter of you know fractions of a second versus minutes this is whether something took a page took two seconds to load or four seconds to load or something like that so even even in the examples that of why this needs to happen this is not the dramatic thing that it’s being sold as right yeah absolutely and in fact uh maybe we can get into this later about how well the american system held up during kobit 19. uh but if you talk about throttling right it’s you know the european union has passed all these regulations on tech as they are want to do right they heavily heavily regulate their tax factor which is why the only large tech company to come out of europe uh these days is spotify the only unicorn company kind of in the top 50 is is because of the regulation but they have kind of these strong net neutrality uh provisions right that prevent you from throttling content or doing that sort of thing uh but of course that means that people were less likely to invest in the network because with regulations comes increased costs we can get into some of those numbers but during the early days of the pandemic when everyone was staying home european regulators uh told facebook that they would have to throttle their content too many people were streaming in high def and important things that needed to happen we’re getting slowed down so the government actually sort of imposed this uh meanwhile across the pond where we had repealed net neutrality and apparently killed the internet two years ago uh people were watching tiger king in 4k and uh you know convinced that carol baskin had murdered her husband yeah so i mean if nothing else we now know the truth about carol basket but question here um you mentioned that net neutrality is not we’re being told that all they did was or were it’s being implied that all they did was make sure that the internet is a is a fair place for everyone and that they’ve made you know neutral treatment of all packets of data but like you said that’s not even the beginning of what they did or that’s just the beginning of the beginning of what they did talk to us about title two and uh you know i i don’t want to give a spoiler alert but you know tell us if uh the government treating the internet like a uh utility is good or bad and why that would be yeah well i mean we don’t even have to go to the the hypothetical right we can kind of look back in time and believe it or not the internet’s not that old but it you know it’s been under different regulatory structures um you know for those of you who are around our age um i got dsl service was really excited about that i was much faster than sort of like the modem 56k you didn’t have to deal with the the beeping sound and all that good stuff um so that actually uh dsl service used to be uh considered under title ii and then that changed the fcc said no we’re actually going to treat it as a data service and what you saw is a major uptick in investment and dsl service a major uptick in people subscribing to that service and more people getting connected to the internet um and so you know we sort of had a first-hand example of you know getting rid of this common carrier status right um the fcc over the last 30 years the story has been one of the regulation and as they have deregulated um again we’re like we’re telling kind of these old-timey stories like 15 20 years ago uh and you think we were talking about 80 years ago by how fast uh the technology hasn’t breached and that’s a as a direct reflection of the fact that the government has increasingly just gotten out of the way of the providers and the internet so you said you had some numbers you know show it tell us some specifics about what happened when title ii was introduced in 2015 and then what happened after it was repealed two years later besides the fact again you spoiler alert uh the internet what did die rest in peace to the internet uh 1980 something to 2017 uh pickups to the homie the internet but other than that you know what were the differences when it got introduced and then when it was revealed yeah um so there’s a there’s been a great study to kind of look at the the talk about uh net neutrality or title ii uh and investment um you know generally i’m sure as all your smart listeners know the government starts to get involved in something and start talking about regulation um and people start to get a little squeamish right uh investing in shockingly expensive thing um over the past 25 years private industry in the united states has put 1.8 trillion dollars into uh broadband investment right this is why 96 of the people across the country um have some kind of cable provider to their home so back in you know 2010 sort of the beginning of the obama administration kind of right after we got out of the great recession started talking about this there was a study done i want to make sure i get this number right found between 2011 and 2015 investment fell 20 to 30 percent or about 30 to 40 billion dollars annually in investment that was just from like the fcc sort of kicking the idea around um of title to investment and uh you know during you know as as uh you know title two was put into place um until it was you know repealed by ajit pai um we saw a lot of the same sort of things right investment sort of dropped off uh because there’s less of a profit motive and you know if you think the government is going to take over uh the billions of dollars that you put in the infrastructure uh you are less likely to invest uh who could have guessed that’s an utter shocker and then obviously when it was repealed we then saw an uptick in investment that happened as a result of that and sort of a i mean we’re in a bit of a internet renaissance right now in terms of you know the the new uh provisions and new types of services and things that are coming on deck so and that’s not obviously the only only a result of the of the um the repeal of title ii but certainly a big part of it yeah absolutely i’ll just give one thing u.s broadband screens from uh increased 91 from 2019 to 2020. so on average you know you basically saw a doubling of speeds across the entire united states uh again like this could not have come at a better time right like nobody knew we were about to be in a global pandemic and be locked down but you know it had had we kept in title ii uh i doubt severely we would have seen these sorts of um you know these sorts of improvements you know that’s not to say that digital divide is not real um that is something we work a lot on at the pelican institute a lot of states with rural populations um you know struggle to get online we can talk a little bit about starlink and some of the great innovations there so i don’t want to say everything is perfect and we have 100 coverage that’s not the case but if you do have coverage and you know we’re continuing to see investment chances are that your speeds are going through the roof uh to kind of take uh account of everything that you’re doing online whether it’s us talking on facebook live right now whether it’s your kid going to school virtually whether it’s working from home or you know streaming what’s on netflix these days i don’t know where the kids watching i’m watching godzilla versus kong on hbo i’m really excited for it i’m i’m told that i need to be watching and i immediately forgot it so i probably won’t be watching it unless it’s accidentally i so rarely watch tv anyway but it was oh man the chicago seven i think it’s called oh yeah yeah the new movie on netflix yeah i think it got nominated for a lot of oscars very exciting yeah yeah and the problem is i’m very contrary so when people tell me you need to watch something i’m like i’m not never gonna watch it people told me in 2007 you should watch the office that really seems like your kind of humor and i’m like just for that i’ll never watch it and then i didn’t start watching it until like 2017 and i watched like the whole thing on netflix and i’m like why did i punish myself with not watching the office pretending anyway um so uh so this is what happens when the throttle is let off by government when it allows the market to provide uh and the you know there’s also corollary effects to this right so like if we have more uh easy and and cheap and plentiful ability for people to telecommute and bosses and we’ve seen this with the pandemic but a lot of these telecommute jobs aren’t going back to in in person the businesses are realizing that the meetings they were having every day weren’t necessary that having all these people come to an office space that they’re having to pay for upkeep for isn’t necessary they’re just as productive if not more from home uh their their uh quality of life is higher they’re happier with their job like it’s better overall that also leads to lower energy prices because people aren’t having to do these unnecessary commutes back and forth just to go and sit in an office and do what they could do from home um it leads to more time with family because you’re at home you’re not having to spend that commute time it leads to more free time it leads to all these great things that happen when we’re able to better utilize technology now eric interestingly enough it seems like most of if not all of the major big tech carriers are 100 behind reintroducing uh title ii and the exception seems to be the carriers so for example like att verizon and so forth seem to be against it and this feels like a crony warfare thing like the lobbies are are fighting in dc and state capitals around the country over which lobby wins but i don’t really care which lobby wins what i do care about is we’re often told that you know uh well if if a industry supports something that means it’s good and yet we’re talking about how this is bad for the internet and yet most of the major providers in the internet support it why why do you think that is yeah i mean i i don’t want to throw any tech company uh sort of under the bus but i i think we are seeing um a big fracturing of silicon valley um and of course some of the carriers might not you might not qualify them as silicon valley but um this sort of infighting i think of um you know pushing government for some sort of regulation that will benefit them and sort of harm their competitor something more and more of um you know traditionally silicon valley had been a uh you know we’re just let you know let us be let us innovate um you know let the best man win and in some ways despite the fact that people think of silicon valley as a very liberal sort of place right they had a very kind of camp capitalistic ethos right they wanted to innovate they wanted to make a billion dollars and start this great new company and serve all these people and they have uh for a lot of ways right you know facebook zoom google um you know we you know we can go on and on and on um but you know you’re seeing sort of these battle lines being drawn and net neutrality is certainly one of those battle lines where like you said a lot of the content providers are sort of fighting uh the carriers over this and you know part of it is because they’re big users of bandwidth right they wanted to make sure that they could continue to eat up you know really large chunks of bandwidth um and without really having to pay anything extra for it um and net neutrality is one way to do that right so then so i mean there is that aspect to it but it seems like that again that’s just the net neutrality part if they’re supporting all of title two which essentially puts a chokehold back on investment in the internet it seems like at least long term and possibly even short term that would hurt a lot of these big tech companies and yet they seem to almost uniformly support it and i i’m not expecting you to throw a specific company under the bus and there’s not really a need to because we’re talking about nearly an entire industry that’s you know uh at least on with the exception of the carriers and some outliers most of all the major players mozilla and facebook and and microsoft and all these different companies they’re supporting um the reintroduction of title two and it seems kind of counterintuitive do you think that it’s i mean this wouldn’t be the first time that you know an industry supports regulations that ultimately hurts it but do you think there’s an ulterior motive do you think that it it only hurts the the disruptors and kind of helps the cronies or do you think this is just like bad idea they’re just adopted or supporting something that is ultimately harmful to them yeah i mean look i don’t know that it’s ultimately going to be harmful to the body their bottom line but you know companies often can sort of look in their short-term interests right don’t they can’t necessarily be kind of 15 years down the road sometimes they do uh right you know you talk about amazon right that was a company that saw 10 to 15 years down the road and the rise of the commoners and now they’re uh you know one of the most fabulously welcome companies another company that sort of looked in the future but you know not all companies sort of act that way um and we can also get into this i know i prepared some tweets to read about net neutrality but it became such a culture war issue right uh you would see people on reddit sort of uh saying that you know if we get rid of net neutrality that um you know reddit will go down and you know it’ll destroy everything and sort of at that point a lot of these companies sort of got boxed into a corner right maybe they were sort of yeah if you’re not neutrality they don’t want to get into it uh but you know when the internet legion’s sort of like you know you have to support net neutrality if you support an open internet uh if you’re a company that has you know users and you want to make them happy and signal to them that you support open internet um you kind of had to support net neutrality so there is a virtue signaling aspect to it because at moments it felt like when you know microsoft on june 1st puts up their rainbow version of their logo and then on the evening of june 30th uh you know it puts up the uh it puts back the regular logo you know they did their their 30 days of allotted lgbt uh you know acceptance or whatever uh not any actual demonstration of acceptance of anyone but just the sort of like well i as a corporation i’m doing this you know allotted virtue signaling period um and and making a couple you know posts about it during that time or whatever and it had there was kind of a feeling of the same type of element in the messaging about net neutrality they’d say we support an open internet and it’s like okay is there someone out there going no we support a closed internet besides the chinese government but i mean is is was there another site going no close the internet or was that so i mean it was kind of a there was a cultural aspect to it as well yeah i mean i mean i think absolutely right when you you would see some of these tweets go out and you realize like they are not talking about net neutrality at all or title ii regulation right right that sort of thing all goes over people’s heads it’s one of the things you sort of you know learn in policy right is most people uh if they pay attention to your policy all they see it at a ten thousand foot level and that’s where the messaging becomes um so so very important but you know when you sort of have principal people who understand the policy understand the effects of it and are sort of willing to push against the grain um you know for the right reasons but you know those people are few and far between unfortunately sometimes yeah most people they want sound bites and it’s it’s one thing that i learned over the last few years is i prefer this type of conversation where we can actually delve into stuff most people it’s like tell me this in 10 seconds and and do your best to appeal to my emotion while you’re saying it or you might lose me in second four and uh and it’s you know it’s unfortunate but that is the reality of how these things have to happen so this could be an example where you know this uh the the government and cronies are are pushing a cultural message or pushing a message to the culture that’s ultimately pursuing a really you know a ruinous policy in title ii now um what is the it seems like there’s indications that joe biden uh does want to move forward on this he’s being very quiet about it uh interestingly enough but uh or and the administration in general is but what are some of those um those examples of of those i guess evidence or or hints that that he’s pushing forward on this yeah um you know tom wheeler who was the fcc chairman uh at the end of the obama administration who had put forth uh the title two regulations has sort of uh been spending a lot of time talking about it again the fcc for those who don’t know is a a body made up of five uh commissioners uh one of whom is a chairman uh and the sort of party that has the executive branch has a three two um sort of advantage there so right now it is currently 2-2 joe biden has not put forth another fcc chairperson so i i think a lot will learn from the binding administration by who he puts there right is it somebody who’s vowed to put back net neutrality um or is it somebody who you know cares much more about closing the digital divide or opening up spectrum um some of the great stuff we can talk about the the fcc doing to make the internet a a better more open freer place um so i think that will tell us a lot about it um you know we can get into california who is who’s been working on it but the the button and mystery has been quite on it uh though they also have not been quite on the broadband front so we can we can perhaps talk a little bit well government is trending to your internet network uh that is not title two regulations because there’s some of that stuff going on too yeah well we’ve seen you know joe biden they’re the tweets x is infrastructure so in this infrastructure build which infrastructure was always meant you know roads and bridges and maybe the electrical grid and now they’ve just started adding everything everything is infrastructure every single thing is infrastructure including the internet so everything needs to be added to this massive pork bill what could possibly go wrong now you had mentioned before uh we have some examples of really just cringy tweets from politicians and pundits about net neutrality uh let’s let’s hear some of these so we can get you know we’ve gotten some actual like scholarly discussion about what this is let’s let’s hear what politicians usually have to say about this kind of stuff yeah um so minnesota has been in the news recently um so we’ve got former senator al franken he goes i’ve called net neutrality the free speech issue of our time it embraces our most basic constitutional freedoms it is vital for to our democracy um i think when most people think about free speech issues uh on the internet right now sort of uh net neutrality is probably not on the top of that list so we’ve got senator ed markey out of massachusetts if the uh fcc kills net neutrality the internet will never be the same uh we’ve got bernie sanders once again the trump administration sides with big money against democracy if this passes the internet and its free exchange of information as we have come to know it will cease to exist it existed for two years i just want to say on those last two tweets this existed for two years yep yep yeah so and the internet yeah uh and nbc news had one uh ending net neutrality will destroy everything that makes the internet great wow how the fcc killing of net neutrality will ruin the internet forever um you know we had of course the the famous sort of banksy tweet um where he sort of put that you were gonna have to pay you know 1.99 for google search uh you know you’re you’re gonna have to pay five dollars for every netflix movie you watched uh you know that got shared like a hundred thousand times um the senate democrats i went and looked up this today it is still out there you can google it um they have this tweet where it says something the effect of if we add net neutrality twitter will load one word at a time and they sort of put a giant space between all of it um and of course uh twitter is not loading one uh you know tweet at a time or one word at a time it’s loading faster than ever as a matter of fact yeah yeah twitter and you know like and share this great podcast what yes like and share this podcast and recognize that it’s not being loaded if it is being loaded one tweet at a time one word at a time then it’s you probably need to reset your router um i’m just you know those tweets it requires and it shows who their audience is their audience is people that have absolutely no idea what’s being talked about so when you hear this will end the internet you go my god they can’t do this it’ll end the internet well no one mentions the fact that or they certainly didn’t mention the fact that this didn’t exist until 2015 the internet was perfectly fine before that has been perfectly fine since then uh no reason to think that any of that um i love the you know bernie sanders uh i i love his his his attacks on big money while he rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars but uh especially this is especially ironic because he’s saying they’ve sided with big money almost the entire big tech sector is at at least 80 85 percent of the big tech sector as well as corporate media nbc news is is you know 100 behind reintroducing this but this but you know that’s that’s not big money that’s good people big money is the ones who want the internet to be free let’s let’s have a bit of a pallet cleansing here let’s talk a little bit about some of the good things you had mentioned bridging the digital divide uh increasing the uh increasing bandwidth and things like that let’s talk about some of the good things that have been coming out of the fcc and your take on whether that’s going to continue uh under the under the bidet administration yeah um i mean and foremost let me just give a huge shout out to ajit pai who of course was the main driving force in revoking that neutrality one of the the best government officials we’ve had in a long time uh certainly one of the most memorable ones right with it was giant reese’s coffee mug which you can no now go bid on it is an nft there’s an nfd of ajit pai uh looking at a picture of himself holding up his rhesus mug uh with his reese’s mug um if that is not innovation i don’t know what is uh it’s great he’s doing it for a good cause so uh give him a follow and go and go bid on his nft um but yeah i mean i think outside of net neutrality right i think his his chairmanship uh was marked by actually really good bipartisanship um you know tom wheeler kind of before him wouldn’t put out his agenda uh beforehand uh you know ajit pai would put it out like a month and a half beforehand so everyone knew what was going to be voted on what was coming up they worked really well with democrats and freeing up wireless spectrum for those of you who don’t know what wireless spectrum is it makes your cell phone work it makes your wi-fi work it gives you 5g all those sort of great things that you know when we’re a more mobile society right we’re all expected to have the internet in our pockets all the time and we can only we can only do that because of spectrum and uh you know and it’s kind of infinite wisdom you know 20 30 years ago the fcc took a lot of spectrum they gave it to sort of favorite organizations uh who what do you know uh didn’t spend a lot of time developing the spectrum because they didn’t really have a profit motive or incentive to do so the fcc has spent a lot of time again in a very bipartisan safe manner clawing back a lot of that spectrum making it available for private use um the c-band which is going to be vital vital for um for 5g it’s you know it just has every characteristic you need to get fast internet across the country they recently auctioned it off they raised 80 billion dollars most government entities spend 80 billion dollars the fcc gave 80 billion dollars voluntarily from corporations back to taxpayers uh from from auctioning off the spectrum and that that investment will go to make sure that your cell phone works faster to make sure that uh the internet of things goes to make sure that america is a 5g leader when it comes to china um you know that’s some of the great stuff that you saw out of that fcc um uh brendan carr has recently put out a spectrum calendar uh it’s the first time that i know of a commissioner doing this saying hey look we got to keep freeing up the spectrum you know wireless is is where we’re going um we need to make as much of it available as possible and when wanting to work with the rest of the commissioners on the fcc and i i certainly wish him uh good luck as like as they go forward and do that and of course i think something that you know every good libertarian loves loves spacex and and all that good stuff they worked really hard on their sort of orbital debris rules uh to kind of get starlink up and going right satellite internet if it existed before had a really terrible latency which just translates to you really can’t use it for things like gaming or video streaming or video conferencing right it just it’s not set up for that when they rework their rules um starlink is now saying that they will have 100 megabits per second download speed and 20 megabits per second upload speed across the united states by 2022. um again as sort of you know the advocates of net neutrality would say you know the internet is just like a utility right you’re only going to get one provider there’s no way we can have competition in this market the only way we can do it is have government kind of get involved and set price controls and regulate what’s going where um that’s just how it’s got to be and you know in like a year and eight months everyone will have access to at minimum uh one provider but most likely two or three um you know that that’s the kind of great stuff that we’ve seen on the innovation from opening up spectrum and uh reducing regulations and and really again the digital divide is real and something that needs to be uh you know dealt with um you know i think states can play a very important role on that but um you know we’re seeing it kind of close faster than ever and uh you know thank goodness yeah and i’m glad you brought this up the theory about utilities the theory and i don’t even believe it with other with things that it’s much more appropriate to um but the theory of government needing to get involved with utilities is that for example if you think of something like water and sewer or electricity um or things like that and honestly i don’t even agree with it with electricity but let’s say water and sewer or with roads and things like that they’ll say well it’s not really feasible to have multiple providers you can’t have multiple water providers uh at least not to the pipe system because there’s one single pipe system you can’t have all these different competing pipe systems or competing sewer lines and things like that although more and more people are getting their water uh from uh from delivery services but that’s a whole other subject in terms of getting it like for tap water and for uh you know for for um potable water uses and things like that you know the idea is that it’s not really possible and so the government needs to come in and sort of create a provider uh or or deeply regulate the provider that’s there and tell them what their options are now again with electricity it increasingly is not the case because you can have uh you can have uh both a power grid uh and you can also have people that are getting their own power off grid you can also now increasingly there are natural gas lines being uh buried and dug through all sorts of parts of the country we started seeing that here in the myrtle beach area uh and there are small generators that can actually use the natural gas to generate electricity uh on site for the homes and businesses so even that is increasingly not true the internet there is no reason when you can get internet from land serv land sources like cable and dsl and and um and dry loop um you can get it from your phone carrier you can eventually get it from satellite services there’s no reason uh there’s there are a few services that can be provided in more different ways than the internet if there is a one example of something that doesn’t need to be regulated because competition if allowed to to exist will keep get price move prices down and move innovation up the internet is that example we’ve been watching it since the 80s that the internet went from sort of this darpa project uh and then an intranet that was being used mostly for you know small electronic communications to now like us doing an hd live stream on multiple platforms and that’s happened inside of a generation there’s no argument that the government needs to be involved in this at in any real way yeah i mean if you go back to sort of like where the fcc you know why why they are involved in this in the first place right it had to do with over telephone lines for for people who who sort of remember uh dial-up but you know that was sort of the theory on why we needed mob l right it was just it was impractical to have more than one phone line for long distance calls and so the the best way is to have the government kind of be a rate maker again a common carrier kind of what we were talking about um then you know the fcc started to get deregulatory broke it up um and now like the idea that we would pay money to call people in europe is crazy you know i like we were i remember uh you know commercials right you know you could call at night and you could get better like minute rates by calling people abroad right now i go on my phone and use whatsapp and i can talk to them and see their face and they can walk me around their house and hd streaming like instantaneously and that sort of happened because they you know went to deregulation know it wasn’t just didn’t start with the internet start with the phone carriers right there’s a reason that at t is also a major sort of um you know internet provider right they were there in the phone game first which is sort of where this technology came from uh but like you said the the the change in internet technology has gotten so great over the time um and it doesn’t sort of have those problems of of water and electricity where you need uh a physical thing to to move data right we figured out how to move it over wireless spectrum that’s not to say that you know fiber isn’t very important fiber is the the backbone of america’s internet network there’s always a wire somewhere that transmits the data you know but wireless is an increasingly important part of that i would also say you know i live in new orleans um where i get gig internet speed for 50 bucks a month in hbo max for free uh my water bill is often higher than that my energy bill is often twice that um if you and you know those are both sort of regulated industries so if you you know i wish my electricity and sewer worked as well as my internet did uh you know the city of new orleans yeah i’m trying to pull up a photo of what the mod bell phone looked like for decades um yeah i mean i don’t know if your viewers have seen that where they put the old rotary phone uh in front of uh you know daniels and they’re like how do you make a phone call on this and they sort of can’t figure it out yeah this is it’s incredible here i found this one because then there was there was the the first one that came out in like the 50s and we had it for 30 years this was the phone that you got if you show this to like your grandparents guys uh they’re gonna have ptsd from it this phone what’s the phone what’s that my grandmother still has that phone yeah this phone was the phone that you could get for decades like decades this was the only thing you could get and then you know in an absolute groundswell of of innovation about 35 years after this phone came out they replaced it with this one it had buttons instead of rotary like and this was the phone until they started breaking up mobile and then suddenly you had all these different phones you had wireless phones and i don’t mean wireless phones as in like cell phones i mean wireless phones as in the receiver could be taken from the the actual hub the the phone itself and you could walk around that room and eventually you could walk into other rooms and then one day they had this brick looking thing it was a lot bigger than this and they went yeah you can use this anywhere it’s going to cost you a fortune and then eventually that became smaller and cheaper and now i got this thing it’s they’ve actually grown in time but it’s because now there are also computers and hd cameras on both sides and they’re gps enabled and you can do everything on this almost everything you can do on a computer and that all happened in the same amount of time that we went from this to this that’s the difference between government being the rate uh you know rate provider the or the the rate checker and and the common carrier or or designating a crony common carrier and just letting people compete and it’s mind-blowing that that’s not the standard way of doing things now eric talk to me about what starlink and and what satellite internet and what this new innovation of internet means for people that are far from the grid people in appalachia not to mention people in other countries people in you know far-flung parts of the world that that don’t aren’t near any kind of infrastructure to speak of yeah i mean i mean starlink has the the ability to absolutely i mean up and the internet right again uh there will always have to kind of be this physical infrastructure but um you know they’re launching a constellation of satellites uh starlink is part of spacex for those of you who don’t know um and they’ll you know sort of been covering the entire united states by 2022 um you can go buy yourself a satellite dish for the you know people who remember directv or satellite tv uh looks a lot like that you can go pre-order it now for 500 bucks i think their internet will be a hundred uh a bucks a month which is you know a little you know more expensive but if you consider uh the cost between you know building out fibroid or somebody’s house which might cost you know fifty thousand dollars per mile versus giving them a five hundred dollar satellite dish uh it’s a really really good value and i’m sure the price of that will you know continue to go down over time of course they compete with technologies like 5g uh or fixed wireless internet which is again sort of light satellite internet but um rather than putting it up in space they just put on a big cell phone tower you know these are the sorts of innovations that we’re seeing uh to sort of close that digital divide um i i will say one thing about the digital divide we spent so much time uh talking about availability of the internet and that is really important you know there are a lot of places that you just kind of can’t uh you know run kind of cable or whatever out to people but the biggest driver of the digital divide is both digital literacy and affordability for people uh if we want to talk about getting more people online a lot of it is just you know making sure they know how to get online right you know some people in an older generation i know people who are 20 years old think oh my god who isn’t online but you know that’s still is still a problem with a lot of americans or people um and you know just a lot of people can’t afford to pay even 20 30 a month for sort of high speed internet even if it’s available to them so so much of this you know conversation is about how the internet works for people who have it or you know building it out to these people but um you know there’s a large chunk of people who are kind of being left behind in the digital revolution uh not because they don’t have fiber to the house but because they can’t afford it or they don’t know how to use it yeah and and now thankfully uh well actually we can talk about that in a moment um uh well no i guess we can talk about now thankfully the buy administration is planning to spend lots and lots and lots of money on the internet and surely that won’t end poorly eric right yeah uh yeah i mean i don’t remember if people remember earlier i talked about uh there was maybe 20 to 30 billion dollars in lost investment due to talk about title ii regulation so in order to make up for all that uh lost money uh the binding administration is planning on spending a hundred billion dollars uh on broadband internet across the united states uh never mind that the studies that have come out that saying getting a hundred percent access will cost eighty billion dollars a hundred billion is a nice round number that you can go put in a press release and it looks good um you know it’s got a few sort of things that i i think are very troubling uh again we talk about the digital divide right we’re talking about people that have access to no internet whatsoever the fcc is spending 20 billion dollars to connect those people and they’re doing so in a very uh smart targeted way right they set up these maps to sort of look at who doesn’t have internet access they have people competitively bid to go serve these people and they’ve actually spent already 10 billion dollars will be distributed over the next six years um 300 million of which are going to to my state of louisiana to and it’s going to make a huge difference down here um there’s also we’re getting a lot of money from the american recovery plan because we just spent uh 1.9 trillion dollars and uh like you said broadband is infrastructure so some of that money will be going there but on top of all that they want to spend 100 billion dollars for quote future proof networks uh what does that mean future proof networks and government speaks means fiber to every home in america i think we just you know had a great discussion about why fiber to america is not great uh for everyone for one thing people not can’t necessarily afford it uh two we have these great other technologies like 5g fixed wireless starlink to reach people in these sorts of areas and so you might ask yourself you know why why fiber everywhere um you know why why are they sort of you know trying to talk about future proofing networks this is going on at the same time that a lot of people in congress are talking about changing the definition of broadband from uh 25 megabits uh download speed to three megabits per second upload speed which is fast enough to do anything that we’re doing right now you know be on twitter video call et cetera et cetera um they want to move it to 100 100 so-called symmetrical speed uh this makes no sense for a variety of reasons number one downstream traffic out numbers upstream traffic uh you know 14-1 yeah we spent we spent a lot more time downloading stuff on netflix than we do video calling people or gaming or sort of things that take upstream traffic but the reason to do that is because all of a sudden it takes a large swath of the american people and urban and suburban areas and qualifies them as unserved so the government can spend a lot of money building out these networks uh you know to to give money to these people um even worse the bond administration has said that the profit motive is the problem with the internet it’s the reason it’s so expensive it’s the reason we don’t have all the service we need so they want to spend a lot of money giving it to co-ops or government-run broadband uh which has proven to be an absolute disaster and absolutely everywhere it’s been tried um but you know you can’t if you say oh only government owned uh networks and unserved areas uh no governments in those areas want to build government-owned networks because they’re ill-suited to do so but governments in places like new orleans or lafayette which has a government-owned network in louisiana would love a huge subsidy from the biden administration to go do that so that is sort of what’s going on in the the biden broadband takeover of the internet you know it sounds good right we want to get 100 access to 100 of americans we’re going to spend 100 billion dollars uh and once again the uh the you know rural unserved areas are going to be left behind uh in favor of government-owned networks uh you know the very people who have very good you know internet service as it is you know maybe it’s not perfect uh that’s you know i can’t guarantee that but it is better than the people who have nothing and uh you know it’s putting them at the back of the line yeah it’s it’s government agencies over actual actually serving internet needs and what’s incredible is nothing says future proof like building more landlines eric like it’s obvious everything is going to wireless and mobile like everything is going to wireless i foresee a time when we’re going to have very little actual physical lines being used um there’s basically no latency anymore for most wireless uh providers um and yes for with satellite there is now but eventually there will be less of that um a landline takes so much more cost which is great if you’re doing a public works project for the government not so much if you’re actually a for-profit company trying to provide a service in the most efficient way possible um it’s you know everything is moving towards towards wireless and and not just in um in the internet we’re seeing that i mean wireless has taken over telecom this would be like saying we’re gonna fusion-proof uh the the telephone services by putting uh phone lines in everyone’s rooms like it’s the opposite of future proofing and a hundred megabyte upload and download for now is is foolish because uh 100 megabyte upload i don’t even need that and i have a show that that i you know do uh five i use five megabytes a second roughly to upload uh to stream my show so even with 10 i’m good and most people aren’t even using that much for for that most people like you said five is more than enough but eventually that’s gonna be stupid because that’ll be a ridiculously no low number and your phone will be able to do a gigabyte a second upload with no problem um with no kind of need for drilling more holes and replacing old lines with new ones this is a public works you know boondoggle government labor type of deal this is not this has nothing to do with the uh with expanding the internet it actually does the opposite it throws uh bad money good money after bad in propping up government-run uh internet providers who suck and compared to their their private competitors who are spending far less per per uh consumer and and providing much better options and also it’s it’s going and like you know nothing says green new deal like you know digging holes everywhere and having trucks go around the whole planet to drill lines into the ground that no one’s going to use in 10 years like it’s just it’s the opposite of where we should be going yeah i’ll just agree with you a little bit that that fiber is going to remove backbone of the internet right we you know wireless internet goes into fiber somewhere so putting more fiber in the ground uh for sort of your it’s called backhaul right it’s it’s sort of um you know what comes off of your phone or your computer or whatever like that that is really important um but you know carriers continue to make large investments in fiber um right you know the economy doesn’t really need to to go do that uh what doesn’t make sense is trying to run fiber to every home in america that’s and that’s what i meant yeah there will always be an actual physical line somewhere but it’s gonna be to like hubs and things like that not not your house and every single room in it yeah i mean yeah like you said the future is you know wireless and it’s not just you know on our phones or on our laptops right it’s the internet of things it is having your car be connected it’s having your smart watch be connected it’s having your you know health moderating system being connected to the internet right it’s your autonomous vehicle um all that requires like an investment in wireless technology and like i said you know the c-band auction brought in 80 billion dollars because people are ready to invest in wireless technologies it is the new big thing people want to be first we you know we want america to be first in china and that requires something just called opening up spectrum and letting you know the private industry invest there was a talk uh you know kind of at the end of the trump administration of having the department of defense you know build out a 5g network and i can think of no better way to lose to china than try to out china china um but you know you know like net neutrality right um there’s sort of this ideological component over the internet right it’s you know i i believe that net neutrality is the right way to work the internet so we need to have title ii i believe the profit motive is wrong um so we need to have government owned broadband never mind the fact that it requires billions of dollars in upfront investment and most of them have been abject failures where people don’t sign up or they’ve had to sell off to the private sector you know that doesn’t matter but when you talk about something as important the internet and the internet infrastructure right it shouldn’t be ideological it should be fact based it should be you know the private market has proven again and again it delivers us the stuff that we want uh trying to get government in the way is the absolute wrong way to go on this thing uh not to mention that i think we passed a hundred percent of uh debt by gdp um so do we really need to spend another 100 billion dollars on this um you know i know you know money machine go bird but uh you know this is perhaps not the best way to spend it well and that’s the thing it’s it’s not it’s money machine go burr and it’s money machine gober to you know government is basically the sunken cost fallacy as policy we’ve spent all this money it’s not working clearly we need to spend more and that’s you know it it’s it’s throwing money at something that there are providers that are nipping at the at the at the butt to be able to uh to go out there and and and provide these things and invest literally all the government has to do is just go all right you do it then and it’s like you said with the with the c ban they just they allowed it now you know libertarian that i am i’d rather the government not be licensing any anything i think they should just let people uh you know bid for it and and own it and not you know even have the government involved but regardless if you’re going to go the licensing route versus the no we’ll control it and tell people who can use it route that uh that is definitely not going to work in the right direction now before we get into some of the other stuff that pelican institute is doing let’s kind of put a a neat little bow on this first let’s talk about what’s happening with california uh they introduced is it did they just pass the net neutrality aspect or did they basically introduce their version of title two in california and and what does that look like for the rest of the country yeah so in in 2018 they went and they passed sort of their own net neutrality law right this was kind of kind of coming off the hysteria right of the gpi ending the internet as we know it and all these states all right oh my god we have our internet we’re going to save our people we’re going to pass that neutrality um you know it’s taken a few years to sort of put it into effect and we’re starting to see it now you know there’s something we didn’t get into we got into the fact that you know net neutrality you have to treat all content equally no matter what um so there’s this great veterans health app that has a zero rating what does that mean that means when you you know use it on your mobile phone it doesn’t count against your data cap you know we think our veterans are so important and their access to mental health is so important that you know you can kind of access them any time for free under california’s net neutrality rule that would be illegal um so there’s been this sort of big kind of kerfluffle over that uh but you know zero rating is available for a lot of things uh t-mobile right a innovative um wireless company has this agreement with uh major league baseball i don’t know if your baseball fan baseball fan said if you sign up for our service you can get mlb tv for free and it’s not going to count against your data cap under net neutrality that would have been blatantly illegal because they’re favoring some content over another um you know the government says this we need this to protect consumers um if protecting consumers from free baseball um is what you’re doing i would say that is pretty un-american yeah that’s actually a good talking point you want one of those those uh those sound bites you go they’re protecting you from free stuff that doesn’t seem like protection uh and it’s not and it’s true it’s nice and it’s actual free stuff it’s free baseball yeah free but free anything you know like uh yeah the government’s protecting you from providers enticing you to join them by giving you free stuff and actual free stuff not free stuff like the government you know taxes you by the trillions and then give some of it back to you if they decide you deserve it actual free stuff where if you join them instead of their competitor uh they they just give you things in addition to you know the the price of whatever service you’re buying um what can we do to fight this or is there anything we can do to fight it what if someone here is saying you know eric i am you know i want to fight as much as i can against the implementation of title ii uh what can i do what is there that we can do who can we contact yeah um obviously the southern california is going uh through the supreme court right there’s sort of a question whether or not california can sort of regulate the internet for the rest of us because you know we know there’s such thing as a california or a washington internet right at minimum there’s an american internet but you know more likely there’s sort of a worldwide internet right so um you know i like federalism as much to the next guy uh but you know a proper understanding of federalism is sort of the right level of government for the right thing right we don’t want our local government setting our national defense policy uh they’re pretty ill suited to do so and i would sort of argue that uh california setting the nation’s internet policy is also probably a mistake and there’s a lack of representation there if you have one state deciding what the entire country or world’s internet looks like the rest of us are having absolutely no say in even the representatives who are deciding that yeah yeah yeah that that’s exactly right um so what what can you do right um you know the fcc is tough uh you know it’s a it’s an unelected body right um you can’t you know vote somebody out otherwise i’m sure ajit pai would have been voted out i’m very glad he wasn’t and he was able to sort of get through that but you know i think as the biden administration moves forward right trying to put pressure on them to pick somebody who is not going to kind of get in line with the title 2 stuff is probably going to be the best thing you can do um you know if they start to do title 2 rule making you know you can put in comments they have to read them but you know just sort of talk to your friends and neighbors about this say yeah hey remember that net neutrality thing that happened a few years ago and everyone got worked up and hated this one guy because he was going to store the internet remember how that didn’t happen the internet’s better than ever before um i think that will go a long way right sort of people let themselves get whipped into a frenzy and believe that all the bad things were going to happen and i i my hope is that they try it again that the messaging just sort of won’t sink through that people have sort of picked up that the internet wasn’t destroyed that it’s better than ever um you know i think sort of on the the biden broadband plan right um if you’re in a rural state right talk to your representative say you know we i understand closing the digital divide is important uh this plan is going to leave behind the people that need it most you know we’re in a very close house and senate uh a few votes either way could sort of end that part of the plan um so i think on that you know metric in terms of you know do we want the government running the internet uh you know your ability to kind of stop that i think is actually uh is actually pretty high cool cool and vote libertarian he didn’t say that but i did um so uh okay cool so let’s talk about before i let you go um let’s talk about some of the other stuff that you and the the pelican institute are doing in louisiana uh i i really do i i and i thought about this actually before i had you on because i had another group called for all tennessee and they’re a tennessee-based uh lobbying group and they’re working on building a think tank as well um and doing kind of that the the libertarian stuff at the or free market stuff at the at the statewide level and uh i do think i’m gonna kind of do a series of interviewing different people across the country that are doing similar things so more on that later but talk to us about what what the pelican institute is doing uh across the board in louisiana yeah i mean louisiana is a great place to live i went to college here and moved away for a few years and moved back because i had such a deep passion for the state um but it’s you know it’s one of the poor states in the country it’s one of the most unhealthy states in the country it struggles with a lot of issues you know even sort of outside my bucket of technology and innovation so our goal is to make you know louisiana a competitive state where people want to move to where people want to invest and that you know requires some big fundamental reforms um occupational licensing we license more occupations than pretty much anywhere else in the country including florists the fine people of louisiana are protecting you from unlicensed flour arranging uh i wish i was joking i am not no i know i know we have a very very complicated tax structure i was up at the capitol today they were discussing that hopefully we’ll see some great for reforms we have the highest corporate income tax rate uh in the southeast right a lot of these southern states have been cutting taxes being more business from getting people from illinois new york california to move their businesses there right uh other countries too yeah tesla just moved to texas um you know louisiana has is holding on we have all these exemptions uh you know for special interests who have been lobbying for years and years and years um you know we’re finally starting to kind of cut away at some of that and kind of lower our tax rate we’re on the base to all those kind of really important tax things but that’s going to be a process it is in our constitution so even if the representatives pass it you know the people of louisiana are going to have to say yes um that’s going to be a big lift um you know education uh you know new orleans is kind of this hotbed for education reform after katrina more school choice um you know we’re trying to push more of that i think during the pandemic people saw how important school choice was uh to the future um but you know sort of that’s you know kind of our big things of course i’m really uh working on these tech and innovation issues uh we just passed something called a financial sandbox uh which we’re really excited about uh you know i started opening up with with dogecoin a sandbox just says that uh if you have an innovative product we want you to come to the state of louisiana and test it out for a few years and then we’re going to fit you in our regulatory structure or even better we’re going to deregulate i mean you know make losing a more free place and we’re going to bring in entrepreneurs who are going to make louisiana a place that people want to go and spend their time and invest their money um and live and so that’s you know what we’re really all about down here at the pelican institute we want to be a leader um you know investment in jobs and education for people but that requires you know major changes um at the state level that’s not going to come from washington dc it’s going to require good people here the state of louisiana and in baton rouge to make the right decisions for people and we want to help them make those right decisions and so your focus is on getting government out of the way of the market as much as possible so that people can have more options so that innovators can grow homegrown there or move from other areas so that louisiana can be more prosperous can be better educated can have more choices can be healthier um basically getting government as much so it seems like an overriding theme and i’m a little bit surprised to hear you say it but it sounds like the overriding theme behind what you and pelican are doing is that the less involved government is in our lives and in our choices the better off we do so i guess i really have one question for you how dare you yeah right uh yeah i mean i look uh you know government is something that we’re gonna have to deal with for a long time uh you know it’s it’s something that you know we want to try to shrink it when we can um but when we can’t we want it to act better right um we talked a little bit about the fcc right the sec can spend its time opening up spectrum and you know pushing forward 5g or it can spend its time trying to regulate uh you know the internet and make it title too uh i mean we’re going to push you know for the for the former not the latter right so that that lot of what we’re doing down here at the pelican institute is shrink government when we can uh you know empower the private sector and when you know government’s going to be there make sure it’s you know it’s working for people uh making sure that you know we have just the regulations that we need creating innovative products like or programs like sandboxes right uh modernizing our telehealth laws so more people can get access to care in louisiana yes um we got we’re doing some really exciting stuff with drones uh that i’m really excited about i want you know louisiana to be a leader in the drone industry we’ve got a lot of agriculture we’ve got a lot of oil and gas you know we’ve got a lot of trade here you know it’s set up perfectly for sort of the drone industry to take flight but you know that’s going to require you know government regulation uh to deal with drones is set up property rights but do it in a smart uh limited way that empowers the private sector that’s awesome well i’m glad you guys are doing that work um you have been a fantastic guest eric before i let you go um i want to give you a chance uh to say whatever you want to say anything you didn’t you think that we didn’t get a chance to talk about uh tell people how they can keep in touch with you in the pelican institute any upcoming stuff you want to promote eric peterson the floor is yours oh man i kind of do bad uh semperaneously but uh yeah you can follow us on pelicanpolicy.org um you can follow me and i know spike’s gonna tweet it out um you know go by doshcoin it’s going to the moon that’s not financial advice please don’t take that seriously not financial advice you know i would sort of can give a message right um you know the states are the laboratories of democracy uh you know i think so sort of the best time that we saw in free market policies was sort of after obama was elected and a lot of states said we’re going to go in a different direction we’re going to cut down regulations we’re going to cut taxes we’re going to be business friendly those policies trickle up to washington dc but that only happens if you get involved at the local level decide you want to make the state the best place you can be and really have those hotbed of innovation ideas you know there’s not a lot of good ideas coming from washington dc these days i think the best ideas come out of state capitals and that’s why i work in state policy because this is a place for innovation this is a place to get good policy to make people’s lives better and see government work for them and so that’s why i’m so passionate about what i do and that’s why i’m really glad to be on your show and talk about it so go get involved at your state like level let me tell you your state rep will take your calls and they care a lot more about what you say than your congressman and there’s some great congressmen out there but um you know your state reps don’t get a lot of calls and so when you when you go up and show up it makes a heck of a lot of a difference your state legislators are more likely to acutely affect your life on a day-to-day basis they’re more likely to listen to you and it costs less to create groups or be involved in groups that get in front of them and that’s even more true at the local level as well you’re obviously talking like major policy but also at like the city level um certainly not with like the internet or something like that but at the city level your city council people are even easier to get a hold of they might you might know them you might go to school or or go to go to a church with them or or live nearby them and this is why i hammer away all the time get involved in your local communities get involved go to your city council meetings go if you can to your state legislative meetings get on the phone and on email with them you know at them on twitter uh tag them on facebook get involved with them you know make friends as much as you can and become that uh that you know squeaky wheel that won’t go away about uh setting the markets free and setting people free and so we can live better lives agree with you a little bit right at the end uh there’s a ton of internet policy that’s done at the local level uh you know you want 5g you got to get small cells set up in your town you go to a city council meeting there’s a bunch of nibby is trying to fight that um you know localities had huge fees for putting fiber in the ground these are really local policies that can help close the digital divide if you show up to your city council meeting uh your chance of getting faster internet is way better than you know going to talk to the fcc or you know yelling at your internet provider it is probably your local government that has more of an impact whether or not you get fast internet service than anybody else that you will ever do don’t take away my hobby of calling spectrum and yelling at them um but yes get involved in your local communities and follow eric peterson follow the pelican institute for public policy and uh eric again thank you so much for coming on man stick around i’m going to talk with you during the intro but folks thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of my fellow americans i think it was an absolutely great one and uh it uh another perfect example of how you know the less we can get government the more we can get government out of our way the better um so thank you for tuning into this episode be sure to tune in tomorrow at 8 pm eastern for the writer’s block uh uh matt wright gosh i forgot his name matt wright my my co-host on tuesdays uh he’s doing his show the writer’s block and um he is going to be talking with jay nygard who is going to be who advocates for uh rights and civil disobedience in regards to green energy and going green jay nygard is best known for being arrested for putting a windmill on his own property yeah his own property his own windmill turns out that’s what you go to jail for so uh be sure to tune in and hear that story and hear how you can get involved with the energy revolution by uh getting government out of your backyard and letting you put what you want there uh and then this weekend i will be in wisconsin eau claire wisconsin uh for the libertarian party of wisconsin’s annual convention uh so for more information on that go follow uh the libertarian party of wisconsin i think their website is lp wisconsin.org i’m gonna confirm that right now nope uh hold on one second i can tell you where to go uh i probably should have done this actually stopping you from uh finding your content what’s that net neutrality stopping you from finding the libertarian website darn you to hack net neutrality no lpwi.org no this was pure user error i’d love to blame joe biden for this but definitely not uh lpwi.org to get more information on that convention this weekend and to register come on out meet me i do q a all the time i answer as many questions as i can like to get to meet you in person uh and then join us back here next week for the muddy waters of freedom where matt wright and i parse through the week’s events like the 2020 wonder boys that we are and then join me next week right here oh wait no i’m wrong next tuesday we’re doing the old switcheroo uh on next tuesday is my fellow americans uh at 8 pm and my guest will be an expert in police reform he actually was an expert witness during the chauvin trial so we’ll be talking about that and we’ll talk about police policy also next wednesday which is usually my show my fellow americans it’s going to be the muddy waters of freedom because we’re going to be live streaming and live reacting to joe biden’s very first state of the union address will joe biden remember where he is the whole time probably not but we will be there to give you a play-by-play as it happens so be sure to tune into that but folks again thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of my fellow americans uh i will see you uh or join us tomorrow and i will see you next week and uh i just am so happy that you tuned in what do i say here oh yeah i’m spike cohen and you are the power god bless guys [Music] far away [Music] [Music] [Applause] you can’t make a change [Music] it might fit we might just unite them come together become hybrid at the least slightly like-minded indeed the life i’ve lived brings light to kindness all you need is a sign put a cease to the crimes put an ease of the minds like mine sometimes darkness is all i find you know what they say about an eye for a night in a time when they’re blind who am i to deny would cry when a loved one dies i recognize that body outside with a hoes in the body that was alive who would want [Music] tell me why [Music] make the change [Music] we will make [Music] [Music] you