Deregulation as principle versus deregulation as practice
In a call about mercury light bulbs, Bob Zadek drew a distinction between the principle of deregulation and the way California carried it out. Zadek said California’s approach was horrible and utterly moronic because it did not deregulate retail rates, only wholesale rates How the Free Market Will Save the Planet (2014). Caller David from San Francisco agreed, saying that was exactly right, and described a bait and switch: the night before the vote, everybody from the Sierra Club to the Heritage Foundation agreed on the deregulation, but the next morning somebody put a new bill on the table, everybody thought it was the same bill, and that is what they voted for. David said Enron looted California based upon bait and switch, and that the deregulation of electricity in California was written by Enron back in 1996.
The same caller grouped the electricity restructuring with MTBE gasoline as examples of crony capitalism. He said MTBE was a waste product from the oil and gas industry that the industry conned the state legislature into accepting as an emissions-reducing product. Zadek agreed on the light bulbs, saying that once business can find an environmental reason, even junk science, a proposal sails through, and that manufacturers could have simply offered CFL and LED bulbs at their higher price and let the public decide rather than having government mandate one product over another. He called that not the way the free market is supposed to work How the Free Market Will Save the Planet (2014).
The regulatory state and the mechanics of undoing it
Sam Batkins is identified as Director of Regulatory Policy at the American Action Forum. In an episode on midnight regulations in the final days of the Obama administration, the discussion covered the legal mechanisms of the regulatory state, the delegation of power from Congress to unelected agencies, and the challenges the incoming Trump administration faced in attempting to deregulate through the Administrative Procedure Act and the Congressional Review Act A Lame Duck’s Last Stand (2017). In the same episode’s opening, Zadek marked the anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration on January 8th, 1790 in New York City, and recounted that only 11 of the 13 colonies ratified the Constitution at the time, with Rhode Island a holdout and North Carolina the last state, holding out because it was disappointed the Constitution lacked a Bill of Rights, and agreeing to ratify with Madison’s promise that there would be a Bill of Rights once Congress was assembled A Lame Duck’s Last Stand (2017).
Deregulation and business confidence
Zadek argued that the Constitution contains only a very short phrase dealing with economic policy, that free markets do not exist per se in the Constitution because it was assumed a country does not get involved in economic policy, and that the only phrase dealing with economics is interstate commerce Stephen Moore on Trumponomics (2018). He tied this to the word unleash in the name of Stephen Moore’s Committee to Unleash American Prosperity, saying unleash means to let go, to step back, and that any policy where government does less economically is a good policy.
Moore said he could not improve on that and confirmed that was why the term Committee to Unleash Prosperity was chosen, adding that all the private sector needs to do better is to be unshackled from the leg weights government puts around the economy. He said the deregulations Trump put into place have been enormously helpful, that we all want clean air and clean water and a safe environment and safe workplaces, but that the Obama people were regulators on steroids who viewed their role as to shut down government rather than allow businesses to succeed. Moore stated that for every new regulation passed under Donald Trump, 20 had been repealed, calling it an amazing reversal, and described CEOs telling the Wall Street Journal they were terrified and would not reinvest, citing fear of what Washington would do next; he said the change is not so much what Trump has done as what he is not doing Stephen Moore on Trumponomics (2018).
Deregulation and occupational licensing
Clifford Winston, identified as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, described his career as beginning with studying transportation industries in the 1970s as they underwent the transition to deregulation, looking at airlines, railroads and trucking, and learning that initial perspectives on what would happen were not quite right and required a long-run view Trouble at the Bar (2021). He said he then turned to the legal profession, and generally to industries subject to entry barriers in the form of occupational licensing, treating law as an industry subject to a form of regulation and proceeding to study it Trouble at the Bar (2021). A separate listing describes the episode as a discussion of the adverse effects of occupational licensing in the legal profession, the American Bar Association’s monopoly on legal education, and how deregulation could improve access to justice and the quality of judicial decision-making Trouble at the Bar (2021).
On a call about healthcare, caller Eben from Fairfax argued that a naturopathic doctor should have equal coverage or equal attention as opposed to a medical doctor. Zadek agreed, saying it is only a highly regulated system that does not give that type of healthcare provider access to the marketplace, and that under a total free market you would have your way and he would have his way, and that it is only when the government intrudes that you cannot. He compared it to food, saying the food market is unfettered by regulation, so people can simply buy what they want. Will Wilkinson pushed back that he would not say the food market is completely unregulated, pointing to trade barriers, and said he does not favor privatizing Medicare at this point. He said one reason Medicare is so expensive is that healthcare costs have gone out of control, and one reason for that is that the system does not work as a market, with no transparent prices, very little competition, and a bunch of little cartels setting prices arbitrarily. He said that if he were redesigning the system it would include a lot of deregulation, so that people can respond to prices, choose between different providers, and try out therapies that might not be covered by the kinds of plans we have today, and that the government could still be the backstop while costing taxpayers a lot less Will Wilkinson: G.O.P. Should Embrace the Welfare State (2017).
Trump’s deregulatory record assessed
Asked for a report card on Trump against libertarian values of limited government and economic freedom, John McGinnis listed tax reduction as positive, including the corporate tax rate, and called the capping of the state and local tax deduction very positive because it increases competition among the states, since allowing state tax deductions gives states an incentive to tax themselves high and slough those costs off on the rest of the country, and because it creates greater accountability in state government. He said another very positive matter has been the general deregulatory structure, calling it a substantial deregulation in a variety of areas, with education as one area where Obama rules he considered unwise were rolled back, and a more rational environmental regulatory agenda Here Comes the Storm (2019).
Across episodes
The excerpts do not show a single argument developing across time so much as the same distinction reappearing in different settings: Zadek’s principle-versus-practice distinction from 2014 about California electricity is echoed in 2018 in his insistence that the measure of economic policy is what government is not doing, while the 2021 discussion with Winston shifts deregulation from a political slogan to a research program on entry barriers in transportation and law, and the 2019 assessment by McGinnis treats deregulation as one item on a presidential scorecard alongside taxes.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state which bill restructured California electricity, which amendment any case turned on, or what any court held about deregulation. They do not give the fate of the Trump repeal figures beyond Moore’s statement, nor any evaluation of the Congressional Review Act’s use beyond the description of it as a mechanism. Winston’s findings on the effects of legal deregulation are not stated here in any detail. The source for the welfare-state episode ends mid-thought at a caller segment, and the transport, trucking and airline results are referenced only as a research program.