The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a free-market think tank described on The Bob Zadek Show as concentrating on government regulation. Guests affiliated with the institute appeared across multiple episodes of the program, discussing telecommunications history, antitrust enforcement, wildfire policy and banking, and the institute’s own origins were recounted in one of those appearances.
Founding and mission
Myron Ebell, identified as Director of Energy and Environment at CEI, told the program that the institute was founded in 1984 by Fred Smith, whom he described as a good government regulator turned free-marketeer after he moved to Washington and saw how the EPA actually worked. Ebell said Smith concluded that big government could not possibly be the solution if the goal was protecting the environment. Ebell characterized CEI as a free-market group that differs from larger organizations in focusing almost exclusively on regulation, listing environmental regulation, financial, labor and antitrust as its subjects, and he directed listeners to cei.org What’s Really to Blame for California and Australia Wildfires? (2020).
Bob Zadek introduced Ebell as the director of energy and environment at one of his favorite free-market think tanks, calling the institute by its abbreviation CEI, and noted that Ebell also chaired an organization called the Cooler Heads Coalition. Zadek said Ebell had advised President Donald Trump on climate issues and on the Paris Accords that Trump pulled out of What’s Really to Blame for California and Australia Wildfires? (2020).
Antitrust and regulation
Ryan Young, described by Zadek as a senior fellow at CEI who spends much of his time on regulatory reform, trade regulation and antitrust regulation, appeared on the program to discuss antitrust enforcement. In a 2019 episode, Zadek and Young discussed the history and economic impact of antitrust regulation, analyzing the vagueness of the Sherman Act, a shift from protecting consumers to protecting competitors, and the targeting of modern Big Tech companies for what they described as political rather than economic reasons Antitrust 101 with Ryan Young (2019).
In a 2020 episode following the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Google, Zadek framed the question for listeners as who to root for, the DOJ or Google, and described the case as Department of Justice v. Google. Young argued that there is no antitrust angle to the government’s complaint against Twitter, saying that the ease of switching services—he cited Google’s payments of as much as $12 billion a year to Apple to be the default search engine on iPhones, and said switching takes three taps on the screen—collapses an antitrust argument on free speech. He said the matter hinges on politics rather than the merits, that Republicans wanted to regulate political speech in their favor and that Democrats would take up the precedent and the new powers against Republicans, and he called freedom of speech one of his few absolutes Why Trustbusting Big Tech is a Bad Idea (2020).
Young also discussed Twitter’s muting of the Hunter Biden story published by the New York Post, saying Twitter made a mistake, that other outlets including the Wall Street Journal thought the story was not adequately sourced, and that if he ran Twitter he would have let the story through. He described the resulting publicity as a Streisand Effect that doubled the story’s reach, explaining the term through Barbra Streisand’s lawsuit over a tabloid photograph of her beachfront home. Zadek summarized the remaining governmental interest as Section 230, which he said he lacked time to discuss, and Young directed listeners to cei.org and to the institute’s antitrust site at antitrust.cei.org Why Trustbusting Big Tech is a Bad Idea (2020).
Telecommunications and crony corporatism
In a 2015 episode on telecommunications, Zadek told guest Bill Frezza that Frezza was active and affiliated with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and asked whether the history of AT&T, Bell Labs and Western Electric proved that capitalism needs to be encouraged rather than controlled. Frezza cautioned that people confuse capitalism and crony corporatism, saying he dislikes the term crony capitalism because it is a contradiction in terms: capitalists go to the verdict of the market, crony corporatists go to the verdict of the politician. He called the history of the Bell System until its deregulation the most successful crony corporatist history that can be found anywhere, said it was not even a predatory monopoly but a well-run and successful one that got bloated at the end, and said what was missed was everything that happened afterward, dating the start of the digital revolution to 1982 Bill Frezza’s History of Telecom Innovation (and Not) (2015).
Environmental policy and wildfires
Ebell’s 2020 appearance concerned catastrophic wildfires in Australia and California. The episode description states that Zadek and Ebell discussed underlying causes, arguing that environmentalist policies banning prescribed burns and logging created dangerous fuel loads, and explored the history of the climate change movement, the greening of the Earth due to increased CO2, and perverse incentives created by government land management, with Ebell advocating a return to active forest management and private property rights What’s Really to Blame for California and Australia Wildfires? (2020). Zadek opened the episode by calling Ebell the opposite of Al Gore, noted that a New York Times article had called Ebell a climate criminal, and said he wanted to assure the audience that Ebell was not speaking from an air-conditioned cell. Zadek credited Ebell with work on the environment and on getting the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords, and urged listeners to support CEI, saying the institute was doing God’s work What’s Really to Blame for California and Australia Wildfires? (2020).
Across episodes: the institute as a recurring voice
CEI-affiliated guests appear in episodes spanning 2015 to 2020, and the treatment of the institute itself changes with the guest. Frezza in 2015 is identified only as affiliated with CEI while arguing the distinction between capitalism and crony corporatism in telecommunications. Young in 2019 and 2020 speaks as a senior fellow on antitrust doctrine and on the Google and Twitter controversies. Ebell in 2020 supplies the only account of the institute’s founding and mission, and Zadek’s own framing shifts from introducing CEI as one of his favorite think tanks to urging listeners to support it financially. The excerpts show the same deregulatory premise argued in each appearance but no account of the institute’s internal development, and no episode in the excerpts has a CEI guest responding to another’s claims.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state CEI’s legal structure, budget, staff size or location, nor any founding principle beyond Ebell’s account of Fred Smith’s turn from regulator to free-marketeer. They do not describe the institute’s positions on issues outside the episodes in which its affiliates appeared, and no excerpt gives the outcome of the antitrust or Section 230 matters discussed. The 2015 excerpt breaks off at the heading “The Universal Service Constraint,” and the 2023 reference to a CEI guest on corporate income tax is a recollection by Zadek that names no speaker and no episode.
Guests and episodes
4 appearances by 2 guests, 2019–2020.
- Ryan Young (Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute) — Antitrust 101 with Ryan Young (2019) — History and economic impact of antitrust regulation.; Reversing the Ratchet (2020) — Government response and regulatory barriers during COVID-19.; Why Trustbusting Big Tech is a Bad Idea (2020) — DOJ antitrust lawsuit against Google and Big Tech.
- Myron Ebell (Competitive Enterprise Institute) — What’s Really to Blame for California and Australia Wildfires? (2020) — Causes of Wildfires in Australia and California.