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Competitive Enterprise Institute

5 min read

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a free-market organization described in The Bob Zadek Show as concentrating on regulation. Guests affiliated with CEI appeared across multiple episodes of the program, and the institute’s founding and scope were set out on air by one of its officers.

Founding and self-description

Myron Ebell, identified as Director of Energy and Environment at CEI, told Bob Zadek that the institute was founded in 1984 by Fred Smith, whom he described as a good government regulator turned into a free-marketeer when he moved to Washington and saw how the EPA actually worked. According to Ebell, Smith concluded that if you actually want to protect the environment, big government can’t possibly be the solution. Ebell said CEI was founded in 1984 as a free-market group that differs from some of the bigger ones in focusing almost exclusively on regulation, naming environmental regulation, financial, labor and antitrust as areas it works on, and directing 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, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and noted that Ebell also chairs an organization called the Cooler Heads Coalition. Zadek said Ebell advises President Donald Trump on issues such as climate in general and the Paris Accords that Trump pulled out of What’s Really to Blame for California and Australia Wildfires? (2020).

Antitrust

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 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 why modern Big Tech companies are being targeted for political rather than economic reasons Antitrust 101 with Ryan Young (2019).

In a November 2020 episode, Zadek framed the Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit against Google as a question of whom listeners should root for, and Young argued that there is no antitrust angle to the dispute over Twitter, saying the matter hinges on politics rather than the merits. Young cited Google’s payment of as much as $12 billion a year to Apple to make its search engine the default on iPhones, and said that switching away takes three taps on the screen for an iPhone user. He argued that consumers decide whether Twitter, Facebook and Google rise and fall, noting that Google took over from Yahoo and Altavista and Facebook from Myspace. Young called freedom of speech one of his absolutes and said government should not regulate speech 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 he would have let the story through and that the publicity resulted in a Streisand Effect that doubled the story’s reach. He explained the term by reference to Barbra Streisand suing to stop a tabloid from running a photo of her beachfront home, which amplified the story instead Why Trustbusting Big Tech is a Bad Idea (2020).

Telecommunications and corporate taxation

Bill Frezza, whom Zadek described as active and affiliated with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, appeared to discuss the history of telecom innovation. Zadek put to Frezza the argument that the history of AT&T, Bell Labs and Western Electric could be read as proof that capitalism needs to be controlled, and asked whether it was instead proof that capitalism needs to be encouraged. Frezza answered that people confuse capitalism and crony corporatism, that he dislikes the phrase crony capitalism as a contradiction in terms, and that capitalists go to the verdict of the market while 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 that in 1982, when they fired the starting gun for the digital revolution, an era of completely unrestrained innovation began Bill Frezza’s History of Telecom Innovation (and Not) (2015).

In a 2023 episode on banking, Zadek recalled a show from at least ten years earlier whose guest was somebody from the CEI, on the topic of who pays corporate income tax. He said the discussion produced a data-driven response showing that the lowest 25th percentile of the earning public bears the brunt of all corporate taxes because they spend all their money on consumption of consumer goods into whose price the taxation is passed Arnold Kling: We Just Nationalized the Banking System—Now What? (2023).

Across episodes

CEI-affiliated guests appear in episodes spanning 2015 to 2023, and the episodes show no development in how the institute is treated: Frezza is identified as affiliated with CEI in the telecom episode, Young as a senior fellow in the two antitrust episodes, and Ebell as director of energy and environment in the wildfire episode, where the institute’s founding is also described.

Guests and episodes

4 appearances by 2 guests, 2019–2020. Guests A–Z by first name.

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