The Regulatory Action Center Review - October 11, 2018

1) Video of the Week: In this video, American political scientist, Charles Murray, explains how deeply entrenched regulatory state tyranny is in our legal system, and how everyday Americans can fight back.

2) Why Stronger Privacy Regulations Do Not Increase Internet Usage: “Contrary to conventional wisdom in tech circles, stronger privacy regulations don’t necessarily lead to more technology use. Beyond a baseline level of consumer protection, additional regulation restricts the supply of digital technologies by raising costs for users and reducing earnings for companies. Policymakers should reject proposals claiming that greater regulation of the digital economy will increase trust.” https://www.realclearpolicy.com/public_affairs/2018/10/10/why_stronger_privacy_regulations…

3) California’s New Net Neutrality Law Hurts Consumers: “But net neutrality advocates would rather have ISPs randomly drop packets of data when there is congestion instead of prioritizing one type of traffic over another. This approach is simply inefficient and bad for consumers. Instead, allowing for prioritization is a legitimate pro-consumer practice. It would increase overall welfare by prioritizing services that require low latency and delaying non-sensitive services by tens of milliseconds.” https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2018/10/08/californias_new_net-neutrality_law_hurts_consumers_110845.html

4) Bricks and Wood Heaters Also Need Relief from Obama-era Overreach: “Both industries are victims of Obama EPA excess. To put things in perspective, neither brickmaking facilities nor wood heaters were particularly serious polluters in the first place, and both had already seen emissions reductions by more than 90 percent as a result of previous standards. It’s regulation for the sake of regulation, and all pain for little or no gain.” https://cei.org/blog/bricks-and-wood-heaters-also-need-relief-obama-era-overreach

5) Washington Wonks Love Tech Regulation More Than Regular Americans Do: “Policy solutions to pressing problems highlighted by recent data breaches, repeated misinformation campaigns, and divisiveness fueled by online platforms must take into account what Americans value when it comes to the Internet – not just what think tanks think is best.” https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/washington-wonks-love-tech-regulation-more-than-regular-americans-do

6) Oil Industry, Green Groups Join Together to Oppose Trump’s Ethanol Plan: “The groups have different reasons for pushing back against Trump’s plan to remove a key barrier to selling gasoline with 15 percent ethanol (E15), but both say it’s a bad policy and are contemplating suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) if it is finalized.” https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/410675-oil-industry-green-groups-join-to-oppose-trumps-ethanol-plan

7) Why the Merger of T-Mobile and Sprint is a Great Idea: “The combination of T-Mobile and Sprint will play an important role in realizing the enormous potential of 5G and in furthering disruptive innovation throughout the rapidly converging digital ecosystem. The absorption of a struggling Sprint by the unfailingly frisky and aggressively competitive T-Mobile will yield a stronger entity that is stout enough to take on the range of new competitors vying for customers in this space.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/washingtonbytes/2018/06/27/why-the-merger-of-t-mobile-sprint-is-a-great-idea/#3a3e37f163b0