Derek Khanna on Real Free Market Policy

Michael and Derek Khanna, Yale Information Society Project Fellow, talk about Derek’s Piece in the American Conservative called The Party of Innovation.

The article encourages the Republicans to embrace what Khanna calls “real free market policies” to foster in a new revolution in tech in the American marketplace.  Khanna advocates free markets as a path toward economic growth.  He encourages big “disruptive” innovations, like Tesla stirring up the automative industry, and Uber challenging the taxi establishment.

Khanna tells the tale of Outbox, a start-up that offered a service digital scanning and email paper mail for consumers.  Eventually, as they grew, the Post Office stepped in and quashed the start-up.

23andMe was a company that analyzed DNA for $100 and told individuals what their genome indicated.  They got a letter from the FDA saying that they were diagnosing people and needed to cut it out.

Derek saw how mobile phones were tethered to carriers as a slap in the face of the free market.  Some legal barriers arose to prevent consumers from switching handsets between carriers.  Copyright, it seems, has been used to stifle innovation, so Khanna is fighting to make sure these kinds of rules aimed at protecting content creators aren’t used to stifle innovation.