Interview with Jared Meyer! (6/15/17)

Elicia Krauss coming at you again with another great edition of prageru live in Los Angeles at our brand new and hopefully improved prageru headquarters we are really excited today to have our newest presenter Jared Meyer join us if you haven't checked out his video you should definitely go to prageru.com right now and I think you're going to like it because it talks a lot about capitalism specifically how you must love capitalism and even if they don't know it liberal hipster Millennials probably love capitalism as well so Jared Meyer he's senior research fellow at the foundation for government accountability and we're also going to be asking him about his new Mini book that's available on Amazon how Progressive cities fight Innovation I'm really excited to learn more about that and don't forget to please click the link to donate as soon as possible even makes a difference because we want more Millennials to see these interviews and all of our great lineup of amazing presenters over at prayer.com so Jared thanks so much for being with us today hey looking forward to it I really loved your video I've been a fan of your writings for a while I know you've contributed at Forbes in the past and your kind of sphere of influence and uh you know expertise tends to be how regulation can hurt Innovation can you break that down a little bit for our audience well I think what we see right now is that a lot of people when they see brand new Services all these Services they use on a daily basis they think they just come about they don't think about all the work that had to go into developing them and when you have government regulation at the level that we have today I mean over 1 million Commandments from Washington words like must cannot shall that really makes it difficult for entrepreneurs to grow a business much less started so I'm always in favor of getting more things and getting them cheaper and government regulation can often make that difficult so I was talking to a girlfriend of mine who's a millennial entrepreneur she's a very successful um wom woman-owned and woman employed business here in Downtown LA and she was talking about how difficult regulations in the state of California make it for her to like walk the walk and not just talk the talk and she also knows and works with a lot of other female business owners that complain about the same thing do and women small business owners seem to be the the largest growing group of of business starters nowadays so what can women do to continue to start businesses but fight these like overreaching government regulations well it's interesting because if you look at technology now it's easier than ever before to start a business and I mean it's still very difficult but I use the example of my mom for example speaking of women entrepreneurs she would make these mittens I know you in La might not know what a mitten is but something wear on your hand when it's cold outside so she'd make them out of old sweaters from Goodwill and then sell them at craft show I mean maybe she could sell 20 30 in a good day but now with Etsy and all these online platforms she can theoretically reach anyone in the world so what I see it's really transformational to allow people to grow their businesses but also people to work part-time or earn some supplemental income through this type of work but yet we see startup rates at their lowest rate in over 25 years so there's some disconnect where it should be easier to start businesses yet people aren't doing it and I put the blame mostly on government regulation and I mean what would you say is the most business-friendly startup State oh that's tough it really depends on where you are I mean what is crazy is that a lot of startups are still happening in California because of all the benefits I mean the weather first of all all the Venture Capital you have out there the smart people coming out of these universities all the immigrants that can work at these different uh companies but yet they they seem to want to force these startups out I like using the example of San Francisco practically trying make Airbnb illegal even though it was founded there so I I'm wondering how much longer that can go on because there are plenty of cities and states across the rest of the country ready to take over whatever California is losing so I I actually tweeted out your video today that I your video is a perfect example of why I always kind of like smirk and chuckle when some Lefty friend or a new acquaintance of mine talks about how they just watched this super cool and educational documentary about how blank conservative or cap capitalistic principle is wrong and when I'm like oh where'd you watch it then they tell me oh Amazon Prime or Netflix and your video points out how even people that might identify as more left leaning or prover regulation really should love capitalism and want limited government well yeah I mean they they practice it every day every time you're using one of these services that now I mean just the example of uber uh if you wanted to get a private ride just even 10 years ago that was truly service for the 1% like the richest people in America could do that now anyone can do it and Uber's fastest growth has been in lowincome or median income communities and then you look at all the free services today that you can get from a company like Google and now Netflix how you have access to a DVD collection that would make the richest American you know 15 years ago jealous it's all about that capitalism is delivering these new services to people that we couldn't even imagined just a few years ago you know I I don't want to jump the gun because I've been telling her she needs to write a piece on this for a very long time but a mutual friend of ours Mary Katherine ham and I are big fans of Rent the Runway and she and I were talking uh once on a road trip last year with our little girls on the way to Disneyland about how now we can all have the closet of share from Clueless where for the girls out there I don't know how many guys watching have seen it but you know Sher goes in and she pairs like what she's going to wear and what's available in her closet on this like high-tech screen and now I mean I can rent a $2,000 dress to wear to event for a couple hundred bucks or a $500 dress for 25 bucks and before I wouldn't go to Nordstrom or Bloomingdales and buy a designer you know dvf gown and The Innovation and the technology that you talked about has made it possible for middle class and even some lower class people to have access to products that they didn't have before yeah it's exactly right and what I like to point out is you know I count Rent the Runway as part of the sharing economy because it's about expanding access through online platforms and that but a lot of people when they hear the word sharing economy they only think of uber and Airbnb and of course I've used those two companies as examples already but it goes far far beyond that we talked about Etsy as well another online platform for handmade goods and I see it really extending to anyone who's working for themselves because back in the 1950s or the 1930s when we set the majority of our labor law and regulation you pretty much needed to have a boss and then they expected you to punch a time card that is the work model of you know my grandfather's Workforce that's not how work is today people are going to be working for themselves at increasing rates and since the early 2000s all the growth we've seen in work has come from people working as independent contractors so it's something where sure the employment model works for some people but as technology makes everything cheaper more convenient and more accessible we're going to see on the work side people being able to fulfill those entrepreneurial dreams that they have so in a recent article in Forbes you talk about how the majority of Millennials um or like something like only 18% of Millennials actually trust government Regulators so then how come you think Millennials want the government so involved in every other decision process of their lives well I think I call it this one is the Uber effect I think when you have government Regulators get between you and something you love like uber the effects of government regulation in the forms of higher prices and reduce competition it's Crystal Clear but when you have government regulating something like the energy sector or the financial sector by the time you're sending money on venmo or going on uh you know charging your iPhone I mean the effects of what would have been in the Paris climate Accord are far from Clear it's something where it's right in their face when it comes to new technology and I think that's what makes Millennials of all Stripes Embrace that part of free markets they might not Embrace capitalism they view it as a dirty word but if you ask them if they want a free market or A government controlled economy Millennials of all political stripes are overwhelmingly in favor of free market so it might just be a branding problem with capitalism so you think that even the phrase free market some Bernie Bros out there might be a fan of oh definitely I mean regardless of what uh Senator Sanders wants to say no one wants the government telling people how many choices in deodorant they can have what they want right now I mean how many of them took an Uber to a Bernie Sanders rally there's a reason that Bernie Sanders when he was up there and this is a time I wish I could do a great impression of him but he didn't start saying about how much he hates Uber he'd rail against the big Banks instead it took one Bloomberg reporter catching him off guard to get him to say that he's no fan of uber you can quote me on that so it's it's something where he knows his audience and he knows that young people love these technologies that are giving them the goods and services and work opportunities that they desire so let's jump to your new Mini book that people can go to Amazon right now and check it out it's how Progressive cities fight Innovation uh how long is it how much is it is it it seems like it'll be an easy and and entertaining and educational read but can we delve into some information about what you looked into in that book oh definitely and just to show you it is very very short it's 10,000 words you can read it you know if you're if you're uh traveling anywhere it's nice and quick you get to write to the point I don't like wasting any time but what I found so odd is that these services and I use Uber and Airbnb as examples through all the regulatory fights they've gone through these Services really help people as we talked about who are middle income or lower income and it helps people in cities even more than it does in rural communities yet what you're seeing is that cities are the ones fighting back against these services so I try to make the argument that states need to step in and protect uh people who live in cities when these local policies threaten Innovation and as we move on to autonomous vehicles drones anything like that we're going to see a lot of cities purely not understanding the benefits that can come to Consumers and getting in the way of new technology so I think it's time for states to step up and re in these cities and really save Progressive cities from themselves and you've seen a lot of places like here in Los Angeles it took Uber and LIF forever to be able to negotiate a deal with lax because the taxi unions were fighting it and liberal city council people were fighting it too because they were getting campaign donations from these taxi unions yeah and it's crazy I was just in Fort Meyers uh actually this morning and when I got in there they still can't pick you up from the airport because Florida is now the 40th state to pass a Statewide preemption the kind of thing that I think is a good idea where no local governments or airports can ban Uber or Lyft or any of these ride Shar services but I couldn't get it hasn't gone into effect so I couldn't get an Uber from the airport so it cost $35 before a tip to get a taxi on the way back the Uber was $21 that's $14 that someone who's trying to live paycheck to paycheck that's a huge difference so maybe for some you know person living in a city who's pretty well off they don't care about $14 but for a lot of Americans that's a big deal and add that up throughout the economy and when we're protecting established Industries like taxis we're making things a whole lot worse for consumers who could use all the help they can get or that $14 as a Chipotle with guac and a drink you could have gotten at the airport and the crazy thing is Uber drivers also will earn more than taxi drivers as well so it's cheaper and the people who are doing the work are earning more I mean it's the closest thing we can have to a win-win that exists it's just the people who had paid for a special interest privilege before from the government they're losing out and you know what I think they deserve to so so final question for you I'm glad you brought up drones a a couple of sentences ago because I know that I believe Senator cotton and Senator SASS and some other people on both sides of the island Capitol Hill are working on deregulating um the FAA having control over drone laws in certain States and municipalities and letting that go down to the local level do you see any chance of that passing at the federal level um them passing those down to the States it'll be tough because the FAA I would really like to see drone regulation move outside of the faaa because their mandate is safety and adding a bunch of small Vehicles flying in the air there's no way that increases safety something could theoretically go wrong so that's why they're going to take a very restrictionist view on this so why safety should be Paramount and we should work on a regulatory structure that will allow us to compete with countries like the United Kingdom that are becoming a worldwide leader in drones or austral Australia what we're seeing right now is that the FAA is ill equipped to handle this think if you're a regulator if they allow drones and then something goes wrong they're going to make the front page of the newspaper but if they cut off an innovation that never ends up happening a lot of people won't notice so Regulators are by Design very cautious and that's why we need something else in terms of public pressure and politicians then standing up for this type of innovation so that we can force Regulators to be accommodated in a way that still protects safety but promotes Innovation Jared it was so good to talk to you I love delving into your expertise of your mind thank you for doing this prageru video everyone should definitely check it out and be sure to like and share not only this Facebook live but Jared's latest video with Prager U that came out today and also if you're a fan of Prager U please consider donating because our videos are able to be kept free because of generous donations from normal people like you and me even $5 makes a difference and if everyone who went and watched Jared's video today just donated $10 that would ensure that 20 million more people see prer you videos thanks so much for tuning in to this edition of Facebook live I'm Elicia Krauss from the lahq signing off