Tonight, 16 Republican presidential candidates will gather at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley to discuss the future of our country. There will be plenty of loud talk and sound bites, but will any of them really address the steps needed to get the American economy back on its feet after eight years in the wilderness? Will their discussion of how to grow the economy go beyond the normal platitudes of low taxes to actually delve into substantive solutions to grow the economy?
To help them with their task, Lincoln Labs, a freedom-oriented thought leadership group based in the Bay Area, released our latest white paper this week, Lobbying for the Future. The study is a blueprint for robust regulatory and market reform that will open up markets to new and innovative competitors and clear out the underbrush of rules we’ve accumulated over the last half-century.
California, more than any other state in the union, represents the greatest dichotomy between a thriving tech sector with a state government obsessed with regulating every last good or service they can get their hands on. Despite leading both the country and the world in innovation for decades, Sacramento politicians and bureaucrats regularly bend to the will of well-entrenched special interests only concerned with keeping their market dominance.
Lincoln Labs proposes a significant new idea to drain the swamp of ridiculous regulations: Right to Work 2.0 – an ethos that promotes the ability of entrepreneurs to pursue their dreams without getting permission from the alphabet soup of regulatory bodies that litter the Capitol Mall. Technology will not sit still waiting for government to catch up – nor should it. But such a technology approach is actually mutually beneficial greater use of technology and management-consulting style operations will reduce costs and improve service for citizens.
the fact there are more lobbyists in Sacramento than Washington, DC is no accident. Both large corporations and labor unions alike have a deeply vested and costly interest in maintaining the status quo. But treading water isn’t what made California great and it isn’t what we need today .Entrepreneurships seeking to grow their company should be spending their precious few resources on engineers, not lobbyists.
We need a comprehensive program to open up government contracting to new bidders, sunsetting or completely eliminating rules and regulations that no longer apply to the 21st century economy, and promote permissionless innovation – where the 18 year old college dropout or the 62 year old retiree can start their business without worrying about what Sacramento thinks about it.
With just a few simple, but impactful actions on this front, we can release the pent up creative energy of California’s entrepreneurs – allowing for job growth, increased tax revenues and the social mobility we all know is so important to creating a thriving and stable society.
We encourage the Governor and the Legislature to review our plan of common-sense regulatory reform and take the actions necessary to allow Californians to do what they do best – lead the world in new ideas.
Reed Galen is a Republican political consultant and communications advisor to Lincoln Labs.