Tim Wu

And having been around conversations of economic regulation and tech regulation for a long time, I've come to this view that there is a fetish in them for truly neutral rules.

That what people always seem to be looking for is a rule that you don't have to apply any judgment on.

You can just say, if you get over this line, everybody knows it's bad.

As opposed to actually having to say, we have views about how the economy should work.

We have views about how our society should work.

We want the interests of small businesses to prosper, and they'll prosper more.

They don't have to give 30 cents of every dollar to Apple or Google or, you know, if you're selling on the Facebook marketplace, Facebook.

And yet, I mean, you've been a policymaker, Tim.

I think that there has been...

in a kind of like a defensive crouch, particularly among Democrats.

And, you know, Lina Khan and others were an exception to this, but a sort of effort to describe everything neutrally when sometimes you just don't want to be neutral on how fundamental companies and markets in your economy are working.

You want to be able to have values that those serve as opposed to your values are subservient to your economy.

Yes, I agree with that, and I think it's an astute observation.

I think it kind of comes, as I said earlier, from a lack of courage or vision.

It reminds me of what you said when you were talking about, well, okay, we'll just create a bunch of windows and let everybody decide what options they want for their privacy and hope that works.

Because it comes from that same impulse that we don't actually want to arrive at a vision of the good society

It's one of the flaws of classic liberalism, frankly, if you get into the political theory.

And frankly, the Gardner metaphor is targeted that it's not just like, let it all run and see what happens.

It is one where you have some idea of what kind of world we want to live in and what kind of society we think is good.

And you have to make decisions based on that.