The FTC as a licensing gatekeeper
The Federal Trade Commission enters the program’s discussion of social media regulation as the body that would decide whether large platforms keep their immunity from suit. In the June 2019 episode, Bob Zadek introduces Senator Josh Hawley’s legislation as “the next scary chapter in this conversation of the censorship or non-censorship of media with federal legislation,” and Frank Buckley describes the bill as “really pretty extreme.” Who Will Censure the Censors? (2019)
Buckley explains the mechanism: Section 230 of the ‘96 Act means that “the Facebooks and Twitters of the world aren’t responsible for the content, can’t be sued for dumb stuff, libelous stuff said on their platform.” Hawley’s bill, in Buckley’s account, would remove that protection “unless the company in question proves beyond a reasonable doubt in the eyes of four out of five members of the FTC, Federal Trade Commission, that it doesn’t discriminate on the basis of political viewpoints.” Buckley states the standard as requiring the company to prove to the commission by clear and convincing evidence that it has not discriminated on the basis of viewpoints, and sums up the burden: “So you have to prove a negative.” Who Will Censure the Censors? (2019)
The FTC here is not described as investigating a complaint or weighing evidence of harm; it is the tribunal before which a private firm must establish its own innocence as a condition of retaining a statutory shield. Buckley’s account of the bill’s title is itself contested in the exchange: he says the bill introduced the previous week “is called Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act,” then adds, “I think the real title is the Social Media Shakedown Bill.” Who Will Censure the Censors? (2019)
Antitrust enforcement and the Baptist and bootlegger dynamic
The August 2019 antitrust episode places the FTC within a broader account of who actually brings antitrust actions. Ryan Young tells Bob Zadek that “95% of all antitrust lawsuits are brought not by the Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission; they’re brought by competitors trying to take down their other competitors.” On that account the commission is a minority participant in a system dominated by firms seeking advantage over rivals rather than by enforcers protecting the market process. Antitrust 101 with Ryan Young (2019)
Young frames antitrust generally as “a confluence of two separate things,” beginning as “special interest legislation to protect competitors rather than competition.” He illustrates the second dynamic with the “Baptist and Bootlegger” pattern: a moralizing preacher and a shady bootlegger both favoring a liquor prohibition on Sundays, the preacher for religious reasons and the bootlegger for the lucrative monopoly. Young says the same dynamic is in play in a lot of antitrust regulation, pairing companies padding their bottom line with people who genuinely believe reining in the big guy would help consumers. Antitrust 101 with Ryan Young (2019)
Bob Zadek’s framing in that episode is broader than the commission itself: he argues that the fastest-growing monopoly is the monopoly in political power ceded from the states to Washington, and that people afraid of bigness look to bigger government to save them from bigness. He also notes the founding-era problem of states charging tariffs on goods moving between states. The FTC appears in the episode only through Young’s statistic about who files antitrust suits. Antitrust 101 with Ryan Young (2019)
The FTC in guests’ careers
Two episodes identify Mike Munger as a former FTC staff economist, and he supplies the only first-person account of the agency in the excerpts. In the January 2015 campaign finance episode, Bob Zadek’s introduction notes that Munger “worked as a staff economist at the Federal Trade Commission.” Who Wants to Buy a Politician? With Mike Munger (2015)
In the November 2019 episode on public choice, Munger dates the experience precisely: “In 1984, I was working at the US Federal Trade Commission. I was working for Wendy Gramm, Phil Gramm’s wife, the senator from Texas.” He describes the work as an attempt to “figure out a new set of rules” so that economic growth would follow from unshackling the dynamism of the economy, in the context of the Reagan tax cuts and the 1986 tax reform. Mike Munger is Taking Public Choice Seriously (2019)
The January 2022 episode repeats the credential in Bob Zadek’s introduction, which states that Munger “has worked as a staff economist for the Federal Trade Commission in the Reagan administration.” The same introduction identifies Munger as professor of political science, economics, and public policy at Duke, a former chair of that department, the 2008 Libertarian candidate for governor of North Carolina, a senior fellow of the Independent Institute, a writer for the American Institute of Economic Research, and a former president and chair of the Public Choice Society. Troubleshooting the Constitution (2022)
Across episodes: the FTC as a chokepoint and a credential
Across the excerpts the FTC is treated in two unrelated registers rather than as a developing argument. In June 2019 Frank Buckley describes the commission as the body that would adjudicate whether platforms prove a negative under Hawley’s bill; in August 2019 Ryan Young cites it only in a statistic about who files antitrust suits; in the Munger episodes it appears as a former employer. The excerpts show no episode in which the commission’s own conduct, structure or record is the subject of examination, and no change in treatment between the earlier and later episodes.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe the FTC’s statutory authority, its commissioners, its budget, its history, or any enforcement action it has taken. They do not state what Section 230 says beyond Buckley’s summary, what became of Hawley’s bill, or whether the bill’s standard was beyond a reasonable doubt or clear and convincing evidence, since Buckley states both. The excerpts also do not say what Munger did at the commission beyond the 1984 description, or what the 1986 tax bill was called.