At 9:30am ET today, TF’s Geoffrey Manne will testify at “The FTC at 100: Views from the Academic Experts” hearing before the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Commerce, Manufacturing & Trade Subcommittee. The Hill previewed the hearing, talking to Manne and other experts:
The hearing is the commission’s second focusing on the 100-year anniversary of its founding. In December, the four current commissioners on the FTC defended the scope of their regulatory authority.
Over the last century, the issues before the FTC has evolved, according to Geoffrey Manne, the founder and executive director of the International Center for Law and Economics and a senior fellow at the think tank TechFreedom. Now, the agency “has become, for better or worse, the Federal Technology Commission, and technology creates a special problem for regulators,” he said in his prepared testimony.
Manne agreed that the FTC should offer more guidance on its legal authority and also increase the power of its economics bureau. That could provide some “internal constraint,” he said, and limit the commission’s ability to take action against a business “simply because three Commissioners — or a few staff lawyers — think they’re helping consumers by crucifying a particular company.”
Read the full article, and see the hearing details (including video stream!).