Social media regulation beyond antitrust

We’re worried about the content

My top recommendation this week is Rachel Bonnifield’s writeup of the new Partnership for a Lead-Free Future (PLF), a joint initiative of USAID, Open Philanthropy, the Gates Foundation and others to eliminate childhood lead poisoning globally.

Rachel was my guest on The Weeds back in April of 2021 after I read a report she co-wrote about this problem. Our hook at the time was that the Biden administration had responded to the tragedy in Flint, Michigan with a big push for domestic lead eradication in the United States. But as she and her colleagues at the Center for Global Development, along with the small NGO Pure Earth, had documented worse-than-Flint conditions impacting hundreds of millions of kids routinely in poor and middle-income countries.

What’s more, while the Flint situation was horrible, it did have a pretty straightforward fix and was addressed with relative speed. But the problem facing many poor countries is even tougher to address and has languished for years — residents, including children, suffer severe lead contamination due to the use of bad cookware, adulterated spices, an unsafe form of eye makeup, unsound forms of battery recycling, and other industrial processes.

Lead exposure is thought to cause about a million deaths per year, though some estimates say the number is closer to five million. But the true toll is higher than the direct deaths because childhood lead exposure reduces IQ and higher cognitive functions. Reducing lead poisoning could generate massive improvements in the basic stability and economic climate of poor countries, or let more kids grow up to be genius-level innovators whose ideas improve the lives of billions more. Note that for all the hoopla — the launch event featured Jill Biden, Samantha Power, and multiple heads of government — we’re talking about a modest $150 million fund. Even the total budget they’re ultimately looking for here is just $350 million. I really think this is a problem on the scale of “if lots of people tweet that it would be good to contribute to this cause, such that it becomes a low-effort way for a rich guy to make people say nice things about him, we could get that money and improve the world by a staggeringly large amount.” The flip side of being a neglected issue is that it’s much less politically contentious than most other serious problems, and anyone from George Soros to Elon Musk could plausibly throw money at it.

Some other recommendations:

• Cathy Young on Springfield, OH.

• Cartoons Hate Her on OCD and the internet.

• Tim Lee on o1.

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Comment of the week from Jerry: I own a small factory in Ann Arbor, Michigan with about 70 employees (a lot of 20 somethings). We discovered that when we brought a nurse in to administer free flu and covid shots and gave everyone a paid half our off to recover, our company vax rate went from 40% to 90%. I'll never underestimate human inertia and laziness again, and am now paying my staff an hour of PTO (all shifts will begin an hour later) + reimbursing Uber rides to the polls on election day. We aren't asking who they voted for (though Ann Arbor is a leftwing outlier), but you may have similar opportunities in your life to enable people to vote who have been persuaded and are just that lazy or unmotivated to go actually vote.

A few good news items this week: NEPA reform for semiconductor manufacturing, blood stem cells that could end the need for marrow donors, and the end of rent control in Argentina is working well.

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This week’s question is from Kirby: Do we need a modern alternative to antitrust that considers network and founder effects? How should we think about consumer surplus in a world where, for example, no Twitter rivals can hope to compete for its users or advertisers by offering a better product?