Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Evan Swartzchrober. On today's show, do progressive cities fight innovation? My guest seems to think so, but with an incendiary title like that, who would actually read this book if you're a progressive? Maybe progressives aren't the audience. I'm going to ask him. My guest is Jared Meyer, senior fellow at the

Foundation for Government Accountability. He's been on this show many, many, many times, probably my

most frequent guest. And we're going to talk about his book today. So, Jared, thanks for joining the show.

Hey, thanks for having me, Evan. So this month, your book came out, How Progress fight innovation. Now, I've got a bone to pick with you because both of

us grew up in progressive cities. You're from Chicago. I'm from New York City. And look at us now.

We're highly successful people at think tanks working on innovation. So how could it possibly be

that these cities where people are using Uber, they're using Airbnb, they're using technology,

you've got San Francisco,

the heart of innovation. New York City has a tech sector, even cities like Atlanta and Austin.

How is it the progressive cities where the innovation actually happens are the ones fighting innovation?

Well, and you forgot to say that we both live in D.C. right now. So, yeah, we just can't get enough

with them. But my point is I love cities. I think they're going to be the driving force of economic growth or continue to be that.

And what I worry about is that a lot oftentimes these seven, nine, 13 member city councils,

they're not thinking about how they can encourage innovation.

They're not thinking about the technologies that are going to be coming in two decades.

And I'm worried that in their push to, let's say, just do whatever the latest special interests

are telling them to do, they're going to threaten city status as the drivers of innovation.

So I just want state policymakers to realize that when progressive cities are fighting against

someone's right to earn a living or the ability to use

technology to help the middle and lower class, what we need to do is have states come in and

overrule cities. And in your book, when you say innovation, you're mostly talking about the

sharing economy, correct? Well, I use the sharing economy as two examples because it's something that

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