Show: 010 Top Priority Podcast | Technology & Innovation Priority Initiative  

Date Recorded: December 17, 2019

Host: Duane Lester, Manager of Issue Education, Grassroots Leadership Academy 

Guests: Billy Easley Senior Policy Analyst of Tech & Innovation Americans for Prosperity 

Jim Fellinger, Communications Lead on Tech & Innovation, Stand Together 

Show Notes

• Why is the Stand Together Community involved in Tech & Innovation? min [3:28]

**We recognize the historical trend that technology improves people’s lives and America has been at the forefront of that trend.**

• America continues to be the world leader in making people’s lives better by: min [7:41]

1. Driving public policy that encourages innovation

2. Fostering a cultural willingness to embrace new technology 

• Our Community wants to empower free people to innovate and create whatever they can dream up, which includes: min [11:49] 

1. Permissionless Innovation—free people are best positioned to drive solutions when barriers are removed

2. Regulatory Humility—the appreciation that free people innovate better than government 

• What are the external barriers we need to break in the realm of Tech & Innovation? min [13:08]
• How dangerous is the internal barrier of technophobia—fear of the unknown? min [17:10] 
• How our Community views Tech & Innovation through the lens of the first mutually-reinforcing principle—Equal Rights. min [30:10]
• How our Community views Tech & Innovation through the lens of the second mutually-reinforcing principle—Mutual Benefit. min [38:04]
• How our Community views Tech & Innovation through the lens of the third mutually-reinforcing principle—Openness. min [41:30]
• How our Community views Tech & Innovation through the lens of the fourth mutually-reinforcing principle—Self-Actualization. min [45:17]

**Additional Resource**

• Trust Ventures—Guiding startups through uncharted territory. The team at Trust Ventures helps tech startups overcome regulatory barriers. 
• Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom by Adam Thierer, Senior Research Fellow at Mercatus Center
• Check out PermissionlessInnovation.org
• Listen to the Pessimists Archive Podcast | A history of why we resist new things
• David French writes about his conversation with civil rights leader, Reverend Walter Fauntroy. where French asks Rev. Fauntroy how the the civil rights movement made such rapid gains in the early 1960s; Rev. Fauntroy’s response was, “Almighty God and the First Amendment."