Project 2029 targeting annoyance economy with consumer protection blueprint

Project 2029, assembled by Chad Maisel and Neale Mahoney, frames hidden fees, hard-to-cancel subscriptions, insurance prior-authorization requirements, and robocalls as a measurable “annoyance economy” market failure costing American families at least $165 billion annually, mapping each of three market failures (concentration, information asymmetry, behavioral bias) to a distinct regulatory instrument family whose durability is conditioned by the Biden-era track record of partial implementation followed by partial reversal.
The framework rests on a three-factor market-failure diagnosis in which concentration, information asymmetry, and behavioral bias are each paired with a specific regulatory instrument — antitrust enforcement and sectoral regulation, disclosure mandates and standardized-claims systems, and default-rule regulation such as the proposed click-to-cancel rule.
Three competing readings circulate, with Maisel and Mahoney’s structural market-failure framing competing against an industry-efficiency reading and a political-instrument reading positioning Project 2029 as a populist counter to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
Industry response patterns differ by instrument family, with the airline industry deploying high-cost lobbying and litigation against cash-refund rules and telecom industry groups suing to block the FTC’s proposed click-to-cancel rule.

The Annoyance Economy Framework and Market-Failure Diagnosis

Project 2029 is a governing blueprint assembled by Democratic policy veterans for a future Democratic president, with a lead proposal developed by Chad Maisel, the executive director of Project 2029 and a former special assistant to President Biden on the White House Domestic Policy Council, and Neale Mahoney, a Stanford economist who directs the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

The lead proposal frames hidden fees, hard-to-cancel subscriptions, insurance prior-authorization requirements, robocalls, spam texts, AI phone agents that replace human customer service, and similar practices as a measurable “annoyance economy” costing American families at least $165 billion annually in wasted time and money, per Maisel and Mahoney’s own estimate in their policy brief.

The framework rests on a three-factor market-failure diagnosis: many industries are “highly concentrated, giving consumers few alternatives”; “consumers often lack information about the full experience of dealing with a company when making purchasing decisions — it’s hard to know whether an insurer will make filing a claim easy”; and “consumers tend to focus on upfront sticker prices rather than the total cost and hassle of dealing with a company, creating what Maisel called a ‘race to the bottom.’”

The diagnosis maps each failure to a distinct regulatory instrument family, and the Biden-era track record of partial implementation followed by partial reversal conditions the expected durability of each Project 2029 instrument according to whether it imposes process costs, default rules, or direct compensation obligations.

Competing Readings of the Regulatory Framework

Three readings of the framework are in circulation, each attributable to identifiable parties in the source material.

The first reading, advanced by Maisel and Mahoney as a structural market failure, constitutes the framework’s own framing, in which the practices constitute a market failure driven by concentration, information asymmetry, and behavioral bias. Maisel and Mahoney wrote: “American companies derive big profits from these painful interactions — and fight to protect them.”

The second reading, characterized as industry efficiency as reported by Maisel and Mahoney, posits that friction-generating practices function as rational mechanisms for managing transaction costs, mitigating fraud risk, and sustaining lower baseline prices by absorbing default risks. Industries have variously argued their interests encompass economic margins, operational flexibility, and security measures such as fraud prevention in insurance claims.

The third reading frames the proposal as a political instrument, in which the framework operates as a populist counter to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the conservative blueprint the Trump administration used as a ready-to-go policy agenda. Maisel stated: “I think the lesson from Project 2025 is just the importance of preparation.” He described wanting a future Democratic president to “have a bookshelf full of really bold, transformational ideas” ready for deployment on their first day.

Evidentiary thresholds for updating each reading include specific documentary requirements. The market-failure reading is updated by independent, peer-reviewed or agency-validated cost analyses replicating the $165 billion estimate across sectors. The political-instrument reading is updated by evidence on whether the sequencing of proposals tracks electoral demographics and swing-state vulnerabilities rather than objective economic severity. The industry-efficiency reading is updated by evidence that friction-generating practices demonstrably lower baseline consumer prices rather than expand corporate margins.

Counter-Mobilization and Industry Response Patterns

The three-factor diagnosis maps each failure to a distinct instrument family, and the documented industry response pattern differs by family.

Concentration maps to antitrust enforcement and sectoral regulation. The documented response pattern involves high-cost lobbying campaigns combined with direct litigation. The airline industry “spent millions opposing a rule that would have entitled passengers to cash refunds for significant delays.”

Information asymmetry maps to disclosure mandates and standardized-claims systems. The proposal for a standardized online insurance claims system is a disclosure-plus-default intervention. The documented response pattern involves litigation that delays effective dates.

Behavioral bias maps to default-rule regulation. The proposed “click-to-cancel” rules, intended to make subscription cancellation as easy as signing up, are a default-rule intervention. The documented response pattern involves industry litigation; telecom industry groups sued to block the FTC’s proposed click-to-cancel rule.

The proposal to end widespread use of insurance “prior authorization” — “replaced with independent clinical bodies that have no financial stake in denial decisions and would review only a narrow list of high-abuse services,” per Maisel and Mahoney — sits at the intersection of disclosure and behavioral-bias targeting, and constrains a major industry revenue stream.

The framework synthesizes behavioral economics with industrial organization theory, and the implementation terrain encompasses consumer protection law and telecommunications policy, areas where the Federal Trade Commission has attempted to implement click-to-cancel rules and junk fee bans.

Conditioning Evidence from the Biden-Era Track Record

The differential outcomes of Biden-era initiatives are the conditioning evidence on durability. The asymmetry across these precedents is the dominant conditioning variable.

Disclosure-style rules imposing process costs without direct revenue transfer completed the notice-and-comment cycle before the administration change. The FTC’s ban on junk fees for hotels, vacation rentals, and live events, implemented in 2024, serves as the primary example. President Biden devoted a substantial portion of his 2024 State of the Union address to the campaign against junk fees. The ban took effect during Maisel’s tenure at the White House Domestic Policy Council.

Direct compensation obligations on concentrated industries faced a multi-million-dollar airline-industry opposition campaign and were rescinded by the Trump administration in November 2025. The proposed airline cash-refund rule for significant delays serves as the primary example.

Default-rule regulations imposing process changes on subscription practices were challenged by telecom-industry litigation that delayed, but as of the article’s framing had not reversed, implementation. The FTC’s proposed click-to-cancel rule serves as the primary example.

The “Time is Money” initiative — a set of proposed federal rules to end time-wasting business practices, also developed inside the Biden White House by Maisel and Mahoney — never took effect in most respects. Maisel attributed this to the short timeframe between the proposals’ unveiling and Biden’s departure, combined with fierce industry opposition.

Applied to the Project 2029 proposal set, the instrument type each proposal most closely resembles conditions its expected durability.

Highest reversal risk attaches to proposals that impose direct compensation or refund obligations on concentrated industries, representing the structural form the airline refund rule took and which the Trump administration rescinded in November 2025.

Insurance prior-authorization reform occupies a complex position; the proposed reform imposes process changes but also constrains a major industry revenue stream, attracting the combined lobbying, litigation, and administrative-reversal pattern documented in concentrated health-care sectors.

“Press zero” restoration, expanded junk-fee rules, and closure of the political-fundraising-texts loophole operate as disclosure-and-process rules structurally similar to the 2024 FTC junk-fee ban; the Biden-era precedent suggests higher durability once finalized.

Robocall and marketing crackdowns face a litigation pattern comparable to the click-to-cancel rule; telecom industry groups have demonstrated both the legal capacity and the institutional incentive to challenge FTC rules in this category.

Standardization of insurance claims represents the most insulated instrument on the evidence available, because it most closely resembles the 2024 junk-fee ban’s structural form (disclosure-plus-default) rather than the refund-rule or default-rule categories that faced rescission or litigation.

The structural conclusion is that the three-factor diagnosis is consequential in itself, as it conditions which proposals are most exposed to industry counter-mobilization, but diagnosis alone does not determine durability. The regulatory instrument chosen, and the industry counter-mobilization pattern it attracts, are the dominant conditioning variables.

Negotiation Environment and Integrative Potential

The implementation environment exhibits both integrative potential and a documented adversarial pattern.

Consumer interests as framed by the framework are substantive, involving the reduction of financial cost, and procedural, involving the reduction of time waste and cancellation friction.

Industry interests, as industries have argued, encompass economic margins, operational flexibility, and security measures such as fraud prevention in insurance claims.

Potential objective criteria include the FTC’s 2024 junk-fee rule and historical customer-service wait-time baselines.

An integrative solution example exists in standardized online insurance claims, which could reduce administrative costs for insurers while satisfying consumer demands for transparency, representing a zone of joint value creation.

The documented industry pattern favors protracted litigation and political reversals rather than negotiated accommodation. Maisel and Mahoney write that companies “derive big profits” from these interactions and “fight to protect them.” In observed practice, the industry alternative to negotiated accommodation has been legal challenge and reliance on political transitions to reverse agency rulemaking, as occurred when the airline refund rule was rescinded in November 2025.

Consequences, Sequel, and Domain Sequencing

The group plans to release additional proposals over the next year covering child care, health care, housing, energy, online safety for children, artificial intelligence, and border policy.

Per Semafor’s reporting, the group chose online safety for children as its opening proposal because it is “among the least politically polarizing topics.”

The opening-domain selection reflects a sequencing strategy to build regulatory momentum and establish precedents in lower-friction domains before advancing into sectors where profit motives tied to consumer friction are most deeply entrenched.

Maisel described the originating impulse: “And so we started kind of poking around on other issues that we thought would similarly strike a chord with Americans and really take on problems that people are suffering through quietly in their daily lives, but that never seem to be acknowledged by people in power.”

Evidentiary Gaps and Unresolved Variables

The source material does not document a finalized reversal-status outcome for the click-to-cancel rule; the record retains the rule as delayed by litigation but not yet reversed as of the article’s framing and publication date of July 7, 2026, per NPR’s Greg Rosalsky reporting.

Independent verification of the $165 billion figure was not located in the substrate; the record retains the figure exclusively as Maisel and Mahoney’s own estimate per their policy brief, as the source itself frames it.

Analytical techniques used in this piece

This analysis applies the methods below. Each links to a short, plain-English explainer you can read and reuse.

Bayesian Hypothesis Network: Updates the probabilities of competing hypotheses as evidence accumulates.
Domain Induction: Builds a working mental model of a domain from the ground up.
Principled Negotiation: Works a negotiation from interests, options, and objective criteria rather than positions.
Bayesian Reasoning: Starting from base rates and updating beliefs proportionally as evidence arrives.