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The Gig Economy is Paving the Road to Serfdom

The tech industry buzzword “gig” has distracted society from important questions about the gig economy that are surprisingly traditional: whether a business has employees or contractors, and how it can avoid payroll taxes and legal liability. Countless Silicon Valley business models have been built under the guise of gigs.

The Non-Voter

Like the largest political group in America, the non-voter, I completely ignored this year’s Democratic convention. Like an overwhelming majority of Americans I didn’t watch any speeches, didn’t go online Read more…

Giganticism After COVID

In March, I could see that our social response to the coronavirus would be more consequential than the virus itself. Natural disasters can do great damage, but they do not usually change societies. By contrast, mass mobilizations for wars in the modern era have been deeply consequential.

The Republican Party Has A Tough Choice To Make

American Compass’s Oren Cass describes the “vital opportunity for the American right-of-center to develop a genuinely conservative economic platform that focuses on working families.”

A Major Question Still Remains for Biden’s Campaign

American Compass’s Oren Cass reviews Joe Biden’s acceptance speech for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Monopolization as a Challenge for Both Parties

Two Federal Reserve economists have just come out with a paper on the social consequences of widespread monopolization of markets by large corporations.

How Corporate Actual Responsibility, Not Social Responsibility, Would Look

American Compass’s Oren Cass outlines the arguments from an open letter sent to the Business Roundtable calling for corporate actual responsibility.

Integralism, Rightly Understood

What’s good for us must be good for the world, we think, and vice versa—an assumption the rest of the world does not necessarily share.

More Than Materialists: Class and Religion

When does something become a cliché? I’m not sure. Truisms lose a certain power after much repetition, but it doesn’t make them less true. That fundamental political conflicts are always theological is an old observation by theorists that still bears repeating, always suggesting something new.

Uber’s New Labor Law: Placation Without Representation

The “gig” may soon be up for Uber. A judge’s ruling that ride-sharing services must treat their drivers as employees has both Uber and Lyft threatening to discontinue service in California, seemingly conceding that their money-losing business model relies not only on the subsidy of endless investor capital but also the legal arbitrage of ignoring the labor laws followed by others.

American Nihilism

Over the last two months protests and Twitter mobs have called for the cancellation of a great deal of America’s heritage, and in many instances civic leaders have cooperated. Daniel Mahoney describes it as a reckless and nihilistic “assault on the nation’s cultural and political patrimony.”

Women’s Work Preferences are Diverse

In less than 24 hours I will be wheeling my bag through the large revolving doors of the hospital, through the Covid screening point, and up the elevator to the ninth floor to deliver my fifth child due to a medically-necessary induction.

Industrial Security Policy: New Missions for DoD, SBA and CFIUS

Thanks to the near-criminal negligence of neoliberal globalist policymakers in both the Democratic and Republican parties, America’s national industrial base, the foundation of its global power, has eroded to the point of collapse.

Corporate Responsibility and 1619

Just as American Compass was releasing the Corporate Actual Responsibility project, the New York Times’s DealBook announced its own corporate-responsibility event.

Big Tech Reveals the Flaw in Citizens United

Last week, the House Antitrust Subcommittee grilled the CEOs of four large technology platforms – Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook – for five and a half hours, focusing on the market power these corporations have accumulated over the last fifteen to twenty years.

Intel’s Stumble is Very Bad for America

America used to dominate the semiconductor industry, but that leadership position is increasingly fragile. There are two parallel forces at work: the rise of our competitors and the decline of our domestic champions.

Are Labor Unions Predatory Monopolies?

At Law and Liberty, I took part in a symposium debating the libertarian scholar Richard Epstein’s comparison of labor unions to predatory monopolies, which he described as the “classical liberal” view. 

Intel’s Troubling Pledge on Outscourcing

Intel has been conspicuous among Silicon Valley high-tech companies, insofar as until now it has resisted the siren song to send much of its manufacturing offshore.

Big Tech, Antitrust and America’s Future

Wednesday’s “must watch” House Judiciary hearing with the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google raised a host of questions, including what the goal of antitrust should be (maximizing economic welfare or other goals, like protecting small business), and how should we think about platform industries.

The GOP’s Embarrassing Big-Tech Performance

The modern-day Titans of Industry testified before Congress Monday ostensibly for a hearing on anti-trust.

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