OpenMarket: Business and Government

National Review contributor and rage-inducing controversialist Kevin Williamson has a new book out, “The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics,” which covers a lot of big-picture theory on democracy, social psychology, and even theology. For the moment, I’m most interested in what he says about capitalism’s history and its recent evolution (if I may use that biological term).

Setting up a sovereign free territory has long been a dream of libertarian mavericks, from the ill-fated Republic of Minerva to the nascent Free Republic of Liberland. Yet arguably none has achieved the longevity of the Principality of Sealand. A major reason for that longevity—and accompanying notoriety—is the fact that Sealand, while perhaps whimsical in its origin, wasn’t merely a utopian experiment.

Lots of things influence prices and, of course, not all are influenced by the same factors. However, the lawsuit filed by several state attorneys general against T-Mobile/Sprint merger explicitly links the number of competitors in wireless market places to lower prices in several places.

Rent-seeking is economics jargon for chasing after unfair special favors from government. Businesses and individuals have a large menu of rent-seeking options to choose from, and antitrust regulations are one of the items. Licensing regulations and other restrictions can make it harder for startups to enter a market, favoring incumbent businesses.

There’s a flurry of news coverage this morning about the Business Roundtable releasing a new public statement on “the purpose of a corporation.” Whereas previous versions stated that “corporations exist principally to serve their shareholders,” the new statement emphasizes the way in which the signatory CEOs “create value for all our stakeholders, whose long-term interests are inseparable.” Opinion writers like the Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein consider this shift in language “significant,” but it seems more a clarification of what has always been true for American businesses than any real change in direction.

The trend of younger voters allegedly becoming more favorable to socialism has alarmed and chagrined many observers recently, from members of the New York Post editorial board (“Socialism’s millennial fans don’t even know what it is”) to an Arizona Republic columnist writing in USA Today (“If millennials choose socialism, fine. Just don't make this mistake”).

Our friends at the Pacific Legal Foundation have a funny and insightful explainer video on the historical development of the regulatory state (also known as the “administrative state”), and how the power of administrative agencies threaten our constitutional rights.

Can the regulation of new technology be voluntary and non-coercive? In a recent op-ed for The Hill, Mercatus Center law and technology analyst Jennifer Huddleston argues that manifestations of “soft law” can be superior to the hard requirements of statutes and binding federal regulations.

The end of the first blog post in this series warned that the real result of a successful lawsuit to block the merger of Sprint and T-Mobile would not be a market with four large wireless competitors, but rather one without Sprint or T-Mobile at all. This is because mergers signal a dynamic marketplace that is highly competitive.

State attorneys general from fourteen states and the District of Columbia have sued to block the merger of mobile phone and Internet service providers T-Mobile and Sprint. The merger was recently green-lit by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and eventually the Department of Justice (DOJ), on the condition that certain assets would be spun off to create a new competitor in the wireless market.