OpenMarket: Business and Government

The New Civil Liberties Alliance hosted a very interesting event this week, as part of its “Lunch and Law” speaker series, featuring remarks by Hudson Institute Distinguished Fellow Chris DeMuth and American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Peter Wallison.

Both parties are making antitrust regulation a 2020 campaign issue. Neither President Trump nor most of the Democratic candidates are proposing improvements. Over at the Washington Examiner I take a closer look.

I’ve been reading a new book on business ethics, “Honorable Business: A Framework for Business in a Just and Humane Society,” and it has some excellent observations about the practice of buying and selling.

It’s an old argument: as population increases and we use up more of the earth’s natural resources, everything is become more scarce. Soon the pressures of so many billions of human beings on the planet will cause a crisis—maybe even a collapse of civilization. It wasn’t an entirely novel theory even back when Rev. Thomas Malthus made it in 1798, and it didn't get any fresher when Paul Ehrlich made it in 1968, but for some reason it keeps scaring the pants off of many otherwise reasonable people.

Antitrust regulation is a complex, multifaceted issue. It brings together insights from law, economics, political science, history, philosophy, and other disciplines. Right now both political parties are ramping up their antitrust rhetoric, and it will likely be a live issue throughout the 2020 election cycle. A working understanding of how antitrust regulation works is important for understanding why it works so poorly, and should ultimately be abolished.

At a time when big tech companies are being attacked over bigness, privacy, elections, and the ordering of their news feeds, the Charles Koch Institute has some good news. While we all have plenty of complaints, Americans also have a lot of good things to say about the platforms, websites, and apps that they use every day.

Tim Carney’s new book on social alienation and U.S. politics, “Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse,” raises the bar for Trump-era political analysis. Building on recent research on economics and civic life from various sources, Carney presents an incisive analysis of The Donald’s 2016 campaign that redefines who supported the 45th president and why.

In a bleak take on the sharing economy, Atlantic writer Alexis C. Madrigal says it has created a “servant economy,” where sharing economy platforms provide “low-paying work that deliver on-demand servant services to rich people.” He likens this to the domestic service prevalent before the Second World War. This take gets things almost completely backwards.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s motto used to be “Move fast and break things.” Now that his company is under increased political scrutiny—and facing calls for breakup from both right and left—he has changed his tune to “move slowly and establish rules.”

Our friends at the Foundation for Economic Education have a new video that gives a great short introduction to entrepreneuship, and what businesspeople actually do when they start a new venture.