OpenMarket: Business and Government

From classical liberal and individual rights perspectives, the administrative state is an affront to liberty almost by definition.

Our old friend (and former CEI Warren Brookes Journalism Fellow) Tim Carney has a new book out, “Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse,” and the American Enterprise Institute recently hosted a public discussion to examine its “findings and claims.”  

My colleagues have written elsewhere about the energy and environmental components of the “Green New Deal” proposals that have been enthusiastically agreed to by most declared Democrat candidates for the presidency and which are about to be debated in the Senate. In this post I will take a brief look at the “social justice” components of the proposed Deal, which cover issues such as monetary theory and labor and employment policy.

It seems like an odd coincidence that legendary American political cult figure Lyndon LaRouche would pass away the same week that the Green New Deal resolution from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was attracting so much national attention. Yet, on at least this issue, LaRouche and Ocasio-Cortez have more in common than most people realize.

Our friends at the American Enterprise Institute have a great video series in which they explain important issues, each in only 60 seconds. A very-short format like this can do wonders to help clarify one’s argument and stay focused on only the most relevant aspects of an issue. I experimented with a similar, not-quite-as-short video format long ago (in the early days of YouTube) with The Simpleton’s Guide.

Our friends at the Federalist Society have released a fun and informative new short film on the history of beer and alcohol regulation. 

The governance of American life has been handed over to an operating system that subtly and perversely drives individuals’ behavior away from their own decisions. Unaccountable regulatory agencies dominate how we live, work, play, build, travel, prepare food, and heal one another.

Economist Harold Demsetz, a Chicago school theorist who was one of the pioneers of the approach now called New Institutional Economics, had died. The former University of Chicago and UCLA professor was 88 years old. See comments from Competitive Enterprise Institute staff below.

After a contentious election season, we look forward to the nation’s elected representatives rolling up their sleeves and getting to work. Divided party control in the 116th Congress will mean that negotiation and compromise will be the order of the day. As previous sessions of divided government have taught us, however, valuable reform is still possible under these conditions.

Our friends at Reason have been following a fascinating story unfolding in New York City, in which a business owner is trying to fend off what many people would consider to be a high honor: the designation of her building as a historic landmark.