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Fraser Institute Confronts Changing Demographics of Entrepreneurship
As my colleague Christine Hall reported earlier this week, our Canadian think tank friends at the Fraser Institute have a new book out…
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Tell the Energy Department What You Think about Your Dishwasher
Thirty-five years ago, dishwashers cleaned dishes in about an hour. Sadly today, due to federal regulations, there are no dishwashers that do so. This isn’t progress—it’s…
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Did You Hear the One about the Entrepreneur?
When putting together a chapter on entrepreneurship and regulation for the Fraser Institute’s new book “Demographics and Entrepreneurship: Mitigating the Effects of an Aging…
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Debating Employment Flexibility in the Gig Economy
Renowned labor expert and Harvard professor Benjamin Sachs argues over at OnLabor.org that he's had enough with what he calls the “flexibility trope” of worker classification…
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Federal Employees Spend Over 3 Million Hours on Union Business
Federal employee unions enjoy a government subsidy known as “official time” that enables union members to perform union duties while being paid by the taxpayer.
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Red Tape Discourages Entrepreneurs, CEI Expert Explains in Fraser Institute Book
Today, the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank, released a new book on worldwide barriers to entrepreneurship, Demographics and Entrepreneurship: Mitigating the…
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Excessive Caution at EPA Produces Absurd Conclusions
In an April 24 blog post, I detailed why a recent National Academies of Sciences review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Integrated Risk Information…
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Ending Disparate Enforcement at Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Just last week, Congress voted to overturn one of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s most controversial regulatory actions—a guidance document that was used…
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Congressional Review Act Wrong Way to Legislate on Net Neutrality
On Wednesday, May 16, the Senate is expected to vote on a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution of disapproval that purports to undo…
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Zero Emission Vehicles Can Increase Air Pollution: Study
A new report by economist Jonathan Lesser of the Manhattan Institute challenges the conventional wisdom that zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) are superior to new internal…
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Cut Red Tape So Middle-Class Investors Can Soar with Next Amazon
Today is the 21st anniversary of the initial public offering of a little company called Amazon. Yes, today Amazon is a behemoth, a supposed…
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Friendly Mentions for ‘10,000 Commandments’ Study
Here at the Competitive Enterprise Institute we’re happy to see the attention being received by the 25th anniversary edition of Wayne Crews’ popular study of…
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Supreme Court Sports Betting Decision Big Win for Consumers, Federalism
Today’s Supreme Court opinion in Murphy v. NCAA (formerly Christie v. NCAA) is a big win for consumers, states, and the constitutional principle…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The big news from the last week was the release of the spring edition of the twice-yearly Unified Agenda, which lists all planned agency regulations…
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UN Climate Talks in Bonn Result in More Climate Talks in Bangkok
The annual subsidiary body meetings of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Bonn, Germany over the past two weeks have…
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California to Require Solar Panels on New Homes
“California is set to become the first state to require solar panels on all newly built single-family houses,” the Los Angeles Times reports. Not…
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New York Attorney General and Climate Campaigner Schneiderman Resigns
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman resigned on May 8th within hours of The New Yorker publishing an exposé in which four former girlfriends…
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Charting the Telecom Future with Free State Foundation
Our friends at the Free State Foundation recently held their 10th Annual Telecom Policy Conference here in Washington, D.C., and the proceedings covered the…
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Clearing a Regulatory Path for Automated Trucks and Trains
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is the national safety regulator of heavy trucks and buses, or commercial motor vehicles. It was created in 2000…
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Due Process Concerns Remain in National Labor Relations Board Ethics Inquiry
On March 28, 2018, the Competitive Enterprise Institute sent a letter to the National Labor Relations Board Office of Inspector General to investigate NLRB…
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Trump Administration Regulatory Agenda Released
Today the Trump administration released the Spring 2018 edition of the twice-yearly Regulatory Plan and Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, accompanied…
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Big Senate Net Neutrality Vote Coming Soon
The debate over net neutrality is heating up again this week, as Democrats in the Senate attempt to overturn new rules adopted by the…
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‘10,000 Commandments’ in the News
The 25th anniversary edition of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s regulatory reform study “10,000 Commandments” has received a warm welcome since it was released…
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A New Bibliography for the Platform Economy
The future has arrived, and it is a radically different economy. Havas Media’s Tom Goodwin pointed out in 2015, “Uber, the world’s largest taxi…
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Do Tourists Cause Global Warming?
Nature Climate Change yesterday published a study measuring the “carbon footprint of global tourism.” It’s big. Taking into account all tourism-related expenditures for transport, shopping,…
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Post Office Payday Loans: A Stunningly Bad Idea
Like clockwork, every so often a new member of Congress will rehash an old, tired idea: having the United States Postal Service (USPS) make short-term,…
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Win for Government Accountability against New York Attorney General
When the law says that government officials are required to turn over documents to the public, it means that they’re actually required to turn over…
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Congress Should Axe Backdoor Auto Finance Rule
This week, Congress has a unique opportunity to repeal one of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s worst regulatory actions. Using the Congressional Review Act (CRA),…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
It is now May, and still only one economically significant regulation (costing $100 million or more per year) has been issued this year. With the…
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Good News from the United Nations Climate Talks in Bonn
The subsidiary bodies of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are meeting in Bonn, Germany this week and next to try to draft…
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Sen. Lankford Headlines Mercatus Event on Regulation and Opportunity
Recently the Mercatus Center hosted an excellent panel discussion on the effects of regulation on entrepreneurs and the poor. I was excited to see…
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Dueling Calculations for the Cost of Federal Regulation
Recently here at CEI, we’ve been celebrating the release of the 25th anniversary edition of our major report on the costs of government regulation,…
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Senseless Menu Labeling Rules Go into Effect in May
Within days, chain restaurants and grocery stores nationwide will have to comply with a high-cost, low-value Obamacare menu labeling mandate. Failure to comply with the…
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Multi-State Petition against EPA Vehicle Standards Makes Weak Legal Case
California joined by 16 states and the District of Columbia yesterday petitioned the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to stop Environmental Protection Agency administrator…
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Regulatory Reform in Congress
While the president’s initial flurry of executive orders enacting some regulatory reforms was a pleasant surprise, the next president can undo them with the stroke…
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Long History for ‘10,000 Commandments’ on Capitol Hill
The 25th anniversary of CEI’s flagship study on federal regulation, “10,000 Commandments”, has been getting a lot of attention recently. We’re always happy when…
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How to Encourage Tech Competition: Deregulate Finance
It’s May Day, and in the pages of the New York Times appears a paean to the halcyon days of the 1930s, urging a…
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Steel and Aluminum Tariffs a Massive Net Loss for U.S. Economy
Following in George W. Bush’s footsteps, President Trump increased tariffs on foreign-made steel and aluminum by 25 percent in March. But he exempted U.S. allies…
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Department of Labor Safeguards Worker Retirement Investments
It is well known that Americans do not adequately save for retirement. As such, it is crucial that every dollar American workers put away…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The number of new final regulations passed the 1,000 mark last week, with new rules ranging from sending mail to human reliability programs.
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House Panels Grill Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Pruitt
On April 26th, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt testified in separate hearings before the environment subcommittees of the House Energy and Commerce and…
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Scalise, McKinley Introduce Anti-Carbon Tax Resolution
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Rep. David McKinley (R-WV) on Thursday introduced H. Con. Res. 119, which “Expresses the sense of Congress…
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Cato Institute Experts on NAFTA and the Trump Tariffs
While the administration has made great progress on issues like regulatory reform and energy policy, the current White House has also embraced policies that—and…
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Visualizing the Burden of Federal Regulation
The Competitive Enterprise Institute recently released the 25th anniversary edition of Wayne Crews’ widely-cited study “10,000 Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State.”…
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Free Market Groups Call for Repeal of Clean Power Plan
Public policy analysts from 20 free-market organizations today filed a joint comment letter in support of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s proposal to repeal…
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House Committee Examines How to Modernize Labor Laws
Labor-management relation laws in the United States are in need of an update. Reform is long overdue, with the last major update to statutes governing…
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Some Context for the Astronomical Cost of Government Regulation
Since any number with that many zeroes and commas in it is difficult for the human mind to process, let’s put it in a more…
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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Targets True Rights Violations with Wells Fargo Fine
After being attacked repeatedly for supposedly being soft on Wall Street and the “big banks,” Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Mick Mulvaney was part…
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Systematic Failures of Chemical Safety Research at Environmental Protection Agency
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” could be the motto of one of the key research programs at the U.S. Environmental Protection…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The big news this week was the release of the 2018 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments. Agencies continued to provide fodder for next years edition…
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What Exxon Knew: AEI Panel on Recent Climate Change Litigation
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) this week held a panel discussion titled “What did they know, and when did they know it?” on the growing swirl of…
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City of Boulder and Two Colorado Counties Join Climate Shakedown Racket
Boulder, Colorado and Boulder and San Miguel Counties filed suit in state court this week against ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy. The suit claims that petroleum products…
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Lessons for Congress from ‘10,000 Commandments’: Regulatory Budgets
One of the lessons learned from this year’s “10,000 Commandments” study is that Congress needs to be more involved in the regulatory process. It needs…
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The Changing Face of Selling Liberty Online
We’ve been publishing and promoting the study for many years, and our strategies and methods have changed as the years have gone by. When we…
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‘10,000 Commandments’ at 25: What Have We Learned, What’s to Come?
Wayne Crews has ably documented the regulatory state for twenty-five years and running. But what will the next twenty-five years of “10,000 Commandments” look like?…
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Peter Navarro’s Economic Ignorance on Trade
Trump economic advisor and Death by China author Peter Navarro’s recent column in The Wall Street Journal, “China’s Faux Comparative Advantage,” is a…
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The Cost of Washington’s ‘10,000 Commandments’
Federal regulation cost Americans $1.9 trillion in 2017, or nearly $15,000 per U.S. household—more than Americans spend on any category in their family budget except…
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House Tech Panel Hears Testimony on Paid Prioritization
Yesterday, members of the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology held a hearing on Internet prioritization. Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) opened…
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AI in the UK: Lords’ Report Makes Startups Less Competitive
The British House of Lords recently published a report on artificial intelligence, which includes policy recommendations that would hamper the development of AI domestically and…
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Massachusetts Court to Exxon: Turn Over All Climate Documents Since 1976
Another day, another investigation in search of a crime. “Massachusetts’s top court on Friday ordered Exxon Mobil, Inc. to turn over company records to the…
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Even without Air Traffic Control Reform, House FAA Bill Improvement to Status Quo
Last week, House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) introduced his updated Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill, eliminating the air traffic control reform title, and making…
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If Trump Is Serious about Jobs, Embrace AI and Loosen Labor Laws
There is a lot of panic about the implications of artificial intelligence technologies for the future of work. Some scholars, such as Nobel laureate Joseph…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The highlights from this week’s round of 36 proposed regulations and 72 final regulations range from licensing government inventions to the Department of Redundancy Department’s…
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Prof. Rajshree Agarwal on the Rubin Report: The True Value of Free Enterprise
I’ve been interested over the last several years to see Dave Rubin’s metamorphosis from stand-up comedian to podcast co-host to serious public affairs…
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Facebook Privacy Critics Ignore Benefits of Social Media
Facebook is not a tool designed to violate privacy nor fan the flames of hate, but it and other social media platforms have been some…
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Senator Grills Zuckerberg While Gathering His Own Facebook User Data
One of the most glaring moments of hypocrisy during yesterday's Facebook hearing came from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) telling Zuckerberg that he felt “betrayed”…
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Zuckerberg Testimony Hints at Devil’s Bargain with Big Government
Much of the political class in Washington, D.C. is currently holding its breath for the big event of the week: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s long-awaited…
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Congress Impatient for Zuckerberg Privacy Testimony
With Facebook in Congress’s crosshairs, America’s leading Internet companies—sometimes known as “big tech”—arguably face a greater risk of regulation than at any time in their…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
It may not feel like Spring yet, but regulatory agencies have turned their fancies to rulemaking, with 45 proposed and 70 final regulations ranging from…
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National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Rebukes Board
It seems there is never a slow day over at the National Labor Relations Board. Today, the NLRB General Counsel Peter Robb issued a legal…
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Option for States Dealing with Illegal Teacher Union Strikes
An uptick in teacher union strikes has occurred over past few months. Teachers have abandoned students in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma with rumblings of…
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Misfiring on All Cylinders: New York Times’ Attack on Pruitt’s Fuel Economy Reset
Greenhouse gas/fuel economy standards encourage automakers to reduce average vehicle size and weight. That is hardly surprising. It takes less fuel to move smaller, lighter…
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Law Geeks Rejoice: Property Rights on the Big Screen in ‘Little Pink House’
John Stossel discusses the history of eminent domain—the legal power that allows local governments to seize property from owners for supposedly public purposes—and how…
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Acting Director Asks Congress for Reform of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
On Monday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released its first semi-annual report to Congress under its new Acting Director, Mick Mulvaney. A routine procedure…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
With a full quarter of 2018 in the books, agencies have issued just one economically significant rule—an increase in State Department fees amounting to $115…
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What’s Driving the New Economy: Reviewing ‘Tomorrow 3.0’
We truly do live in amazing times. And according to Michael Munger, who directs Duke University’s multidisciplinary PPE program (it stands for Philosophy, Politics, and…
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Track How Humans Are Making Progress around the World
For several years now, HumanProgress has been an excellent source of data and scholarship on major demographic trends around the word. As longtime fans know,…
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Investigate Labor Relations Board Confidentiality Breach
Earlier this week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute sent a request to the National Labor Relations Board Office of Inspector General to investigate NLRB member…
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Chef Geoff Tracy Fights Virginia’s Happy Hour Ad Ban
Local D.C.-area chef Geoff Tracy is a bacon lover, popular food Instagrammer, and a budding legal activist. This week, aided by his attorneys at the…
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Wayfair Supreme Court Case Could Upend How We Buy and Sell Things Online
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case, South Dakota v. Wayfair, Corp, that could have a huge impact on people who sell…
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Hope for Reforming Obama-Era Fuel Economy Mandates at EPA
The Environmental Protection Agency is approaching the April 1st deadline to complete its Midterm Evaluation of the Obama administration’s fuel economy and motor vehicle greenhouse…
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European-Style Tech Regulation Not the Answer to Facebook Privacy Concerns
The fallout at Facebook continues to grow after it was revealed that millions of Facebook users’ data was used by the consulting firm Cambridge…
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Tax Complexity a Major Headache for Small Businesses Online
For a lot of small businesses in America, taxes are not just an expensive hassle but a scary, anxiety-inducing ordeal. Taxes are the…
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Obama Holdovers Work to Save EPA Junk Science
Obama administration holdovers at the Environmental Protection Agency are doing their best undermine efforts to drain EPA’s bureaucratic swamp. And thus far, unfortunately, they’re succeeding.
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Commonwealth Nations Beating America on FinTech Regulation
While the United States continues to have healthy development of financial technologies—thanks predominately to unparalleled access to capital and technology—it is at risk of falling…
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Cracking Down on Automated Vehicles Would Mean More Death and Destruction
Real-life road testing is the best way to continue improving the performance of automated driving systems, thanks in part to the gathering of real-time road…
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Consumers Lose in European Union’s Struggle against Google
Anti-technology hysteria continues to build in the European Union. Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition, confirmed today that she is still considering breaking…
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Arizona Becomes First State to Establish FinTech Sandbox
As the only state where all four North American deserts reside, it’s fitting that Arizona became the first state to establish a “sandbox” for financial…
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California Climate Change Litigation: Will Big Oil Learn How to Fight?
This week, Chevron lawyer Ted Boutrous told federal Judge William Alsup that “There’s no debate about climate science.” His company “accepts the consensus of the scientific…
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Will Government Allow Gene Editing for Cancer Treatment?
The idea of genome editing is no longer a theoretical concept studied only within the confines of labs and scientific research institutions. In August 2017, scientists…
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Outlook for Economy’s ‘Master Resource’ Bright
Yesterday my colleague Marlo Lewis and I sat down for a Facebook Live interview (archived here) on this week’s big event, Human…
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Liberate Dishwashers from Federal Efficiency Mandates
Thirty-five years ago dishwashers cleaned dishes in about an hour. Sadly, today there are no dishwashers that do so due to federal government regulations. This…
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3 Proposals to Temper the Federal Payday Loan Rule
When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule regulating payday loans in October last year, I wrote that this could be the end…
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Natural Isn’t Necessarily Better: Celebrating Human Achievement
Human Achievement Hour is the Competitive Enterprise’s Institute’s annual celebration of innovation and progress. During this hour, people around the world pay tribute to the advancements that inventors…
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Next Steps in Facebook Privacy Fallout
Privacy policies at Facebook—and, by extension, other major online platforms—have sparked furious debate in recent days because of the revelations regarding…
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History Lesson in Technological Optimism: Simon, Jevons, and Lardner
Through his publications and scholarly work in the 1980s and 90s, the economist Julian Simon challenged the conventional wisdom and the intellectual position of the…
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Human Achievement: The Shipping Container
One of the most underappreciated drivers of the modern global economy is the humble shipping container. Widely adopted internationally in the second half of the…
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Hernando de Soto Wins Julian Simon Memorial Award
It is enormously gratifying that this year’s winner of the Julian Simon Award is Hernando de Soto, whose work around the world to define,…
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Include ‘Joint Employer’ Fix in Omnibus Budget Bill
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is leading a free-market coalition urging Congress to attach the Save Local Business Act (H.R. 4331) as a policy rider to the…
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CEI Submits Comments to Federal Vehicle Regulator on Automated Driving Systems
The process for modernizing federal motor vehicle safety standards needs to be improved, thereby allowing for more rapid deployment of vehicles equipped with new self-driving technology…