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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…
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Gains from Automation Create Path to Greater Prosperity
Automation has become somewhat of a dirty word recently. Fear of mass unemployment and widening inequality has led to calls for greater regulations of technology…
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Climate Policy: What It Means for Pompeo and Kudlow to Be Replacing Tillerson and Cohn
If people are policy, the Trump administration’s commitment to the President’s pro-growth energy agenda has become clearer and firmer. Last week, Mr. Trump …
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Department of Education Limits Federal Employee Union Subsidy
Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos deserves a round of applause. Most federal agencies, even in Republican administrations, agree to collective bargaining agreements that heavily…
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Human Achievement Benefits Nature’s Creatures—Including Pets
Environmental activists want you to “take action for our planet and nature” by sitting in the dark for an hour on March 24th. But…
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Impressive Work on Display by Students for Liberty
Congratulations are in order to our friends at Students for Liberty and their CEO Wolf von Laer on a successfully annual conference recently held here…
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Online Sales Tax Bill a Small-Business Killing Tax Hike
The Wall Street Journal editorial board was entirely correct yesterday when they said, “Republicans have spent the last year cutting taxes and regulations, which…
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5G Will Work—If Government Gets out of the Way
To usher in a new era of 5G virtual reality, 4K video, and self-driving cars, a major network upgrade is needed. The greater data demands…
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What Will You Achieve with Your 8,760 Hours?
Several years ago CEI launched Human Achievement Hour, an annual celebration of innovation and progress. During this hour—this year, Saturday, March 24th from 8:30pm to…
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How States Can Win Big from Legal Sports Betting
Every March, millions of Americans join friends, relatives, and coworkers in “March Madness” betting pools, centered on the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Men’s Basketball…
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National Labor Relations Board Recusal Saga Continues
Democrats and union allies have been transparent in their goal to block or delay any decisions by the Trump National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), as…
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‘Fair Shot’ by Chris Hughes: Facebook Co-Founder’s Book Rich in Anecdote and Emotion
Chris Hughes, the co-founder of Facebook, has a new book out with a dramatic suggestion for changing the distribution of wealth in the United States.
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Melugin: Keep Online Sales Taxes out of Omnibus Budget Bill
Today Jessica Melugin, associate director of CEI’s Center for Technology & Innovation, joined U.S. Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) and a number of other free-market…
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3 Reasons the Senate Should Pass Financial Reform
The Senate is expected to vote on its first major piece of financial reform this week since the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. A bipartisan bill…
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Trump Ousts Tillerson: What’s Next for the Paris Climate Treaty?
President Trump this morning ousted Rex Tillerson from his post as Secretary of State and plans to replace him with CIA director Mike Pompeo.
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Growing Scandal at National Labor Relations Board
This has the look of a coordinated attack to hinder the current National Labor Relations Board’s ability to reform Obama-era policies. The Inspector General stirred…
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Judge in California Suit against Oil Companies Orders Climate Tutorial
A federal judge in California last week ruled that a suit brought by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco seeking climate damages from major…
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Everything You Need to Know about the Clean Power Plan
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, nineteen other state attorneys general, and the head of the Mississippi department of environmental quality recently filed a superb …
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European Food Safety Assessment Proves Nothing about Risks to Bees
As European Union risk assessments purportedly “confirm” that pesticides threaten honeybees and lawmakers quickly clamor for pesticide bans, the stark reality is that so far…
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The Supreme Court Case That Would Catch the Law Up to Economic Reality
As more and more services move into platform business models as the lower transaction costs they facilitate increase consumer welfare, platform firms need assurance…
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More Evidence of Growth in February Job Figures
Today’s jobs numbers shattered expectations—313,000 new jobs in February against an expectation of 200,000. The numbers provide yet more support to the…
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Happy Birthday to Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’
Being able to make voluntary transactions with others while having redress in the case of fraud sets the stage for larger, more complex, and longer-term market…
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Trump’s Recent Trade Decisions Could Spell Doom for the Economy
With President Trump’s announcement on steel and aluminum tariffs and his continued wrong-headed approach to trade policy, there are reasons to be concerned that a…
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Tracking Public Opinion on Trump, Tariffs, and Trade
A Pew study noted that Republicans’ views on free trade shifted in a more negative way during the 2016 presidential campaign, while Democrats’ views…
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Don’t Bring Net Neutrality Regulations Back from the Dead
Republicans on Capitol Hill are looking to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with their recently introduced net neutrality legislation, Sen. John Kennedy’s (R-LA) Open Internet…
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The Government Killed Free Checking—Can Amazon Save It?
Amazon's move into banking services spells good news for currently under-served consumers, who often rely on relatively expensive financial services such as payday lending or…
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If the Payday Lending Rule Stays, Ability-to-Repay Does, Too
Many in the financial services industry seem to believe the CFPB's ability to replay rule doesn’t impact them and it’s not worth fighting. That is…
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Millennials Love Entrepreneurship But Skeptical of ‘Capitalism’
If we want Millennials to have a greater appreciation for the virtues of capitalism, we need to convey how their entrepreneurial aspirations can only be made possible…
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Government Not Only Source of Regulation for Finance
One of the most misunderstood and underappreciated aspects of free market economics is the idea of private or “self” regulation. Up until recently, private enterprises…
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Don’t Let an Online Sales Tax Hike Creep into Omnibus Spending Bill
With the siren song of the omnibus spending bill calling, legislators would be wise to resist pressures to include increases in online sales…