Category: Text

How Powerful Ideas Can Shape Society: Aaron Director and the Triumph of Nihilism

The rise of giants like Amazon and Facebook proves the long-lasting influence of Director’s approach. His intellectual and political legacy is the transition of legitimacy from democratic institutions as the locus of governing power to private monopolies. (ProMarket, the blog at the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business)

This week is the 15th anniversary of the long and productive life of one of the most important men Americans have never heard of, the political philosopher and economist Aaron Director. Director is the key founder of what is now known as the Chicago School of law and economics, which reshaped the American approach to corporate power and political economy.

I didn’t know Director, but I know his work because of the world in which we live. His handiwork is in the air we breathe, the language we use, and the policies that we consider possible. It is in our markets, our banks, our corporations, the products we can buy and sell, and even the wars we may yet have to fight. So before evaluating his life, let us bow before this truly great man. Great not in a moral sense, but in a raw sense of impact.

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Boeing’s travails show what’s wrong with modern capitalism

Deregulation means a company once run by engineers is now in the thrall of financiers and its stock remains high even as its planes fall from the sky (The Guardian)

The plight of Boeing shows the perils of modern capitalism. The corporation is a wounded giant. Much of its productive capacity has been mothballed following two crashes in six months of the 737 Max, the firm’s flagship product: the result of safety problems Boeing hid from regulators.

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The great breakup of big tech is finally beginning

Google and Facebook are the subject of large antitrust investigations. This is good news for our democracy and a free press (The Guardian)

Last week, state attorneys general, led by Texas and New York, announced investigations into Google and Facebook for possible antitrust violations. This is a big deal. No society has ever centralized control of information as we have in big tech, and this is the first real American strike at the problem. As Scott Galloway frequently notes in his podcast with tech journalist Kara Swisher, the big tech breakup has finally begun.

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Finding the Future in Radical Rural America

The problem is not capitalism; it is our markets. Markets that Obama screwed up. (Boston Review)

Elizabeth Catte’s essay on the left-wing tradition in Appalachia is not so much a political argument as a beautifully written reflection on an important cultural tradition of dissent. She is part of a trend of thinkers and organizers who have come to reject capitalism per se as an immoral system that must be overthrown.

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America’s Monopoly Crisis Hits the Military

Wall Street’s short-term incentives have decimated our defense industrial base and undermined our national security. (The American Conservative)

Early this year, U.S. authorities filed criminal charges—including bank fraud, obstruction of justice, and theft of technology—against the largest maker of telecommunications equipment in the world, a Chinese giant named Huawei. Chinese dominance in telecom equipment has created a crisis among Western espionage agencies, who, fearful of Chinese spying, are attempting to prevent the spread of Huawei equipment worldwide, especially in the critical 5G next-generation mobile networking space.

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Launching a Global Currency Is a Bold, Bad Move for Facebook

The way we structure money and payments is a question for democratic institutions, not technology companies. (New York Times)

On Tuesday, Facebook, in partnership with a surfeit of other large and powerful corporations, including Uber, Spotify, PayPal and VISA, announced that it would lead the effort to create a new global currency called Libra. “We believe,” says the organization that will govern the currency, “that the world needs a global, digitally native currency that brings together the attributes of the world’s best currencies: stability, low inflation, wide global acceptance and fungibility.”

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Democrats Need to Tame the Facebook Monster They Helped Create

Breaking up the social networking behemoth is one option. But first, Democrats need to start pointing the finger at regulators who won’t admit there’s a problem. (Politico Magazine)

If you are thinking about Facebook or questions of political economy, an important and telling hearing took place recently in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Democratic leaders Frank Pallone and Jan Schakowsky did an oversight review of Facebook’s regulator, the Federal Trade Commission, with all five commissioners, including Chairman Joe Simons, advancing ideas on how to address privacy rules in America today.

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When American Capitalism Meant Equality

Americans used to have a relatively egalitarian view of markets. How did they come to accept extreme inequality as an innate part of their economic system? At the heart of this change is a radical shift in the meaning of American capitalism itself. (ProMarket blog)

American capitalism used to mean economic equality and security. When I mention this in speeches or talks today, this observation prompts laughter, or outright disbelief. But it’s true. Americans used to believe economic equality was foundational to our political system. That America—at least for those considered citizens—carried with it an implicit promise of rough commercial equality. How did this notion change so radically?

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Facebook is violating our privacy. Where are the cops?

A company whose motto has been ‘Move Fast and Break Things’ cannot be relied upon to admit wrongdoing (The Guardian)

2011, the Federal Trade Commission settled charges with Facebook that the social networking giant “deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public”. Today, the company is again in hot water for, among other things, misusing private user data, failing to stop the spread of fake news and enabling the distribution of toxic and violent multimedia.

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