In countries facing democratic backsliding, attention often centers on state capture of the press. Recent U.S. media failures, however, demand a wider lens. Authoritarian encroachment here rests on deeper layers of capitalist and oligarchic capture. Understanding how these different layers interact and reinforce one another is a necessary first step toward building a more democratic media system.
When Congress eliminated taxes on overtime last summer, it framed the move as a win for workers. However, by encouraging people to spend more time on the job, the policy runs directly counter to the original purpose of overtime laws: to protect workers’ personal time and give them greater control over their lives. A better agenda would involve shortening the workweek, increasing the overtime premium, and banning mandatory overtime.
A decade ago, Martin Shkreli became the most hated man in America by raising the price of Daraprim – an antiparasitic essential for immunocompromised patients – from $17.50 to $750 per pill. Though Shkreli’s conduct was lambasted in the court of public opinion, the legal framework that allowed this 4,000 percent increase remains in place. And Daraprim? It still costs $750 a pill.
Many on the left continue to view cryptocurrency as little more than a grift. Yet the crypto industry aims to achieve something much more dangerous: functional monetary sovereignty. Their infrastructures create new conditions for exchange, wealth, and information. By ignoring these developments, we increasingly live in a dystopian world of monetary fiefdoms, and we find ourselves lacking the legal imagination to meet the moment.
At a recent convening devoted to the death of neoliberalism, what emerged was less a rupture with the past than a centrist project of status-quo stabilization.
In today’s polarized political discourse, it is easy to forget that the Bible’s economic values align better with LPE’s market critiques than with the neoliberal right’s twentieth-century synthesis. And it would be a mistake to surrender these resources to the post-liberal right.
As public-private partnerships become central to modern governance, FOIA’s Exemption 4 has evolved into a powerful tool for corporate secrecy. After Argus Leader, government agencies and private firms can thwart transparency through confidentiality pacts, shielding significant public spending and regulatory decision-making from democratic oversight.
As hospice care is increasingly dominated by private equity firms, an antitrust response, while necessary, has the potential to normalize the language of the market as the default mode for discussing healthcare reform. Hospice demonstrates what is lost when healthcare is described as a mere economic exchange, and Medicare’s per diem hospice benefit harbors as-yet-unrealized potential for decommodification.
The Trump Administration’s use of individualized, firm-level waivers and exemptions marks a new frontier in presidential control of the administrative state. This strategy allows the administration to bypass the formal process for repealing regulations while turning deregulation itself into a tool for distributing political favors.
While some have cast the U.S. government’s $8.9 billion equity stake in Intel as the first step on the road to socialism, upon closer examination it looks more like a distinctive form of American state capitalism: one that entrenches corporate power while foreclosing more democratic and effective alternatives.
Law and Economics scholars argue that if income redistribution is to happen at all, it should occur exclusively through the tax system, rather than through supposedly less efficient methods, such as the minimum wage, collective bargaining, or housing regulation. Yet even by their own lights, these arguments fail: in many cases, predistributive policies are actually more efficient than the tax and transfer system. More fundamentally, to address economic inequality, we must move beyond narrow issues of distribution and transform the mode of production itself.
Recent amendments to Delaware’s corporate code have tilted the playing field toward powerful tech CEOs and private equity representatives. Beneath these reforms lies a deeper political shift — the rise of populist corporate governance that threatens both shareholder rights and the rule of law.
In a stunning betrayal of 30 million workers, the Federal Trade Commission has abandoned its nationwide ban on non-compete agreements. Fortunately, states are filling the void with remarkable creativity — drawing on both new legislation and existing competition and consumer laws to enhance worker mobility.
From lending to stock trading to crypto, leading fintech companies have gained an edge not through actual technological innovation, but by using tech-driven narratives to obscure how they profit from bending and breaking financial regulations. What makes this especially troubling is that the public is propping up these firms by subsidizing Silicon Valley’s VC industry.
To build an electric system that meets the needs and opportunities of the 21st century, we need proposals that strengthen public control and improve regulation of Investor-Owned Utilities. Yet on their own, such proposals ignore a fundamental issue: almost all federal, state, municipal, and coop utilities currently operate with the same centralized, top-down planning and system control as Investor Owned Utilities. Unless that changes, public ownership will do little to remove the barriers that now largely block the evolution of decarbonized, resilient, and more equitable electric service.
