Droning On in the Middle East
Back in the early 2010s when I first started playing with drones, I speculated in the FT that if I could own a drone, anyone could, and that this would have big implications for global politics. At that time, drone technology was largely controlled by the U.S. and Israel,
Infrastructure, Governance, and Trust
Before I get off the subject of infrastructure, I want to make a more general point about the nature of governance at this point in the 21st century, which has to do with social trust. I wrote a whole book on this subject back in the 1990s, but a lot
In Praise of Industrial Policy
My friend Steve Rhoads, emeritus professor at the University of Virginia, will be publishing through Cambridge University Press a 35th anniversary edition of his 1984 book The Economist's View of the World. The book reviews and explains many of the fundamental concepts of modern neo-classical economics, like opportunity costs, marginalism,
A Clear and Present Danger
American Purpose was founded to defend classical liberalism. The latter has been under attack in recent years from both the right and the left. On the right, the threat comes from the populist-nationalist Right, no more so than in the United States itself at the hands of Donald Trump and
California Dreaming
So Gavin Newsom, governor of California, has survived the recall attempt this past Tuesday by a very substantial margin, and can return to worrying about issues like wildfires, drought, insufficient housing, high cost of living, and the like. The recall provisions in California’s state constitution, along with ballot initiatives
20/20 Hindsight
I have to admit that I’ve gotten pretty annoyed at a lot of the punditry surrounding the terrible events accompanying the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. There are many things to legitimately complain about, particularly the Biden Administration’s failure to anticipate and plan against a rapid regime collapse, and
Crimea Platform
Today marks the launch of the Crimea Platform, an initiative of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to highlight Russia’s continuing illegal annexation of Crimea, and to demonstrate that the world has not forgotten about it. The Platform itself will not, of course, do
Covid and Bureaucratic Autonomy
The Covid pandemic has raised in an acute way the question of how much autonomy the political authorities in our government should grant to the bureaucratic experts that work for them. A simple-minded principal-agent model would say that in a democracy, the people are the principals who elect representatives—the
