The week in review: @rohangrey.bsky.social and @amandaparsons.bsky.social on crypto, Sandeep Vaheesan on antitrust reform, @azohra.bsky.social and Madiha Tahir on why the U.S. wages war, and @quinnslobodian.com on the post-neoliberalism. Plus, more LPE news and notes in the 🧵👇

"Given the fact that postliberalism from the right has failed to deliver on any of its promises to workers and has instead yielded a new, intensified form of cronyism, what are we to make of the larger project of locating a post-neoliberalism that could somehow encompass both left and right?"

"“Can’t we all get along?” the post-neoliberal centrism asks. “Or, if not, can’t we still enjoy what we have for a little longer?”

As @meredithmeredith.bsky.social wrote at the time, "The right is fighting to take control of these platforms, while liberals and some on the left are fighting to expand vectors of platform control, without thinking hard enough about who will wield this power and who is likely to get hurt."

"The fundamental questions here are not about which body of law to apply—human rights law or the law of war. Instead, as the US opens another front of possible war, we must ask: what interests does it advance, and whose?"

A must-read post by @azohra.bsky.social & Madiha Tahir on how the "double tap" bombing of the boat in the Caribbean is at once horrifying & unexceptional as a US tactic, & how preventing it in the future must start from the recognition that the US's imperial project lpeproject.org/blog/beginni...

Crucial intervention from @azohra.bsky.social and Madiha Tahir lpeproject.org/blog/beginni...

Today, Sandeep Vaheesan concludes our series on Marxism and Antitrust by arguing that antitrust reform can act as a complement to other forms of economic regulation, and, more broadly, as an instrument for democratizing economic life.

Incredibly difficult to overstate the importance of this work by @amandaparsons.bsky.social. No quotes. Read the whole piece.

Useful. The author doesn’t draw the parallel directly, but fixing attn to how *state governments* are creating demand for private currencies sets another bell ringing in that carillon tune, “history doesn’t repeat but it sometimes rhymes, and what we’re doing now w/ money is like Jacksonian times!”

"Government actors, including state tax authorities, are being recruited to craft the demand necessary to prop up what is essentially a Ponzi scheme—one worth $5 billion to our current president and his family."

"The enemy is not developers or hobbyists tinkering with apps. It is oligarchs like Andreessen and Thiel, who understand that control of the future of money means control of the future itself."

"Three awards of $7,000 each will be given to early-career scholars for papers that address the meaningful decommodification of access to basic needs in America." mailchi.mp/law/freedom-...

What has happened since the Court upheld the TikTok ban makes a mockery of the gvt’s claims that TikTok was an urgent national security risk—and of the court that deferred to those claims Wrote w @jameeljaffer.bsky.social abt why TikTok should haunt the Court www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Today, @rohangrey.bsky.social kicks off a series on the law and political economy of cryptocurrency, by considering the Left's missed opportunities and explaining how it can reclaim control over the future of money.

New (forthcoming) piece with @samuelmoyn.bsky.social on how to think about a Court that doesn’t care what you think. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

The week in review: a call to join the ranks of the @a-lpe.bsky.social, an interview with @benchansfield.bsky.social about the business of arson, and a new entry by Amna Akbar in our symposium on Free Gifts. Plus, the best of Law and Political Economy from around the web 👇🧵

Today, Amna Akbar continues our series on @alybatt.bsky.social's *Free Gifts,* reflecting on what her account of capitalism tells us about the state and law as terrains of struggle.

🚨Today is the final day to register for the Association of Law and Political Economy's inaugural conference🚨 And even if you are unable to attend the conference, you can still join @a-lpe.bsky.social as a member and vote in the spring elections! Links to both can be found in the post below!

The Price of Democracy tells the history of taxation from colonization to the present day. It's essential reading for anyone who cares about preserving democracy. n.pr/48Io9DM

New interview! Andrew Anastasi and I discuss the emotional logic of insurance and how racial capitalism is being misconstrued in the present -- as made manifest in some reviews of my book. Grateful for this partnership between @hpe-project.bsky.social and @lpeblog.bsky.social!

Today, Andrew Anastasi and @benchansfield.bsky.social discuss the wave of landlord-perpetrated arson during the 1970s, how residents organized to stop it, and what this tells us about the ongoing interplay between property and racial capitalism.

"This post, then, is an official birth announcement, but also an invitation to collective conversations together about what ALPE can do, what it should be, and what role in can play in advancing knowledge, fostering solidarity, and building strength in these perilous times."

A new era for LPE — a more democratic one, not subject to university administrators and not reliant on funder money. LPE lfg lpeproject.org/blog/lpe-2-0...

Week in review: @madisoncondon.bsky.social on climate change and externalities-thinking, @markieviczlass.bsky.social on MAGA’s faux populism & college affordability, and @alvinvelazquez.bsky.social and @chrishampton.bsky.social on LPE and the Bible. Plus, the Best of LPE from around the web 🧵👇

I've learned today that, read properly, both the Bible and Ronald Coase are in favor of LPE.

“What has New Haven to do with Jerusalem?”

"Asserting democratic control over corporate investment decisions is key to an anti-capitalist climate agenda…Imagine if we had collectively decided to build wind turbines and flood gates instead of data centers. Imagine that we could." 👀

Today, Colleen Carroll discusses a little noticed aspect of Trump's Compact: the attempt to subsume and corrupt the issue of college affordability.

External to what?

If we rejected the idea that climate change is best thought of as an externality, how would it our approach to regulation:

Today, Mason Kortz explains how FOIA’s Exemption 4 has evolved into a powerful tool for corporate secrecy, allowing government agencies and private firms to thwart transparency through confidentiality pacts. lpeproject.org/blog/public-...

Today, Jed Britton-Purdy continues our symposium on @alybatt.bsky.social's *Free Gifts.* To what extent, he asks, can a turn to politics make space for the ecological values that many of us want to take seriously?

The week in review: @alybatt.bsky.social on the free gifts of nature, @selfactingmule.bsky.social on value form theory and the accelerating climate crisis, and Reshard Kolabhai on what Africa might mean for thinking about LPE. Plus, the best of LPE from around the web 🧵👇

In honor of the perfect dog, Stella T. Brandt (May 2012 - Nov 2025), please let your four-legged companions sit atop and lean against you for a few extra minutes today 💔

I wrote for @lpeblog.bsky.social about @alybatt.bsky.social's new book—which, I argue, shows how the critique of political economy can allow us to clearly name the social cause of climate catastrophe: capital. lpeproject.org/blog/when-na...

Today, Reshard Kolabhai lays out some lessons for LPE from the Global South. A focus on Africa, he argues, could helpfully destabilize our narratives about capitalist periods, our assumptions about the links between law and capitalism, and our understanding of progressive development policy.

This post is both a helpful primer for anyone who has ever wondered, "what, exactly, do Marxists mean by value form theory?" as well as an insightful analysis of why such theory can help us understand the accelerating climate catastrophe. Good stuff!

"although the scope of things that may be bought and sold is vast, the things that matter most have no value. Dignity, beauty, freedom, robust ecologies—none of these can be produced and exchanged as commodities... their production or preservation are matters of indifference to capital."

Don't miss Alyssa Battistoni's post about her excellent new book!!

Don't miss Alyssa Battistoni's post about her excellent new book!!

Today, @alybatt.bsky.social kicks off a symposium on her book, *Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature* The idea of the free gift, she argues, can give us a deeper understanding of the environmental problems that plague capitalism. It can also help us better understand capitalism itself.

The week in review: @vanessawilliamson.bsky.social on oligarchy and taxation, and Elle Rothermich on private equity and the commodification of hospice care. Plus, the best of Law and Political Economy from around the web, including new events, books, essays, and articles 🧵👇

Medicare's hospice benefit "was designed not to maintain a healthy market for hospice, but to disentangle hospice from market logic. To achieve this, we need to do more than merely stabilize the hospice industry through greater competition—we need to create spaces where care remains uncommodified."

Fascinating piece. While not the author's main point, the fact that Medicare's attempt to disentangle hospice from market logic instead made it a private equity goldmine raises a more general challenge to the idea that we can decommodify certain aspects of care within a capitalist healthcare system.

At this point, the easiest way to unify the Democrats would be a change in leadership.

Trump's tariffs are always described as chaotic. They aren't chaotic. They are part of a concerted attack on the rule of law. If you want to read about that at more length and with more penguins:

"Slaveholders also ensured that there was no effective bureaucracy for tax assessment. In Georgia, for example, property holders simply asserted the value of their estate and, by law, tax officials could not dispute the owner’s estimate."