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 🧵👇

I wrote about a conference marking the culmination of tens of millions of dollars of philanthropic spending to transcend neoliberalism. lpeproject.org/blog/post-ne...

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 🧵👇

Vital post about an incredibly important and under-analyzed ideological development

This is a bravura performance beginning to end, but the thinly veiled biographies of the speakers are the best part.

"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?"

Just perfect on “post-neoliberal” vacuity from @quinnslobodian.com lpeproject.org/blog/post-ne...

“We would not be asking whether neoliberalism was, in fact, over…we would proceed from the stipulated premise that it had ended. This was a convenient but analytically catastrophic choice, as it forced participants to ignore the durable continuities…” — exactly the same as the “end of the 9/11 era.”

Today, @quinnslobodian.com takes you inside a recent conference devoted to the world after neoliberalism. What emerged, he argues, was less a rupture with the past than a centrist project of status-quo stabilization.

"Antitrust and Industrial Policy: A Misunderstood Relationship." This is a new draft academic paper I've been working on for a while (serious comments welcome). It suggests that the antitrust regime should be understood as a part of the industrial policy toolkit. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

"“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?”

This proposal from @econmarshall.bsky.social, @higheredlabor.bsky.social and others to overhaul higher education is really compelling. Worth reading in full. marshallsteinbaum.org/wp-content/u...

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."

TikTok is going to be controlled by a group of right-wing billionaires. Great job, Joe Biden and congressional democrats, who joined (and stoked) the moral panic that initiated and then fed the process that has ended up here.

Today, @azohra.bsky.social and Madiha Tahir argue that recent criticism of the Trump administration's bombings in the Caribbean risks repeating a familiar mistake: debating how the United States wages war while leaving unquestioned why it wages it at all.

Watch this space! 👀👀

These findings would seem to undermine the argument that risk-based premium pricing is an effective way to achieve risk reduction. If households just forego the insurance when premiums rise, no flood risk is reduced AND those households are exposed to greater risk of financial catastrophe.

Very badly needed

"It is not difficult to see the naked aggression because the legal arguments barely hold together: we are told to believe that fishermen are actually members of a drug cartel on the precipice of invading Venezuela and threatening to do the same in the U.S."

"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?"

Today, @azohra.bsky.social and Madiha Tahir argue that recent criticism of the Trump administration's bombings in the Caribbean risks repeating a familiar mistake: debating how the United States wages war while leaving unquestioned why it wages it at all.

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...

"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 [on Venezuela], we must ask: what interests does it advance, and whose?" 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.

What's that you say, Utah Republicans? You want to expand the Supreme Court because you don't like its rulings? Interesting. Oh, you don't mean THAT Supreme Court?

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.

Today, @amandaparsons.bsky.social explains how the crypto industry is partnering with government institutions to craft demand for a currency that hardly anyone uses.

NYC Policy Forum has a publishing platform/newsletter designed to take policy conversations out of white papers & into the public sphere. It will provide a range of viewpoints & insights on the difficult tasks of governing as we work together to build an affordable NYC. nycpolicyforum.substack.com

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."

Today, @amandaparsons.bsky.social explains how the crypto industry is partnering with government institutions to craft demand for a currency that hardly anyone uses.

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.

"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."

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...

"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-...

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 👇🧵

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 👇🧵

Registration closed yesterday (over 400 attendees!), but I heard a rumor that there's a brief grace period. So register if you didn't!

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.

“the task before us is to remake the very social relations from which these fundamental problems emerge“

And a little bird has told us that there is *still time* to register. But our phone lines are lighting up as we speak, so you need to jump on this offer now, before it's too late!

I just reviewed the agenda for this conference, and so many people I've wanted to meet IRL will be there. Absurdly excited about this event. I apologize in advance for being a dweeb.

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.

I'll be there and so will all my friends! Should be a fun time.

🚨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!