Americans on Food Stamps Can Shop Online Thanks to Walmart and Amazon
Private enterprise has long provided the government with efficient solutions, even if the government itself undermines private efforts by using technology ineffectively.
READ MOREUber’s New Feature: A Response to Fake-Driver Epidemic
If we truly had a fully free market economy, this type of reaction would always be the norm. It is when crony capitalism reigns supreme that we have instances of companies knowingly pushing products that hurt consumers — with the support and blessing of the government.
READ MOREHow To Defend a Culture of Innovation During the Technopanic
We need a vision and set of principles to fight back against neo-Luddites and their proposals to slow or stop technological change.
READ MOREThe Radicalization of Modern Tech Criticism
Today’s neo-Luddite tech critics suggest that we should just be content with the tools of the past and slow down the pace of technological innovation to supposedly save us from any number of dystopian futures they predict. If they succeed, it will leave us in a true dystopia.
READ MORECoffee Robots are Not Causing Homeless People to Starve
Does the picture of a huddled mass of homeless people outside a robotic coffee shop suggest the ruins of late-stage capitalism? I think not. It represents instead the “great deal of ruin” policymakers create when they make policy as if the laws of supply and demand are optional.
READ MOREZuckerberg Wants to Regulate the Internet. Here’s Why.
Government regulation isn’t just bad because it ignores the unintended consequences that restrictions produce over time. Regulation is also bad because it invites cronyism.
READ MOREWhat Schumpeter Would Say about Techlash
If Schumpeter were alive today, he’d have two important lessons to teach us about the techlash and why we should be wary of misguided interventions into the Digital Economy.
READ MOREThis Agency Might Wreck Internet Economics
Social media companies like Facebook obviously want to comply with the law, but they would also like to stay in business. That business depends fundamentally on targeting based on some demographic grounds. If a consistent application of non-discrimination law means that advertising has to become completely random to be compliant, Internet economics will experience the fate of countless public housing units in the past: it will be completely demolished.
READ MOREThe US Mugging of Huawei Is Truly Dangerous
Translating what is completely mindless, the federal government is ultimately persecuting Huawei for being successful.
READ MOREDon’t Blame Technology, Blame Yourself
Every new technology comes with an awkward stage of adoption, during which time people get manipulated and break every kind of rule of propriety until they figure out a better way.
READ MOREWhy Facebook’s Stablecoin is Good News for Crypto
Technology rarely does what we hope or predict it will do. In a year of falling exchange rates and failed ICOs, Facebook’s co-option of blockchain technology might be the best news for the industry of 2018.
READ MORERemember What the Internet Is All About
Some great minds are remembered mostly for one moment in time, a momentous action or revelatory piece of writing. Such is the case for John Perry Barlow, who died on February 7, 2018. Born in 1947, he was a remarkable visionary, a lyricist for the Grateful Dead who later became a founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends your rights as a citizen of the digital age. He is the author of the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace.
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