Category: Economy
DoorDash to Acquire Instacart – Bad Deal for Consumers
DoorDash is acquiring Instacart for $17 billion ($65 per share). The companies plan to keep separate brands and apps until…
AI: Is It Worth It?
The Trillion-Dollar Machine: Is Artificial Intelligence Worth the Cost? We type a question into ChatGPT or Claude, wait a few…
Will AI Agents Run Entire Businesses?
Imagine establishing a business without hiring a chief executive, a manager, an accountant, or even a receptionist. Instead, you install…
The Iran War Dividend: Why Should Oil Companies Keep It All?
When war drives up energy prices, consumers pay more and oil producers can earn extraordinary profits. Should some of that…
AI in Free Fall: Seven Giants, One Blanket, and No Parachute
Imagine seven of the world’s most powerful technology companies falling through the sky, desperately holding the edges of a rescue…
Underground Finance: Follow the Money, If You Can
For centuries, people have moved money across borders without banks. Now cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence are giving these old networks…
When Even the Cardboard Is Worthless: Hong Kong’s Elderly Poor
The collapse in earnings from collecting wastepaper exposes a larger problem in one of the world’s wealthiest cities: how to…
We Know We’re Being Watched. Why Don’t We Care?
Ten years ago, we were warned that technology companies were turning our personal lives into a commercial product. Today, we…
Neither Political Party Controls the Price of Diesel
Every time diesel prices rise, politicians start pointing fingers. Republicans blame Democrats. Democrats blame Republicans. Both promise that their policies…
Everything Everywhere All at Once: Can America Afford to Be the World’s Indispensable Nation?
For decades, the United States has occupied an extraordinary position in world affairs. It maintains military commitments across several continents,…
China Built a Belt and Road. America Is Building Something Different.
For more than a decade, China’s Belt and Road Initiative seemed to pose a fairly simple question for Washington: where…
Ten American Companies Are Now Worth as Much as the United States
If the ten most valuable American companies were nations, ranked by the price of their shares on October 5, 2026,…
The Student as Consumer
Campus intolerance is frequently blamed on radical political ideology, but its deeper cause is structural: the transformation of students into…
American Workers Will Be Competing Against Highly Automated Chinese Factories
China’s current economic difficulties can easily be interpreted as evidence of long-term decline. Consumer spending is weak, the property sector…
Why AI Regulation Is Far Harder Than the Slogans Suggest
This paper offers an extended analysis of the profound difficulties in regulating artificial intelligence, taking as its starting point Nilesh…