Episode Notes
Written notes for each episode in the queue. Where audio is published, a player sits with the notes; the rest are ready to read as written briefs while audio production catches up.
0 of 20 episodes have audio published; the rest are notes-only.
The Public-Goods Problem at the Atmospheric Scale
Climate stability is the largest public good humans have ever tried to provision through markets. We work through why the free-rider mechanism makes it the hardest case, what carbon pricing does and …
Labor's Comeback — Starbucks, Amazon, and the New Organizing
Starbucks Workers United organized over 400 stores between 2021 and 2024. Amazon Labor Union won the Staten Island JFK8 election. The 2023 UAW Big Three negotiation produced 25% raises. We ask what t…
Industrial Policy Returns — CHIPS, IRA, and the China Comparison
The 2022 CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act together represent the largest US industrial-policy push in seventy years. We examine what the subsidy structure rewards, how it compares to China's Mad…
The Carbon Price Argument — Sweden, EU ETS, and California
Sweden's carbon tax is the world's highest at over $130 per ton. The EU Emissions Trading System covers about 40% of EU emissions via cap-and-trade. California's program links to Quebec and runs belo…
Antitrust Now: Lina Khan, Jonathan Kanter, and the Platform Cases
The FTC and DOJ antitrust divisions under the Biden administration filed more major cases in three years than the previous decade combined. We walk through US v. Google search, FTC v. Meta, the Apple…
Finance: When Capital Markets Work and When They Don't
Capital markets are supposed to allocate investment to its highest-value use. In this episode we examine whether they succeed, what 2008 revealed about systemic risk, and why the line between finance…
Monopoly: The Market's Self-Contradiction
Successful competition tends to eliminate competition. Network effects, economies of scale, and regulatory capture all push toward concentration. We examine the mechanisms, the antitrust toolkit, and…
The Corporation: A Technology for Concentrating Capital
Limited liability, the joint-stock company, and shareholder primacy are all inventions — legal technologies for pooling capital and distributing risk. We trace how the corporation evolved and what it…
Markets vs. Prices: What's the Difference?
A market is a coordination mechanism. A price is information. In this episode we unpack how they interact, why some goods resist marketization, and what happens when prices are prevented from doing t…
What Is Capitalism, Actually?
We start at the beginning: what distinguishes capitalism from other economic systems, why private property and voluntary exchange are its core institutions, and what the historical alternatives looke…