Barry C. Lynn

Barry C. Lynn, after a career in journalism, was the director of the Open Markets Program of the ostensibly independent liberal Washington think tank, the New America Foundation. The Program criticized Google. Lynn was fired in 2017. Lynn became a founder of the Open Markets Institute a liberal think tank, which is critical of corporate concentration. Liberty from All Masters, published in 2020, argues that the American business and political elites have destroyed the political institutions that restrained the business elites from predatory behaviour. Lynn, like Timothy Wu, is critical of predatory behaviour in telecommunications, including Internet services. Lynn argues that Americans have traditionally distrusted and resisted the power of wealth and business. In part, he makes a historical argument from the time of American Independence (in the writing of James Madison in the Federalist papers), that the American system government resisted giving the wealthy too much influence in making and enforcing laws affecting their wealth and power.… (plus d'informations)

On September 21, 1999 an earthquake that registered 7.6 rocked Taiwan. Despite the death toll of 2,400, the quake barely registered in the consciousness of most Americans.

Watching the news would lead even the most cosmopolitan American observer to conclude that people in this country were more interested in North Carolina. Hurricane Floyd dropped more than 28 inches of rain there the week before.

Yet the shock wave from the quake was felt within days. Xilinx, a highly-specialized American semiconductor designer and manufacturer, lost two of its factories that day in Taiwan. Soon, thousands of assembly-line workers located from California to Texas, were furlogued.

The chain reaction did not stop there. Wall Street traders began to place the Taiwanese natural disaster in its proper prospective. Shares of Dell, Apple and Hewlett-Packard began to tumble.

By Christmas, American shoppers were scurrying to avoid the shortages of laptop computers, Barbie cash registers and Furby dolls.

In short a disaster that only 10 years prior would have been a localized disaster, cascaded into a worldwide crisis. The Taiwanese earthquake had elevated itself into a symbol of how closely connected the world has become. Perhaps, more important, Barry Lynn, a fellow at the New American Foundation in Washington, D. C. illustrates how that out-sourced world faces different risks.

Lynn argues today’s worldwide economy is an improvisation that creates and distributes wealth in ways beyond the control of its designers.

In this well-written and well-researched monograph is an at times angry look at globalization. It offers a departure from the now familiar argument that interconnected, worldwide capitalism is good. In its place, the author offers a subtle and often scary look at a risk-laden system beyond any government's control.

Lynn’s arguments promise to add clarity to this nation’s growing global debate.… (plus d'informations)