Why were Lyft and Uber willing to shut down? It is dollars and cents. By being forced to classify their drivers as employees, Lyft and Uber would be forced to incur huge new expenses on behalf of each of their drivers to pay for mandatory new benefits.

The silver lining, if there is one, in the COVID-19 pandemic has been the easing up of at least some regulatory restrictions that were actively preventing rapid and innovative responses.

“The post office has been run poorly for many, many decades,” Trump declared last week. In a less histrionic era, the Postal Service’s failures could spur Congress to finally remove the roadblocks to private innovation in letter delivery. Instead, the coming delivery debacles may become the conspiratorial RussiaGate of the 2020 election.

When this sledgehammer is lifted off of us, it won’t be lifted for long. We now know that this awful hammer is there, looming overhead. We have good reason to worry that government officials are likely to smash it down upon us when another communicable pathogen emerges and makes news – as such a pathogen inevitably will, for viral pathogens have been part of human existence from the start.

This is the spoken edition of the American Institute for Economic Research for August 17, 2020. A longer text version is hosted at AIER.org, along with many other articles. What Will Not Recover: Government, by Jeffrey Tucker. What becomes of government credibility in the post-lockdown period? There are thousands of politicians in this country for whom this is a chilling question, even a taboo topic.

This is the spoken edition of the American Institute for Economic Research for August 14, 2020. A longer text version is hosted at AIER.org, along with many other articles. King Canute and the Virus Tide, by Jeffrey Tucker. Nine-hundred years ago, the English historian Henry of Huntingdon wrote down an older Anglo-Saxon story/myth of King Canute who claimed the throne of England in 1016. The story was of appalling arrogance.

This is the spoken edition of the American Institute for Economic Research for August 12th, 2020. A longer text version is hosted at AIER.org, along with many other articles. Don’t Live in a Bubble, by Roger Koops. I am writing to the younger generation. Much of this hysteria has been forced upon us by people who were elected to represent us, not dictate. Not all have gone this route but most have. They now seem to be only serving themselves.

This is the spoken edition of the American Institute for Economic Research for August 12th, 2020. A longer text version is hosted at AIER.org, along with many other articles. The New Fascism, by George Gilder. Up here in Maskachusetts, in the Berkshire Hills, we have a new form of fascism that might well be called “phasism” as our Governor Charlie Baker phases out our freedoms and our economic life.

This is the spoken edition of the American Institute for Economic Research for August 11th, 2020. A longer text version is hosted at AIER.org, along with many other articles. What did the Stimulus Stimulate? By Alan Reynolds. Faced with an escalating pandemic in March, the President and most governors did not want to “stimulate” the private economy. They wanted to shut it down –with stay-at-home orders and mandated business closings.

This is the spoken edition of the American Institute for Economic Research for August 10th, 2020. A longer text version is hosted at AIER.org, along with many other articles. Economic Freedom Is Essential for Managing Pandemics Vincent Geloso The present pandemic has few historical parallels in terms of magnitude.