Ikenomic Insights

 (Originally published in Forbes .) From banning “non-compete” clauses to re-requiring “net-neutrality” to hyperinflating the costs of taxpayer-funded infrastructure with extravagant union giveaways, the Biden administration has overseen a massive expansion of the regulatory state . But amid this regulatory incontinence, which sows uncertainty, suppresses innovation, and retards investment and growth, there are encouraging signs that Congress, the courts, and US entrepreneurs are fed up with rule by executive fiat. Take, for example, the escapades of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Since assuming power, Biden’s approach to cryptocurrencies and related technologies has been to delegate and defer to an activist SEC and its crusading chairman, Gary Gensler. Chairman Gensler portrays the crypto industries as “ rife with hucksters, fraudsters, [and] scam artists , ” which, he seems to believe, excuses him from proposing and promulgating concrete rules, in compliance with statute...

  (Originally published in  Forbes .) Popular on the left is this trope that Washington’s unwavering commitment to free markets is responsible for the demise of America’s once mighty manufacturing sector. A mutation of that belief infecting the “new right” holds that US security is imperiled by Washington’s failure to harness industry’s capacity and direct it toward national economic and social objectives. These strange ideological bedfellows are seeking more federal intervention in the industrial economy, when most manufacturers – and most objective observers – see need for much less. The interventionists speak of the importance of the industrial economy. They say a vibrant manufacturing sector attracts investment in R&D and that innovation drives productivity and wage growth. They say robust manufacturing capacity is essential to national security, while manufacturing facilities and jobs are important to our social fabric. They say the shuttering of factories over the pa...

(Originally published in Forbes .)  Innovation is essential to economic growth and higher living standards. Better tools and techniques that make us more productive are requirements of wealth creation. Still, innovation attracts its fair share of skeptics whose fears about where new technologies may lead are ripe for exploitation. Helming the regulatory agencies in Washington, today, are many who seem to prey on fears about the nefarious misuse of technology or how innovation will send our jobs and way of life into obsolescence. Yet, with every new wave of technological uptake, the U.S. economy has created more and better paying jobs than existed before, owing to the increasing abundance produced and invested. Such progress would be impossible without entrepreneurs and their innovations. Consider blockchain – one of the most important innovations to emerge from the financial technology revolution of the past couple decades. Blockchain is most commonly associated with cryptocurrenci...