Barry C. Lynn: All Publications, Events and Press

The Predator State

Communications — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 04:15:00 -0400

A New America Event
10/06/2008 - 12:15pm

As the myth of the free market is overcome by current events, James K. Galbraith's new book explains both its rise and fall. His description of the dynamic and troublesome interaction between the public and private sectors is timely, instructive, and ultimately devastating. The rise of a free market ideology blurred both the distinction between these sectors and the growth of government. It did so in ways that not only contributed to greater wealth and income inequality, but also directly… more

POSTPONED: The Monopolist Assault on Entrepreneurs

Communications — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:15:00 -0400

A New America Event
05/29/2008 - 3:15pm

**This event has been postponed until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience.**

The yeoman tradition—in which the small property owner and the entrepreneur represent an American ideal—inspired many of the nation’s founders, Thomas Jefferson most notably. Yet today, deregulation and a lax interpretation of anti-trust law make it increasingly difficult for small businesses to even access local markets. Mega chains may be ruthlessly efficient in driving down prices, but their near-monopoly positions create tremendous barriers to entry and… more

America's Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony

Communications — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 06:00:00 -0400

A New America Event
03/12/2008 - 3:00pm

With the United States and China, who will rule whom? That's the central question of In the Jaws of the Dragon by Tokyo-based journalist and writer Eamonn Fingleton. His own answer is sobering. As American leaders fixate on the Middle East, China quietly consolidates both its geostrategic vision and its economic and military power. What is at stake is far more important than manufacturing jobs or the transparency of Sovereign Wealth Funds. It is a matter of which nation will… more

Trade Imbalance

Communications — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 07:15:00 -0400

A New America Event
10/05/2007 - 12:15pm

In the coming months, the U.S. Congress will vote up or down on trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, Peru, and Korea. These elected officials will not examine these agreements solely on their commercial or foreign policy benefits to the American people. They will also weigh whether or not each agreement advances particular human rights abroad. However, these Representatives proceed with little information about how trade agreements, and even trade per se, affect human rights at home or abroad. Although… more

The Next Catastrophe

Communications — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 07:15:00 -0400

A New America Event
06/06/2007 - 12:15pm

Is America ready for the next September 11 or Hurricane Katrina? Is our nation really safer now than it was when Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center towers? Have the billions of dollars we spent on Homeland Security prepared our industrial and financial systems for real shocks? Have we even managed to identify what the real threats to our society actually are?

Charles Perrow is one of America’s preeminent experts on disasters and disaster preparedness, and… more

New Statesman Cites Barry Lynn on Free Market, Grocery Sector

Communications — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:21:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Groceries were always the best illustration of the merits of free markets. How ridiculous it would be if we decided collectively - by annual ballot, say, or by entrusting the decision to some Whitehall bureaucrat - which fruits and vegetables the shops should stock and in what quantities. A system whereby competing retailers offer individual consumers a daily choice is obviously better. Yet we are close to driving the free market out of the grocery sector...For example, as… more

Rules That Wilt the Free Market in British Groceries

Articles — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 18:27:00 -0400

Perhaps it is time to erect a new stone next to Adam Smith’s grave in Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh. Not to commemorate Smith, whose greatest monument is his masterwork, The Wealth of Nations. Rather, to mark the demise of the insitution Smith did so much to promote - the free market.

If you did not notice the free market’s passing, you were not alone. No television newscasts bemoaned the fact. The notice was hidden deep in a Competition Commission report on monopolisation… more

Why Economists Can't See the Economy

Articles — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 22:16:00 -0400

"The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to avoid being deceived by economists."-- Joan Robinson, Cambridge University

On page one of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith illustrates the central principle of his economics with an example taken from, in his words, a "very trifling manufacture": the making of pins. Smith goes to some effort to describe the process. "One man draws out the wire," he writes, "another… more

End of the Line

Communications — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 06:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
11/29/2006 - 12:00pm

At this California event, Barry Lynn, a New America Foundation senior fellow, discussed his ground-breaking book, End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation.

We are used to thinking about the effects of globalization and outsourcing in terms of winners and losers: how these trends harm certain classes of American workers or benefit consumers. Lynn goes beyond the stereotypical debate about whether this economic revolution is good or bad to expose the dangerous underside… more

Breaking the Chain

adminn — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 23:26:00 -0400

There is an undeniable beauty to laissez-faire theory, with its promise that by struggling against one another, by grasping and elbowing and shouting and shoving, we create efficiency and satisfaction and progress for all. This concept has shaped, at the most fundamental levels, how we understand and engineer our basic freedoms -- economic, political, and moral. Until recently, however, most politicians and economists accepted that freedom within the marketplace had to be limited, at least to some degree, by… more

Risk, Ahoy!

Articles — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 16:20:02 -0400

It's so easy to forget the close calls. I was reminded of this while reading an article in a recent issue of The New Yorker, which looked back at one of the more terrifying international crises of recent years -- the near war between India and Pakistan in 2002. That event marked the first time since the Cold War that two nations threatened to launch nuclear weapons at one another, and to this day it's not clear either country has… more

Globalisation Must be Saved from the Radical Global Utopians

Articles — Tue, 30 May 2006 16:20:01 -0400

Now may hardly seem the time to imagine a more global future, let alone do so with optimism. Most of us are hard pressed just to maintain the illusion that the present system is not breaking down, to deny with conviction what everyone knows -- that the grand trade liberalisation project is, at best, on life support.

It is only natural to think conservatively, even defensively, when witnessing the collapse of an empire. Few outside the US doubt that… more

What Should USTech's Sourcing Strategy Be?

Articles — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Greg should consider himself lucky. The cozy relationship between USTech and TaiSource was speeding toward a crisis even before he hired Morris. But thanks to what he learned from that questionable decision, Greg now has an opportunity to fix USTech's sourcing strategy before disaster strikes.

USTech and TaiSource have become so interdependent that USTech must establish either a more formal alliance with the supplier or a more strictly defined arm's-length relationship. Given the distrust on both sides, the only… more

Wake Up to the Old-Fashioned Power of the New Oligopolies

Articles — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0500

What will it take to wake us up to the ever-tightening grip of oligopolies over ever more of our global marketplaces? Even though their power increasingly warps our production systems, and our free market system, alarms are rare and fleeting.

The collapse of an overly consolidated US flu vaccine system two years ago did not set off any bells. Nor did the revelation, by experts studying the potential impact of an avian flu pandemic on commerce,… more

The Fragility that Threatens the World's Industrial Systems

Articles — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Time and again, human beings have learned to build buffers into complex systems. We design compartments into our ships, circuit breakers into our electrical networks and minimum reserve requirements for our banks. Yet since the cold war era, we have done the exact opposite with our industrial system. Rather than conceive market-friendly methods to distribute risk and dampen shocks, we devoted ourselves to eliminating the bulkheads that have traditionally existed between nations and between companies. To evoke a more raw… more

End of the Line

adminn — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 05:00:00 -0400

Selected reviews of End of the Line are featured below:

Publishers Weekly

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 The problem with globalized outsourcing, former Global Business executive editor Lynn warns, is that "a breakdown anywhere increasingly means a breakdown everywhere," as when a 2003 earthquake in Taiwan halted semiconductor manufacturing for a week, negatively affecting American electronics firms. National security, he argues, is jeopardized by this "hyperspecialized and hyper-rigid production system" as well; for Lynn, until the NAFTA-izing Bill Clinton came… more

The Trade Row Over Aircraft is Missing the Point

Articles — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The long-festering spat between Boeing and Airbus has been dumped back onto the World Trade Organisation in a fight that promises to be expensive, some say foolish. A more apt description might be "dangerously anachronistic". The twin revolutions of globalisation and outsourcing have so altered the business of manufacturing jetliners that the coming clash in Geneva is unlikely to benefit either company -- or, for that matter, citizens on either side of the Atlantic.

If the fight sounds familiar, it… more

Is America Facing a Technology Innovation Crisis?

Communications — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 19:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
11/13/2003 - 12:11pm

According to Forrester Research, nearly 4,000 white-collar jobs are leaving the U.S. a week for low-cost locales. McKinsey & Co. forecast the U.S., Europe, and Japan combined lose 600,000 of these jobs a year. In the late 1990s, science and engineering accounted for 5% of U.S. undergraduate degrees; in China, they accounted for 73%. Intel Chairman Andy Grove recently posed the question, "Do we have the national will to take productive action? When the problem becomes… more

Hydrogen's Dirty Secret

Articles — Thu, 01 May 2003 00:00:00 -0400

When President Bush unveiled his plans for a hydrogen-powered car in his State of the Union address in January, he proposed $1.2 billion in spending to develop a revolutionary automobile that will be "pollution-free." The new vehicle, he declared, will rely on "a simple chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen" to power a car "producing only water, not exhaust fumes." Within 20 years, the president vowed, fuel-cell cars will "make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent… more

Chaos and Constitution

Articles — Sat, 01 Feb 2003 00:00:00 -0500

You can buy a plastic-bound copy of the Venezuelan Constitution for 60 cents, a leather-clad copy for $3, a coffee-table edition for $5. Not that you really need a copy of your own, since someone standing near you on the subway in Caracas will have one in his pocket. Or you can always listen to one of the ongoing debates at a downtown park. "Look at this article," someone will shout, and a half dozen people will flip through the… more