Price and Sovereignty Harvard Law Review

Restoring Consumer Sovereignty: How Markets Manipulate Us and What the Law Can Do About It

Abstract. For decades, there has been broad consensus within antitrust, intellectual property, and consumer law scholarship that consumers make decisions i

A Tale of Two Theories (of Coordination)

Leveraging and Deleveraging Toward Thick Sovereignty

Restoring Consumer Sovereignty

For decades, there has been broad consensus within antitrust, intellectual property, and consumer law scholarship that consumers make decisions in their own best interests by consciously weighting the market’s relative prices, quantities, and qualities against each other. That consensus is unraveling in light of novel findings from cognitive and social psychology that explain how individuals’ concepts of what they prefer drive the global economy. At the same time, producers nowadays no longer merely satisfy consumers’ needs but also communicate their values, identities, and aspirations through the sale and marketing of products. As part of the growing interest in observations such as these, a wealth of psychological studies challenge the fundamental teaching of economics that the interplay of demand and supply of goods in a free market economy provides us with material wealth. This book provides a normative defense of that assumption and a theoretical framework for understanding its contradictions. It argues that the erosion of consumer sovereignty through the ability of product manufacturers and sellers to systematically take advantage of individuals’ psychological weaknesses demands a twenty-first-century reconceptualization of the consumer and a modern account of how the law should regulate the digital economy. Such an account is justified to ensure a diverse marketplace in which consumers can influence how our societies are structured and arranged. By examining the role that market manipulation plays, it offers ingredients for a realistic descriptive and normative market regulatory theory that is aware of its political economy, its behavioral suppositions, and its distributional consequences.

The Eye 02: When is sovereignty not sovereign?

As we start to reject reliance on US tech monopolies, Palantir and its allies rush to strip the word "sovereignty" of its meaning

From Territorial to Functional Sovereignty: The Case of Amazon

Economists tend to characterize the scope of regulation as a simple matter of expanding or contracting state power. But a political economy perspective emphasizes that social relations abhor a power…

Think Like a Commoner | A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons

In our age of predatory markets and make-believe democracy, our troubled political institutions have lost sight of real people and practical realities. But if you look to the edges, ordinary people are reinventing governance and provisioning on their own terms. The commons is arising as a serious, practical alternative to the corrupt Market/State.

Power: A Primer for Perplexed Economists

Let's Assume an Unfettered Marketplace of Ideas! Or Actually, Let's Not.

Sovereignty Is Not Solitude: Open Source as Canada’s Third Path in AI

True artificial intelligence (AI) sovereignty isn't about building a Canadian fortress; it’s about mastering the open-source ecosystems that power the world.

Privacy and/or Trade

International privacy and trade law developed together, but are now engaged in significant conflict. Current efforts to reconcile the two are likely to fail, an

Exocapitalism: economies with absolutely no limits

There is a touch of destiny with this one. We have real…

Company as a Commons

What if excess wealth derived from business couldn't be privatized? Through the levers of steward-ownership, companies can protect their purpose-oriented long term mission from the maligned incentives of absentee stakeholders.

Shareholder Democracy Is a Corporate Governance Myth That Won’t Die

In a new article, we challenge one of corporate law’s most persistent narratives: the concept of “shareholder democracy.” With people on opposing sides of recent high-profile battles at compa…

Reinventing identity for a post-human world

Identity as a Sovereign Asset: The ARPA Live ID and the Next Economic Paradigm

The Critical Resource Theory of Fiduciary Duty

This Article proposes a new theory to unify the law of fiduciary duty. The prevailing view holds that fiduciary law is atomistic, arising for varied reasons in