Author Archives: Timothy B Lee

I’m a longtime donor to the Institute for Justice, the nation’s premiere libertarian civil liberties organization. They’ve taken cases to the Supreme Court a number of times, and on every previous occasion, I’ve been rooting for their success. But on … Continue reading →

My brilliant and thoughtful friend Reihan Salam was kind enough to critique last week’s immigration posts. Here, I think, is the gist of our disagreement: My basic frustration with my interlocutors on the immigration question is this: is access to … Continue reading →

There’s a long-running argument between the left and right about whether economic policy should focus more on efficiency questions or distributional questions. At the risk of oversimplifying, progressives tend to focus on inequalities of income and wealth, and they worry … Continue reading →

Here are some immigration links: Jose Antonio Vargas’s new website, Define American, is really fantastic. It’s a pitch-perfect example of the kind of humanizing effort I wrote about on Wednesday. Not only does it portray Vargas himself as a sympathetic … Continue reading →

Was my last post, despite its claims to the contrary, a brief for open-borders zealotry? That seems to have been the reaction of a number of commenters and folks on Twitter. Josh Barro, for example, tweeted “I’m not sure there’s … Continue reading →

Jose Antonio Vargas’s riveting story about life as an undocumented immigrant has been taking the Internet by storm. It powerfully illustrates the contrast between our nation’s professed ideals of equality and opportunity and the actual, shameful results of the laws … Continue reading →

As Erik Kain notes, the point I made yesterday isn’t limited to the telecommunications industry. It applies with equal force in banking. A good example of this principle at work is Cato scholar Lawrence White’s 2004 call for greater regulation … Continue reading →

Everyone knows that the contemporary telecom debate pits free-market opponents of regulation against progressives who want a more activist government. But if that’s what you’re expecting, then the 1970s and early 1980s look very puzzling. You had the Democratic Carter … Continue reading →

There’s been an interesting back-and-forth in the left-of-center blogosphere over efforts to organize a boycott of the Huffington Post for its practice of allowing volunteer bloggers to contribute to the site. The case for the boycott seems so obviously wrong … Continue reading →

In the conclusion of my interview with James Bessen we talk about the difficulty of measuring software-driven economic growth, a topic I’ve written about before. Timothy B. Lee: How should we think about the value that consumers get from the … Continue reading →