Market Governance – LPE Project https://lpeproject.org The Law and Political Economy Project Mon, 14 Jul 2025 17:18:55 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 https://lpeproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-LPE_Favicon_512px_BlackBG-450x450.png Market Governance – LPE Project https://lpeproject.org 32 32 Local Electricity and Bottom-up Energy Planning https://lpeproject.org/blog/local-electricity-and-botton-up-energy-planning/ Mon, 14 Jul 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11703 This post concludes a symposium on Sandeep Vaheesan’s Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States. Read the rest of the posts here. ** ** ** Sandeep Vaheesan’s Democracy in Power presents a coherent vision for more effective public control of electricity, to be imposed largely by congressional mandate. In his response, William Boyd provides an excellent explanation of the...

Source

]]> The Tax Struggle and Renewable Power https://lpeproject.org/blog/the-tax-struggle-and-renewable-power/ Mon, 16 Jun 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11640 This post is part of a symposium on Sandeep Vaheesan’s Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States. Read the rest of the posts here. *** Tax policy has become a key battleground for federal climate policy in the United States, a fact that is especially evident as the Trump administration and its allies in Congress work to terminate much of President Biden’s signature...

Source

]]> Yardsticking It to the Man, Then and Now https://lpeproject.org/blog/yardsticking-it-to-the-man-then-and-now/ Mon, 09 Jun 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11615 Democracy in Power, Sandeep Vaheesan argues that New Deal rural electrification efforts can serve as a model for public power in today’s energy system. There are, however, important differences between the political economy of rural electrification and that of today’s climate crisis. Understanding these distinctions can help us be clear-eyed about the political hurdles facing modern public power movements.]]> This post is part of a symposium on Sandeep Vaheesan’s Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States. Read the rest of the posts here. *** In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and like-minded thinkers advanced the idea of publicly owned utilities as a “yardstick” against which private utilities’ performance could be measured. When private utilities fell short...

Source

]]> Why Public Ownership? https://lpeproject.org/blog/why-public-ownership/ Tue, 03 Jun 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11613 This post is part of a symposium on Sandeep Vaheesan’s Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States. Read the rest of the posts here. *** Public ownership has long been a rallying cry for many on the left. Historically, that cry typically focused on the means of production of commodities—for what was capitalism if not a social form organized around private ownership of...

Source

]]> Democratic Abundance https://lpeproject.org/blog/democratic-abundance/ Mon, 02 Jun 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11612 Democracy in Power, by tracing the history of electrification during the New Deal and offering a blueprint for a publicly-led path to decarbonization.]]> This post introduces a symposium on Sandeep Vaheesan’s Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States. Read replies from Brett Christophers, Shelley Welton, and William Boyd here. *** I am honored to kick off this symposium and to be in conversation with a group of illustrious scholars. In writing Democracy in Power, my aim was to tell the now-mostly forgotten history of...

Source

]]> Some of the Best New LPE and LPE-Adjacent Scholarship https://lpeproject.org/blog/some-of-the-best-new-lpe-and-lpe-adjacent-scholarship-2/ Thu, 22 May 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11591 With summer just around the corner, are you looking to indulge in some juicy, page-turning scholarship? As always, the Blog has you covered. So throw those Capri-Suns in a cooler, grab your favorite e-reader, and load up some of our favorite forthcoming LPE and LPE-adjacent articles for your next trip to the beach, park, or (let’s be real) library. ** ** ** Sahil Agrawal, Melissa Barber...

Source

]]> On Tariffs and the Ends of International Economic Law https://lpeproject.org/blog/on-tariffs-and-the-ends-of-international-economic-law/ Tue, 29 Apr 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11541 These days, I often find myself thinking about Thornstein Veblen, capitalism’s most astute non-Marxist critic. A progenitor of institutional economics, Veblen is best known for his scathing critique of bourgeois conspicuous consumption: the habit of the newly-enriched capitalist classes to publicly display the goods and services purchased through their ever-expanding discretionary income as a way...

Source

]]> You’re Paying Big Tech’s Power Bill https://lpeproject.org/blog/youre-paying-big-techs-power-bill/ Tue, 18 Mar 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11430 The world’s wealthiest corporations are investing staggering amounts of capital in data centers. In fiscal year 2025 alone, Amazon will likely spend $105 billion on data center investments, Microsoft anticipates investing approximately $80 billion to build out data center infrastructure, and Meta predicts investing between $60 and $65 billion to meet its artificial intelligence goals.

Source

]]> Six Biden Administration Officials on Reimagining a Progressive Future https://lpeproject.org/blog/six-biden-administration-officials-on-reimagining-a-progressive-future/ Mon, 24 Feb 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11336 Last week on the blog, Luke Herrine suggested that on the other side of the Trump-Musk hellscape – whose reforms might be so broadly unpopular as to “serve as a catalyst to productive mobilization” – there could be an opportunity for a more fundamental, ambitious rebuild of our policies and institutions. “A time of unpredictable politics is a time for non-reformist reforms,” he argued...

Source

]]> Did More Competition Make Meatpacking Fairer? https://lpeproject.org/blog/did-more-competition-make-meatpacking-fairer/ Tue, 26 Nov 2024 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11002 Concentrated power in the meat industry is a serious problem. It’s a serious problem for the animals raised for slaughter, for buyers of meat, for small farmers, for packhouse workers and farmworkers, for communities near to and downstream from packing plants and huge farms, for biodiversity, for resilience in the face of shocks (climate-induced and otherwise). It’s a serious problem for doing...

Source

]]>