Tim Wu

If you are around Oxford (UK) I'm giving a talk at the law school this Thursday at 12 at the IECL seminar room. Topic is: "The Servile State revisited" -- it is reconsideration of distributism as an alternative to brutal capitalism and communism. Open to public

I used to work in the NY AG's office. The federal indictment of Letitia James is disgusting and embarrassing. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...

What’s Wrong With Las Vegas?

Las Vegas is a microcosm of the broader US economy. Mergers have led to duopoly/oligopoly. A corporate extraction imperative leads to price hikes where hotels / casinos to target big spenders. Short-term profit but longterm cost to the broader ecosystem
nytimes.com/2025/10/01/t...

Business has long depended on emotional attachment as strategy to create switching costs. (E.g., Cadillac). Seems utterly obvious that despite their ethical commitments, the intentional engineering of AIs to generate human emotional attachment will soon be mainstream.

If the shutdown yields nothing, when health insurance premiums soar as projected, who do Republicans think Americans will blame? Obama?

Finalized my 2025 book tour!

Coming through New York, DC, Chicago, Toronto, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Oxford and Cambridge. Click here for details:
timwu.net#booktour

For my new book, THE AGE OF EXTRACTION, here is the UK cover and the USA cover. Curious which people prefer.

From last week's meeting of winning progressive campaigns in UK/Canada/Australia

- Left-leaning parties need tap into national pride, specifically concerning healthcare or threats to economic wellbeing;

- Focus on affordability and economics essential; must resist distractions.

It is weird and not healthy to begin every day wondering:

"What outrageous thing will the U.S. government do today? Will it be unethical, unconstitutional, or all of the above?"

The lack of any real Republican objection to the open and explicit abuse of the DoJ to target a political enemy is terrifying

Here in London listening to the PMs of England, Canada, Iceland and Australia gives a real sense of hope

The Extraction Imperative: that the highest purpose of business lies not in creating value but finding novel ways to take more money and intangible assets from everyone else; i.e., achieving full use of every iota of market power.

Opinion | Conservatives defend transgender rights — to bear arms Conservatives protest a Justice Department idea to bar transgender people from gun ownership.

Pick your poison in this debate: absolutist gun rights advocates or haters of transgender people?

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Google remedy order is a paradox. Says "Google cannot use the same anticompetitive playbook for its GenAI products that it used for Search." But it then says payments for default placement are fine? The government should appeal the remedy order.

Opinion | Google Could Get Broken Up This Week. Here’s What It Would Mean.

The most important question about the Google remedy just released is whether it will effectively prevent Google from pushing Gemini on distributors / everyone www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/o...

174. Justice Gorsuch's Attack on Lower Courts Just like the earlier rulings that Justice Gorsuch claims lower courts are defying, his concurrence in the NIH grant cutoffs case would be a lot more convincing if it showed more of its work.

This Supreme Court is a weird mix of activist and cowardly: they know that the President is violating the Constitution and precedent, but don’t want to get on his bad side, so they signal party loyalty by beating up on district court judges. www.stevevladeck.com/p/174-justic...

A common error in the analysis of antitrust remedies is to see them in isolation from market forces. The best remedies use the market to accomplish its goals.

Bondi Aides Corrupted Antitrust Enforcement, Ousted DOJ Official Says Roger Alford, formerly second-in-command of the antitrust division, called on a court to scrutinize the merger case that led to his firing.

Must-read inside account of the corruption of antitrust enforcement by the DoJ front office by Roger Alford www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Announcing my new book THE AGE OF EXTRACTION - presenting a vision of how to retake broad prosperity in the platform age. Coming Nov. 4.

"Startling .. An urgent wake-up call" - Publishers Weekly

Preorder your copy today: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/691177...

August is when Presidential honeymoons end -- looks like Trump is down to 38% in Pew's latest and he lacks the ability to fire this statistician
pewresearch.org/wp-content/u...

Charles I 1630s is the best historic precedent for our moment. That King relied on tariffs, fees & selling monopoly to avoid Parliament & its taxation power. Parliament, angry, eventually declared war on the King; he was put on trial and convicted.
www.parliament.uk/about/living...

How Democracies Die How Democracies Die analyzes the main dangers that modern democracies face. As the authors warn, 21st-century democracies do not die in one fell swoop, in a violent way, by hands that do not always be...

Reading a newish classic: How Democracies Die revista.drclas.harvard.edu/how-democrac...

Opinion | Trump’s Economy Looks Like Command Capitalism

The United States is undergoing a major ideological shift in economic terms: from a modified free-market approach to command capitalism
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/29/o...

The problem with housing affordability is no joke; but assuming there's one cause or one solution is laughable

Yes, I knew

Opinion | The Case for Letting Mortgages Move With Us (Published 2024)

Here are more details on how portable mortgages would open up housing supply:
www.nytimes.com/2024/05/06/o...

Mussolini (purportedly) made the trains run on time. If Trump wants a project he should force the freight train industry to provide good & reliable service to American shippers instead of trying to pump their stock prices

Porting your mortgage when moving If you're moving house and want to pack your mortgage too, you may be able to port it. This Money Saving Expert guide tells you how and when porting works.

Forget zoning for a min -- the US housing market would work better (more housing supply) if you could take your mortgage with you. I.e. sell your house and secure the mortgage with the new house. Portable mortgages are common in the UK and Canada: www.moneysavingexpert.com/mortgages/po...

Government Broke the Housing Market—Only This Will Fix It If you’re frustrated with being unable to buy a home today, you’re not alone. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, homeownership affordability has been near an all-time low since 2023.

Looks like E. J. Antoni, the new nominee for BLS head is a critic of "artificially" low interest rates. Let's see how that pans out
www.heritage.org/markets-and-...

On a panel with Larry Summers today, he argued that the "calamitous " election of Zohran Mamdani is (at least in part) a byproduct of abandoning the consumer welfare standard in antitrust.