![Regulation - Summer 2021 - Cover](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/serial_cover_phone/public/2021-06/reg_44n2_cover_Page_1.jpg?itok=tAt4LKDo) # Summer 2021 Vol. 44 No. 2 [Subscribe](https://store.cato.org/collections/all-products/products/regulation-magazine) ##### From the Cover ### [Birx Reconsidered ](/regulation/summer-2021/birx-reconsidered) By David E. Harrington The former Trump COVID adviser has been criticized for not leaving the administration, but her efforts saved thousands of lives. ### [The Problem with Politicizing Corporations ](/regulation/summer-2021/problem-politicizing-corporations) By Pierre Lemieux Corporate officers and shareholders are often naively caught in debates they don’t understand and act against their own interests and that of their customers. ### [Anticompetition in Buying and Selling Homes ](/regulation/summer-2021/anticompetition-buying-selling-homes) By Roger P. Alford and Benjamin H. Harris The National Association of Realtors’ market power is hurting Americans’ mobility. ### [Reforming Michigan Vehicle Direct Sales Laws ](/regulation/summer-2021/reforming-michigan-vehicle-direct-sales-laws) By Daniel A. Crane Thanks to Tesla, the home of the U.S. auto industry could embrace a 21st century business model. ##### Features #### [Privacy and Free Speech ](/regulation/summer-2021/privacy-free-speech) By [Timothy Sandefur](https://www.cato.org/people/timothy-sandefur) Government requirements that nonpolitical nonprofits disclose their donors strike at the First Amendment. #### [*U.S. v. Google*: A Tough Slog, But Also an Intriguing Possibility](/regulation/summer-2021/us-v-google-tough-slog-also-intriguing-possibility) By Lawrence J. White Did Google pay billions of dollars for the “inertia” of mobile device owners, or for something else? #### [Undermining Innovation? ](/regulation/summer-2021/undermining-innovation) By Ari Blask Digital economy startups can compete without competitive process antitrust #### [Can States Do a Better Job of Buying Drugs? ](/regulation/summer-2021/can-states-do-better-job-buying-drugs) By [Ike Brannon](https://www.cato.org/people/ike-brannon) and Anthony Lo Sasso Hepatitis C medication data suggest that pharmacy benefit managers are better than direct government purchasing at controlling prices. ##### Briefly Noted ##### [Privatizing Disaster Relief ](/regulation/summer-2021/privatizing-disaster-relief) By [Ike Brannon](https://www.cato.org/people/ike-brannon) The use of private contractors lessens the problems created by FEMA’s lack of experienced administrative staff, engendered by the ad hoc nature of disaster relief. ##### [In Defense of Internet Data ](/regulation/summer-2021/defense-internet-data) By Thomas M. Lenard The creative use of data is the basis for the success of many of this century’s great internet companies—predominantly American companies—whose revenue is primarily derived from targeted advertising. ##### [Antitrust and “Big Pharma” ](/regulation/summer-2021/antitrust-big-pharma) By Thomas Grennes A favorable interpretation of the cooperation that resulted in a rapid response to the negative COVID shock is that it saved lives and reduced suffering by slowing the spread of the virus around the world. ##### [The Problem with Politicizing Corporations ](/regulation/summer-2021/problem-politicizing-corporations) By Pierre Lemieux Corporate officers and shareholders are often naively caught in debates they don’t understand and act against their own interests and that of their customers. ##### [On the Minimum Wage, Both Sides Have Their Economics Wrong ](/regulation/summer-2021/minimum-wage-both-sides-have-their-economics-wrong) By Richard B. McKenzie The proposed increase would do little to raise the net spendable incomes of many low-wage families but would boost the incomes of much-higher-income families. ##### In Review ##### [Markets and Prescription Drug Addiction ](/regulation/summer-2021/markets-prescription-drug-addiction) By Phil R. Murray The 1914 Harrison Act was the significant federal anti-drug legislation of the era. ##### [Capitalism and Immorality ](/regulation/summer-2021/capitalism-immorality) By George C. Leef The unwritten pact between groups on the political right is now coming apart, with the defection of the social conservatives being especially striking. ##### [The State of the Labor Movement and the Strike Tool ](/regulation/summer-2021/state-labor-movement-strike-tool) By Vern McKinley A GM line worker’s compensation was a black box of adjustments. Pay was docked when the lines shut down, even if it was not the worker’s fault. ##### [Responding to Fears of AI ](/regulation/summer-2021/responding-fears-ai) By Thomas A. Hemphill AI operating today is considered “artificial narrow intelligence” (ANI), which is defined as supporting specific processes with well-defined rules (and, incidentally, does not have any “intelligence” or “common sense”). ##### [A Rearguard Defense of the Administrative State ](/regulation/summer-2021/rearguard-defense-administrative-state) By Jonathan H. Adler Rather than offer the full-throated defenses of the administrative state each has offered elsewhere, in *Law & Leviathan* Sunstein and Vermeule suggest administrative law has developed a set of “surrogate safeguards” that enable the administrative state to protect public welfare while preventing the worst abuses of bureaucratic excess. ##### [Overreacting to COVID ](/regulation/summer-2021/overreacting-covid) By David R. Henderson Precisely because some customers might want less human interaction because of their fear of the virus, “it was possible that businesses would devise all manner of ways to save on labor while meeting new or evolving needs of customers that they didn’t express before the spread of the coronavirus.” ##### [Is Populism the Savior of Democracy? ](/regulation/summer-2021/populism-savior-democracy) By Pierre Lemieux The new populists were more radical than Franklin Roosevelt and often turned against him. ##### [The Ignored Consequences of the Fed’s Interventions ](/regulation/summer-2021/ignored-consequences-feds-interventions) By Vern McKinley Anyone who has followed the ups and downs of the financial sector and its fits of instability since 2007 remembers where things stood just over a decade ago. ##### [Fighting Intellectual Exclusion ](/regulation/summer-2021/fighting-intellectual-exclusion) By George C. Leef The academic world, the authors lament, has been falling more and more into fundamentalist thinking. ##### [Working Papers ](/regulation/summer-2021/working-papers) By [Peter Van Doren](https://www.cato.org/people/peter-van-doren) and [Ike Brannon](https://www.cato.org/people/ike-brannon) A summary of recent papers that may be of interest to *Regulation* readers. ##### Final Word ##### [Gamestopped ](/regulation/summer-2021/gamestopped) By Tim Rowland So what to make of “meme stocks”— buying shares of failing firms for no reason other than to mess with professional traders looking to profit from those firms’ demise? ##### Latest Issues [![Regulation - Fall 2026 - Cover](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/serial_cover_phone/public/2026-09/regulation-fall-2026-cover.jpg?itok=4PdTh8RK)](https://www.cato.org/regulation/fall-2026) [Fall 2026](/regulation/fall-2026) [![Regulation - Summer 2026 - Cover](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/serial_cover_phone/public/2026-06/regulation-summer-2026-cover.jpg?itok=mgR9E73X)](https://www.cato.org/regulation/summer-2026) [Summer 2026](/regulation/summer-2026) [![Regulation - Spring 2026 - Cover](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/serial_cover_phone/public/2026-03/regulation-spring-2026-cover.png?itok=_E4_q18u)](https://www.cato.org/regulation/spring-2026) [Spring 2026](/regulation/spring-2026) [![Regulation Winter 2025-2026 Cover](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/serial_cover_phone/public/2025-12/regulation-v48n4-cover.jpg?itok=QSGuJRQT)](https://www.cato.org/regulation/winter-2025-2026) [Winter 2025–2026](/regulation/winter-2025-2026)