Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty and What to Do About It

by Sohrab Ahmari

The inside story of how our political class enabled an era of unaccountable corporate might that left ordinary Americans isolated and powerless—and how we can fight back—from the acclaimed author of The Unbroken Thread

“In Tyranny, Inc., Sohrab Ahmari, one of the leading thinkers of our time, alerts us to one of the greatest threats to freedom”—Michael Lind, author of The New Class War and Hell to Pay

Over the past two generations, U.S. leaders deregulated big business on the faith that it would yield a better economy and a freer society. But the opposite happened. Americans lost stable, well-paying jobs, Wall Street dominated industry to the detriment of the middle class and local communities, and corporations began to subject us to total surveillance, even dictating what we are, and aren’t, allowed to think. The corporate titans and mega-donors who aligned themselves with this vision knew exactly what they were getting: perfect conditions for what Sohrab Ahmari calls private tyranny.

Drawing on original reporting and a growing chorus of experts who are sounding the alarm, Ahmari chronicles how private tyranny has eroded America’s productive economy and the liberties we take for granted—from employment agreements that gag whistleblowers, to Big Finance’s takeover of local fire departments, to the rigging of corporate bankruptcy to deny justice to workers and consumers—illuminating how these and other developments have left millions feeling that our livelihoods are insecure. And he shows how ordinary Americans can fight back, by restoring the economic democracy that empowered and uplifted millions of working-class people in the twentieth century.

Provocative, original, and cutting across partisan lines, Tyranny, Inc. is a revelatory read on the most important political story of our time.

“A trenchant critique of neoliberal capitalism that offers pointed remedies.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Sohrab Ahmari’s book is a masterpiece of clarity that should be read by everyone who cares about where our societies our moving”—Slavoj Žižek

“This book is full of truths the ruling class doesn’t want you to hear. Defy them. Read it.”—Senator Josh Hawley

“Tyranny, Inc. is a remarkably thorough and entertaining book on the ways that private enterprise dominates the lives of ordinary people. It’s a stinging rebuttal to the right-wing claim that oppression flows from government. It also manages the rare feat of feeling prescient about a problem that’s centuries old. . . . An essential salvo in a very long war.”—Fredrik deBoer, author of The Cult of Smart

“For too long, elite institutions dismissed and minimized America’s working class. Instead of an engine of economic opportunity, American workers became servants of the market. From the dystopian warehouses of Amazon to the (seemingly) spotless halls of venture-capital firms, Ahmari’s latest book shows that there is real tyranny at work in too many businesses. Open-minded readers will find a lot to mull over.”—Senator Marco Rubio

“Ahmari’s background, intellect, and fierce independence make him uniquely situated to illuminate the rise of authoritarianism in the United States.”—Glenn Greenwald

“One of our leading thinkers alerts us to one of the greatest threats to freedom today.”—Michael Lind, author of Hell to Pay: How the Suppression of Wages Is Destroying America

“Challenging conservative free marketeers as much as progressive liberals, this book is a compelling inquiry into one of the great dilemmas of our time.”—John Gray, author of False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Economics, Business, History, Society, United States

288 pages, Hardcover

Published August 15, 2023

About the author

Sohrab Ahmari is a founder and editor of Compact: A Radical American Journal. Previously, he spent nearly a decade at News Corp., as op-ed editor of the New York Post and as a columnist and editor with the Wall Street Journal opinion pages in New York and London.

In addition to those publications, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Times Literary Supplement, The New Statesman, The Spectator, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Dissent, and The American Conservative, for which he is a contributing editor.

Born in Tehran, Iran, he lives with his wife and two children in Manhattan.

Reviews

[Allen Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐

I'm sold on the premise because only the willfully blind can pretend that an employee has the same level of power as an employer. This book highlights some of the absolutely ludicrous legal loopholes in the system that allow, for example, multi-billion dollar companies to say that they are broke in order to avoid lawsuits when any HUMAN with EYES sees they are not.

The problem is that a lot of the nitty-gritty about economic and political theory was, for me, a snoozefest. A great read but parts of it felt a little too academic for me. I recommend, though!

[Matt Nyman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books where I totally agree with the description of the problem, but disagree almost entirely with how Ahmari gets there and also what Ahmari's proposed solution is. Yes, corporate power is a problem.

First off, his anecdotes and examples of corporate power are pretty terrible. Here's the parade of horribles list: workplace scheduling by employers, wage exploitation, lack of social mobility, lack of workplace protections, one sided employment contracts (and non-competes and acceptable use policies), private arbitration, hedge funds and private equity, private ambulance care, the death of newspapers, corporate bankruptcy law, and Purdue Pharma. That's his comprehensive list of how private companies are ruining everything through coercion of the common person.

And his solution is? To empower the working class and regulate the markets, to create a "countervailing power" to all this corporate abuse and coercion.

For me, Ahmari's argument is interesting because it has attracted so much attention from conservatives like Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley. But it's NOT a real argument. Here's why: empowering labor and increasing regulation are ALSO subject to abuse. Reducing one overlord's power by giving another overlord power dose NOT solve the coercive problem, or really address it in any real way. The unions are overlords, poorly managed abusive entities that broadly need extreme regulation themselves. Government, and increased regulation to protect and enhance the working class? Also extremely subject to abuse. You don't just redistribute power to other power brokers to save society.

Ahmari almost entirely ignores progress, claiming misery and debacle and abuse over and over again. And any argument for extreme social change like embracing "countervailing power" has to address the arguments in favor of current society. This book is far more of a manifesto of aggression and change, without address any real social problems. Poverty? Not discussed. Healthcare? Nowhere to be seen (outside of the private ambulance industry, which is a tiny little segment, and the focus is not broadbased healthcare). Education? Nope. Economic growth? Not mentioned. Why should we all change to labor countervailing power? What is the argument FOR that perspective in terms of social development? How would it make it better?

I think Ahmari ultimately relies on the idea that the past was better. Really? The 1950s were the time when everything was great because labor was stronger after the New Deal? I can see why the MAGA friendly politicoes would find this argument attractive.

No question this book is interesting and provocative because it claims to assert a conservative restatement of labor, going after neoliberal free market ideology. But neoliberalism is pretty silly given all the policy that has occurred since the 1960s (or 1980s if you want to start with Reagan and Thatcher). What is Obamacare (the biggest policy change of the past 50 years, I'd argue)? Is that corporate overlordship? What about tariff and employment protections at the borders? Certainly most free traders have major problems with most of that, but both are as strong as ever. Do the multinationals have too much power? What about all the regulation tech faces? Not addressed.

In the end, I don't think Ahmari's labor empowerment solution does anything to address the big social problems. It might create more problems. But no question this is a provocative read.

[Daniel S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Throw political dogma out the window and read this book with an open mind. In Tyranny, Inc., Sohrab Ahmari offers a well-researched and thoughtful look at the current economic and political landscape as it relates to unbalanced corporate power. Ahmari provides solutions that may rankle some, but his position is worth considering. If anything, Tyranny, Inc. is a great starting point for analyzing one of the most pressing issues of our time.

[Ryan O'Malley · Rating 3 out of 5]

An infuriating look into the way corporate greed manipulates and hurts peoples lives. For context, Ahmari is a socially conservative but fiscal left author. I think a lot of his ideas including empowering workers and a stricter government controlling the market is correct but does not go far enough.

I am very confused to the endorsement of this book by Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley. I imagine if they read this book they would be infuriated by whatever staffer wrote their “praise” for it.

[Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll try to type up something of a review, but for now I’ll just attach this link to a review by Oren Cass in First Things:

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2...

[Caroline Liberatore-Logan]

I am hopelessly dumb when it comes to economics, so most of this book went way over my head. But I can at least tell you one thing: SOMETHING AIN'T RIGHT!

[Colleen T · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

Sohrab Ahmari, an op-ed editor for the New York Post, details how corporate America has transitioned to a more controlling way of doing business or what the author calls "private tyranny". This rings especially true with a corporation's employees, essentially creating means by which an employee will experience more hardship if they decide to leave because they exercised their liberties or by declaring bankruptcy to avoid paying out a former employee that has sued them. Ahmari shows how this has affected various industries, including retail and local fire departments, and how we've gotten to the point where employers have exercised this control.

I thought that the information laid out in this book was well-researched. There were many supporting examples that Ahmari used throughout that drove his point home that I appreciated. That being said, I did think that some of the points in the first part of the book were slightly redundant. It felt as if the same point was being written in five different ways and it was frustrating and slightly boring to read. I also didn't think the points that he made in the book were that groundbreaking.

I understand that Ahmari is a reporter and that he is just reporting his findings. However, I wish he detailed some ways in which we can change the dynamic he describes in the book. The description of this book states that "ordinary Americans can fight back", but I didn't really get that reading this.

While informative, I wanted more from this book. I hope that if the author decides to republish this book, there are more instances of cause-and-effect and methods that we can alter the way corporate America operates in the future. It could have more of an impact on me.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting if sometimes repetitive read. I had never heard of Ahmari before picking up this book, but this seems to be written by a conservative who is primarily trying to get his fellow conservatives to support unions and increased government regulation of the economy. Most of his arguments make a lot of sense. This is a short book and well worth the read.

[Eric]

Twenty first century American citizen required reading

[David Baer · Rating 4 out of 5]

As you mindlessly click “accept” on the license agreement that you have to accept, in order to use almost any electronic thing, all you need to know about the pages upon pages of legalese is this: it boils down to “no matter what, you’re screwed.”

That this is my own formulation positions me as one already having recognized and accepted Ahmari’s thesis ahead of time, that is, before starting this book.

Developing this thesis involves some new and interesting ideas, too. For one, he explores the concept of “liberty” in some depth. We usually use this word in a sense in which it is a concept akin to “love,” or “antidisestablishmentarianism.” (jk) In other words, it is a freestanding condition that you as an individual either have, or do not have. The reality is more nuanced and a little bit disappointing. It turns out that liberty really only exists in your relations to other people. Any form of freedom of action for one party involves a little impingement on the freedom of action by others. I own my house free and clear. That means you can’t have it.

Huh. Well, that’s a thought. Now what? Yes, well, it serves as a framework for recognizing the misdirection involved in invocations of liberty in the context of, say, the right of employers to insert contractual language in an employment offer whereby you agree that any future disputes you may have with them will require you to fly halfway around the world at your own expense in order to individually entreat with an arbitrator in the company’s employ. This is a great example of how individuals “willingly” sign away the liberties spoken of in the US Constitution. Come to that, do our “constitutional” rights mean anything at all when so much of life is regulated by “private contracts” like this? Our US Supreme Court has not internalized such reflections in its rulings.

Given this leftist-sounding deconstruction of a conservative shibboleth, “liberty,” it is surprising at first to learn how certain “conservatives” have hailed this book. I guess what a "conservative' might have in mind are things like the supposed political slanting of Google search results, or the banning of Trump from social media platforms. Or, for that matter, enforcement of various codes of conduct smelling of PC or “woke-ness”. You are not allowed to bring your legal firearm to work. You cannot wear T-shirts with offensive slogans. And things like that. I suppose. These are my examples. In the actual book, Ahmed opens with some startling examples, which he initially phrases to make you think they happened in some other authoritarian country, but which turn out to be US examples. The examples include a company requiring their employees to attend a Trump rally, and another company reading an employee’s email and disciplining them for political speech found there. Yep. That happened.

At about the halfway point, I considered bailing out, finding that the ideas were becoming repetitious and were slowly destroying my will to live. So I decided to rate it “4 stars” and just consider my work done.

[Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Review of the Audiobook

Published in 2023 by Random House Audio.
Read by the author, Sohrab Ahmari.
Duration: 7 hours, 30 minutes.
Unabridged.

Writing about government overreach is a common theme among conservatives like Sohrab Ahmari. In Tyranny, Inc. he switches gears and writes about overreach from the private sector instead.

He talks about predatory hedge funds that purchase reasonably healthy companies, load them with debt, and then let them die. He tells the pathetic story of the decline and fall of both Sears and K-Mart, but it's happened over and over again with multiple companies.

He also talks about a number of court cases, legal rulings, new laws, and relatively new interpretations of laws that have slid the balance of societal power to private corporations. He gives tons of examples like expansive Non-Disclosure Agreements, tracking software on employee's private phones because they are forced to use them for work, and hidden clauses in multi-page employment agreements that give employers perpetual rights to use their employees' physical likeness, speaking voices, and singing voices.

He's not so keen on privatization of public services, like fire and ambulance services and tells some horror stories about those as well.

His answer is to...

Read more at: https://dwdsreviews.blogspot.com/2025...

[Sam Strickland · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Ahmari’s thoughts to be humane. He makes a good case for increasing labor power in the workplace and seeking reforms in corporate policy.

He mentions countervailing power and the common good quite a lot. This is unsurprising. However, I wonder if there is any space in his account for the concepts of authority, creativity, and benevolence as applied to business.

I admit myself to have a layman’s knowledge when it comes to labor law and the workings of corporations. I’d like to see some different perspectives. Michael Lind, with whom I suspect Ahmari to be in agreement, and Tyler Cowen are two that I plan to read/listen to this year. I welcome suggestions of any others.

[Alicia Guzman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tyranny Inc was an illuminating and infuriating read about the ways in which private tyranny, as referred to by the author, oppresses the working class.

In order to illustrate his point Sohrab Ahmari provides examples such as J&J declaring bankruptcy in order to avoid litigation, and the privatization of emergency services that result in people incurring more costs at their own expense.

I like the way in which the author structured the book. As someone who is not an expert on this topic and primarily a fiction reader , the points were easy to understand. I do wish the points were elaborated on or that foot notes were included for us to peruse at our own time.


Thank you Netgalley and Convergent Books, Forum Books for an advanced reader copy.

[Darnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conservative case for more left wing economic policies? It's a curious beast, indistinguishable from left rhetoric in certain places despite the author's use of conservative examples. While it's interesting to see this, and it brings to mind the always discussed hypothetical left/right working class alliance, I just don't know how plausible that is. The author does acknowledge toward the end that the right is more opposed to anti-corporate policies, but this is still far outside the norm.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A challenging book for libertarians and classical liberals who take the idea of freedom seriously, but see it threatened only by the actions of government. An interesting critique of the market from the right!

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was not what I thought it would be. I didn’t care for it. The author makes a few fair points but overall, it was a bit too Marxist for my taste. I also felt it was not succinct. This was a painful short book.

[T.]

From Jon Askonas's review in Plough:

My only criticism of Ahmari’s book is that he does not sound the alarm enough. Most of his examples of private coercion originate from the realm of law and policy, especially with the breakdown of the New Deal order of countervailing labor power and the regulations and legal precedents that bolstered it. Today, with the marriage of private economic coercion and unbridled technological power, we face additional dangers that we have hardly begun to confront.

In his debate with Alexandre Kojève about tyranny and philosophy, Leo Strauss exposes another way we’ve outpaced the classical conception of tyranny: “Present day tyranny, in contradistinction to classical tyranny, is based on the unlimited progress in the ‘conquest of nature’ which is made possible by modern science.” In its desire to override the passions which made human societies necessarily dangerous (and thus necessarily political), the contemporary tyranny would seek to intervene with technology to redefine human nature itself, even at the level of biology.

The most recent season of the sci-fi horror series Black Mirror led off with an episode that dramatizes Ahmari’s argument. In “Joan Is Awful,” an executive at Netflix stand-in Streamberry discovers that her company, using a bit of AI wizardry, has turned her life into a near-real-time prestige drama starring Salma Hayek. At the end of each day, the entire world can tune in for a new episode recounting the events of Joan’s day, in all their embarrassing detail.

What has made this possible is a very real practice recounted in Tyranny, Inc. – buried in a lengthy contract is an expansive clause turning over Joan’s likeness, persona, voice, etc. to Streamberry. But what makes such a clause matter is a technological transformation: what in a previous technological milieu meant that your company could put your picture in the brochure now means that your company can fire you and replace you with an AI chatbot trained on your data.

Ahmari’s book is an urgent clarion call, not only because of entrenched economic injustices in American society, but also because of this new tyranny that has only just begun to assert itself. To the antipolitical coercion of economic tyranny will soon be married the antihuman coercion of technological power. What we must aim for now is no longer only to promote a just society, but to preserve a human one.

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life...

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great and informative read, thought provoking and inspiring, it should be recommended read for everyone's benefit. We all hear about Neoliberalism and this book really explains how it creeped its way into public life making it miserable for everyone.

[Sebastian 14 1 9 18 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent Jacobin/Sandernista text with vague references to “wokeness” and the author’s Catholicism. “Realignment” for sure man

The first 8 chapters are good accounts of private (although almost always court mediated) tyranny via stories of individuals. The authors personality shines through here as an empathetic cultural conservative trying to honestly defend society.

The last 4 are nothing new

[Marcy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not pretending to have any great understanding of economics…not sure if I really don’t get it or if “no one” gets it, or if I’m just always told I don’t get it so I lack the confidence to say anything about it at all.

That aside, and the fact that I once watched a debate between Amari & David French and I did not care much for Amari’s tendency toward ad hominem…oh and the fact that the people I know who are Amari fans are not people who I think are very thoughtful in their own opinions….all of this disposed me to side-eye this book as I picked it up. And I thought it would be good to take a look since I had just read Poverty by America. AND because I almost fell out of my seat (but I didn’t because I was driving) listening to his interview on Andrew Sullivan’s podcast and he said some kinda surprising things.

I realize that nothing he says in this book negates his previously stated desire for some version of a theocracy (so done with democracy) and so I will reserve my judgement somewhat.

But Amari makes some really great points and tells some very interesting stories. Virtue signaling corporations that actively work against the interests they claim to support, oppression of the working class via unfair labor practices, non-living wages, plus the unlimited lobbying and political donation power of the “person” of the corporation in the name of free speech…I am glad to at least know there are other voices out there who may be both pro-life AND pro-social Justice. Everyone is complicated. I thought he had some good ideas here. But that doesn’t mean I think all his ideas are good. That’s just my disclaimer because I DO try to read books by people I don’t agree with or don’t think I’ll agree with. It’s complicated.

[Reed Schwartz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book isn't bad, exactly, I'm just so far from the intended reader that it was hard for me to get anything out of it. Basically, this is Ahmari's attempt to get the American conservative movement to embrace new support from working class voters by proposing policy that actually advances their interests. It hasn't been entirely fruitless—some R senators like Josh Hawley have embraced neo-Brandeisianism, and J.D. Vance still parrots a lot of these talking points (less enthusiastically than when he wasn't accountable to his caucus, but still.) If you aren't a conservative politician looking to shore up support in Pennsylvania diners, though, it's unlikely you'll get anything out of it. The first half is made up of human interest stories about people getting screwed by corporations, management, and Wall Street (and quite a lot of waxing nostalgic about Sears, for some reason). The second half is a mishmash between baby's first history of neoliberalism and a couple of vague policy proposals to make the US more pro-labor (all of which [I think, I got bored and started skimming] I'm very sympathetic to.)
If you've ever read any left-wing nonfiction, this will probably not be worth picking up, but I do hope that the Ahmari project is successful among its target audience!

[Boukie's Bookshop · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tyranny, Inc, by Sohrab Ahmari, has a simple and evident premise: our politicians have allowed for a complete corporate takeover of our American society, leaving the poor, working, and middle classes "isolated and powerless." This is certainly not a revolutionary concept (though that very well may be a solution to the problem he's outlined). What is interesting about this book, however, is the papertrail that he goes to great lengths to lay out. This is a "receipts book", meaning, a book that lays out the whos and the whats and the hows, which is, at this point, the most important work to do. Who has helped to contribute to such a disparity of power and wealth? By what means? And to what end? But most importantly - what to do about it?

Anyone who's interested in the current political dystopia in which we find ourselves should read this book.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the digital review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

[Red · Rating 3 out of 5]

For *me* it's a 3, others who are new to politics/economics and the like will probably find it eye-opening and enraging and give it higher marks as a handy primer on All That Is Rotten in Denmark. I guess I've been pretty involved in these subjects since I was a kid and onward, so a lot of what was covered I already knew about and was up to date with (ex: fake corporate/billionaire bankruptcy, arbitration, union busting, Big Tech, Big Pharma, and hypocritical politicians/corporate ghouls on both sides, etc).

Definitely left-of-center solutions to systemic economic (and thus social) issues, but the author makes no claims to the contrary, so ensure you read several somethings to balance out your perspective.

[Shannon Sipher]

I recommend it! Good snapshot history of how we got here. I don’t think he understands how much of American conservative identity is anti-union and really serf mindset. Now, that’s the real identity politics! And I don’t agree with calling liberal democrats the “left”. By global standards they are not close to left. Really enjoyed his switcharoos, (that’s not Iran, it’s America) but I just don’t think the conservative people in my life can countenance any union talk (strong propaganda against it in the south.)

[JC NoKey · Rating 3 out of 5]

The share of the U.S. economy dominated by hedge funds and private equity has ballooned over the past generation. Total assets under their management rose to $2.4 trillion in 2019, up from $2 billion in 1976. More than twice as many Americans now work for private-equity-controlled firms (nine million) as for the federal government and U.S. military combined (abeut four million). These firms also attract a huge slice of
business talent. recruiting a third af 2020 Harvard and Stanford MBA graduates, more than any other industry. Defenders point to such figures as proof that Big Finance is "investing" in the economy. Yet as King notes, "The buying and selling of companies, the mergers and divestments, the hedging and leveraging, are not themselves valuable activity. They invent, create, build, and provide nothing." 31] On the contrary, financial wizardry of this kind very often destroys businesses, jobs, and communities. The fate of Sears is sadly illustrative.

Around the same time, another private equity fund, Clayton Dubilier & Rice, purchased Emergency Medical Services Corporation, a Rural/Metro rival, for $3 billion.[141
Other-funds saw the opportunity even before the recession. The émergency-services firm TransCare EMS, for example, had a decade earlier come under the control of Patriarch Partners, the fund headed by the celebrity financier Lynn Tilton. The star of the short-lived Sundance Channel reality-TV show Diva of Distressed, Tilton was known for her raunchy persona she once sent a client a holiday card featuring a photo of herself dressed in black lingerie and brandishing a whip and for her supposed forswearing of asset stripping ("It's only men I strip and flip").
[15]
All told, at least a dozen ambulance companies were acquired by private equity over the past two decades, with many of the deals taking place after the financial crisis. A quarter of those, including Rural/Metro and TransCare, went on to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Meanwhile, of some eleven hundred traditionally owned firms in the industry, none went into bankruptcy|16]—a disparity that starkly underscores a point we made in the previous chapter: Ownership by private equity dramatically increases the likelihood of a firm's becoming insolvent.
Even if one assumes that profit-motivated firefighting and ambulance services are a net positive to society, the fact remains that Wall Street wasn't interested in properly investing in these firms, or helping them grow in the old-fashioned capitalist way. Instead, as a 2016 New York Times exposé concluded, Big Finance turned to its signature "moneymaking playbook: a mix of cost cuts, price increases, lobbying and litigation." [17] Warburg's ownership was illustrative. For starters, the fund levered up Rural/Metro in typical private equity style, leaning heavily on debt to finance its acquisition and adding $500 million to the company's liabilities at the outset. At first, Warburg did plow some money into the firm and its assets, but it also pushed Rural/Metro to buy out a pair of smaller rivals, compounding debt upon debt and soon necessitating cutbacks. Raises and pensions were slashed. Finances became a "mess," the Times noted. Rural/ Metro told "investors it would book higher revenue than it ultimately did."|18] As we will soon see, delayed responses became more common, and drug thefts and other staff misdeeds multiplied.

[Patrick Santino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quirky topic that hopefully might become a big deal in the coming decade. Book highlights market corrosion that benefits the Few at the top of big corps at the expense of the working class Many; emphasizing private big corp tyranny is way more dangerous to the average American than the govt tyranny that the Right usually worries about. Whole first half highlights specific “representative” cases of the Little Guy getting obviously hosed by the big boss thanks to govt deregulation etc. The dumb hedge funds profiting off fictitious speculative “value” & the death of local newspapers I found most interesting. In the second half he goes through the past two centuries of American market history, highly praising the broad idea of the New Deal & the prosperity it brought, & lamenting the deregulation that came throughout the 1970s onwards by Neoliberals undoing the New Deal. These Neoliberals & Libertarians (& most Republicans & Democrats) will label this guy a socialist or a Marxist, but based on previous writing & who he’s intellectually friends with: he’s more a “working-man’s conservative” / a “pro-Labor Rightwinger” interested above all in the Common Good (the quirky part, cuz he’s too hard to pigeon hole; the book was inspired by seeing the massive Rust Belt working class turn out for Trump/Republicans in the 2020 election). In nutshell, I think, he liked how in the first half of the 20th century the govt worked for the common man & with unions against big corp private tyranny, but from the 1970s onwards the govt became subservient to the market to the detriment of Most & to the benefit of the Economic Elite (this I think can be potentially felt & seen by all Americans now, actually). He denies inevitable globalization of exporting industry or that the market is great at self correcting, & thinks more pro Labor politics needs to be reinjected into the American political scene etc. I do not think I’m knowledgeable enough to have a significant opinion on the topic, especially given I don’t have a good enough foundation on economics, besides that I am also highly pro Common Good. To better understand this book I think I’d need to read Adam Smith & Milton Friedman …which sounds dreadfully dull, & then even Marx, Catholic social teaching (Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum), & some kinda New Deal material …which sounds more tolerable but not soon on the horizon. Found the book cuz his first two books were really good, this one was good for a topic I’m less interested in but that is important; so best of luck to him in popularizing his common good ideas.

[Jeremiah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recently heard this book recommended on an interview with Ezra Klein and thought it sounded relevant. The key insight of the book is that, despite America's long-time paranoia about government overreach and coercion, our society is actually permeated with privatized coercion, often of employers over employees or corporation over consumers. Ahmari provides several examples of this to demonstrate that, while individuals theoretically possess the right to walk away from user agreements, employment contracts, or faulty products and to address injustice in court, they are often deterred from doing so due to the financial and legal precarity of the individual compared to the legally and financially bolstered corporation. Often with terms of service or employment contracts there is also no room for negotiation and in some cases users are pressured to read through the terms quickly or not at all. Ahmari argues that these inequalities and abuses are further enabled by a lack of regulation on the market which is what contributed to the Great Depression in that the work force was paid so little that they could not afford the products being produced and thus demand was stunted. Essentially, Ahmari seems to be explaining the importance of market regulation and equality for the owning class as well as the working class to protect both as well as the whole system. Having just finished Harari's Nexus, I find that both books tie together a similar thread to conclude that totally free information and economic environments will become naturally coopted to those prepositioned to superiority, those whose misinformation resounds with enough people, those who break with conventions, etc., allowing the abusers to soak up disproportionate opportunity at the expense of many others. Ahmari's solution for this is political activism and labor unions.

Overall, I would say the book wasn't perfect but it offered a crucial insight on the ubiquitousness of privatized coercion in our society. He did not go into much detail on how to fix this but encouraged political activism to seek the economy and society we want and to take part in labor unions.

[Behrooz Parhami · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the unabridged 8-hour audio version of this title (read by the author, Random House Audio, 2023).

Unchecked corporate power is being criticized both from the left and from the right, with members on one side of the spectrum occasionally even endorsing or praising ideas from the other side. Ahmari, a conservative, dedicates his book to "Adrian, Chad, Gladden, and Patrick"; first names of a group that were co-founders of the Substack newsletter Postliberal Order. Shoshana Zuboff, a decidedly liberal author and professor, had previously written The Age of Surveillance Capitalism on the horrors of illicit corporate power gained through amassing users' private information.

My review of Zuboff's book:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

According to Ahmari, unchecked corporate power hurts both employees (e.g., through so-called flexible contracts and mandatory arbitration agreements) and consumers (privatization of vital emergency services, local newspapers going under, the rich-friendly bankruptcy law that allowed Purdue Pharma to escape liability for the opioid crisis). These are important concerns for our society, whether you consider them populist or conservative musings.

Ahmari's ideas are more FDR than Ronald Reagan, more Ruth Bader Ginsburg than SCOTUS's conservative opinion approving of arbitration clauses, more Elizabeth Warren than Paul Ryan, more an Amazon whistle-blower than corporate lawyers defending Amazon's miserable COVID response. For the ills he enumerates, Ahmari places the blame on the economic liberalism of the right and the social liberalism of the left. One remedy is to restore workers' rights, that are gradually disappearing, through the establishment and nurturing of powerful unions.

[John Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a political policy book, something I normally dread. It is also written by an old school conservative. BUT WAIT, don't answer yet. It is actually pretty good. During its writing he admits to changing his mind and realizing the free markets are never really free and always involve some form of coercion. He pitches that "political-exchange capitalism" (essentially New Deal economics) that help protect individuals from powerful entities like corporations really is the best middle road to an economically just society. He has no time for lifestyle liberalism (busting up a union during your day job and driving home in your Audi A8 with a pride sticker on the bumper, for example) and neither do I. Also, it is a good summary of how Neo-liberalism came to dominate political thinking. I think his best arguments are that all commerce is coercive and that the state has to step in to protect asset-poor members of society. And also that the construct of an "invisible hand" guiding the market is an attempt to mystify what is actually a series of choices about how we protect profit acquisition at the expense of all other social concerns. That the idea of "equal opportunity" is also an attempt to divert attention from free markets primarily benefiting only those that are already wealthy. And if you needed another reason to like it, *Reason* magazine hated it.

[Gina T · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to Random House for providing this book in a Goodreads giveaway.

I've long believed that Big Business has too much power and has been too busy maximizing shareholder value at the expense of the average Joe and Jane. Executive pay continues to rise but workers wages (and the minimum wage) haven't kept up with inflation. From problems with last minute scheduling (especially hard for people with kids) to the rights we sign away as part of new employee onboarding.

Ahmari also touches on the privatization of emergency services, death of the local paper, Corporations reorganizing into units and then declaring bankruptcy in one unit to avoid litigation (J&J and the Texas two step.) There are many examples of tyranny.

There isn't much space given to solutions, but the point is made that "private tyranny is a political crisis that... requires a political solution" and "it's up to the American worker to drag our politicians and corporate leaders into a new consensus."

Surprising conclusions coming from a contributing editor of "The American Conservative."