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Clark Neily

If you haven’t seen the Netflix blockbuster Rebel Ridge, you should. Billed as a Rambo-meets-Jack-Reacher police procedural whose protagonist is triggered by a costly encounter with civil forfeiture that quickly snowballs into brutal conflict with a corrupt rural police department, the film delivers that dopamine-laced punch of catharsis you’re craving.

An added bonus is the vexing authenticity of the initial setup, which features a cascading series of entirely plausible civil-rights violations, threats, prevarications, and broken promises by money-grubbing cops who view citizens as little more than walking ATMs. And when former Marine martial-arts instructor Terry Richmond (played by Aaron Pierre) finally dishes out the full can of Devil Dog whoopass, the action is fast-paced and well-choreographed. You can’t ask for more than that.

Or can you?

Enjoyable and well-executed as this movie was, it felt like a missed opportunity to tell a more authentic—and perhaps more sinister—story about America’s criminal justice system.

The corrupt cops’ ringleader in Rebel Ridge, Chief Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson), exudes a miasma of smug menace and latent racism that effectively arouses the audience’s ire and their desire for righteous vengeance. Those feelings are turbocharged when Burnne’s perfidy leads to an avoidable tragedy and the protagonists discover that he has orchestrated a sprawling conspiracy to destroy evidence and deny counsel to detainees in furtherance of his forfeiture-fueled policing-for-profit scheme.

On one level, this is textbook storytelling. The (literally) black-and-white confrontation between good and evil engages the audience emotionally and provides the satisfaction of knowing (with one notable exception) who are the good guys and who are the bad guys—as well as the confidence that everyone on both sides will ultimately get what they deserve.

On another level, however, the over-the-top malignity of Chief Burnne and his minions provides false comfort about the true state of American criminal justice—namely, that you’ll be OK so long as you don’t have the misfortune of encountering a criminally corrupt outfit like the Shelby Springs Police Department. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In reality, America’s criminal justice system is often rotten to the core. Contrary to the scenario in Rebel Ridge, cops and other system actors need not be staring down the barrel of a fiscal crisis to deploy civil forfeiture in a manner scarcely distinguishable from outright theft. Instead, the combination of perverse incentives, lax procedures, and near-zero accountability practically ensures abuse. Those who object will discover that the so-called “blue wall of silence” is very real and far more effective at protecting perpetrators of serial police misconduct than the ragtag conspiracy of country bumpkins portrayed in Rebel Ridge.

And in our system there’s no need to sandbag defendants by flatly denying access to counsel when you can accomplish the same functional result by persistently underfunding and overworking public defenders to the point where it becomes impossible for them to provide a truly zealous defense to all—or even most of—their clients.

Finally, the rampant overcriminalization and coercive plea bargaining that pervade our system ensure that nearly anyone can be charged with something. They can then be threatened with some combination of pretrial detention, charge-stacking, and a savage trial penalty will nearly always produce a guilty plea—with the added bonus of the defendant “voluntarily” waiving their right to obtain potentially exculpatory discovery from the prosecution and challenge the admissibility of unlawfully obtained evidence. In short, it is no exaggeration to say that our vaunted criminal justice system, which—on paper at least—bristles with myriad procedural protections and advantages for the accused, has become little more than a conviction machine.

Again, Rebel Ridge is a fun, satisfying movie that tells a compelling story about the abuse of official power and the importance of standing up to it. But there was no need to slather on layers of conspiracy, corruption, and venality. Our real system of criminal “justice” is plenty bad enough without cinematic embellishment.

Adam N. Michel

The United States stands alone in applying the entire domestic tax regime to all citizens, permanent residents, and tax residents regardless of where they live and work. Eritrea’s brutal dictatorship is the only other country to come close, imposing a 2 percent levy on all expatriates. In a recent video, former President Donald Trump endorsed eliminating the outdated US system of worldwide taxation of Americans living overseas. The reform would enhance the competitiveness of American businesses abroad, attract foreign talent for domestic operations, and ease administrative burdens on US expats.

For these reasons, most other nations use territorial or residence-based taxation, where only income earned by someone within the country’s borders is subject to tax. The US has a quasi-territorial tax system for corporate profits but not for individuals. The territorial approach respects that citizens living and working abroad already pay local taxes on their income.

In contrast, the US system imposes a second layer of tax on top of what citizens pay to their country of residence. Some relief is offered under the Section 911 exclusion, which exempts up to $126,500 (2024) of foreign-earned income from US taxation, and other protections allow foreign tax credits to offset similar taxes paid to other governments.

However, the exclusion and credit system fails to fully resolve the problem. For those Americans living in one of the more than 100 countries without a US tax treaty, more of their income is subject to two layers of tax. For those living in lower-tax jurisdictions, the worldwide system leaves them paying higher taxes than their neighbors and coworkers. Even when no additional US tax is due, the system burdens expatriates with multiple tax systems and other non-tax reporting requirements. This is also the provision of the tax code that slaps our Olympic athletes with hefty tax bills on the value of their winning medals and monetary rewards earned overseas.

Worldwide taxation undermines US citizens’ global mobility and professional opportunities abroad, where they often facilitate US exports and other forms of exchange. American citizens living abroad often work for US multinationals to expand US exports and gain experience with foreign technologies and processes to, in turn, enhance domestic operations.

When the Section 911 exclusion amount was lowered under President Jimmy Carter in 1976, Carter’s Export Council warned that the “misguided” change put Americans abroad at a competitive disadvantage, resulting in fewer Americans being hired and “brought about a sharp loss in the U.S. share of overseas business volume.” To mitigate some of this problem, the Section 911 exclusion was expanded under President Ronald Reagan.

The worldwide system also discourages high-skill and high-net-worth foreigners from living and working in the United States. Regardless of citizenship or official work status, working more than half the year in the US subjects all your income to worldwide taxation and, after eight years, triggers an exit tax if the individual wishes to rid himself of the US tax regime.

The US worldwide tax system is made worse by the maze of overlapping reporting requirements that have sprung up to enforce it, replete with steep penalties for common mistakes. Compliance with domestic tax laws, foreign tax systems, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR), and other trust and shareholder reporting creates significant administrative burdens. Following FATCA’s implementation, US citizenship renunciations increased by nearly 200 percent. One high-profile example was former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who gave up his US citizenship after the IRS hit him with a tax bill for the sale of his London home. 

Shifting to a territorial tax system for individuals, where only US-sourced income is taxed by the US government, would bring the US in line with international norms, significantly reducing the administrative and financial burdens on expatriates. Such a change would also enhance the competitiveness of American businesses abroad and could attract foreign talent, ultimately contributing to a more dynamic and globally connected American economy. In 2017, Congress shifted business taxation toward a territorial approach; it’s time to provide the same relief to individual taxpayers. 

Jennifer Huddleston

October has seen a number of bad headlines about the popular social media app TikTok. First, 13 states and the District of Columbia alleged that the platform harmed kids and “addicted” them to the app. Then, a Kentucky Public Radio report published documents that the company knew about the potentially negative impact and behavior of the app’s minor users, prompting senators to call for production of the documents in question. These latest claims follow an earlier FTC-led investigation for violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). All this arrives at a time when the company and its users attempt to rally against a law that would see TikTok face the choice of being sold or banned in the United States.

It seems both policymakers and the public are often combining the wide array of concerns about the popular app. The problem with this line of thinking is that the policy solutions and principles that apply in each case — as well as the underlying questions — are different. As a result, it is important that if there are legitimate policy issues to address, they should be targeted to respond to the concerns lest they cause more damage to other important values such as free speech, innovation, or privacy.

This last week, many of the concerns expressed by the media and policymakers are about the impact the app may have on young people. Such a conversation exists in a broader context around youth online safety. Before these concerns were expressed about TikTok, they were levied at other social media apps popular with young people at the time, including Instagram and even MySpace. As a result, policymakers are quick to respond to new allegations and use them as an opportunity to promote legislation that raises significant privacy and speech concerns.

There are specific requirements around young people’s data that are at issue in the COPPA investigation, which the law was designed to address. If TikTok violated COPPA, then there are existing remedies that can be enforced to respond to the practices and may require changes to the platform.

Many of the allegations about TikTok and young people, however, are not about the type of nuanced data collection practices covered by the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), or even the presence of underage users on the app. The recent discourse from the Kentucky Public Radio report and cases brought by the states has resurfaced the refrain of “social media addiction.” But the problem here is that “addiction” has and should be understood within the realm of medical diagnoses. Currently, there is not one such diagnosis accepted in the medical academy.

Again, this debate pre-dates the recent concerns about TikTok. As my Cato colleague Dr. Jeff Singer, MD wrote in a 2018 piece “Stop saying social media ‘addiction,’” “Addiction has a biopsychosocial basis with a genetic predisposition and involves neurotransmitters and interactions within reward centers of the brain. The interaction of these factors has not been established with respect to social media use.” These allegations are also not unique to TikTok. Last year, Meta faced a similar batch of lawsuits from states about the impact of its products on young people including allegations of “addiction.”

Companies continue to evolve their tools to empower parents of young users, as well as users of all ages to be more informed about their choices. These range from screen time limits on certain apps, the changing of defaults for young users, and notices more generally about screen-time usage on smartphones. This allows each family to determine what makes the most sense for them and to curate the tools to respond to their own needs.

For example, a teen on a church mission trip or traveling for a soccer tournament may need to be on her phone to communicate with family or stay entertained on a bus even if it is “late at night.” In other cases, a young person may be using social media frequently to stay in touch with far-away friends or to get help with a medical issue. Policy is unable to properly consider these nuances and instead risks eliminating beneficial uses along with the bad.

Even if it turns out that TikTok violated COPPA, or that the states win the case about its impact on young people, these issues are very different than the one underlying the calls to force TikTok to “divest or ban.” To call such issues a national security concern would indicate that this law is more directed at the type of speech on TikTok and strengthens the case that the law raises significant concerns under the First Amendment. I have more thoroughly discussed the various issues related to speech, competition, and innovation with the “divest or ban” bill in other work. But these latest allegations should emphasize the need for a principled approach. A “divest or ban” would impact the speech of the adult users of the app (who are bringing their own challenge to the law) and does not take into account that many of these allegations have been thrown at other platforms.

There are existing tools to respond to specific concerns about the use of data of underaged users under COPPA. The other allegations have also been expressed against a wide array of social media companies since social media came into existence. Our policymakers should be careful not to conflate the issues at hand and carefully examine if they are best served by policy solutions. 

As with the broader debates about tech policy reflected in these latest concerns about TikTok, policymakers should carefully consider if their proposed policy responses even address the underlying issue and might be better addressed through education, not regulation. They also should consider the longer-reaching impact on key values like speech, innovation, and privacy that could be collateral damage of such policies due to animosity towards one type of technology or one company.

Chris Edwards

The federal “tax gap” is the amount of taxes owed but not paid on time, which is loosely viewed as the amount of tax cheating. The IRS has released a new estimate showing that the tax gap is down as a share of gross domestic product (GDP). Despite political rhetoric to the contrary, tax cheating is not a growing problem.

The gross tax gap in 2022 was $696 billion. After late payments and enforcement actions, the net tax gap was $606 billion. Of the gross total, $514 billion stemmed from individual income taxes, $50 billion from corporate income taxes, $127 billion from payroll taxes, and $5 billion from estate taxes.

The chart shows the tax gap was 2.7 percent of GDP in 2022. The gap has been roughly flat over the past decade and down a bit from two decades ago.

All tax systems have tax gaps, and there are pros and cons of using tougher enforcement to reduce the gap. The US tax gap is smaller than the average gap in Europe.

The flip side of the gross tax gap is the “voluntary compliance rate,” which is the tax paid on time divided by the estimated full amount owed. This rate was 85 percent in 2022, which was little changed over the past decade but up from two decades ago.

No one likes tax cheating, but there are civil liberties costs when the government tries to close the gap by heavier regulations and overzealous enforcement. The optimal tax gap is not zero because that would impose huge compliance costs and because the IRS makes errors. 

Furthermore, some of the tax gap is not outright cheating but rather reflects a misunderstanding of the complex code. Unfortunately, both presidential candidates have proposed changes that would complexify the tax code, frazzle taxpayers, and cause more errors. The proposed changes come after the current administration complexified the code with the Inflation Reduction Act.

Congress in 2025 should reject any loopholes proposed by the new administration. Lawmakers should simplify the tax code along the lines suggested by Adam Michel and myself. Simplifying the tax code would reduce cheating, boost growth, and be a win-win for taxpayers and the government.

I discuss IRS funding and the tax gap in congressional testimony here and here.

Walter Olson

This November voters in Nevada, Colorado, and Idaho will consider whether to adopt versions of the “Alaska model,” discussed in this space here, here, and here, which does away with party primaries in favor of a single primary open to all followed by a general election that employs ranked choice voting (RCV). Alaska voters themselves will also vote on whether to keep that model, opponents having succeeded in submitting enough petition signatures to place a repeal measure on the ballot. And voters in Arizona and Montana will consider taking a big partial step toward the Alaska model by replacing party primaries with a single open-to-all primary, without resolving whether RCV or some other method, such as a runoff, will be used to sort out the results of a general election in which no candidate commands a majority. 

There’s enough material here for several posts. I’ll start by tackling just one question: how the open-to-all primary model differs from the so-called open primary model that’s been kicking around for decades.

In that older open primary model, any voter can request and vote the primary ballot of any party. Advocates for such an arrangement say it gives a greater voice to voters, particularly independents, who these days make up by far the largest portion of the electorate but who are otherwise shut out of the stage of the election in which a majority of races are practically decided.

Questions of participation aside, advocates say open primaries are also more likely to give a shot to candidates who can appeal to a broad range of voters and not just the party’s base.

Whatever the merits of such arguments, the old open primary model suffers from an objection in principle and a related flaw in practice that has limited its appeal. The objection in principle is that political parties are private groups that should enjoy freedom of association, in particular the right not to have their endorsements determined by outsiders. The related practical problem is that open party primaries can be open to manipulation by supporters of the opposing party who might cross over to promote a candidate they see as weaker. 

Partly in response to these concerns, states have introduced modified models in which voting in a party’s primary entails instant re-registration with that party, or in which unaffiliated voters but not registrants of other parties can cross-vote, or in which each party decides whether to open its primary.

The Alaska model bypasses all these problems in favor of a single primary in which all candidates can run and all voters can vote. The four top finishers who advance to the general (five under the Final Five version) might include two from each major party, but they might also include two or three from the same party and perhaps an independent, Green, or Libertarian.

Observe that no political party’s rights of association are infringed in the least under the Final Four or Final Five model. An existing party remains free to arrange ways to gauge members’ sentiments to identify the one candidate who best reflects collective Democratic or Republican base preference. It’s just that taxpayers will not be asked to pay for that process, and anointed candidates will not automatically be given ballot status unavailable to rivals except through a sometimes arduous and heavily lawyered signature process. 

Final Four and Final Five should also succeed in curbing gamesmanship aimed at pushing a weaker candidate from the other party into the lead, because it’s likely that the other party’s stronger candidate will make it onto the ballot anyway. Each party’s committed base is also quite likely to succeed in getting its candidate into the general election ballot. What’s different is that they will no longer be able to keep others from getting there too.

All of which is why, as a matter of terminology, it’s better not to describe the Alaska model as including an “open primary.” “Nonpartisan” and “all-party” primary are better terms. I myself like “universal primary,” which hasn’t caught on, and “single qualifying primary” would make sense too.

Further into the merits in the next post. 

Colleen Hroncich

Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota is the poorest area in the nation, says Mary Jo Fairhead, a former public school teacher who grew up on the reservation. “I love it, but there are a lot of life issues,” she explains. “A lot of poverty, a lot of addiction issues. Our kids struggle with suicide and high dropout rates. Just a lot of hard things. And that’s really why I became a teacher—because I wanted to help kids.”

But when she got to the classroom, she didn’t feel like she was really helping. “Class sizes were huge, and I couldn’t get real meaningful lessons planned because I was just putting out fires all the time,” she recalls. “I got really frustrated with how the system was set up and the kids I was seeing falling through the cracks.” Her frustrations—with the discipline techniques, the structure of the day, the curriculum, and all the testing—pushed her to quit teaching.

After being home with her kids for a few years, she took a position as principal of a small preK‑8 public school. Mary Jo says she was excited about the job because, as principal, she figured she’d be able to do things the way she thought they should be done. “I really did enjoy that job. It was so hard emotionally, but I felt like we were doing some really good things. The kids were really making progress, and the teachers felt comfortable with me,” she says. 

The main downside was the amount of testing they had to do—because their test scores were low, the kids had to do even more testing. “We were testing like five to six weeks out of the year, and that wasn’t even including the progress monitoring,” she says. “We had benchmark, we had the state testing, and then we had the progress monitoring. So it was just all this time around testing.” Meanwhile, she was mainly concerned with just keeping the kids alive.

Then COVID-19 hit, and they had strict lockdowns and didn’t see the kids for 13 months. When they finally went back, she was glad to see the kids, but she didn’t see herself there anymore. She told her husband she had to begin homeschooling or open her own school, and he said, “I guess we’re starting a school.” She quit her job without much of a plan and created Onward Learning.

Mary Jo started with six school-aged children and six in a childcare situation. She had 27 students by the end of the second year and started this year with 37 students and a long waitlist. “We just don’t have the capacity for more kids,” she says. “We’re just growing really fast.” Right now she has preschool and kindergarten in the upper level of her house, grades 1–4 in the lower level, and grades 5–8 in a space she rents. They’re in the process of building a new facility that she hopes will be able to serve 60 kids for next school year. 

The kids spend a lot of time outdoors; Mary Jo has 3½ acres with lots of trees, a playground, and a nearby golf course. “We’re outside at least two hours a day, sometimes more. If it’s nice out, we bring our books outside and do all of our learning outside,” she says. “We also have a garage that we’ve turned into kind of an art studio. So we have a kiln in there, and we do all our painting and ceramics and things like that in there.”

They start each day outside no matter what the weather is. Then they come inside and have breakfast together—a local mom makes home-cooked breakfast, lunch, and snack each day. They work in small groups through the morning to cover math, English, reading, and science. All of the learning is personalized, so Mary Jo evaluates students when they come so she can start them where they are rather than where they “should” be. 

After the core subjects, the kids have a break and then do music, art, or baking before lunch. After lunch is independent reading time, which Mary Jo says the kids love. She also reads aloud to them in the afternoons. Then they have what she calls curiosity classes. “Those are anything from painting to ceramics to woodworking, nature walks,” she explains. “Pretty much anything that they’re interested in.”

Mary Jo is finally able to teach the way she thinks it should be done. “I grew up going to a really small school, they call them country schools here, with multi-age learning—very similar to the microschools. And that’s what I knew and that’s what I loved,” she says. But that’s not what was happening when she was in public schools.

For other teachers who are feeling the same way and want to create their own microschool or other learning environment, Mary Jo offers encouragement. “Reach out to find other people who have done it and just ask questions and lean on them a little bit,” she says. “I think the biggest thing is just to not question yourself. You can do it. It seems daunting, but it’s really not.” 

Colin Grabow

Last week, the Philly Shipyard announced the ceremonial start of construction on three Aloha class containerships. While typically a celebratory occasion, the cutting of steel for these ships should be more accurately viewed as marking a grim milestone for American shipbuilding. At $333 million each, the vessels symbolize a stunning lack of competitiveness and the failure of US maritime protectionism.

The ships’ price tag is almost difficult to fathom. For perspective, the same shipyard was contracted to build two Aloha class containerships—i.e., almost the exact same vessel (the new ships feature a more advanced LNG propulsion system)—in 2013 for $209 million each. That’s an increase of well over $100 million in nine years (the new vessels were ordered in 2022). 

Further, consider that two LNG-powered containerships were ordered from a South Korean shipyard in 2022 for over $200 million less per ship than the new Aloha class vessels despite having more than double their cargo capacity.

Why the vast price difference? As one Danish maritime publication put it, “It’s not because the ships are built from gold plates instead of steel plates, but the US shipbuilding industry is way, way too expensive because it’s not competitive.”

This lack of competitiveness is a natural outcome of not having to compete. Instead of carving out a specialized niche within the global market, US shipyards almost exclusively operate within a captive domestic market created by the 1920 Jones Act (large Navy and Coast Guard contracts restricted to US shipyards also encourage this domestic orientation). Among its provisions, the law requires that vessels transporting goods within the United States be constructed in domestic shipyards.

In theory, such protectionism ensures the existence of capable shipyards to meet the country’s national security needs. Indeed, Jones Act advocates insist the law helps provide a “modern” and “robust” shipbuilding industrial base.

But these claims are at odds with the facts.

Far from robust, US shipyards’ collective output ranked just 15th globally from 2019–2023.

These numbers make it more difficult for US shipyards to justify the investments needed to stay on the industry’s cutting edge, as such outlays are spread across relatively few vessels. This contributes to a pronounced technological gap with foreign shipyards. Indeed, one member of Congress recently stated that some US shipyards appear unchanged since the 1930s.

The US shipbuilding industry is caught in a vicious cycle. As costs escalate, demand decreases, putting further upward pressure on costs as the economies of scale needed to remain competitive further erode. While US-built ships cost roughly double that of ships constructed abroad as recently as the 1970s, today they can be four or more times the world price.

Their price goes higher still if one accounts for the numerous subsidies provided to the shipbuilding industry. Philly Shipyard, for example, received $438 million in 1997 and another $42 million in 2011 to pay for various upgrades. It also benefits from a $1 per year lease from the quasi-public Philadelphia Shipyard Development Corp, and numerous federal programs meant to promote domestic shipbuilding.

And that’s on top of the Jones Act, itself a significant subsidy to US shipyards.

The icing on this protectionist cake is that the few large commercial ships delivered by domestic shipyards are only superficially “US-built.” While assembled in the United States, these ships heavily rely on imported parts and components. The previous two Aloha class ships (designed by a South Korean firm) feature foreign-built engines, propellers, and other key machinery. Even much of the steel was imported.

According to one Philly Shipyard executive, at least half of the parts and components in a US-built ship are foreign-sourced.

While there’s nothing objectionable about imports, their use shatters any notion that costly Jones Act protectionism frees the United States from relying on foreigners for its shipbuilding needs. 

If meant to ensure a vibrant shipbuilding industry, the Jones Act’s prohibition on foreign-built vessels has clearly come up short. But this failed policy also inflicts myriad harms. High domestic shipping costs—largely due to the inflated cost of buying the actual ship—serve as a de facto tax on intra-US commerce that hurts businesses and consumers. There’s more pollution, congestion, and wear and tear on highways as cargo is diverted to less costly transport modes such as trucking and rail. Foreign trading partners maintain barriers to US exports in retaliation for Jones Act protectionism. 

Not least of all, forcing Americans to pay inflated prices for new ships is also a transparently self-defeating method of encouraging a healthy and capable US merchant marine—ostensibly one of the Jones Act’s chief tasks. 

When Philly Shipyard’s new containerships are finally delivered, they will no doubt be greeted with much pomp and circumstance. One of them might even be named after a politician with a well-established record of advocating on behalf of the shipping industry. For most Americans, however, these ships represent dysfunctional protectionism for which there is precious little to celebrate. 

Jeffrey A. Singer

People who have taken high school economics should know about the law of supply and demand. Put simply, if demand for a good or service rises relative to supply, the price for the good or service increases. Conversely, if the supply of the good or service exceeds demand, the price drops. When supply and demand equilibrate, the price stabilizes. This is a spontaneous, self-directed market phenomenon that Adam Smith metaphorically called an “invisible hand.” But a visible hand—a Food and Drug Administration rule that governs pharmacists who compound drugs—may soon mean that patients will pay more for obesity-reducing GLP‑1 drugs as the supply increases.

Under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 and subsequent amendments, compounding pharmacists do not need FDA approval to make and sell their products to consumers provided they use FDA-approved ingredients from FDA-approved manufacturing facilities. However, the agency prohibits compounding pharmacies from producing a drug that “essentially copies a commercially available drug.” The FDA waives this prohibition during critical shortages of a commercially available product.

When clinical studies demonstrated that GLP‑1 drugs (e.g., semaglutide, tirzepatide), developed to treat diabetes, are effective weight loss drugs that directly act on the brain’s satiety center to reduce food intake (also drink less alcohol and smoke fewer cigarettes) doctors began prescribing them to help reduce the health risks associated with obesity. The FDA approved semaglutide (Wegovy) for chronic weight loss in adults in 2021. Demand for GLP-1s dramatically increased. In late 2022, the FDA officially announced a shortage of tirzepatide, semaglutide, and other GLP-1s, and permitted compounding pharmacies to make essential copies of them. Compounding pharmacies expanded patient’s access to these excellent drugs at much lower prices than they would have paid for commercially manufactured versions.

On October 2, the FDA announced that the supply of tirzepatide had caught up with demand and removed it from its drug shortage list. Other GLP-1s remain on the FDA shortage list. For many people who are benefitting from tirzepatide, this means they will go back to paying more for the commercially available product. The higher prices may cause some people to stop taking the drug altogether. FDA compounding regulations explain why, counterintuitively, consumers will be paying higher prices for GLP-1s as supply improves.

Compounding pharmacies are considering workarounds, such as compounding products with doses or delivery systems that are slightly different from the commercially available drugs.

One way to improve the situation would be for the FDA to remove barriers to compounding pharmacies making products that are essential copies of commercially available products. Drug makers might bring lawsuits against compounding pharmacies for patent infringement, but this would not be an issue with off-patent drugs.

A better approach would be for the FDA to reclassify GLP-1s as over-the-counter drugs, which could drive prices down as producers compete for comparison-shopping customers.

Notwithstanding FDA drug compounding regulations and prescription requirements, there is already a thriving grey market in GLP‑1 drugs. Some of these products contain toxic impurities or are phony knockoffs. If the FDA ends the prescription requirement for GLP-1s, it will deal a blow to the grey market and make it easier and safer for patients to access these important drugs.

Mustafa Akyol

The British Catholic magazine The Tablet just ran an eloquent review of my new book, The Islamic Moses: How the Prophet Inspired Jews and Muslims to Flourish Together and Change the World. Penned by Bruce Clark, the longtime religion reporter for The Economist, and titled “Two Peoples, One Prophet,” the review highlights some key themes of the book and points to additional dimensions. Clark’s description of what I do—and what I hope to do!—is wisely accurate: 

Jeffrey Miron

Does a government definition of property rights promote economic progress? A recent paper suggests yes:

Cadastres—records of landownership—provide governments with the information necessary to tax and clarify ownership, making transactions more efficient. Cadastres underpin the security of ownership and enable land and credit markets to function at a national scale. As such, adopting or improving cadastres may impact a country’s economic growth. …

Our research finds that cadastres consistently contribute to economic growth. Specifically, between 1950 and 2015, a transition from no cadastral system to a full cadastre … was associated with an immediate 2.86 percentage point increase in the level of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. …

Identifying the effect of cadastral reforms on economic growth is challenging. Governments may introduce cadastres as part of a large package of reforms or after a crisis when GDP levels are already recovering. … Thus, we cannot rule out the possibility that our estimate of the impact of cadastral reforms may, to some extent, capture general recovery effects from crises.

Nevertheless, these results support the libertarian claim that defining property rights enhances economic growth.

This article appeared on Substack on October 9, 2024.