Liberal Radicalism for the Digital Age

Abstract

The present architecture of the digital economy is leading to unprecedented concentrations of economic and political power.  Superficially liberal institutions advocated by many in the open source software and blockchain movements cannot combat this as they ignore the technological, social and psychological forces that cause it.  Instead a solution must draw on the Radical Liberal tradition of thinkers such as Alexis de Toqueville, John Stuart Mill, Beatrice Webb, Henry George and Hannah Arendt, which acknowledges the need for collective organization to protect individual dignity from centralized authority.  Applied to the economic and privacy concerns around data collection, this suggests the need for “Mediators of Individual Data (MIDs)” that would, like unions or artist royalty collection agencies of the past, act as fiduciaries to help individuals bargain for fair compensation for and limits on the exploitation of their data labor.

 Bio: E. (Eric) Glen Weyl uses ideas from political economy to develop social technology for widely-shared prosperity and social cooperation. These ideas have inspired a social movement, RadicalxChange, that convenes activists artists, entrepreneurs and researchers using market mechanisms to create a richer and more equal society.  Glen helps catalyze this collaboration as Founder and Chairman of the RadicalxChange Foundation, as he continues his research as Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New York City.  He also teaches a course as a Visiting Research Scholar and Lecturer at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs on his recent book with Eric A. Posner, Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society, which summarizes many of these ideas.