The essays on this site develop a framework. This page states the conclusions that framework reaches.
Each position identifies a mechanism. If the mechanism does not exist, or does not produce the effect described, the position is wrong. These are falsifiable claims.
State Monopolies
California gas prices are high by regulatory design. The California Air Resources Board mandates a fuel blend specific to California. When California refinery capacity is disrupted, supply cannot be supplemented from other states whose refineries produce a different blend. The price spike that follows is the guaranteed result of a supply restriction embedded in the regulatory code, not a market failure.
The California housing shortage is a zoning product. The majority of residential land in California cities is legally restricted to single-family construction. Apartments and multi-family buildings are illegal on most of it. The shortage is the legally mandated outcome of codes written by homeowners and enforced by the officials those homeowners elect. Subsidized affordable housing programs operate inside the same legal framework that makes the shortage permanent.
Certificate-of-need laws limit healthcare capacity by design. Most states with CON laws require any new healthcare facility to prove to a state board (often composed of existing healthcare providers) that its services are "needed." The standard result is denial. The market participant best positioned to testify that new capacity is unnecessary is the incumbent whose business model depends on limited competition.
Intellectual Property
Copyright term extensions benefit catalog holders, not creators. The 1976 and 1998 US copyright term extensions were passed when major rightsholders' most valuable properties were approaching the public domain. The claimed beneficiary is the original creator, who in most cases is dead. The actual beneficiary is the corporate successor holding the catalog. A law that extends protection when a corporation needs it to is not primarily a creator-protection mechanism.
Software patents on abstract methods function as market exclusion, not invention protection. A method "implemented on a computer" is not meaningfully different from the method itself. Granting a patent on it allows the holder to exclude others who independently arrive at the same method using their own tools. That is a barrier to entry, not a reward for invention.
Right-to-repair restrictions use copyright to eliminate property rights. The DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions apply to software embedded in physical products. Manufacturers use this to prevent owners from accessing diagnostic software in equipment they purchased outright. The property rights of the buyer are superseded by the IP rights of the manufacturer. The practical result is that ownership does not confer the right to repair what you own.
Cognitive Capture
A think tank that consistently supports positions favored by its funders is not doing independent research. The correlation between a policy organization's funding sources and its published conclusions is not incidental. Research that challenges a major funder's positions tends not to be published, promoted, or continued. Calling such output "research" rather than "sponsored positions" obscures the actual production process.
Regulatory agencies staffed from and returning to the industries they regulate are not independent of those industries. The personnel movement is not corruption in the legal sense. It is the structural relationship between regulators and regulated entities. An agency whose leadership comes from industry and whose alumni return to industry after government service will produce regulatory outcomes that reflect those relationships. This is normal operation, not an exception.
Academic consensus on policy questions is affected by funding, publication incentives, and which findings get promoted. This does not require coordination or conspiracy. It requires only that funded research tends to get done, findings that fit existing frameworks tend to get published, and publications that challenge major institutional funders tend to receive fewer citations, fewer follow-on grants, and fewer promotions for their authors.
Urban Planning
Minimum parking requirements subsidize car ownership at the expense of everyone who does not drive. A parking space adds roughly $20,000 to $50,000 to construction costs depending on structure type. Parking minimums require developers to build a fixed number of spaces per unit regardless of demand. The cost is passed to renters and buyers, including those who do not own cars. The subsidy to car ownership is embedded in the price of every unit that satisfies the minimum.
Car dependency is a policy output, not a market preference. US zoning laws mandate land uses that require car travel by separating residential areas from employment, retail, and services. The interstate highway system redistributed federal investment to suburban highway construction over transit alternatives. Urban neighborhoods were cleared for urban freeways. Transportation systems produced by these choices are cited as evidence of consumer preference. The preference expressed is for the least costly option available. Policy determined which options were least costly.
Technology and Sovereignty
Platform monopolies are partly maintained by legal structures, not only by network effects. The DMCA makes it a potential copyright liability to reproduce a platform's content protection system. Patent law allows platforms to patent methods of connecting users. Interoperability between competing platforms is legally risky in ways that have nothing to do with engineering difficulty. A competing platform can be built; the legal environment around the incumbent cannot be replicated from scratch.
Government reliance on proprietary software creates permanent vendor dependency. When government records are stored in a format controlled by a private vendor, the government cannot operate independently of that vendor's continued cooperation, pricing decisions, or existence. Open-source software is not a cost preference. It is the only arrangement under which a government retains sovereignty over its own records and processes.
Mandatory backdoors in encryption are incompatible with the security they claim to provide. End-to-end encryption protects against the access of third parties, including malicious actors and foreign governments. A backdoor accessible to a domestic government is a security vulnerability. No large-scale secret has remained so indefinitely. The choice is between communications that are secure against everyone or communications that are accessible to anyone who finds or obtains the key.
Electoral Systems
Ballot access requirements in most states are designed to exclude third-party and independent candidates. In California, a new party must collect signatures equal to 10% of voters in the previous gubernatorial election. Major parties do not face equivalent requirements. The requirements were established by major-party legislators, enforced by major-party election officials, and have been upheld by courts at every level. The system produces the party composition it was designed to produce.
Winner-take-all voting in single-member districts systematically underrepresents parties whose voters are geographically concentrated. Urban Democratic voters and rural Republican voters both lose representation relative to their vote share. Third parties lose almost entirely regardless of their geographic distribution. This outcome is a mathematical property of the voting method, not a reflection of ideological composition. It persists because it benefits the parties that write the rules.
Redistricting by incumbent legislators produces fewer competitive districts than randomized maps. Legislators drawing their own district lines have a direct financial interest in the outcome. The maps produced reliably favor incumbent parties. Independent redistricting commissions improve competitive outcomes. Legislators resist creating them. California's Citizens Redistricting Commission was suspended in 2025 by referendum. Both major parties supported the suspension.