Under Construction

Fundamentally, I’m committed to human excellence and prosperity. Technology and markets can empower humanity, extend our healthy life years, and solve some of our fundamental problems, but only if we are smart about it. My research primarily focuses on:

Artificial intelligence public policy and the economics of automation;
Vetocracy, good governance, and project management; and
Attention markets and digital competition.

I’ve also recently written policy papers on regulation of over-the-counter COVID tests and other commercial diagnostic kits; the constitutional and legal challenges of regulating TikTok; and the efficacy of municipal broadband projects.

Artificial Intelligence and Automation

Artificial intelligence is a topic I’ve been covering for over a decade but recently it has come to dominate my research. My writing covers topics such as:

If we want to understand how AI technology is likely to progress, how it will affect workers, and how it might impact productivity, we should be focused on understanding its interdependencies. In other words, “To Understand AI Adoption, Focus on the Interdependencies.” But that’s not all, Should robots be taxed? May you live in interesting times, or just another AI hype cycle

Vetocracy, Good Governance, and Bureaucratic Reform

The United States is increasingly becoming a vetocracy, a system ruled by excessive veto power. Vetocracy has paralyzed decision-making at every level, frustrating efforts to build homes, nuclear power plants, solar and wind projects, add new hospital beds, lay railroad tracks, and start businesses. I’ve collected the evidence here. San Francisco is what happens when vetocracy comes to dominate a city. And I’m convinced the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Helene in Asheville were worsened because NEPA was used to stop a dam project in the 1970s. But the answer isn’t degrowth. While I am not completely wedded to the concept of the abundance agenda, it is a useful framing for what needs to be achieved. We should focus on economic growth. We need to go faster.

Regulatory notes and fiscal note reform; How to reverse the vetocracy; A reading list to understand bureaucracy, The costs of CEQA.

The Attention Economy and Digital Competition

Another major throughline of my research explores the rise of digital platforms and the public policy surrounding these tech giants. My piece titled “The attention economy: a history of the term, its economics, its value, and how it is changing politics” provides the intellectual basis for my work on digital competition. I’m also interested in phenomena like the majority illusion, which explains how a loud, small, partisan minority can disproportionately shape online narratives. I’m convinced that wokeness got its trial run on Tumblr and the Cambridge Analytica scandal was overplayed. I’ve also analyzed the hidden costs of privacy legislation.

I tend to think there is an overemphasis on what Schudson calls the informed citizen theory of democracy, which I tried to lay out in a series of posts at Cato Unbound, including “Fake News and Our Real Problems,” “Democracy as an Essentially Contested Concept,” and “Technologies of Freedom.”

Others: Making sense of content moderation, some foundations, Zuboff’s definition of surveillance capitalism commits a category error, From my recent CSPAN appearance: We need technological atonement, Notes on McLuhan’s The Gutenberg Galaxy, Social media research, a constantly updating bibliography; When an online community migrates; Musk wants to make Twitter open source. What does that mean?, MrBeast confirms the importance of Buchanan’s “Order Defined in the Process of its Emergence”; Every way of seeing (like a platform) is also a way of not seeing, There might be too much advertising, but not for the reasons you think, Inequality in the attention economy. Practical Problems with Regulating Tech in the Public Interest

Everything Else

I’m also interested in the concept of time, the perils and promise of geoengineering; King Tut’s meteorite dagger; how real options analysis could help improve regulatory decisions, heuristics guiding my research into politics and policy, broadband buildout, and the moving goal posts of the net neutrality debate.

Space Policy and Economics

I have also become increasingly fascinated with the management of large government projects, especially those at NASA. My recent article on the cost overruns of NASA’s VIPER project is one part of this research stream but I’m also finishing papers on the management lessons from Apollo and cost overruns in the James Webb Space Telescope. Notes on space capitalism, A list of space and defense projects

Broadband and Internet Infrastructure

The rural broadband penalty Estimates of broadband deployment costs Is Internet access like electricity? (Is Internet access a general purpose technology?), A compilation of my recent broadband work and broadband maps!, Where broadband likely exists in the United States; an estimation of the broadband gap using logit models, Is cost stopping people from getting online?; Is Internet Access a Right?

In various places, I have written about the history of media regulation. In “The Real History of Title II and Investment,” I wrote a section on the history and investments made during the Dotcom Bubble.

My Substack is called Exformation. It’s where I send updates on my work and publish personal essays. The blog on this site serves as a scratchpad to work out ideas before publishing them. My publications page lists of all my work, op-eds, essays. All of my media appearances can be found here. You can find my bio and more information about me here.

For my research fellows, I created a syllabus of key texts for tech policy, as well as a public policy cheatsheet. If you’re interested in housing policy, I put together a housing and urbanism FAQ. For economists using ChatGPT, check out my prompts. For a full list of datasets, resources, technical manuals, and the like, check out my commonplace. I’m also constantly updating my working bibliographies on social media research, philosophy of technology, and theorems of cognition.

Some other works: Neoliberalism in the university: why the Marxists don’t take the analysis far enough, Instead of being eradicated, should mosquitoes be vaccinated?, What does it mean if the FDA made aging a disease?

Will Rinehart

Research