iRobot, the Massachusetts-based maker of the Roomba robot vacuum, has filed for bankruptcy. While competition from newer, innovative rivals played a role, iRobot’s collapse cannot be understood without examining the role of regulators and politicians who blocked the company’s best chance to survive. As Market Institute Senior Fellow Norm Singleton Read more…
New York City voters didn’t just elect a self-proclaimed democratic socialist mayor — they handed the keys to the transition team to someone whose regulatory philosophy has already reshaped Washington: former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan. During her tenure, Khan oversaw what CNBC’s Jim Cramer called a “one Read more…
California Governor Gavin Newsom, often floated as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, recently vetoed SB-771 — a bill that would have made social media platforms legally liable for “recklessly” allowing so-called hate speech to appear on their sites. As Charles Sauer writes, the measure “would hold social media companies liable Read more…
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Andrew Ferguson may not always align perfectly with free-market principles, but his recent defense of American businesses and consumers against the European Union’s regulatory overreach deserves praise. As Norm Singleton writes in RealClearMarkets, Ferguson’s actions mark a welcome shift from his predecessor Lina Khan—who “assisted Read more…
In a recent RealClearMarkets column, Market Institute Senior Fellow Norm Singleton draws a sharp historical parallel between the government’s decades-long antitrust crusade against IBM and today’s efforts to “break up” Google. In 1969, the U.S. government sued International Business Machines (IBM), then the world’s largest corporation, for antitrust violations. The Read more…
In a recent Townhall column, Market Institute President Charles Sauer warns that the Biden administration is slowing down innovation in rail safety by stalling the approval of Automatic Track Inspections (ATI). These systems, Sauer writes, “harness advanced sensors and data analytics to scan tracks with greater frequency and precision than Read more…
One of the reasons Amazon remains the world’s leading online retailer is its Amazon Prime service. Created in 2005, Prime began by offering free two-day shipping. Today, it has approximately 240 million members worldwide—180 million of them in the U.S.—who enjoy free one- or same-day delivery, access to streaming music Read more…
One of the Progressive Era’s so-called innovations was the creation of “independent federal agencies.” As Market Institute Senior Fellow Norm Singleton explains in a recent piece for RealClearMarkets, these agencies have the power to write regulations, enforce them, and then adjudicate alleged violations in administrative courts — combining legislative, executive, Read more…
The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) recently called on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate whether the Biden Administration’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention worked with anti-Second Amendment groups to pressure the FTC into cracking down on firearm advertising. As Market Institute President Charles Sauer explains in RealClearMarkets, the Read more…
On August 13, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order repealing Joe Biden’s July 2021 directive on “Promoting Competition in the American Economy.” That Biden-era order empowered Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Jonathan Kanter at the Department of Justice (DOJ) to expand government control over Read more…