Max Gulker
Senior Policy Analyst
Max Gulker is a former Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. He is currently a Senior Fellow with the Reason Foundation. At AIER his research focused on two main areas: policy and technology. On the policy side, Gulker looked at how issues like poverty and access to education can be addressed with voluntary, decentralized approaches that don’t interfere with free markets. On technology, Gulker was interested in emerging fields like blockchain and cryptocurrencies, competitive issues raised by tech giants such as Facebook and Google, and the sharing economy.
Gulker frequently appears at conferences, on podcasts, and on television. Gulker holds a PhD in economics from Stanford University and a BA in economics from the University of Michigan. Prior to AIER, Max spent time in the private sector, consulting with large technology and financial firms on antitrust and other litigation. Follow @maxg_econ.
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Micromanaged Business Reopenings Could Cause More Harm
“In attempting to convey that the adults in the room have spent a long time thinking about this difficult issue, Massachusetts instead exposes just how little regulators’ blunt instruments can possibly add.” ~ Max Gulker
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Reflections on the Economic Value of Life
When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said any efforts were worth it to save just one life, it likely came from a place of human decency, but it revealed an old moral compass that in a post-industrial, post-modern medicine world no longer makes sense.
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Bitcoin’s Disappointing Performance Shows Why Having a Good Product Is Not Enough
Developers, miners, and other players in the Bitcoin community should not let the next opportunity to make the blockchain-based currency useful pass. Bitcoin can’t be the asset many of its developers want it to be without incentivizing the type of curiosity needed to change deeply held beliefs.
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Medical-Supply Nationalism Is Deeply Harmful, Even Deadly
When there is a shortage of medical supplies, going out of our way to make them more expensive will hurt people. These are also not perishable goods – stockpiling them from efficient sources to be deployed in a future crisis seems like a safer bet than shiny new idle factories waiting to ramp up production…
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Warren Got Specific, and Everything Fell Apart
Her approach took the centrist consensus of the last couple generations to a logical limit only a lawyer could find and ended up with something not that far from Sanders’ socialism.
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Why We Must Keep Section 230 and Pay the High Cost of Free Speech Online
One can’t pretend the internet hasn’t made the dark side of free speech more dangerous. But rather than a censor, it’s time for a gut check.
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•
Helping San Francisco’s Homeless One Individual at a Time
“Something must be done about the homeless.” That refrain seems to be the only thing people agree upon with respect to San Francisco’s tragic and intractable homelessness crisis. The city has lurched between the progressive and sometimes tolerant-to-a-fault policies for which it is known and periods of what reads and looks like urban warfare, encampments…
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The Surreal Logic of Trump’s Trade Deal
President Donald Trump’s tariffs-first trade policy against China has unequivocally harmed the majority of people and businesses in both countries since its inception just under two years ago. There’s the estimated $46 billion in new taxes directly paid by American businesses importing Chinese products, despite the president’s Twitter admonitions that the Chinese were paying the…
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What If There Was No Legal Smoking Age?
Whether government-mandated or left in the hands of individuals, tobacco use will lead some to tragic consequences. Kids will get cigarettes either way, and adults will try and fail to stop.
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•
Private Governance, Not State Capacity
Economist Tyler Cowen has released a provocative essay with, I hope, the opposite of its intended impact. State Capacity Libertarianism, which he deems the only “smart” path for libertarians and classical liberals, is as conventional in its thinking as it is strangely named. At first blush his eleven-point description sounds like something that would have…
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•
Micromanaged Business Reopenings Could Cause More Harm
“In attempting to convey that the adults in the room have spent a long time thinking about this difficult issue, Massachusetts instead exposes just how little regulators’ blunt instruments can possibly add.” ~ Max Gulker
-
•
Reflections on the Economic Value of Life
When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said any efforts were worth it to save just one life, it likely came from a place of human decency, but it revealed an old moral compass that in a post-industrial, post-modern medicine world no longer makes sense.
-
•
Bitcoin’s Disappointing Performance Shows Why Having a Good Product Is Not Enough
Developers, miners, and other players in the Bitcoin community should not let the next opportunity to make the blockchain-based currency useful pass. Bitcoin can’t be the asset many of its developers want it to be without incentivizing the type of curiosity needed to change deeply held beliefs.
-
•
Medical-Supply Nationalism Is Deeply Harmful, Even Deadly
When there is a shortage of medical supplies, going out of our way to make them more expensive will hurt people. These are also not perishable goods – stockpiling them from efficient sources to be deployed in a future crisis seems like a safer bet than shiny new idle factories waiting to ramp up production…
-
•
Warren Got Specific, and Everything Fell Apart
Her approach took the centrist consensus of the last couple generations to a logical limit only a lawyer could find and ended up with something not that far from Sanders’ socialism.
-
•
Why We Must Keep Section 230 and Pay the High Cost of Free Speech Online
One can’t pretend the internet hasn’t made the dark side of free speech more dangerous. But rather than a censor, it’s time for a gut check.
-
•
Helping San Francisco’s Homeless One Individual at a Time
“Something must be done about the homeless.” That refrain seems to be the only thing people agree upon with respect to San Francisco’s tragic and intractable homelessness crisis. The city has lurched between the progressive and sometimes tolerant-to-a-fault policies for which it is known and periods of what reads and looks like urban warfare, encampments…
-
•
The Surreal Logic of Trump’s Trade Deal
President Donald Trump’s tariffs-first trade policy against China has unequivocally harmed the majority of people and businesses in both countries since its inception just under two years ago. There’s the estimated $46 billion in new taxes directly paid by American businesses importing Chinese products, despite the president’s Twitter admonitions that the Chinese were paying the…
-
•
What If There Was No Legal Smoking Age?
Whether government-mandated or left in the hands of individuals, tobacco use will lead some to tragic consequences. Kids will get cigarettes either way, and adults will try and fail to stop.
-
•
Private Governance, Not State Capacity
Economist Tyler Cowen has released a provocative essay with, I hope, the opposite of its intended impact. State Capacity Libertarianism, which he deems the only “smart” path for libertarians and classical liberals, is as conventional in its thinking as it is strangely named. At first blush his eleven-point description sounds like something that would have…