Professor of International History, Boston University

Economy

Sovereignty Through Technology

A conversation with Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff on Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed

June 1, 2026 • by Ben Tarnoff, Quinn Slobodian and L. Zhang

If Fordism named the operating system of the twentieth-century economy, what governs the twenty-first? Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff—a historian of global capitalism and a technology writer respectively—suggest that the answer lies in Muskism. Their new book, Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed (Harper, 2026) is not so much an ...

Goldbugs

An excerpt from Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right

November 17, 2025 • by Quinn Slobodian

People make bad money, and that money makes bad people.— Peter Boehringer Monetary issues have long divided neoliberals. Can you trust a central bank to manage currency? Can the growth of the money supply be made automatic? Should fixed or floating rates reign in global currency markets? Must money be backed ...

Neoliberalism’s Populist Bastards

A new political divide between national economies

February 15, 2018 • by Quinn Slobodian

This year, attendees at the World Economic Forum might have breathed a sigh of relief, believing that immediate threats to their existence had passed. Yet members of the so-called populist right in Germany and Austria entered parliament after big wins in elections at the end of last year. Their victories ...