Barry C. Lynn

Barry Lynn
Barry Lynn at a New America symposium.
Born Miami, Florida
Alma mater Columbia College, Columbia University
Occupation Journalist, writer

Barry C. Lynn is an American journalist and writer. He was a senior fellow at the New America Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C., directing the Open Markets Program. The program was shut down, allegedly for criticizing Google, one of New America's chief funders.[1] He has written extensively on globalization, economics, and politics for such publications ranging from The Financial Times and Forbes to Mother Jones and the Harvard Business Review.[2]

Biography

Lynn was born in Miami, and is a graduate of Columbia University. He has been a reporter for the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse and worked as a correspondent in Peru, Venezuela, and the Caribbean. Prior to joining New America in 2001, he was the executive editor of Global Business, a monthly magazine targeted at the managers of multi-national enterprises.[2] He has also worked in factories, construction, landscaping, retail, furniture moving, and as a truck driver. He lives in Washington with his wife and two sons.

Work

Lynn has written extensively on the risks of unfettered globalization and industrial interdependence. In End of the Line he examines how a deeply interconnected global industrial system undermines safety and freedom. His work shows how the relentless quest for efficiency, and practices like outsourcing to a single factory and “just-in-time” production, create an increasingly fragile system, where one isolated shock can crash entire industries. His thesis prefigured later attention given to supply chain disruptions, most recently prompted by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan and floods in Thailand.

Lynn’s work also focuses on the effects of extreme concentration of political economic power. In Cornered he documents how radical consolidation has birthed present day monopolies that dominate and control virtually every major industry in America. Through reporting the experience of people and small businesses, he argues that these new monopolies are squelching innovation, degrading product quality and safety, and destabilizing vital industrial and financial systems. His work shows how from the American Revolution to the Second New Deal, Americans have traditionally resisted concentration of power and understood that its distribution is critical for freedom and democracy. He argues that the US must revive its antitrust laws to recover real open markets, resilient systems, and liberty.

He was a senior fellow at the New America Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C., where he directed the Open Markets Program.

In August 2017, Lynn was fired and the Open Markets Program terminated by Anne-Marie Slaughter, the President and CEO of New America Foundation. The New York Times revealed that pressure from Google led to his ousting.[3] The emails sent by Slaughter "clearly show the influence that Google wields over New America’s operations,” stated the Open Markets team in a statement provided to The Intercept.[4] A collective letter signed by 25 New America’s former and current fellows, including prominent journalists such as George Packer of The New Yorker and notable scholars such as Evgeny Morozov of Harvard University was delivered to Anne-Marie Slaughter and New America’s directors. The letter highlighted that the handling of the situation by Slaughter has damaged the think tank’s reputation.[5][6]

Lynn has moved the team of researchers and advocates that had been with him at New America, and has created an independent nonprofit organization, the Open Markets Institute.[7][8]

Publications

Books

  • Barry C. Lynn, End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation, New York, Doubleday, 2005 ISBN 0-385-51024-1
  • Barry C. Lynn, Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, Hoboken, John Wiley & Sons, 2010 ISBN 0-470-18638-0

Articles

References

  1. ↑ David Weigel (September 4, 2017). "Breaking from tech giants, Democrats consider becoming an antimonopoly party". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on September 5, 2017. Retrieved September 5, 2017. “Google was Obama’s Halliburton,” said Luther Lowe, the vice president of public policy at Yelp.
  2. 1 2 "Barry C. Lynn Bio at New America". Archived from the original on December 28, 2014. Retrieved September 2, 2017.
  3. ↑ Vogel, Kenneth (August 30, 2017). "Google Critic Ousted From Think Tank Funded by the Tech Giant". The New York Times. Retrieved August 30, 2017.
  4. ↑ Dayen, David (September 1, 2017). "New Think Tank Emails Show "How Google Wields its Power" in Washington". The Intercept. Retrieved September 2, 2017.
  5. ↑ Vogel, Kenneth (September 1, 2017). "New America, a Google-Funded Think Tank, Faces Backlash for Firing a Google Critic". The New York Times. Retrieved September 8, 2017.
  6. ↑ Kuwin, Noah (September 5, 2017). "Google critic's firing sparks backlash within New America ranks". Vice News. Retrieved September 8, 2017.
  7. ↑ "Tell Google: Stop Killing Monopoly Research". www.citizensagainstmonopoly.org. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  8. ↑ Vinik, Danny. "Inside the new battle against Google". Politico. Retrieved September 17, 2017.
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