Untrustworthy
Timeless stories from our 174-year archive handpicked to add context to the news of the day.
Trust-Busters
[ O C T O B E R • 2 0 2 4 ]
Read Barry C. Lynn’s cover story on democracy’s last stand against Big Tech in our latest issue, then trust the Harper’s archive for more anti-trust history.
Read “The Antitrust Revolution”
[ S E P T E M B E R • 2 0 2 0 ]
Lynn’s take on how how Google, Amazon, and Facebook control our lives.
Read “The Big Tech Extortion Racket”
[ F E B R U A R Y • 2 0 1 2 ]
Lynn on the fear and loathing in Silicon Valley’s monopolies.
Read “Killing the Competition”
[ A U G U S T • 2 0 1 4 ]
Rebecca Solnit traces the tentacles of power from nineteenth-century robber barons to today’s tech tyrants.
Read “The Octopus and its Grandchildren”
[ J U L Y • 1 9 5 0 ]
“The effect of bigness on the consumer is not the only test. We also must measure when bigness gets so big as to endanger the structure of society.”
Read “How Big is Too Big?” by Peter Ferdinand Drucker
The Pager Detonations
[ O C T O B E R • 1 9 7 2 ]
“The frightening thing about the government’s rationale in support of its power to wiretap without a warrant was that it could equally be used to extend to other forms of obtaining ‘intelligence.’”
Read “Your Phone is a Party Line” by Ira Glasser
[ M A R C H • 2 0 2 4 ]
“Senior commanders broadcast the notion of ’netcentric warfare,’ and their aspirations found fruit in such projects as the Future Combat Systems program, which linked sensors and weapons via high-powered processors to strike targets so effortlessly that, or so its proponents claimed, it would no longer be necessary to install defensive armor on tanks.”
Read “The Pentagon’s Silicon Valley Problem” by Andrew Cockburn
[ M A R C H • 2 0 0 7 ]
Context on conflicts in Lebanon.
Read “The Lord of No Man’s Land” by Charles Glass
Uninterested
[ A P R I L • 2 0 2 0 ]
Reservations re: the Federal Reserve.
Read “The Money Question” by Christopher W. Shaw
[ A P R I L • 2 0 0 9 ]
How unlimited interest rates destroyed the economy.
Read “Infinite Debt” by Thomas Geoghegan
[ J A N U A R Y • 1 9 7 5 ]
Borrowing trouble: “a matter of consuming interest.”
Read “How Banks Destroy the Economy” by Martin Mayer
Consider the Hippopotamus
[ J U N E • 2 0 1 2 ]
Nature vs. nurture: on zoos.
Read “Wild Things” by David Samuels
[ A P R I L • 1 8 7 9 ]
“Should any purist object to the word ‘zoo’ for ‘zoological garden,’ he must be reminded of the folly of resisting the popular will, or even a popular whim.”
Read “The Philadelphia Zoo” by Marie Stevens Howland
[ N O V E M B E R • 1 9 2 1 ]
“My doom was come upon me. I rose. The hippopotamus snored on.”
Read “Who Let In the Hippopotamus?” by Grace Hodson Boutelle