Although James Ely’s Railroads and American Law (2001) examines the era of the locomotive, not Linux, its lessons for policymakers in the wired economy are significant. Whatever looks new in the past two decades—bubbles, busts, merger manias, managerial malfeasance, fights over network standards, imported labor, intellectual property, and hype—the railroads had in abundance.

Andrew R. Rutten is a former Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University.
Banking and FinanceBusiness and EntrepreneurshipEconomyTelecom and Internet Policy
Other Independent Review articles by Andrew R. Rutten
Fall 2006 Politics in Time
Summer 2001 Rethinking the New Deal Court: The Structure of a Constitutional Revolution
Spring 1999 Can Anarchy Save Us from Leviathan?
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