One of the fundamental critiques against twentieth century experiments in central economic planning, and the main reason for their failures, was the inability of humandirected planning systems to manage the data gathering, analysis, computation, and control necessary to direct the vast complexity of production, allocation, and exchange decisions that make up a modern economy. Rapid recent advances in AI, data, and related technological capabilities have re-opened that old question, and provoked vigorous speculation about the feasibility, benefits, and threats of an AI-directed economy. This paper presents a thought experiment about how this might work, based on assuming a powerful AI agent (whimsically named “Max”) with no binding computational or algorithmic limits on its (his) ability to do the task. The paper’s novel contribution is to make this hitherto under-specified question more concrete and specific. It reasons concretely through how such a system might work under explicit assumptions about contextual conditions; what benefits it might offer relative to present market and mixed-market arrangements; what novel requirements or constraints it would present; what threats and challenges it would pose, and how it inflects long-standing understandings of foundational questions about state, society, and human liberty.

As with smaller-scale regulatory interventions, the concrete implementation of comprehensive central planning can be abstracted as intervening via controlling either quantities or prices. The paper argues that quantity-based approaches would be fundamentally impaired by problems of principal-agent relations and incentives, which hobbled historical planning systems and would persist under arbitrary computational advances. Price-based approaches, as proposed by Oskar Lange, do not necessarily suffer from the same disabilities. More promising than either, however, would be a variant in which Max manages a comprehensive system of price modifications added to emergent market outcomes, equivalent to a comprehensive economy-wide system of Pigovian taxes and subsidies. Such a system, “Pigovian Max,” could in principle realize the information efficiency benefits and liberty interests of decentralized market outcomes, while also comprehensively correcting externalities and controlling inefficient concentration of market power and associated rent-seeking behavior. It could also, under certain additional assumptions, offer the prospect of taxation without deadweight loss, by taking all taxes from inframarginal rents.

Having outlined the basic approach and these potential benefits, the paper discusses several challenges and potential risks presented by such a system. These include Max’s need for data and the potential costs of providing it; the granularity or aggregation of Max’s determinations; the problem of maintaining variety and innovation in an economy directed by Max; the implications of Max for the welfare of human workers, the meaning and extent of property rights, and associated liberty interests; the definition of social welfare that determines Max’s objective function, its compatibility with democratic control, and the resultant stability of the boundary between the state and the economy; and finally, the relationship of Max to AI-enabled trends already underway, with implications for the feasibility of Max being developed and adopted, and the associated risks. In view of the depth and difficulty of these questions, the discussion of each is necessarily preliminary and speculative.

Continued failure to limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are causing global climate change has brought increased attention to climate engineering (CE) technologies, which actively modify the global environment to counteract heating and climate disruptions caused by elevated greenhouse gases. Some proposed forms of CE, particularly spraying reflective particles in the upper atmosphere to reduce incoming sunlight, can cool the average temperature of the Earth rapidly and cheaply, thereby substantially reducing climate-related risks. Yet CE interventions provide only imperfect corrections for the climatic and other environmental effects of elevated greenhouse gases, and carry their own environmental risks. Moreover, they may also increase risks, by weakening political support for essential emission reductions or providing new triggers for international conflict. These technologies thus require international governance, but also pose novel and severe challenges to current international laws and institutions. Effective governance of CE will require a capacity to make decisions regarding the conditions, if any, under which specific interventions are authorized, plus real-time operational oversight of any interventions that are conducted. Decision processes must be effectively linked with scientific research and assessment, and with institutions to manage and respond to threats of CE-related conflict. We advance preliminary suggestions to address two priority areas for early investigation: how international cooperation on early CE research can help develop shared norms that can grow robust enough to support future decision needs; and how early research and development on CE can be made to complement and encourage, rather than undermining, parallel efforts to reduce climate risks by cutting emissions.

Global climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic recession, and social and racial unrest have tested conventional thinking about environmental health, economies, governance, and socio-cultural relations in the State of New York. This thesis questions whether proposed and implemented responses are sustainable through a desk-review case study analysis of global, unintended tertiary consequences. The introduction foregrounds problems to consider as the state transitions to a new normal. It does so by problematizing the Executive Order, New York Forward: A Guide to Reopening New York & Building Back Better. From there, it proceeds to introduce the methodology behind anticipating and identifying global, unintended tertiary consequences, with a focus on the Congo Basin and the Democratic Republic of Congo as the situated region and nation of Analysis. Thereafter is a description of the results, followed by a discussion on New York State Consolidated Law and sustainable business and consumer cultures. Last, a conclusion that summarizes the broader implications of the research. Overall, this thesis advances the need to study and problematize the application of epistemological framings undergirding newer forms of state governance, social mobilization, and capitalism. For, theory and praxis do not always marry.

California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) is an ambitious, innovative, and controversial policy that controls greenhouse-gas emissions associated with transport fuels – a large emissions source mostly neglected by prior climate policies, with unique technical challenges of uncertainty, long time-horizons, and network effects, that hinder its response to economy-wide emissions-pricing policies. The LCFS was introduced in 2011 as one measure to pursue the goal of California's landmark 2006 climate law, returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. LCFS regulations were revised in 2015 and further changes are now proposed for 2019, under a new statutory target for state emissions 40 percent below 1990 by 2030.

Now in effect for seven years, the LCFS is a major element of California's climate policy. It has survived early legal challenges suffering only some implementation delays, and has generated large expansions of alternative fuel supply and significant reductions in overall carbon intensity in California's fuel markets. Yet the policy remains controversial and faces continuing legal challenges and policy critiques of its effectiveness, cost, and legality.

This paper provides a critical review of the LCFS, particularly regarding challenges likely to arise in pursuing deeper cuts after 2020. It is based in part on discussions at a 2015 workshop held at the Emmett Institute at UCLA School of Law, which sought to bring the LCFS to broader attention among environmental law scholars and identify key legal and policy design challenges moving forward. The paper draws on the workshop's background paper and discussions, but is substantially extended based on more recent developments and further research.