This was a deeply fascinating book that provided important context on how our work has been influenced and subjugated by companies and predatory policies designed to perpetuate the capitalistic ideal and the class structures found in our society today. If you are interested in how we got to where we are today, this book is for you. 4/5 Stars

This book was incredibly interesting. I feel like I learned a lot even though I feel like this space in the book world can be pretty saturated. I loved it.

Tyranny Inc was an illuminating and infuriating read about the ways in which private tyranny, as referred to by the author, oppresses the working class.

In order to illustrate his point Sohrab Ahmari provides examples such as J&J declaring bankruptcy in order to avoid litigation, and the privatization of emergency services that result in people incurring more costs at their own expense.

I like the way in which the author structured the book. As someone who is not an expert on this topic and primarily a fiction reader , the points were easy to understand. I do wish the points were elaborated on or that foot notes were included for us to peruse at our own time.


Thank you Netgalley and Convergent Books, Forum Books for an advanced reader copy.

Tyranny, Inc, by Sohrab Ahmari, has a simple and evident premise: our politicians have allowed for a complete corporate takeover of our American society, leaving the poor, working, and middle classes "isolated and powerless." This is certainly not a revolutionary concept (though that very well may be a solution to the problem he's outlined). What is interesting about this book, however, is the papertrail that he goes to great lengths to lay out. This is a "receipts book", meaning, a book that lays out the whos and the whats and the hows, which is, at this point, the most important work to do. Who has helped to contribute to such a disparity of power and wealth? By what means? And to what end? But most importantly - what to do about it?

Anyone who's interested in the current political dystopia in which we find ourselves should read this book.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the digital review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

For the past two years, two surprising words have characterized the post-pandemic recovery across the United States: “Now hiring.”

Seemingly every coffee stand, auto body shop, restaurant, school, police station and shipping company is looking for warm bodies. Even the toy company Mattel is looking for a “Chief Uno Player.”

And this growth has benefitted those who often get left behind. Since the beginning of 2021, workers without a college degree have seen faster wage growth than those with an associate or bachelor’s degree, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Earlier this year, the unemployment rate for Black workers reached its lowest rate in at least a half-century.

The strong job market does make the Federal Reserve’s ongoing effort to bring inflation back under control a little trickier. But as a new book by the provocative writer Sohrab Ahmari underscores, that’s a good problem to have. Giving more bargaining power to workers is an essential part of what makes capitalism work. And this realization means that any self-described party of the working class must learn to embrace the beauty of tight labor markets.

The founder of a new journal aimed at envisioning “a strong social-democratic state that defends community,” Ahmari’s “Tyranny, Inc.” attempts to mount that defense of community against what he sees as the oppressive hand of corporate America.

Classical definitions of tyranny, like Aristotle’s, have stressed the danger of “any sole ruler … who rules over subjects all equal or superior to himself to suit his own interest and not theirs.” Most modern political theory tends to see the state, with its monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, as the most likely institution to fall into some form of autocracy.

But Ahmari sees a similarly oppressive hand dictating the lives and livelihoods of workers across the income spectrum. “Coercion,” he writes, “is far more widespread in supposedly noncoercive societies than we would like to think — provided we pay attention to private power.”

Of course, there is already a political movement whose primary aim is to curb the power of corporations and bolster traditional worker organizations like labor unions. Historically, it’s been found within the Democratic Party.

And read in isolation, “Tyranny, Inc.” might strike the naïve reader as fitting into the long tradition of leftist provocations against corporations using their market power to enforce cultural conformity and prioritize efficiency over all other goods. If you don’t like Amazon’s terms of service, some may initially think, just turn off your Alexa.

But Ahmari is at his most effective when he takes a page from the late liberal journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, uncovering stories of workers treated unfairly, the Kafkaesque process of private arbitration that too often stacks the deck in favor of corporate interests, and what happens when the search for a return on investment outweighs any sense of fidelity to the common good. (If you, like many, were disgusted by college football allowing the pursuit of TV money to destroy centuries-old rivalries, you’ll thrill to Ahmari’s critique of private equity funds doing the same to storied brands like Sears.)

As the GOP increasingly becomes the party of the working class, it could find common ground with the left on issues such as curbing noncompete agreements and curtailing so-called just-in-time scheduling that leaves too many workers at the mercy of their employer’s algorithms (Oregon became the first state to ban the practice in 2018).

Conventional Republican orthodoxy has favored policies that tend toward lower labor costs for employers. But as the parties realign along educational grounds, and tight labor markets mean firms must now compete for workers, these types of reforms might get a new hearing.

Gov. Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland, required that the state get rid of requirements that discriminated against job-seekers without a traditional four-year degree; Democratic governors in Colorado and Pennsylvania took similar action. And as the past two years have indicated, the power of a labor market in which employers are desperate for workers can in and of itself curb some of the abuses and indignities that characterized low-wage employment for most of the past two decades.

And the rethinking of economic policy should include how Republicans see the Federal Reserve as well. The booming economy of President Donald Trump’s (pre-COVID-19) time in office was due in no small part to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell allowing interest rates to rest below what many conventional Republicans thought was appropriate. This allowed the economy to run “hot,” encouraging business owners to invest in hiring and expanding job creation. Updating GOP orthodoxy on monetary policy could be immensely pro-worker.

Just this past week, for example, the Teamsters and UPS reached an agreement that will bring the average salary and benefits for a full-time delivery driver to $170,000 annually by the end of their recently-negotiated contract. Tight labor markets aren’t a panacea, but they are necessary to ensure that both employees and employers have credibility at the bargaining table.

A pro-worker political agenda would encourage appropriately aggressive fiscal policy while seeking to build the country’s economic capacity through supply-side reforms. That type of conservative economic policy wouldn’t necessitate the full legal and regulatory revolution Ahmari suggests in “Tyranny, Inc.” but would adopt the type of pro-worker mentality for which the author advocates. Like other heterodox writers, such as Michael Lind and Oren Cass, Ahmari would like to see populist-leaning Republicans to rethink their reflexive positions in favor of policies friendlier to the changing face of the GOP. And their voters may like to see that as well.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

Sohrab Ahmari, an op-ed editor for the New York Post, details how corporate America has transitioned to a more controlling way of doing business or what the author calls "private tyranny". This rings especially true with a corporation's employees, essentially creating means by which an employee will experience more hardship if they decide to leave because they exercised their liberties or by declaring bankruptcy to avoid paying out a former employee that has sued them. Ahmari shows how this has affected various industries, including retail and local fire departments, and how we've gotten to the point where employers have exercised this control.

I thought that the information laid out in this book was well-researched. There were many supporting examples that Ahmari used throughout that drove his point home that I appreciated. That being said, I did think that some of the points in the first part of the book were slightly redundant. It felt as if the same point was being written in five different ways and it was frustrating and slightly boring to read. I also didn't think the points that he made in the book were that groundbreaking.

I understand that Ahmari is a reporter and that he is just reporting his findings. However, I wish he detailed some ways in which we can change the dynamic he describes in the book. The description of this book states that "ordinary Americans can fight back", but I didn't really get that reading this.

While informative, I wanted more from this book. I hope that if the author decides to republish this book, there are more instances of cause-and-effect and methods that we can alter the way corporate America operates in the future. It could have more of an impact on me.

An excellent and timely intervention into conversations about the sources of tyranny. It will be quite interesting to see how Ahmari's conservative audience tackles his treatment and criticisms of market utopianism.