Tyranny, Inc.

How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—and What to Do About It

By: Sohrab Ahmari

Narrated by: Sohrab Ahmari

The inside story of how our political class enabled an era of unaccountable corporate might that left ordinary Americans isolated and powerless—and how we can fight back—from the acclaimed author of The Unbroken Thread

“In Tyranny, Inc., Sohrab Ahmari, one of the leading thinkers of our time, alerts us to one of the greatest threats to freedom.”—Michael Lind, author of The New Class War and Hell to Pay

Over the past two generations, U.S. leaders deregulated big business on the faith that it would yield a better economy and a freer society. But the opposite happened. Americans lost stable, well-paying jobs, Wall Street dominated industry to the detriment of the middle class and local communities, and corporations began to subject us to total surveillance, even dictating what we are, and aren’t, allowed to think. The corporate titans and mega-donors who aligned themselves with this vision knew exactly what they were getting: perfect conditions for what Sohrab Ahmari calls “private tyranny”.

Drawing on original reporting and a growing chorus of experts who are sounding the alarm, Ahmari chronicles how private tyranny has eroded America’s productive economy and the liberties we take for granted—from employment agreements that gag whistleblowers, to Big Finance’s takeover of local fire departments, to the rigging of corporate bankruptcy to deny justice to workers and consumers—illuminating how these and other developments have left millions feeling that our livelihoods are insecure. And he shows how ordinary Americans can fight back, by restoring the economic democracy that empowered and uplifted millions of working-class people in the twentieth century.

Provocative, original, and cutting across partisan lines, Tyranny, Inc. is a revelatory book on the most important political story of our time.

©2023 Sohrab Ahmari (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Compelling as a work of narrative journalism.” —The Washington Post

“Tyranny, Inc. is a book . . . in the pessimistic spirit of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed.” —Ross Douthat, The New York Times

“[Ahmari] is a deft storyteller. . . . He highlights genuine injustices, such as the way some firms abuse gag clauses, non-compete agreements, and the arbitration process.” —The Economist

A Triumph!

A road map to a realistic bi-partisan working class politics. Excellent from beginning to end. Take care of yourself, take care of each other, solidarity forever.

An excellent perspective

We all have the responsibility to be aware of how stratified Tyranny is…from the bully on the playground to our highest elected officials.

Doesn't address the whole picture

Basically, more unions and New Deal again. Doesn't address the flaws in unions (like how they can sometimes work against the interests of the workers), nor what he claims are flaws in ND. What are the imperfections? Also, how would a union address the JJ issue? it seems like he had a lot of ideas of what is wrong but had no idea of what to do right. it may have been better if he went more in depth on common good

Gravely disappointing

I was eagerly anticipating this book after having listened to The Unbroken Thread, in which Mr. Ahmari stresses that people need to have the good, the true, and the beautiful in their lives. My hope was that this book would continue that theme in demonstrating how commercial enterprises do their level best to marginalize the transcendentals.

Nope. This was just a tendentious cavalcade of leftist tropes that could have been written, if not as well, by the machines of Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, or any number of their fellow travelers. There were only passing mentions to serious problems like censorship by big tech. There were also glaring inconsistencies. For example the author decried government employee pension plans investing in private firms that could end up eliminating government jobs, but savaged a private sector employer for supporting a politician whose opponent aims to literally destroy that employer's industry. Perhaps even worse was his disingenuous take on the Johnson & Johnson reverse merger. To be sure i find J&J to be reprehensible for their role in eugenics, but that's not related what the author was criticizing. He cited J&J's market capitalization, but blithely ignored the fact that the average per capita settlement for the talcum plaintiffs multiplied by the number of plaintiffs already identified exceeded that amount.

Poorly Thought-Out Solutions to a Serious Problem

I really wanted to like this book. The first few chapters of the book are good. In these chapters the author details the economic and social tyrannical power that modern corporations exert and abuse against largely defenseless individuals, usually employees, but also consumers and contractors. 

After this, the author indulges himself in a lengthy and tiresome tirade of nearly conspiracy-theorist-level confirmation bias to twist everything to pin it on his chosen bogeyman: neoliberalism in general, and Hayek in particular. Even though the author mentions causes for this corporate tyranny that long predate the invention of neoliberalism, his hatred for Hayek seems to prevent him from connecting the dots. While the author usefully cites Lincoln's conception of free labor, with its notion that being an employee would be for most people a temporary situation, he misses the elephant in the room: that our political foundations envisioned a society of farmers, craftsmen, and small businesses, not our modern situation where only a privileged few could ever work for themselves. 

The author usefully points out how political action in the first half of the 20th century successfully curbed some of the tyrannical power of corporations and how political action is again needed now. Unfortunately, he is attached to some solutions, such as labor unions, that turned out not only to create new problems, but to be catastrophic for labor when exposed to global markets. About these issues, the author buries his head in the sand. His analysis is shallow and his insight is clouded by his intense hatred for a few thinkers who are only minor contributors to the problem of corporate tyranny.