E. Glen Weyl is an economist and researcher who works on technology-enabled democratic and economic institutions. He is Founder and Research Lead of the Microsoft Research Plural Technology Collaboratory, founder of the RadicalxChange Foundation, and a Visiting Senior Researcher in Princeton's Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering. His work applies social-choice theory and mechanism design to proposals for political economy, and he advocates a "Plurality" framework that he presents as an alternative to what he describes as the two dominant technology ideologies of Silicon Valley.
Background and roles
Weyl is Founder and Research Lead of the Microsoft Research Plural Technology Collaboratory, an arrangement that makes Microsoft (via Microsoft Research) his current employer. He founded the RadicalxChange Foundation and holds an appointment as Visiting Senior Researcher in Princeton's Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering. Across these roles, his distinctive contribution is the application of social-choice-theory and mechanism-design rigor to political-economy prescriptions.
Plurality framework
With Audrey Tang, Weyl co-authored Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy, published open-source in 2024. The book gives a book-length treatment of the "Plurality" framework, which it describes as technology-enabled collaboration across difference, positioned as an alternative to both Libertarianism (characterized as crypto-individualist) and Technocracy (characterized as centralized AGI control). The book draws heavily on Taiwan's g0v, Pol.is, and vTaiwan experience.
Techno-ideologies essay
In "Techno-ideologies of the Twenty-first Century," an essay in Digitalist Papers Vol. 1 co-authored with Hamdy and Moore, Weyl identifies two ideologies he describes as dominant in Silicon Valley:
- Technocracy — associated with Altman and OpenAI's "Moore's Law for Everything" combined with universal basic income and centralized AGI control, and also labeled "Fully Automated Luxury Communism."
- Libertarianism — associated with crypto, sovereign individuals, the Network State (Srinivasan), accelerationism, and Thiel and Andreessen funding.
The essay argues that both ideologies are developed by "secular wealthy tech-focused white men," a small fraction of the world population, and proposes as an alternative the plurality framework, which centers religion and ecology as structurally underrepresented constituencies. It frames its central question as "What do people actually want?" The essay appears in The Digitalist Papers (Stanford, Volumes 1–2) Vol. 1.
RadicalxChange and economic mechanisms
Weyl founded RadicalxChange (from 2018) with Eric Posner as a movement advocating new economic and political institutions, including quadratic voting / funding (voting mechanisms intended to better reflect preference intensity), Harberger taxes (asset taxation linked to self-assessed value), and data dignity (individual ownership of and compensation for data generation). These mechanisms received a book-length treatment in Radical Markets (2018), also co-authored with Eric Posner.
Positions
Weyl is described as a heterodox pluralist who shares frustration with status-quo liberalism with both libertarians and socialists but rejects both of their prescriptions.
Relationships
- supports: The Digitalist Papers (Stanford, Volumes 1–2) — Vol. 1 essay.
- related: Audrey Tang — Plurality co-author.
- related: Alignment Assemblies and Collective Constitutional AI / Collective Intelligence Project (CIP) — adjacent participatory-governance framings (CIP founders were associated with RadicalxChange).
- related: AI Dividends (Universal Basic Capital, Digital Dividend, Global Dividend) — data-dignity ideas are precursors.
- related: Microsoft — current employer (Microsoft Research).