Free Thoughts

We know income inequality exists, that some people are very rich and others very poor. And this bothers quite a lot of us. Aren’t we right to be concerned about this? Isn’t there something wrong when some people have access to far more resources than others?Brink Lindsey is vice president for research at the Cato Institute and is the author of Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter—and More Unequal (2013). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why is political rhetoric so harsh?Arnold Kling joins us for a discussion on his book, The Three Languages of Politics. Kling says that progressives, conservatives, and libertarians all use different languages to justify their beliefs, and that this results in political polarization.Why is political rhetoric so harsh? Is there too much over-simplification in political rhetoric? Are libertarians guilty of this as much as anyone?Show Notes and Further ReadingArnold Kling, The Three Languages of Politics (e-book)Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (book)George Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (book)Paul Krugman, Conservatives Are (Mostly) Not Libertarians (column) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Everyone seems to be talking about Bitcoin these days. But just what is Bitcoin—and what are cryptocurrencies in general? How do they work? Are they money? Will we all be sending and receiving payments in Bitcoin in the near future?Trevor and Aaron sat down with Timothy B. Lee to try to answer these questions.Lee is a senior editor at Vox where he covers technology. Previously he was a technology reporter at the Washington Post. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Immigration is one of the biggest policy issues of our time, and millennials are well positioned to play a leading role in its reform.Alex Nowrasteh returns to the show to answer student questions about the philosophy of free immigration at the 2014 International Students for Liberty Conference. This episode was taped in front of a live audience on February 15, 2014. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we tend to think of justice in social terms, but in the time of Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, the virtue of justice was thought to be an individual characteristic.Mark LeBar elaborates on what that meant for their society and what it might mean for us today while providing a solid introduction to virtue ethics. LeBar is professor of philosophy at Ohio University whose areas of specialization include moral, social, political and ancient philosophy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Does the death penalty make us safer? Should the state be given the ultimate power to decide matters of life and death? Given the data on innocents that have been sentenced to die, how skeptical of the death penalty should we be?Ben Jones joins Aaron Powell and Trevor Burrus to help answer these questions. Jones is a campaign strategist for Equal Justice USA (EJUSA) and works in support of Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty, a project of EJUSA. Jones is also pursuing a Ph.D. in political science at Yale University. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Can’t we just come up with a system that gives people as much health care as each of them needs? Is it the government’s responsibility to do that? Can the government do that? What about the market—what would a free market in health care look like? Would it look anything like the system we have now?Michael Cannon joins Aaron and Trevor to help answer these questions. Cannon is the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies.Show Notes and Further Reading:Michael F. Cannon, Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It (book)David Goldhill, Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father—and How We Can Fix It (book)Michael F. Cannon, 50 Vetoes: How States Can Stop the Obama Health Care Law (white paper)Gallup Poll: Majority in U.S. Say Healthcare Not Gov’t Responsibility (November 18, 2013) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ilya Somin joins Aaron and Trevor for a discussion on political ignorance, which is the idea that the majority of the electorate doesn’t have enough information to make fully-informed political decisions, with the understanding that for most people this ignorance is perfectly rational.The idea of democracy is that the citizens should decide how they’re governed and what policies their government adopts, and they way they do this is via the ballot box. But what if the voters are too ignorant about what makes good policy—or even about the effects of bad policy—to vote well in the first place?Somin is Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law and is also a regular contributor at the Volokh Conspiracy.Show Notes and Further Reading:Ilya Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter A Libertarianism.org video featuring Prof. Somin explaining political ignorance Cato Unbound symposium on political ignoranceBryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Timothy Sandefur joins Trevor Burrus and Jason Kuznicki for a conversation about America’s founding documents: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence.Which is the Constitution’s primary value: liberty or democracy? Is it enough to tell lawmakers to just “go back to the Constitution” when Constitutional interpretation varies so wildly? What does the Constitution have to say about slavery? Individual rights? Voting rights?Sandefur is a principal attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation and the author of the 2014 book The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty. He also heads the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Economic Liberty Project, which protects entrepreneurs against intrusive government regulation.Show Notes and Further Reading:Supreme Court CasesTroxel v. GranvilleGrutter v. BollingerLawrence v. TexasBarron v. BaltimoreMuller v. OregonJohn Locke, Second Treatise of GovernmentWilliam Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of EnglandAkil Amar, America’s Unwritten ConstitutionJ. Harvey Wilkinson, Cosmic Constitutional Theory: Why Americans Are Losing Their Inalienable Right to Self-Governance Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie have noted an emerging group of people who, having been accustomed to a panoply of choice in every other aspect of their lives, are abandoning America’s two-party system in droves.Is this growing movement of independents a cause for optimism among libertarians? Are we in for a better, more libertarian era than ever before? Or should we be skeptical of this kind of optimism, given the growth of the federal government in recent years?Together Matt and Nick are the authors of the 2011 book, “The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics can Fix What’s Wrong with America.”Show Notes and Further Reading:Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics can Fix What’s Wrong with AmericaGallup Poll: Americans Disapprove of Government Surveillance Programs Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tom Palmer joins Aaron and Trevor for a discussion on the two most common philosophical justifications for libertarianism.Typically we think of justifications for libertarianism as falling into one of two kinds of categories: consequentialism and rights-based. Are these two justifications necessarily at odds with each other?Tom G. Palmer is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, director of the Institute’s educational division, Cato University, Vice President for International Programs at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and General Director of the Atlas Global Initiative for Free Trade, Peace, and Prosperity.Show Notes and Further Reading:Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of MoralsAristotle, Nicomachean EthicsDavid Hume, A Treatise of Human NatureJohn Locke, Two Treatises of GovernmentJeremy Bentham, A Fragment on GovernmentRandy Barnett, The Structure of LibertyMurray Rothbard, The Ethics of LibertyStephen Pinker, The Better Angels of Our NatureJean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social ContractThomas Hobbes, LeviathanRichard Epstein, Simple Rules for a Complex World Simple Rules Libertarianism.org lecture videoBertrand de Jouvenel, The Ethics of RedistributionGeorge Orwell, Animal Farm Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we’re discussing a relatively unknown essay by Auberon Herbert called “The Ethics of Dynamite,” wherein Herbert compares the coercive political force of the state (the majority) to the coercive, terroristic use of force by the dynamiter (the minority), a 19-century reference to violent anarchist sects. Herbert points out that the means of the state and those of the dynamiter really do not differ all that much, and offers his solutions for “unmaking” the coercive nature of each.Jason Kuznicki is a research fellow at the Cato Institute and editor of Cato Unbound.Show Notes and Further Reading:Adam Smith, The Wealth of NationsThomas Hobbes, LeviathanHerbert Spencer, Social StaticsMurray Rothbard, The Anatomy of the StateSpecialization and Trade (video) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David D’Amato joins Aaron and Trevor for a conversation about the idea of voluntary socialism through the lens of the individualist anarchists of the 19th century. They discuss the life and philosophy of Benjamin Tucker, Voltairine de Cleyre, and others, and explain how the definitions of socialism and capitalism have changed over the years.David S. D’Amato is an attorney and a Senior Fellow and Trustee at the Center for a Stateless Society. He earned a JD from New England School of Law and an LLM in Global Law and Technology from Suffolk University Law.Note: In the show, D’Amato claims that Benjamin Tucker died in the 1920s; he actually passed away in 1939. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Aaron and Trevor talk about the tendency of the political process to group people into warring “tribes” when they otherwise wouldn’t. Trevor explains why this is so bad for society and offers several examples and solutions.Who decides what aspects of our lives can become politicized and which ones can’t? How are things distributed in a fully politicized world? What can we do about this tendency to politicize contentious issues? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Patrick J. Michaels, the director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, joins Aaron and Trevor for a discussion about bias in science and how scientific findings affects public policy.The idea that science isn’t biased—or generally isn’t biased—is pretty widely held. But is that true? Is there something about science that makes it less susceptible to bias than other fields of inquiry? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason Kuznicki, a research fellow at the Cato Institute and editor of Cato Unbound, joins Aaron and Trevor to discuss historicism: the idea that historical forces work to determine the ideas and values of individuals, and that as a result, historical trends have a direction or purpose to them.To understand a person or event in history, you need to look at their historical context. That’s not so crazy all by itself—it’s actually pretty reasonable. But the trouble starts when historicist thinking begins to deny individual agency. Not always—but very often—historicism is at odds with methodological individualism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Boaz, the executive vice president of the Cato Institute, sits down with Aaron and Trevor to talk generally about the libertarian philosophy, and answer the following questions: Is there one set of ideas called libertarianism, or is it more a collection of different schools of thought? If the latter, what binds them together? How long has libertarianism been around? And if libertarianism is so great, why is there no modern libertarian nation? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it mean to say that something is a market failure and that public policy ought to fix it? Can the government actually provide these goods? How often do these situations occur? What does economics have to say about these public goods problems?Van Doren explains several key economic concepts, including the economist’s definition of a public good, Pareto optimality, and Cosean bargaining.Peter Van Doren is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and editor of the quarterly journal Regulation. He is an expert in the regulation of housing, land, energy, the environment, transportation, and labor, and has taught at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (Princeton University), the School of Organization and Management (Yale University), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alex Nowrasteh joins Aaron and Trevor to talk about immigration. Immigration policy provokes much debate, anger, and often some pretty ugly politics. But immigration isn’t just a matter of policy, of what effects immigrants have on America’s economic outlook—immigration raises important moral issues as well, because it impacts basic human rights.Nowrasteh is the immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Houston Chronicle,Boston Globe, San Jose Mercury, Richmond Times-Dispatch,Huffington Post, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and elsewhere. He has appeared on Fox News and numerous television and radio stations across the United States. He received his B.A. in Economics from George Mason University and MSc in Economic History from the London School of Economics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Aaron and Trevor tackle a few listener questions in this episode, including the perennial classics: Who will build the roads? Who will “control” the corporations? Is there a libertarian position on abortion? What would a libertarian society look like? What about child labor laws? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason Brennan joins Aaron and Trevor for a discussion about political obligation. Conventional wisdom holds that governments make laws and their citizens have a duty to obey them. Most people think that’s so obvious that we don’t even really need to discuss it. But is it? Governments certainly want us to obey them, but what sort of arguments are there for why we should?Brennan is Assistant Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at Georgetown University. Jason’s the author of three books: Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know, The Ethics of Voting, and, with David Schmidtz, A Brief History of Liberty. He is also a regular contributor to the blog Bleeding Heart Libertarians. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

James Stacey Taylor joins Aaron and Trevor to discuss what society thinks is okay to buy and sell. Buying and selling some things—like books, cars, or houses—strikes us as fine. But even the thought of trading money for things like love or organs makes many people uncomfortable or even angry.Taylor is an Associate Professor at the College of New Jersey and the author of Stakes and Kidneys: Why markets in human body parts are morally imperative and the forthcoming book Toxic Trade? An Unapologetic Defense of Universal Commodification. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Matt Zwolinski joins Aaron and Trevor for a look at the plight of poor people and how concern for the least well-off relates to libertarian thinking. Libertarians are often branded as being anti-poor and are frequently criticized for espousing a philosophy that only benefits the rich and privileged. But is that true?Zwolinski teaches philosophy at the University of San Diego, founded the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog, and writes for Libertarianism.org. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Julian Sanchez joins Trevor and Aaron for a discussion on the political philosophy of Robert Nozick. Nozick’s 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a classic of modern philosophy. In it, he argues that the rights we all have as human beings dramatically limit what the state’s allowed to do. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

John Samples joins Aaron and Trevor in looking at the relationship between money and political speech. Campaign finance is a perennial issue, but much of the argument about it rests on often unexamined assumptions. Is money speech? If it is, can we still restrict its role in politics? If it isn’t, what’s its relation to political speech? What does it mean to say elections can be corrupted by too much speech?Samples is director of Cato’s Center for Representative Government, and author of “The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For this first episode of Free Thoughts, we want to look at politics and community and the relationship between them. Libertarians often get called “anti-community.” That’s an unfair charge, of course. But it’s a plausible one if you assume no difference between community and politics, between community and the state. This mistake is in fact a rather common one—and thus results in many bad arguments against libertarianism.So what is community? And what is politics? And can we have one without the other?Show Notes“What’s the Matter with Libertarianism?” by Peter Corning“Libertarians Are the New Communists” by Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.