Free Thoughts

How did SpeechNow and Citizens United change how elections are financed? Where does the distrust of money we so often see in politics come from? What’s wrong with making people disclose their donations?What’s the problem with occupational licensing? Doesn’t it seem sensible in some cases for the government to license certain things to make sure people aren’t hurting others with their advice?How are these two issues related? This week Paul Sherman from the Institute for Justice joins us to discuss free speech as it applies to politics and elections (political speech), occupational licensing (occupational speech), and the future of the First Amendment.Show Notes and Further ReadingSherman’s article in the Harvard Law Review, “Occupational Speech and the First Amendment.”Amanda Shanor and Robert Post’s response to Sherman’s article, “Adam Smith’s First Amendment.”Institute for Justice cases dealing with free speech issues that we mentioned in this episode:Charleston Tour GuidesColorado Private EnforcementSavannah Tour Guides Free SpeechKentucky Psychology SpeechDC ToursParker North, CO Free Speech Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who were the academics, reformers, and social scientists that made up the early American progressive movement at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century? The positions held by today’s progressives only bear a passing resemblance to those of the Progressive Era; how have the original progressives’ ideas changed over time?Thomas C. Leonard joins us this week for a discussion on the founding of the Progressive Era and the creation of the American regulatory and welfare state.Is there anything inherently wrong or dangerous about the idea of turning over certain aspects of government to experts? How did Darwin’s theories play into the beliefs of these new progressives? Why did the progressives of this era embrace eugenics, racial science, and other ideas that today we would consider abhorrent?Show Notes and Further ReadingThomas C. Leonard’s new book, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era (2016). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Richard A. Epstein joins us to talk about the history, economics, and legal theory behind unions, which remain some of the most powerful forces in the modern American political landscape.Is our collective narrative about unions saving workers from evil capitalist robber barons and horrible working conditions in the Industrial era accurate? How were unions initially treated by the Supreme Court?Are unions essentially cartels? Don’t workers need unions to equalize their bargaining power with employers?What does the future of unions look like? Are they going extinct? What about public sector unions, and the budget obligations they put on local and state governments? What would Epstein’s ideal unionization law look like? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Henry Ford’s mass production of the automobile ushered in a new era of human mobility, one that public planners always seem to be attempting to steer the American public away from. How is transportation important to human freedom and flourishing?How much are we spending on public transit? When, if ever, does public transportation make sense?What will driverless cars do for traffic congestion? Are driverless cars going to cause people to drive more? Less? Are there any potential roadblocks to driverless cars?Show Notes and Further ReadingO’Toole’s books on various topics: The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths: How Smart Growth Will Harm American Cities (2001), The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future (2007), and American Nightmare: How Government Undermines the Dream of Homeownership (2012).Randal O’Toole blogs at The Antiplanner.Trevor mentions this article from The Onion (satire): “Report: 98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How important are private property rights? What does a society look like that has no property rights, if that’s even possible? How did the Founding Fathers think about property rights?This week Timothy and Christina Sandefur join us for a conversation about an essential aspect of what it means to be free. Timothy notes that, “If you can’t own something, you can’t have other kinds of rights.” Show Notes and Further Reading Timothy and Christina Sandefur’s book, Cornerstone of Liberty: Property Rights in 21st-Century America has a new edition.When talking about the effect property rights have on the world around them, Timothy mentions the Wallace Stevens poem “Anecdote of the Jar,” and Trevor talks about the 1980 movie from Jamie Uys, The Gods Must Be Crazy.Christina tells the story of Glenn Odegard and the house he built to turn into a rental property in Jerome, Arizona. Here is a local news story about what happened. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is the Constitution a document that originally meant to limit government? Did the Articles of Confederation do a better job? Sheldon Richman joins us this week to talk about the origins of the American government.Is it possible to write a constitution that’ll keep government in check forever?Show Notes and Further ReadingRichman’s original blog posts on the subject, “The Constitution Revisited” and “The Bill of Rights Revisited.”Jeffrey Rogers Hummel’s work is referenced often in this episode. Here’s an article he wrote with William Marina in the April 1987 issue of Reason entitled “Did the Constitution Betray the Revolution?”Gordon Wood’s book on the American Revolution, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, is also mentioned, as is Merrill Jensen’s book The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution, 1774-1781. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it mean to live a virtuous life? Why was Socrates’ self-defense at his trial so seemingly lackluster? Where does his “death before dishonor” attitude originate? Was he actually a heretic?Brian Wilson from Combat and Classics joins us this week for a discussion on the trial that ended in Socrates ultimately being sentenced to death by drinking hemlock. Why would Athenian jurors vote to execute the man Plato called “the best of all men of the time, the wisest and most just of all men”?Show Notes and Further ReadingCombat and Classics is a series of free online seminars for active duty, reserve, and veteran U.S. military, sponsored by St. John’s College.Plato’s Apology is Plato’s version of the speech given by Socrates as he defended himself against the charges of “corrupting the young, and by not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other daimonia that are novel.” Free versions (with the same line numbers Wilson references in this episode) can be found here and here.This discussion is continued in Part 2 of this series, on Crito, Plato’s account of Socrates’ last days in prison. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Scientific studies and data get invoked all the time in debates about policy, especially when it comes to matters of environmental policy. But why should those who prefer a cleaner environment (or on the flip side, those who prefer more industry and the benefits it brings) have to justify their preferences with scientific evidence? What makes environmental policy conflicts so intractable? Why is “science” invoked by both sides of the political spectrum in policy conflicts?Peter Van Doren returns to the podcast to talk about the thesis of his 2003 Regulation article “Letting Environmentalists’ Preferences Count.” We also discuss property rights and Coase’s theorem as it would apply to these types of disputes.Show Notes and Further ReadingPeter Van Doren’s article “Letting Environmentalists’ Preferences Count.”Peter Van Doren’s other Free Thoughts episodes are a great primer on how to think like an economist when approaching policy questions: “Regulations Gone Wrong,” “When Markets Fail,” “An Introduction to Public Choice,” and “The Internet Doesn’t Need to Be Saved.”Van Doren mentions W. Kip Viscusi’s work on the economics of risk and the value of a human life. Here’s a short paper he wrote on the topic in 2005 called “The Value of Life.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What qualifies as a sweatshop? Is there one standard definition? Why would someone choose to work in a sweatshop? What are their other alternatives? What happens when companies are made to pay their sweatshop workers more?Benjamin Powell discusses the economics of sweatshop labor. He argues that the anti-sweatshop movement’s policies actually tend to harm the very workers they intend to help.Show Notes and Further ReadingPowell’s book Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy (2014).Powell’s Learn Liberty videos on sweatshops and immigration are well worth watching:“Sweatshop Wages and Third-World Workers: Are the Wages Worth the Sweat?”“The Unbelievable Truth about Sweatshops”“Top Three Myths about Immigration”“Economics of Immigration: Myths and Realities” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why is objectivity important when it comes to how judges decide cases? Tara A. Smith joins us this week to talk about what people mean when they say “We want judges to be objective and to uphold the law.”We discuss the what, how, and why of judicial objectivity, first principles, the value of discretion among different government actors in a legal system, and we compare Smith’s theory of judicial review to other, competing theories.Show Notes and Further ReadingSmith’s book on this subject is Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System (2015).Trevor recommends the 1961 movie Judgment at Nuremberg, directed by Stanley Kramer.Near the end of the episode, Smith mentions Randy Barnett and Josh Blackman’s Weekly Standard article “The Next Justices.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we are joined by Flemming Rose, the editor who defended Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten’s printing of 12 cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in 2005. We talk about the tradition of religious satire in the Western world, the importance of free speech to pluralistic societies, and the dangers of censorship—even self-imposed censorship—on those societies.Show Notes and Further ReadingFlemming Rose’s book, The Tyranny of Silence (2014), has a new paperback edition coming out this year. In the book he provides a personal account of an event that has shaped the debate about what it means to be a citizen in a democracy and how to coexist in a world that is increasingly multicultural, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The podcast guests we had in 2015 share some of their greatest intellectual influences and give book recommendations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What’s it like running for elected office in New Zealand on a free market, limited government platform? How did the economic liberalization of New Zealand in the 1980s happen? What are the contemporary political issues of the day in New Zealand?Show Notes and Further ReadingNew Zealand consistently outranks the United States in the Fraser Institute’s annual Economic Freedom of the World report. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Does Star Wars have a distinct political viewpoint that we can tease out? Would the Rebel Alliance be considered a terrorist organization? How would we know if a rebellion was justified? Is the Star Wars story libertarian?Show Notes and Further ReadingThe original trilogy of Star Wars movies and the prequel trilogy of the late 90s/early 2000s will be joined by Star Wars: The Force Awakens on the day this podcast is released.Trevor mentions Somin’s work on political ignorance; for a more in-depth study, listeners may want to read his book on the matter: Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (2013), or read the Cato Unbound series on democracy and political ignorance.Listeners may also enjoy the podcast we did earlier this year with Timothy Sandefur on the politics of Star Trek.Ilya Somin was also a guest in a KosmosOnline podcast about Star Trek.Somin frequently mentions the animated TV series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How did the effort to foil American terror plots change after 9/11? How are terrorists deterred from their goals?John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart join us this week to talk about why our government needs to think realistically about combating terrorism. Show Notes and Further ReadingMueller and Stewart’s new book on how our post-9/11 government ends up chasing incredible terrorist threats, Chasing Ghosts: The Policing of Terrorism (2015).Mueller mentions a 2010 comedy movie about British jihadists, Four Lions. Mueller also mentions a book of student papers that he edits that follows post-9/11 terror cases in America, Terrorism Since 9/11: The American Cases (2015).Garrett Graff’s The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War (2012) is a good overview of how the FBI currently responds to terror threats. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you started from scratch and wanted to build a government that preserved the free choices of its citizens as much as possible, and used force only in circumstances where it provided net benefits to all concerned parties, how would you do it? How long would its powers remain limited?Richard A. Epstein joins us this week to discuss classical liberal statecraft, state cartels vs. private monopolies, inequality, and more.Show Notes and Further ReadingWe highly recommend reading all of Epstein’s books; start with Simple Rules for a Complex World, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain, and The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government.Here’s a video lecture Libertarianism.org produced on Simple Rules for a Complex World. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Matt Ridley joins us this week to discuss his latest book, The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge (2015). In it, he theorizes that much of the order we see in the natural world and in human culture and society is the result of unplanned, bottom-up, emergent evolution.Is there a way to introduce these evolutionary pressures to government?Is there a bias to thinking that the world operates by design, from the top down? Does this bias have an origin in our evolutionary psychology? Is it reflected in how we view history?Show Notes and Further ReadingRidley’s newest book, The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge (2015).Ridley’s bestselling book is an optimistic look at progress and economic history: The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2011).Also from Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation (1998).Libertarianism.org has a video from 1983 of professor and Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek talking about cultural evolution and the origins of tradition in society.Ridley mentions the ideas and management practices of Mike Bracken, the UK government’s former digital chief. Here’s an extended interview with Bracken about his ideas for government and why he chose to leave. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The economic historian and economist Robert Higgs joins us to talk about his new book, Taking a Stand: Reflections on Life, Liberty, and the Economy (2015).Show Notes and Further ReadingHiggs’s classic work on how government has grown, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (1987).We also talk about Higgs’s Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American economy 1865-1914 (1977).Higgs mentions a few books by C. Wright Mills: The Power Elite (1956) and The Sociological Imagination (1959). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The celebrated science fiction franchise Star Trek is well known for incorporating broad discussions of philosophy and ethical conundrums into its episodes and movies. Timothy Sandefur joins us to talk about how the series deals with some of these big questions.How does Star Trek: The Original Series reflect the way people thought about politics, justice, and human rights in the wake of the second World War? How does the series change over time? The Prime Directive: is it moral? What was its purpose in the original series if Captain Kirk violated it half the time?Show Notes and Further ReadingSandefur’s original article “The Politics of Star Trek” appeared in the Summer 2015 issue of the Claremont Review of Books.Star Trek: The Original Series episodes referenced in this podcast episode:“The Way to Eden”“The Conscience of the King”“The Apple”“Spock’s Brain”“Arena”“Plato’s Stepchildren”“Space Seed” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Roy A. Childs, Jr. was an essayist, lecturer, and critic. He first came to prominence in the libertarian movement with his 1969 “Open Letter to Ayn Rand,” and he quickly established himself as a major thinker within the libertarian tradition.George H. Smith talks about Roy’s ideas and personality as well as the people that influenced Roy’s thinking and the people that Roy in turn influenced during his lifetime.Show Notes and Further ReadingAnarchism & Justice is a collection of Childs’s essays on moral philosophy and the role of the state.Here is Smith’s five-part introduction to Anarchism & Justice.Here is the text of Childs’s “Open Letter to Ayn Rand.”Smith mentions Childs’s essay “Big Business and the Rise of American Statism.” It is available here in four parts.Here’s Childs giving a lecture on the ethics of liberty at a Cato summer seminar in 1983.Here’s an audio clip of Childs giving a fiery speech to open the Libertarian Party’s 1979 Presidential Nominating Convention.This is a link to all of Libertarianism.org’s content by or about Childs. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rules in society don’t always come from government: they’re all around us. For example, think about how rules governing families, colleges, companies, homeowners associations, and sports organizations work. In this week’s episode, Edward Peter Stringham makes the case for “private governance” and says that rules that don’t come from government tend to work better and be more fair than rules imposed by governments.Show Notes and Further ReadingStringham’s new book, Private Governance: Creating Order in Economic and Social Life (2015). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

America has a history of allying with bad actors to effect change in other countries. Our little-known historical relationships with dictatorial regimes in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, Iran, Pakistan, and Zaire are proof of that. What are the benefits and drawbacks of allying ourselves with certain regional factions over others?Is American foreign policy hypocritical when we ally ourselves with authoritarian or otherwise despotic regimes? When did this tendency to become intertwined with bad actors begin?Show Notes and Further ReadingTed Galen Carpenter and Malou Innocent’s new book, Perilous Partners: The Benefits and Pitfalls of America’s Alliances with Authoritarian Regimes (2015). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Murray Rothbard wrote The Ethics of Liberty in 1982 as a full moral theory of the ethical considerations libertarianism requires and what these considerations would prevent the state from doing. This week we’re analyzing the philosophical framework he lays out in the first part of Ethics. We talk about the difference between natural law and positive law, the is-ought problem, Rothbard’s views on utilitarianism, and what Rothbard thought the task of political philosophy was. What is the purpose of humanity? What is essential to human nature?This discussion is continued in this followup Free Thoughts episode on part two of The Ethics of Liberty. Show Notes and Further ReadingMurray Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty (1982). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Your hero economists are my hero economists.”We talk about a variety of topics on this episode, including cultural conservativism and libertarianism, whether libertarians are more at home on the right or left, Goldberg’s 2009 book, Liberal Fascism, and the rise of outsider candidates on the political right and what they may (or may not) be signalling about the preferences of the electorate.Show Notes and Further ReadingGoldberg’s books, The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (2013) and Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change (2009).Charles C. W. Cooke’s new book The Conservatarian Manifesto: Libertarians, Conservatives, and the Fight for the Right’s Future (2015).The History News Network’s Symposium on Liberal Fascism.David Oshinsky’s New York Times review of Liberal Fascism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We discuss the growth and maturity of the modern environmental movement from Rachel Carson to Paul Ehrlich and Naomi Klein. From overpopulation and pollution to pesticide use, mass animal extinctions and peak oil to global cooling and global warming (now climate change) and genetically modified food, there seems to be no shortage of potential catastrophes for us to fret over. Is humanity truly perpetually poised on the brink of destruction? Or are the solutions these environmental millenarians propose the true threat to our species?Show Notes and Further ReadingRonald Bailey’s new book The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century is a must read on this topic.We also recommend Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves and Brink Lindsey’s The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture to get a better understanding of the power of markets to allocate resources in increasingly efficient ways.Paul Ehrlich’s 1971 book The Population Bomb is mentioned in this show. It reads as fantastic science fiction today, though the predictions Ehrlich makes were taken quite seriously when the book was first published. Similarly, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) predicted a world in which it was common for people to die of cancer-related illnesses (caused by pollutants) at the age of 45. The book was instrumental in launching the modern-day environmental movement.Bailey also mentions an article he wrote in 2009 about the National Academy of Sciences predictions in 1980 of what the world would look like in 2010, “How Green Is Your Crystal Ball?” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why is the internet community—and now, John Oliver—so irate about the state of the Internet? Berin Szoka says the debate over “net neutrality” stopped being about neutrality years ago, and has become a debate over something else entirely, with nothing less than the very nature of the Internet at stake.With the Federal Communications Commission’s ruling earlier this year, are we going to see a less dynamic, less innovative, less consumer-friendly Internet?Show Notes and Further ReadingTechFreedom’s website is a wealth of information on current issues in technology policy.The Tech Liberation Front group blog is also a good way to keep updated.This Free Thoughts episode is partially about common carrier obligations and how the world of public utilities that we now live in came to be.Berin mentions this post from Dan Rayburn questioning Netflix’s assertion that ISPs were behind apparent service slowdowns last year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a new survey of over 4,000 young Americans, Jennifer L. Lawless and Richard L. Fox have found that only 19% of respondents indicated that one of their future goals was to become a political leader. Why are these young people not interested in running for office? Will they change their mind later in life?Show Notes and Further ReadingJennifer L. Lawless and Richard L. Fox’s 2015 book on this phenomenon, Running from Office: Why Young Americans are Turned Off to Politics.The New Books in Political Science podcast—as its name implies—is a great source of information on current trends in political science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a society, are we as tolerant as we could be? As we should be?Andrew Jason Cohen gives his definition of toleration and we discuss the harm principle as elaborated by John Stuart Mill and the implications of various alternatives to it.Show Notes and Further ReadingCohen’s 2104 book on the subject, Toleration, part of Polity Press’s “Key Concepts” series. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is this a libertarian moment? Was there a libertarian moment? Can we expect there to be a libertarian moment? Yes to all three, says Reason managing editor Katherine Mangu-Ward. We also discuss whether younger people are becoming more libertarian, why libertarianism always seems to be associated with the political right, and whether libertarianism depends on technological growth.Show Notes and Further ReadingThis New York Times column by Robert Draper that first called attention to the “libertarian moment.”This Hit & Run blog post by Reason.com editor Nick Gillespie, “The Libertarian Moment is Everywhere Around Us (Increasing Social Tolerance Edition)”.Jonathan Haidt’s 2013 book on moral psychology in politics that shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have different intuitions on what is right and wrong, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science-fiction novel predicting the rise of an internet much like the one we know today, Snow Crash.Mangu-Ward’s cover article for the November 2012 issue of Reason, “Your Vote Doesn’t Count”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we’re joined by Christopher A. Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. We ask whether there exists a single libertarian foreign policy that all libertarians would agree with; talk about the idea that war powers, resolutions, and laws passed during wartime don’t recede in times of peace; give a quick rundown of American military history; and discuss the rise of a permanent private industry supplying the military.When should the United States go to war? When did the American military really start to get massive? How much do we spend on the military today? Relative to recent history? Is the military open to the same kinds of critiques that libertarians make about other government programs?Show Notes and Further ReadingChristopher Preble’s 2014 book, co-editied with John Mueller, A Dangerous World?: Threat Perception and U.S. National Security features a collection of essays examining and questioning the most frequently-referenced dangers to American security.Bruce Porter’s book War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Modern Politics (1994).Robert Higgs’s book Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (1987), in which he establishes the principle of the ratchet effect.Ted Galen Carpenter and Malou Innocent’s new book Perilous Partners: The Benefits and Pitfalls of America’s Alliances with Authoritarian Regimes (2015). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Matt Zwolinski joins us to talk about the fascinating life of one of the most radical libertarians of the nineteenth century: the lawyer, abolitionist, political philosopher, and entrepreneur Lysander Spooner, who believed adamantly that we have no obligation to do what the government tells us to do just because the government is telling us to do something.Near the end of his life Spooner wrote a letter to then-president Grover Cleveland. We discuss this letter and it’s implications on Spooner’s political philosophy, and the similarities between Lysander Spooner’s principles of natural law and contemporary philosopher Michael Huemer’s ideas on ethical intuitionism.Show Notes and Further ReadingLysander Spooner’s 1886 “A Letter to Grover Cleveland, on His False Inaugural Address, The Usurpations and Crimes of Lawmakers and Judges, and the Consequent Poverty, Ignorance, and Servitude of the People” (Online Library of Liberty link).Lysander Spooner’s other, more popular works on slavery and vice, “The Unconstitutionality of Slavery” and ”Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty“ (Online Library of Liberty links).Michael Huemer’s 2005 book The Problem of Political Authority and the Free Thoughts podcast we did with him in 2014. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robert Nozick, in his essay “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?” proposed that many highly-educated public intellectuals tend to lean towards collectivism and authoritarianism because they expect society to work best in the way that schools and the academic system (which is the system they are most familiar with) operates. Was Nozick’s theory right? Why do academics, philosophers, journalists, sociologists, and other “wordsmith intellectuals” tend to skew left?Show Notes and Further ReadingRobert Nozick’s influential short essay “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?”Friedrich Hayek’s essay along similar lines, “The Intellectuals and Socialism”.George H. Smith also wrote about Hayek’s views on intellectuals in this column: “Intellectuals and Libertarianism: F. A. Hayek”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Where did the health insurance system as we know it come from? Why are so many people these days getting insurance through their jobs? Why are prices so particularly high in American health care? Is Obamacare working?John C. Goodman notes that what’s critical to understanding the American health care system is that the identity of the party that ends up paying the bill has a huge effect on pricing in the medical marketplace.Show Notes and Further ReadingJohn C. Goodman’s books A Better Choice: Healthcare Solutions for America (2015), Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis (2012), and Patient Power: The Free-Enterprise Alternative to Clinton’s Health Plan (1993). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With the Greek debt crisis in the news, everyone is asking “Are we the next Greece?” Is our current level of debt sustainable? How about our entitlement programs, like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid?Michael D. Tanner joins us fresh from the release of his latest book, Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis (2015). Together we discuss whether or not the American government’s profligate spending can be reined in in time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Michael C. Munger joins us to talk about voluntary transactions and questions of justice in market pricing.What would everyone agree is truly voluntary? Are disparities in bargaining power coercive? What’s wrong with using the state to address these disparities? What about price gouging situations? What about sweatshops?Show Notes and Further ReadingDr. Munger’s 2010 paper “Euvoluntary or Not, Exchange is Just”.Dr. Munger’s 2011 paper “‘Euvoluntary Exchange’ and the ‘Difference Principle’”.Aristotle’s best-known work on ethics, The Nicomachean Ethics.Harvard professor Michael Sandel’s 2013 book on coercion caused by circumstances, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets.James Taylor’s 1979 song about working in a textile mill, “Millworker”.A recently-rediscovered short essay by John Locke on the morality of price theory, “Venditio”.Dr. Munger’s new co-edited textbook, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics: An Anthology (2015). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Philosophy is concerned with three basic questions: “What is there?,” “How do I know about it?,” and “What do I do about it?” The three questions correspond to the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.Our Cato colleague Matthew Feeney joins us this week to talk about philosophy, rhetoric, why people disagree about politics, performative morality, the non-aggression axiom, and more.Show Notes and Further ReadingLast week’s Free Thoughts Podcast with Andrew I. Cohen on the intersection of philosophy and public policy.Our Free Thoughts Podcast with Michael Huemer on political authority and ethical intuitionism.Brink Lindsey’s book, Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter — and More Unequal (2012).Jonathan Haidt’s morality quiz at YourMorals.org. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Andrew I. Cohen discusses his new book, Philosophy, Ethics, and Public Policy: An Introduction. We talk about philosophy as a careful, methodical approach to thinking about issues.Is philosophy particularly powerful compared to other academic and scientific disciplines? What counts as public policy and how does philosophy influence it? Is it a good idea to “politicize” philosophy? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Jacob T. Levy joins us to discuss his new book, Rationalism, Pluralism and Freedom (2015).Can rationalism and pluralism be reconciled in the liberal tradition? Why not?How much authority is proper for intermediate groups? When does pluralism shift into illiberalism? How can the balance of power between intermediate groups be used to grow the power of a central state?Show Notes and Further ReadingMontesquieu, The Spirit of Laws (book) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What would a privately-administered legal justice system looks like? Bruce L. Benson joins us to give us a hint about what such a system would look like as we discuss his book, The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without a State.Is government necessary to provide law and order? How does thinking about the law in economic terms—as a good or service like any other—change how we think about the law? Could you really think of those under the protection of law enforcement as “customers”?How did the law as we know it today—a system of rules and courts provided by the government—come about? How are incentives aligned in our current legal system? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What’s wrong with K-12 education? What about higher education? How can we rebuild American education from the ground up?This week Glenn Harlan Reynolds joins us to talk about his new book, The Education Apocalypse: How It Happened and How to Survive It. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What would the American founders think of our taxation system today, given America’s origins? Daniel Mitchell answers this and other questions as we talk about the different kinds of tax schemes and the different incentives they offer taxpayers.Why is doing taxes so complicated? Why are there so many exemptions, deductions, incentives, preferences, etc. in the tax code? Are the rich paying their “fair share” of taxes? What’s the Laffer Curve and how does it work? What are consumption taxes and why are they better for the long term growth of the economy? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek was one of the world’s foremost intellectuals in a variety of fields, including legal theory, economics, constitutional theory, and neuroscience. This podcast episode provides an introduction to his academic and popular writing.Steven Horwitz joins us for a discussion about Hayek’s life and ideas. What does it mean to think “Hayekian”? What is spontaneous order? Why doesn’t planning work?Show Notes and Further ReadingSteven Horwitz, Hayek’s Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions (forthcoming book)F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (book)F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society” (essay)F. A. Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty (book series: Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we are joined by Peter J. Boettke, who explains this history and tenets of the Austrian tradition in economics. Boettke traces the school’s history from Carl Menger through Eugen Böhm-Bawerk and Joseph Schumpeter, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard to contemporary economists such as Israel Kirzner, Vernon Smith, and Mario Rizzo. He explains what Austrian economics does and does not do, and distinguishes between what he calls “mainline” economics and “mainstream” economics.What distinguishes Austrian economics from other schools of thought in economics? How did the Austrian school come to be known as the free market school?Show Notes and Further ReadingPeter J. Boettke, Living Economics: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (book) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Bernard B. Kerik joins us to offer his perspective on criminal justice in America. Mr. Kerik was the New York City Police Commissioner from 2000 to 2001, and was later sentenced to four years in federal prison in 2010 for criminal conspiracy and tax fraud. He shares his experience in prison and how his own incarceration influenced the way he sees the American justice system today.Show Notes and Further ReadingBernard B. Kerik, From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054 (book) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we’re joined by Grover Norquist for a frank discussion about every libertarian’s favorite part of the government: its tax-collection arm. Norquist shares how he got into politics, the idea behind his infamous tax pledge, and his plan for reining in the government’s power to tax its citizens.What’s the right amount of taxes? Zero? How do we get there? Given our nation’s anti-tax roots, have we become too complacent in paying taxes?Show Notes and Further ReadingGrover Norquist, End the IRS Before It Ends Us: How to Restore a Low Tax, High Growth, Wealthy America (book) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Daniel J. Ikenson explains the idea of free trade between nations on this week’s show. We discuss how Enlightenment-era economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo saw trade as a non zero-sum game and what their theories mean for continued economic growth today. We discuss in detail the idea of comparative advantage, and talk about the effects of regulation on trade.What is a trade surplus? What’s a trade deficit? Is one good and the other bad?Should we be worried about the loss of manufacturing jobs in America? What about job losses from trade? Will “Buy American” laws fix this?What are “anti-dumping” laws and how do they work? What’s the distinction between free trade and managed trade? Should advocates of free trade support free trade agreements?Show Notes and Further ReadingDaniel J. Ikenson, “Did the Profit Motive Spark the Recent Asian Factory Fires?” (Cato @ Liberty blog post)Jason Dedrick, Kenneth L. Kraemer, Greg Linden, “Who Profits from Innovation in Global Value Chains? A Study of the iPod and notebook PCs” (academic paper) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Edward H. Crane joins us this week as we talk about the beginnings of the Libertarian Party in the early 1970s and Crane’s involvement with that organization. We also talk about the founding and early history of the Cato Institute, and we talk generally about Cato’s purpose and mission.What was early-1970s libertarianism like, and how has libertarianism changed over the past 40 or so years in America? How did Cato get started and then grow into the organization it is today? What’s Cato’s role as a think tank? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week George H. Smith joins us to talk about Individualism: A Reader, the first in a series of readers published by Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. In it, Smith and his co-editor Marilyn Moore have compiled 26 selections from 25 writers on the topic of individualism.How has the idea of individualism evolved over time? What are some common misconceptions about individualism? Is a commitment to individualism somehow antithetical to the idea of community? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Timothy P. Carney joins us this week for a discussion on how the complex system of lobbying and regulating and subsidizing works in Washington D.C. He points out that big government and big business often scratch each others’ backs at the expense of the taxpayer, gives several examples of this behavior, and explains how it benefits both parties.Show Notes and Further ReadingTimothy P. Carney, The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money (book)Timothy P. Carney, Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses (book)Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916 (book)New York Times, “Catfish Farmers, Seeking Regulation to Fight Foreign Competition, Face Higher Bills” (article) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

James Otteson is the author of The End of Socialism (2014) and is a professor of political economy at Wake Forest University. This week he joins us to talk about socialism and explains several problems with the philosophy’s methodology that makes it unworkable in the real world.What exactly is socialism? What’s the distinction between socialism and corporatism? Why doesn’t socialism work? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.