Free Thoughts

Mark A. Calabria joins Aaron and Trevor for a discussion on banking regulations in the United States. Calabria gives a short history of banking regulation and explains the incentives built into the regulatory system that governs banking and investments here in America.Why are people so angry at “Wall Street” all the time? What exactly is Wall Street, anyway? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week Jason Brennan joins Aaron and Trevor to discuss his newest book, Why Not Capitalism?, which is a response to G. A. Cohen’s 2009 book Why Not Socialism? Brennan says that Cohen commits the fallacy of comparing idealized socialism with perfect actors to real markets with imperfect actors, and offers an illustrative example as proof that when comparing idealized capitalism to idealized socialism and real capitalism to real socialism, it is capitalism—not socialism—that claims the moral high ground.Is there anything to the argument that “socialism would work if we were just better people” and had perfect information? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Aaron and Trevor join Randy Barnett to discuss his book The Structure of Liberty, which was recently re-released in an updated edition. Barnett describes five rights—informed by natural law—that are crucial for properly structuring a society. He also shows how libertarian theories successfully counter the structural societal problems of knowledge, interests, and power.Show Notes and Further ReadingRandy E. Barnett, The Structure of Liberty (book) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Aaron and Trevor talk with Peter Van Doren about regulatory failure in markets, specifically phone service, banking, electricity, internet, and health care. Van Doren shows how regulation in these markets works as a hidden tax by cross-subsidizing competing services and distorting real prices.Who loses when regulations have unexpected consequences: the companies or the consumers the regulations are meant to protect? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Besides the horrendous affront to human rights that was American slavery, black people in America have been and continue to be singled out for “special treatment” by the government in other ways, too: the federal drug war, minimum wage laws, the failure of public schooling, licensing restrictions on opening businesses, gun control laws, the indignity of welfare, and many more. So why aren’t there more black libertarians?Show Notes and Further ReadingRadley Balko, Rise of the Warrior Cop (book)David Weigel, “Ruth Marcus, David Brooks, and Reefer Madness” (article)Tim Lynch, Police Misconduct: The Assault on Civil Liberties (video)Associated Press, “SWAT team raids Md. mayor’s home, kills 2 dogs” (article) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Tom W. Bell joins Aaron and Trevor for a discussion on intellectual property, specifically copyright law in the United States. Is there one libertarian stance on intellectual property?What’s wrong with copyright law in America today? Should we even have copyright at all? And if we should, how can we make it better than it is now?Show Notes and Further ReadingTom W. Bell, Intellectual Privilege (book) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Why is Piketty’s book getting so much attention in America? What does Piketty get right and wrong in his book? Piketty seems to be predicting the inevitable collapse of capitalism…but is inequality really getting worse?Show Notes and Further ReadingScott Winship, “Whither the Bottom 90 Percent, Thomas Piketty?” (article)Lawrence H. Summers, “The Inequality Puzzle” (article)Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (book) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What does Article 2 of the Constitution say about the powers of the Executive Branch? How did we get to where we are now, with the executive wielding so much discretionary power? And is there anything we can do about it? Gene Healy, vice president of the Cato Institute and author of The Cult of the Presidency and False Idol joins us to answer these questions and more about America’s most popular branch of government.Show Notes and Further ReadingF. H. Buckley, The Once and Future King (book)Juan Linz, The Perils of Presidentialism (article)Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (book)Gawker Video at 2012 Democratic National Conference, “Ask the DNC: Is Romney Ready for the Kill List?” (video)Theodore Lowi, The Personal President: Power Invested, Promise Unfulfilled (book)Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Rating the Presidents: Washington to Clinton (article)Siena College Research Institute Presidential Ranking SurveyU.S. News and World Report, The 10 Worst Presidents (article)  See acast.c

In this episode Aaron Powell and Trevor Burrus talk about egalitarianism with Professor Elizabeth Anderson. Should we be concerned about an equal distribution of resources in a society? An equal distribution of outcomes? Is it a bad thing for some people to be worse off than others through no fault of their own? And whose job is it to enforce such distributions—government or markets?Anderson is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Is economic growth incompatible with a clean planet?Jerry Taylor is considered to be one of the most widely cited and influential critics of green energy and federal environmental policy.Is economic growth incompatible with a clean planet? Doesn’t the government already do a good job of regulating pollution? How would markets do better?Show Notes and Further ReadingRonald Coase, The Problem of Social Cost (article)Murray Rothbard, Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution (article) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out 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 Democr

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 Engl

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  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.