Free Thoughts

Dr. Frank of The Mr. T Experience joins us this week to talk about the politics of punk rock. What is punk rebelling against? Is it inherently political?Why do anti-authoritarian, counter-cultural movements so often reject free markets and libertarianism?Show Notes and Further ReadingThe Mr. T Experience on Spotify, iTunes, and Amazon Music.Dr. Frank’s young adult novels are King Dork (2006), Andromeda Klein (2009), and King Dork Approximately (2014).The song in this episode’s outro is “Institutionalized Misogyny” by The Mr. T Experience from the album Yesterday Rules (2004). Used with permission. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Charles J. Sykes joins us this week for a discussion on the origins of the populist, pro-Trump Right.What happened to the conservative intellectual infrastructure that was so robust in William F. Buckley, Jr.’s time? Why does it seem like politics now is more about attitude and tribal loyalty than ideas and discourse? How do groups like the Tea Party and media personalities like Ann Coulter fit into this narrative?Further ReadingSykes’s new book is How the Right Lost Its Mind (2017).Libertarianism and Trump, Free Thoughts Episode.“Should Twitter Ban Donald Trump?” is Really a Question About Government Legitimacy, written by Aaron Ross PowellTrump’s Assault on America’s Institutions, Free Thoughts Episode See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Elizabeth Anderson joins us to talk about her new book, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk About It).How has the nature of employment changed throughout history? Is the typical American workplace a dictatorship? Do we need a worker’s bill of rights?Show Notes and Further ReadingAnderson’s book is available here.Here’s our previous episode with Prof. Anderson, on egalitarianism and the distribution of resources in a society. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Brock Cusick joins us this week to talk about the decentralized blockchain technology that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies run on, and about bitcoin itself: how does bitcoin work? What makes it valuable?Why is there a finite amount of bitcoin? What happens when all of the bitcoin is mined? What’s next for cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology? Will the government step in to regulate this? Can it?Show Notes and Further ReadingBack in 2014 we invited Timothy Lee on the show to give us a primer on bitcoin. If you bought a single bitcoin the day this episode was released, that bitcoin is worth $6,734.66 more today (as of 11/9/17)! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Peter Van Doren joins us once more on the podcast, this time for a discussion on Richard Thaler’s work in behavioral economics.What’s the difference between behavioral economics and more traditional neoclassical economics? Is the goal of behavioral economics really to implement consumer preferences? Are “nudges” paternalistic and insulting, or do they merely—as behavioral economists would say—create default conditions to correct the influence of cognative biases that stop people from doing what they actually want to do anyway?Show Notes and Further ReadingListeners may be interested in our other Free Thoughts episodes with Peter Van Doren.Van Doren mentions this debate in Regulation between Jonathan Gruber and W. Kip Viscusi.This Crazy Mouse Won’t Leave Me Alone by Dan Deacon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.Shootin Stars by Aero Chord feat. DDARK provided by NoCopyrightSounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTF5xgT-pm8 See acast.com/privacy

Jeffrey A. Singer joins us this week to talk about the ongoing opioid overdose epidemic in the United States. Why are there so many opioid users in the US?Specifically, what kinds of drugs are we talking about, fentanyl? Oxycontin? Is the overdose death problem a direct result of doctors over-prescribing opiates to patients for pain management?Show Notes and Further ReadingHere’s a Cato briefing event that features Singer: “A ‘Modern Plague’? How the Federal Government Should Address the Opioid Crisis.””Misdiagnosing the Opioid Crisis”; this article appeared in Inside Sources on September 27, 2017.Trevor mentions Jacob Sullum’s book Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use (2004).Listeners may also be interested in our Free Thoughts episode with Johann Hari, “Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

David Schoenbrod shares five specific tricks that politicians from both parties use to avoid public accountability. Is Washington more broken than people think?How can we more properly align our elected representatives’ incentives to keep them accountable? Does Congress have the willpower to change the rules of the game?Show Notes and Further ReadingSchoenbrod’s newest book is DC Confidential: Inside the Five Tricks of Washington (2017), and here is the book’s website. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

John Glaser and Emma Ashford join us this week for a discussion on the “Iran nuclear deal” that’s been in the news lately. What is this deal—what did the US and Iran agree to? How did it happen?Why did Iran agree to limit their nuclear program in the first place? What are their regional goals? Is Iran complying with the deal so far? What will President Trump do?Show Notes and Further ReadingHere’s Ashford and Glaser’s Policy Analysis, “Unforced Error: The Risks of Confrontation with Iran” and some associated content:“Alternatives to the Iran Deal Carry Too Much Risk” appeared in TIME on September 19, 2017.“The Iran Nuclear Deal: Assessing the Impact of Decertification,” a Cato Hill Briefing event.“Are There Alternatives to the Iran Nuclear Deal?,” a CatoConnects live event.“Iran, Decertification, and the Dangerous Alternatives,” a Cato@Liberty blog post by Ashford.“Overwhelming Resistance to Trump’s Plan to Scuttle the Iran Deal,” a Cato@Liberty blog post by Glaser. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-o

Richard E. Wagner joins us for a discussion on life and thought of James M. Buchanan, who was one of the founders of public choice theory.Show Notes and Further ReadingWagner’s latest book is James M. Buchanan and Liberal Political Economy: A Rational Reconstruction (2017).A good portion of what we discuss in this episode deals with Nancy MacLean’s account of Buchanan in Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (2017).Aaron mentions this article by Lee Fang in The Intercept, “Sphere of Influence: How American Libertarians Are Remaking Latin American Politics.” Buchanan and Gordon Tullock co-wrote The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (1962), considered one of the landmark works of public choice theory.Our other podcast episode with Wagner gives a pretty good introduction to public choice theory, but listeners may also be interested in this episode on the same topic. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michael Malice joins us to give a primer on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. What’s North Korea like? Do the people there really believe the popular legends we’ve heard about the Kim family?Which is Kim Jong-un: a spoiled heir to a political dynasty, a paranoid lunatic with a big gun and 25 million hostages, or a coldly rational devious mastermind? Perhaps some combination of all three?Show Notes and Further ReadingFor more insight on how North Koreans and the Kim family see the world, we highly recommend Malice’s book, Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il (2014). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hans Noel joins us this week to share ten insights into how politics, campaigns, and political parties work.Is there such a thing as “the will of the people?” Why do political parties act the way they do? We also discuss Duverger’s Law, campaign finance, presidential elections, special interests, and grassroots movements.Show Notes and Further Reading“Ten Things Political Scientists Know that You Don’t” in Volume 8, Issue 3 of The Forum. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

William J. Watkins, Jr. joins us for a discussion on the Articles of Confederation and the ideas of the Anti-Federalists.Were the Articles of Confederation a failure? How did the country work under them and how is the US Constitution different? What can we learn from the Anti-Federalists?Watkins is a research fellow at the Independent Institute.Show Notes and Further ReadingWatkins’s book is Crossroads for Liberty: Recovering the Anti-Federalist Values of America’s First Constitution (2016).Trevor mentions this episode of Free Thoughts with Gary Gerstle. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ryan M. Yonk joins us this week for a discussion about how we think about ecology and the environment. We talk about various environmental regulations including the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Endangered Species Act.What counts as a “natural balance” in ecology? Is the ideal environment one with no human impact at all? What is “political entrepreneurship” and how do environmentalists use it to push for their policy goals?Show Notes and Further ReadingYonk is coauthor, along with Kenneth J. Sim and Randy T. Simmons, of Nature Unbound: Democracy vs. the Environment (2016).Trevor mentions this Free Thoughts episode, in which Van Doren suggests that the US government gift the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the Sierra Club, effectively assigning them responsibility for any economic benefits that would come from drilling for oil there. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Grant Babcock joins us this week to talk about an essay he wrote in defense of natural rights-based libertarianism.What are natural rights? Are they intuitive? Is radicalism in defense of rights-based approaches to libertarianism effective? Is it necessary?Show Notes and Further ReadingThis episode of Free Thoughts was inspired by Grant Babcock’s “The Robustness of Natural Rights Libertarianism: A Reply to Lindsey,” which he wrote in response to Brink Lindsey’s essay “The Poverty of Natural Rights Libertarianism.” The episode references the following texts and previous episodes of Free Thoughts:The Late, Great Libertarian Macho Flash by Michael CloudTrevor mentions this Free Thoughts episode where we get into nitty-gritty details of social contract theory.Arguments for Liberty, edited by Aaron Ross Powell and Grant BabcockMurray Rothbard, “Do You Hate the State?”Matt Zwolinski, “Libertarianism and Pollution” (SSRN paper)Order without Law by Robert EllicksonGoverning the Commons by Elinor Ostrom“Why Libertaria

Christopher Freiman joins us to talk about his Arguments for Liberty chapter on utilitarianism. What’s the utilitarian argument for libertarianism?What is utilitarianism? How does utilitarianism interact with rights-based approaches to morality? What are the rhetorical virtues of utilitarianism?Show Notes and Further ReadingYou can read Freiman’s Arguments for Liberty chapter in full here: “A Utilitarian Case for Libertarianism”Arguments for Liberty is available here as a free .pdf and in Kindle and e-Book formats. It’s also available in paperback on Amazon.Here are a few other selections from Libertarianism.org on utilitarianism.Other Free Thoughts episodes on Arguments for Liberty:Rawlsianism with Kevin VallierKantianism with Jason Brennan See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Our producer, Tess Terrible, interviews Aaron and Trevor for Free Thoughts’s 200th episode. How did Free Thoughts get started, and what have we learned along the way?Show Notes and Further ReadingWe’d like to thank Russ Roberts and his EconTalk podcast for providing some of the inspiration for this show, as well as all of our listeners. We hope you’ve enjoyed the show so far and look forward to another 200 episodes! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

John Glaser joins us to talk about a policy shift that would save money and make the United States safer: closing some or all of America’s 800 overseas military bases.Where are these bases concentrated? Why does the military think they’re necessary? Would the world be a more dangerous place if the US wasn’t a global hegemon?Show Notes and Further ReadingIf you’re interested in this topic we encourage you to read Glaser’s policy analysis, “Withdrawing from Overseas Bases: Why a Forward-Deployed Military Posture Is Unnecessary, Outdated, and Dangerous” and his op-ed in Time, “Why We Should Close America’s Overseas Military Bases.”Other Free Thoughts episodes on foreign policy:“When Is It Appropriate to Go to War?” with Justin Logan“How Much Should We Worry About ISIS?” with Emma Ashford“America’s Authoritarian Alliances” with Ted Galen Carpenter and Malou Innocent“War Is the Health of the State” with Christopher A. Preble See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Bill Emmott joins us this week to talk about his new book, The Fate of the West: The Battle to Save the World’s Most Successful Political Idea (2017).Is the West in decline and if so, can we do anything about it? Is more inequality part of what’s causing this decline? Why aren’t Western economies aren’t as dynamic as they used to be?Show Notes and Further ReadingTrevor mentions these previous Free Thoughts episodes about free speech on college campuses:“Campus Freedom” with Robby Soave“Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate” with Greg Lukianoff See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sam Bowman joins us this week to talk about political trends in the United Kingdom and in Europe more broadly. What’s a neoliberal, and how is that different from American libertarianism?What kinds of reforms are needed in European politics? Is there a connection between Brexit and Donald Trump’s election? What does a Trump presidency mean for the U.K.?Show Notes and Further ReadingHere’s the Adam Smith Institute’s website. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

William Irwin joins us for a discussion about the novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk and the movie it inspired. Are consumer choices authentic choices? Where does Tyler Durden go wrong in his thinking?Show Notes and Further ReadingChuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (1996) is a novel that’s well-worth reading if you haven’t yet. Here’s a link to the David Fincher movie (1999) starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter.Here’s William Irwin’s essay, “Fight Club, Self-definition, and the Fragility of Authenticity.”He’s also written a short column for Libertarianism.org, “Free Market Fight Club.”Our other Free Thoughts episode with Irwin was a discussion on capitalism without consumerism. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.