Free Thoughts

Emily Ekins has identified five different types of voters that elected Donald J. Trump the 45th President of the United States. Do these groups represent a big shift in American politics? In this episode we also discuss polling methodology and analysis. How reliable are public opinion polls and voter surveys?Show Notes and Further ReadingHere is the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group Ekins participated in.And here is her report on “The Five Types of Trump Voters.”Ekins also mentions FiveThirtyEight’s Pollster Ratings project. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Kevin Vallier joins us to talk about his Arguments for Liberty chapter on the ethical system of John Rawls. Does Rawls have value for libertarians?Show Notes and Further ReadingYou can read Vallier’s Arguments for Liberty chapter in full here: “A Rawlsian 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.This lecture on distributive justice in our guide to political philosophy is a great place to start for those new to the thought of John Rawls. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Deirdre McCloskey has a few suggestions that she hopes will make libertarians more humane and empathetic. What sort of rhetorical tactics should libertarians use?In this episode, we also talk about the “slow socialism” of the New Left, inequality, whether an affluent liberal society sows the seeds of its own demise, and McCloskey’s personal ideological journey from “Joan Baez-style” Marxism to liberalism.Show Notes and Further ReadingThe essay that inspired this episode, “Manifesto for a New American Liberalism, or How to Be a Humane Libertarian,” can be found here on McCloskey’s website.Here’s a previous Free Thoughts episode with McCloskey on her excellent Bourgeois Era book series, which are linked below:The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (2007)Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (2011)Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (2016) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski think that anything you’re allowed to do for free, you should be able to do for money. That means things like buying and selling kidneys, children, sex, grades; even waiting in line. Are they right?What should you be able to buy and sell? What does it mean to pay someone for something?Show Notes and Further ReadingBrennan and Jaworski’s book is Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests (2015).Markets without Limits is partially a response to this book, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (2013) by Michael J. Sandel.One of our very first Free Thoughts podcast episodes was with James Stacey Taylor on this very same topic. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Shon Hopwood joins us this week to tell about his journey from bank robber to federal prisoner to U.S. Supreme Court practitioner and Georgetown law professor.What’s it like in federal prison? How did Hopwood become a jailhouse lawyer? If people do in fact “age out” of criminal activity, then what should our prison system look like?Show Notes and Further ReadingHopwood’s book is Law Man: My Story of Robbing Banks, Winning Supreme Court Cases, and Finding Redemption (2012).Here’s the New York Times article by Adam Liptak that Hopwood mentions, “A Mediocre Criminal, but an Unmatched Jailhouse Lawyer.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Robert Luddy joins us this week to talk about his ventures as the founder of several successful private schools in and around Raleigh, North Carolina. Could private education supplant public schooling?Show Notes and Further ReadingThales Academy, Franklin Academy, St. Thomas More AcademyHere’s a short video from Reason.tv’s Jim Epstein featuring Luddy and his work.Other Free Thoughts episodes on education and school choice:“Why Schools Haven’t Changed in Hundereds of Years” with Kevin Currie-Knight“Teaching School Choice to the American Education System” wth Jason Bedrick“The Education Apocalypse: How It Happened and How to Survive It” with Glenn Reynolds“The State of State Education in America” with Neal McCluskey See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jacob T. Levy says that the collapse of trust in institutional norms is what’s responsible for a new era of Trump-style authoritarian, “closed-society” populist politics here in America and around the globe.What explains the Trump phenomenon? How did we get President Trump? Just an electoral appetite for “shaking things up,” or is it something deeper? How does Trump think? How does he make decisions?Show Notes and Further ReadingOur other episode with Levy on his book “Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom” is required listening if you’re interested in what’s being played out in the political sphere these days.Levy also mentions this essay he wrote on identity politics, “The Defense of Liberty Can’t Do Without Identity Politics.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Andrei Illarionov joins us this week to tell us about growing up and studying economics in the Soviet Union, and about the years he spent as an economic policy advisor to Vladimir Putin.What inspired Illarionov to study economics? What was life in the Soviet Union like? What was it like studying economics in a Communist regime? How did prices work in the USSR? How did he first meet Vladimir Putin, and what does Putin want for Russia? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Julian Sanchez joins us this week for a discussion about online privacy in the era of mass data collection. When we’re online, what kind of data are we creating, and who’s watching us?We talk about data mining, ad blockers, the internet of things, developer keys, passwords and fingerprint security, encrypted messaging apps, and more.Further ReadingOther Free Thoughts episodes about online privacy:“Deconstructing the Surveillance State “with Julian Sanchez“The CIA Listens to Free Thoughts “with Patrick EddingtonSanchez mentions the browser ad-ons Ghostery and NoScript and the Tails operating system.He also mentions The Art of Invisibility: The World’s Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data (2017) by Kevin Mitnick. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

John Pfaff joins us this week to talk about the United States’s unusually high rate of incarceration. How many Americans are in prison or in jail? What did they do to get there?If we have roughly the same crime rate as we did in 1970, but have five times as many people in prison as we did then, what are those extra people in prison for?Show Notes and Further ReadingPfaff’s book is Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration—and How to Achieve Real Reform (2017).Other books mentioned in this episode:Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America (2015) by Jill LeovyLocking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (2017) by James Forman, Jr.Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court (2010) by Amy BachListeners may also be interested in our Free Thoughts podcast episode with Bernard Kerik, “From Jailer to Jailed: Bernard Kerik’s Story.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Tyler Cowen joins us this week to talk about the slowing pace of innovation and growth in the United States over the past few decades. Has American society become too complacent? What would a more dynamic society look like?Show Notes and Further ReadingCowen’s book on the subject is The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream (2017).Cowen refers to this study by Enrico Moretti and Chang-Tai Hsieh called “Why Do Cities Matter?,” which claims that “Lowering regulatory constraints in [major] cities to the level of the median city would expand their work force and increase U.S. GDP by 9.5%.”Trevor mentions this episode of Free Thoughts featuring Yuval Levin, “Stuck in Political Nostalgia.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown joins us this week for a discussion about sex work. What’s the difference between sex trafficking and prostitution? How much sex trafficking is going on in the United States?Show Notes and Further ReadingMuch of Brown’s work at Reason focuses on sex work, here’s a reverse-chronological list of all the articles she’s written there.We talked in detail about Brown’s September 2016 Reason cover story, “The Truth About the Biggest U.S. Sex Trafficking Story of the Year.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Andrew Turner joins us to talk about his experience being stationed at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2009 and 2010.What is working at Guantanamo Bay like? Who are the detainees? How did they end up there? Are we ever going to be able to close the facilities there?Show Notes and Further ReadingHere’s the Vice News article by Jason Leopold that Turner was interviewed in, “Guantanamo’s Untold Trauma,” and the accompanying Vice News Tonight video.Turner’s Reddit AMA. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Emma Ashford joins us this week to discuss the rise of the Islamic State. How is ISIS different from Al Qaeda and other terror groups? Does it pose an existential threat to the Western world?Where did the Islamic State come from? What do they believe? Is America responsible for ISIS’s rise to power? What’s their end game? How will Trump “deal with” ISIS, and how is that different from Obama’s policies?Show Notes and Further ReadingAshford mentions the work of Dr. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross on understanding links between terrorist groups and lone-wolf attackers. This op-ed in Foreign Affairs is a good summation of that work. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Yuval Levin joins us to talk about political nostalgia and American individualism. Why do the political right and left both seem to be stuck yearning for the 1950s and early 60s?Why do baby boomers have such an outsized influence on American culture and politics? Did government work better in the 1950s and 60s? How has the country changed in the last half-century?Show Notes and Further ReadingLevin’s most recent book is The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism (2016). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Peter T. Leeson joins us this week to discuss rational choice theory as it applies to self-governance. What happens in the absence of government?We discuss the difference between government and governance, what it means to be stateless, and how anarchy is perceived in the world today.Show Notes and Further ReadingLeeson’s book on this topic is Anarchy Unbound: Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think (2014).Leeson cites Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (1949) as highly influential to his thinking.Here are a few other Free Thoughts episodes having to do with anarchy and self-governance:The Distinction Between Governance and Government with Edward StringhamThe Legacy of Roy A. Childs, Jr. with George H. SmithMust You Obey Government?The Problem of Political Authority with Michael Huemer See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Patrick G. Eddington joins us this week to tell us about the history of the Central Intelligence Agency, how the CIA operates, and what the new Wikileaks revelations mean for our privacy online.What does the CIA do, and how does it go about that? How close to reality does Hollywood get when portraying the CIA? What’s the difference between the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA? What have these new revelations told us about what the CIA is doing?Correction: Eddington states that the Privacy and Civil Liberites Oversight Board was composed of three Republicans and two Democrats under Obama; it was actually composed of two Republicans and three Democrats. Today, the only remaining board member is a Republican.Show Notes and Further ReadingEddington mentions Glenn Greenwald’s book No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (2015).He also mentions a new study by our colleague Adam Bates, “Stringray: A New Frontier in Police Surveillance.”Here is the previous Free Thoughts episode we recorde

Aaron and Trevor have a discussion about the political authority of the state. Should one obey the government? Is there a compelling reason to? Why does it matter?Show Notes and Further ReadingListeners interested in this topic should check out our episode of Free Thoughts with Michael Huemer on this topic, and this Guide lecture with Jason Brennan.Aaron mentions Socrates’ actions in Plato’s Crito, here is our Free Thoughts episode on that dialogue.Trevor talks about his lecture “The Statrix: How Government Warps Our Perception of the World.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Peter Goettler joins us this week to talk about his role at the Cato Institute, Cato’s history of 40 years of advancing liberty, and what’s next for public policy organizations more generally and for Cato specifically.What is a think tank, and what does it do? What does Cato do and how is it different? What’s the difference between being oriented towards politics and being oriented towards ideas and principles? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Peter Van Doren joins us this week to talk about health care economics. We talk about risk aversion, risk neutrality, expected value statements, guaranteed renewable care, the ACA as a health care redistribution program, and health-status insurance. How much should we spend on health care, and how would we know the answer to that question?Show Notes and Further ReadingVan Doren mentions “The Market for Lemons,” (1970) a fascinating concept and paper by George Akerlof.Mark Pauly’s 2003 paper “Incentive-Compatible Guaranteed Renewable Health Insurance” is mentioned several times in the episode.Van Doren also talks about John Cochrane’s writings on health-status insurance. Here is a Cato Policy Analysis from 2009 on the topic. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.