Free Thoughts

Mustafa Akyol joins us this week to talk about Islam. Is there a Muslim case for liberty? How has Islam traditionally treated the principles of political liberalism?Show Notes and Further ReadingAkyol’s book is Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty (2013).He also mentions this op-ed he wrote in the Feb. 13th, 2017 edition of the New York Times, “What Jesus Can Teach Today’s Muslims.”Listeners may also be interested in this episode of Free Thoughts on libertarianism and Christianity. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Wolf von Laer joins us this week to talk about the movement for liberty on college campuses around the world.What are the biggest challenges to liberty for today’s university students? How difficult is it to communicate ideas on college campuses?Show Notes and Further ReadingListeners may be interested in our Free Thoughts episodes with Robby Soave and Greg Lukianoff on First Amendment rights on college campuses.The 10th International Students for Liberty Conference is February 17th-19th, 2017. More details here. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jeremy McLellan joins us this week to talk about his brand of politics and comedy. Does humor have a place in changing people’s political beliefs?You can find McLellan’s comedy on Twitter and Facebook. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Alex Nowrasteh joins us this week to talk about immigration in the wake of Donald Trump’s contentious executive order on the subject. Is immigration always good for a country?In this episode, we discuss economic arguments for and against immigration, the rate at which immigrants culturally and politically assimilate in the United States, and the real odds of a successful terrorist attack carried out by immigrants or refugees.Show Notes and Further ReadingFor a deeper understanding of Trump’s executive order restricting permanent immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries, we recommend this Vox article by Dara Lind and this New York Times op-ed by David Bier.Trevor mentions this Free Thoughts episode with John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart on the real risks of terrorism, and listeners may also be interested in the first episode we did on immigration with Alex Nowrasteh; it’s about the history of immigration in the US and the various laws governing it. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out informati

Brink Lindsey joins us this week to talk about his idea for an alliance between liberals and libertarians in the age of Trump-style conservative populism.Where did the idea for liberaltarianism come from? How will Donald Trump’s presidency affect libertarians’ relationship with liberals and progressives?Show Notes and Further ReadingHere’s Brink Lindsey’s Vox article, “Liberals and libertarians should unite to block Trump’s extremism.”See also this article by Lindsey that appeared in the New Republic in 2006 that first coined the term “liberaltarian.”Here’s our previous Free Thoughts episode with Lindsey on income inequality.Lindsey mentions this book, The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth (2006), by Benjamin M. Friedman.Here is Lindsey’s 2015 study, “Low-Hanging Fruit Guarded by Dragons: Reforming Regressive Regulation to Boost U.S. Economic Growth.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Gene Healy joins us for a special Inauguration Day episode of Free Thoughts. We assess Barack Obama’s legacy as President of the United States and think about what we might expect in the coming years from President Trump.What will Obama’s presidential legacy be? How will recent expansions of executive power under Obama affect the actions of a Donald Trump administration?How hawkish has Obama’s foreign policy been? What happened to the anti-war movement during Obama’s presidency? Can we expect them to come back during a Trump administration?Show Notes and Further ReadingGene Healy’s article in the February 2017 issue of Reason is “Goodbye, Obama”.Other episodes of Free Thoughts that are mentioned in this episode:America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power with Gene HealyWhat Are the Risks of Terrorism? with John MuellerHealy mentions Jack Goldsmith and Matthew Waxman’s “The Legal Legacy of Light-Footprint Warfare” (2016).He also mentions Party in the Street (2015) by Michael T. Heaney and Fabio Rojas, Nati

Peter Van Doren joins us this week for a discussion on how wages are determined in a market economy.Is there a correlation between a worker’s productivity and the value they provide for society? Why has CEO pay increased so much lately? Should the government have a role in fixing unequal or unfair wages?Show Notes and Further ReadingVan Doren mentions this blog post by Robert Lawrence on the gap between real wages and labor productivity. See also this link for the same discussion (only with Canadian data) on the terms of trade between what workers make and what they consume.Here are papers by Kevin Murphy and Steven Kaplan on CEO pay.Van Doren also mentions The Homevoter Hypothesis: How Home Values Influence Local Government Taxation, School Finance, and Land-Use Policies by William Fischel. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jason Kuznicki joins us to discuss his chapter on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant in our newest book, Arguments for Liberty.What’s Kant’s conception of the good, and what kind of government follows from that?Who was Immanuel Kant and what were his moral and political theories? What does Kant’s categorical imperative tell us about how to live a good life? How do we get from the categorical imperative to a form of government? And why are some libertarians seemingly anti-Kant?Show Notes and Further ReadingArguments for Liberty is available here as a free .pdf and in Kindle and e-Book formats. It’s also available in paperback on Amazon.For those interested in reading more of Kant’s work, Kuznicki recommends starting with Kant’s Idea of a Universal History from a Cosmopolitical Point of View, or Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason; both are in the public domain and are available for free download from Liberty Fund. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

David Boaz joins us to recap 2016. Did we just have the worst year ever in American politics?Show Notes and Further ReadingHere’s our Free Thoughts episode on Donald Trump with Ben Domenech, recorded after Trump won the Republican primary but before he won the general election.Boaz mentions the current issue of Cato Policy Report, which features an article by Tom Palmer on the new resurgence of three threats: identity politics, populist authoritarianism, and radical political Islam.Boaz also mentions this article by Conor Friedersdorf, “Tyrant-Proof the White House—Before It’s Too Late.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

George Selgin joins us for a discussion about the gold standard. How did America get off the gold standard, and is there any chance of the country returning to it? Would it be a good idea to revive the standard?Why gold in particular and not any other commodity? Is gold less valuable as money than in other applications, like electronics manufacturing?Show Notes and Further ReadingTrevor asks whether people in Venezuela have started switching to Bitcoin, since Venezuela’s own currency is falling apart. According to this article from Jim Epstein in next month’s issue of Reason, that’s exactly what they’re doing. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Timothy Sandefur joins us this week to talk about his new book, The Permission Society: How the Ruling Class Turns Our Freedoms into Privileges and What We Can Do About It.What’s the difference between a society where people are free to do whatever they please and one where they must first get permission from the government to do things like owning land, building a house, or starting a business? What’s wrong with these systems of permitting?Show Notes and Further ReadingSandefur’s book is The Permission Society: How the Ruling Class Turns Our Freedoms into Privileges and What We Can Do About It (2016).   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Kevin Currie-Knight joins us this week to discuss why we can’t seem to change the way we educate schoolchildren. Is there one best way to educate kids?Where did our current system—splitting kids up by age, dividing knowledge up into subjects, having teachers stand at the front of the room and give lectures, testing knowledge with exams, summer holidays, etc.—come from? Why does education still look pretty much like it did hundreds of years ago when everything else in our modern world has changed?Show Notes and Further ReadingCurrie-Knight spoke on a Kansas Policy Institute panel on this topic.Here’s Currie-Knight’s video series about education, Schooled.He also mentions The Independent Project (here’s a Huffington Post article about it), High Tech High, and an upcoming documentary about High Tech High called Most Likely To Succeed.Trevor mentions a lecture (and Free Thoughts episode) he gives called The Statrix.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Johan Norberg joins Trevor this week to talk about the notion of progress and gives us all a few reasons to look forward to the future.Why is there a systemic bias towards pessimism when hard data shows the world is getting better and better every day?Show Notes and Further ReadingNorberg’s newest book is Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future (2016).Listeners may also enjoy Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2011).To find more statistics that show how the world is always getting better, we recommend checking out another one of Cato’s projects, HumanProgress.org. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Richard Vedder joins us this week to discuss what he’s identified as three major problems with the way today’s American higher education system works.Why is higher education so expensive, and how did it become so expensive so quickly? If student aid and loans only aggravate the problem, can anything be done to remedy this? Is going to college more of a status symbol than a necessity these days? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. Ryan Neuhofel joins us this week to talk about his practice, NeuCare, which is a very different way to approach primary care medicine in the United States.What is direct primary care? How should health insurance work, and how is it broken in our health care system today? How do primary care doctors currently get paid? Why is managed health care so expensive? Is direct primary care part of what a free market in medicine might look like?Show Notes and Further ReadingYou can find more information about Dr. Neuhofel’s practice at neucare.net.Our episode on “The Statrix” is what originally prompted Dr. Neuhofel to send us an email. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

American Indians currently have the highest rates of poverty of any racial group; some reservations have unemployment rates upward of 80 percent. Suicide is the leading cause of death among Indian men, Native American women are two and a half times more likely to be raped than the national average, and gang violence affects Indian youth more than any other group.Why? Naomi Schaefer Riley says the American government’s current Indian policies are at fault as much as any historic injustice done to them.What is the federal government’s current relationship with American Indian tribes? What does the day-to-day economic life for people on a reservation look like? How do tribal courts work?Show Notes and Further ReadingRiley’s book is The New Trail of Tears: How Washington Is Destroying American Indians (2016). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The bleak prospect of living in a country governed by one of the major-party presidential candidates seems to bolster arguments against voting. Declining to participate in this year’s deeply unsatisfactory election may signal a preference for “none of the above” while denying personal sanction to the many wrongs and injustices governments mete out in our names. Not voting is a time-saver, too.But non-participation in the vote may be an unwise option. Voting doesn’t just elect a candidate: it may signal to a variety of important audiences what direction the electorate would like the country to take. Perhaps voting is the best option available, even if other candidates and other systems of government would provide more liberty and prosperity. Failing to vote may waste personal power.Is the best choice to vote one’s conscience, vote strategically, or not vote at all? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What are some of the geographical factors throughout history that lead to unequal outcomes? Can we tease out a causal direction for something like cultural dishonesty? Is isolation—cultural, geographic, and otherwise—always bad for a society? How does all of this relate to the ongoing income inequality debate in America?Show Notes and Further ReadingThomas Sowell’s newest book is Wealth, Poverty, and Politics: Revised and Enlarged Edition (2016).Sowell mentions J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (2016).Freedom on Trial is our new courtroom drama that takes viewers into the heart of the everyday issues that arise when an employer’s desire to hire more employees runs into the barrier of minimum wage laws, and when the government’s plans to “solve” income inequality only makes things worse.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Why have people been so fixated on income inequality lately? Is it really a matter of “the 1%” versus “the 99%”? How do things like occupational licensing, energy use, and regulation tie in to this? How do these things stack the deck against poor people?Show Notes and Further ReadingHere are Ryan Young’s two most recent papers on the inequality, which he coauthored along with Iain Murray. “People, Not Ratios: Why the Debate over Income Inequality Asks the Wrong Questions” and “The Rising Tide: Answering the Right Questions in the Inequality Debate.”Freedom on Trial is our new courtroom drama that takes viewers into the heart of the everyday issues that arise when an employer’s desire to hire more employees runs into the barrier of minimum wage laws, and when the government’s plans to “solve” income inequality only makes things worse.The quote Trevor paraphrases near the beginning of the show was a bit of wisdom from Anatole France: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sl

Why does the left seem better at making non-cringeworthy political videos? Does that necessarily have to be the case?John Papola joins us this week to share his background at MTV, Nickelodeon, and Spike TV; his thoughts on the filmmaking process; and why it’s essential to tell character-driven stories. We also discuss Libertarianism.org’s new series, Freedom on Trial, which was produced by Emergent Order and directed by Papola.Show Notes and Further ReadingHere’s our Freedom on Trial landing page. There, you can find the videos themselves, supplemental videos, and more info about the cast and crew for the production.Emergent Order’s website is here.Here’s Papola’s trailer for the Rocket Power movie, his first opportunity to direct and edit a trailer.”Fear the Boom and Bust” and “Fight of the Century” are the two rap battles between John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek that Papola and Emergent Order are most well known for.Trevor mentions our Free Thoughts episode with Russ Roberts on his book How Adam Smith Ca