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...

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...

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 Supre...

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? A...

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.”  Sh...

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 Reading Richman’s original blog posts on the subject, “The Constitution Revisited”...

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 e...

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 “...

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. Sho...

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...

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 Reading Flemm...

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 Reading New Zealand consistently outranks the United States in the Fraser Institute’s annual Economic Freedom of the World report ....

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 Reading The 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   o...

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 Reading Mueller and Stewart’s new book on how our post-9/11 government ends up chasing incredible terrorist threats, Chas...

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 monopoli...

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 ope...

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 Reading Higgs’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 Americ...

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 secon...

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 durin...

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 impose...

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 au...

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...

“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. Sh...

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 per...