Free Thoughts

Why is the internet community—and now, John Oliver—so irate about the state of the Internet? Berin Szoka says the debate over “net neutrality” stopped being about neutrality years ago, and has become a debate over something else entirely, with nothing less than the very nature of the Internet at stake. With the Federal Communications Commission’s ruling earlier this year, are we going to see a les...

In a new survey of over 4,000 young Americans, Jennifer L. Lawless and Richard L. Fox have found that only 19% of respondents indicated that one of their future goals was to become a political leader. Why are these young people not interested in running for office? Will they change their mind later in life? Show Notes and Further Reading Jennifer L. Lawless and Richard L. Fox’s 2015 book on this p...

As a society, are we as tolerant as we could be? As we should be? Andrew Jason Cohen gives his definition of toleration and we discuss the harm principle as elaborated by John Stuart Mill and the implications of various alternatives to it. Show Notes and Further Reading Cohen’s 2104 book on the subject,  Toleration , part of Polity Press’s “Key Concepts” series. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/priv...

Is this a libertarian moment? Was there a libertarian moment? Can we expect there to be a libertarian moment? Yes to all three, says  Reason managing editor Katherine Mangu-Ward. We also discuss whether younger people are becoming more libertarian, why libertarianism always seems to be associated with the political right, and whether libertarianism depends on technological growth. Show Notes and F...

This week we’re joined by Christopher A. Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. We ask whether there exists a single libertarian foreign policy that all libertarians would agree with; talk about the idea that war powers, resolutions, and laws passed during wartime don’t recede in times of peace; give a quick rundown of American military history; and di...

This week Matt Zwolinski joins us to talk about the fascinating life of one of the most radical libertarians of the nineteenth century: the lawyer, abolitionist, political philosopher, and entrepreneur Lysander Spooner, who believed adamantly that we have no obligation to do what the government tells us to do just because the government is telling us to do something. Near the end of his life Spoon...

Robert Nozick, in his essay “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?” proposed that many highly-educated public intellectuals tend to lean towards collectivism and authoritarianism because they expect society to work best in the way that schools and the academic system (which is the system they are most familiar with) operates. Was Nozick’s theory right? Why do academics, philosophers, journalists...

Where did the health insurance system as we know it come from? Why are so many people these days getting insurance through their jobs? Why are prices so particularly high in American health care? Is Obamacare working? John C. Goodman notes that what’s critical to understanding the American health care system is that the identity of the party that ends up paying the bill has a huge effect on pricin...

With the Greek debt crisis in the news, everyone is asking “Are we the next Greece?” Is our current level of debt sustainable? How about our entitlement programs, like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid? Michael D. Tanner joins us fresh from the release of his latest book, Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis (2015). Together we discuss whether or not the American gover...

This week Michael C. Munger joins us to talk about voluntary transactions and questions of justice in market pricing. What would everyone agree is truly voluntary? Are disparities in bargaining power coercive? What’s wrong with using the state to address these disparities? What about price gouging situations? What about sweatshops? Show Notes and Further Reading Dr. Munger’s 2010 paper “ Euvolunta...

Philosophy is concerned with three basic questions: “What is there?,” “How do I know about it?,” and “What do I do about it?” The three questions correspond to the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Our Cato colleague Matthew Feeney joins us this week to talk about philosophy, rhetoric, why people disagree about politics, performative morality, the non-aggression axiom, and more. Sho...

This week Andrew I. Cohen discusses his new book,  Philosophy, Ethics, and Public Policy: An Introduction .  We talk about philosophy as a careful, methodical approach to thinking about issues. Is philosophy particularly powerful compared to other academic and scientific disciplines? What counts as public policy and how does philosophy influence it? Is it a good idea to “politicize” philosophy? Ho...

This week Jacob T. Levy joins us to discuss his new book, Rationalism, Pluralism and Freedom (2015). Can rationalism and pluralism be reconciled in the liberal tradition? Why not? How much authority is proper for intermediate groups? When does pluralism shift into illiberalism? How can the balance of power between intermediate groups be used to grow the power of a central state? Show Notes and Fur...

What would a privately-administered legal justice system looks like? Bruce L. Benson joins us to give us a hint about what such a system would look like as we discuss his book,  The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without a State . Is government necessary to provide law and order? How does thinking about the law in economic terms—as a good or service like any other—change how we think about the law? Co...

What’s wrong with K-12 education? What about higher education? How can we rebuild American education from the ground up? This week Glenn Harlan Reynolds joins us to talk about his new book,  The Education Apocalypse: How It Happened and How to Survive It . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What would the American founders think of our taxation system today, given America’s origins? Daniel Mitchell answers this and other questions as we talk about the different kinds of tax schemes and the different incentives they offer taxpayers. Why is doing taxes so complicated? Why are there so many exemptions, deductions, incentives, preferences, etc. in the tax code? Are the rich paying their...

Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek was one of the world’s foremost intellectuals in a variety of fields, including legal theory, economics, constitutional theory, and neuroscience. This podcast episode provides an introduction to his academic and popular writing. Steven Horwitz joins us for a discussion about Hayek’s life and ideas. What does it mean to think “Hayekian”? What is spontaneous order? Why...

This week we are joined by Peter J. Boettke, who explains this history and tenets of the Austrian tradition in economics. Boettke traces the school’s history from Carl Menger through Eugen Böhm-Bawerk and Joseph Schumpeter, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard to contemporary economists such as Israel Kirzner, Vernon Smith, and Mario Rizzo. He explains what Austrian economics doe...

This week Bernard B. Kerik joins us to offer his perspective on criminal justice in America. Mr. Kerik was the New York City Police Commissioner from 2000 to 2001, and was later sentenced to four years in federal prison in 2010 for criminal conspiracy and tax fraud. He shares his experience in prison and how his own incarceration influenced the way he sees the American justice system today. Show N...

This week we’re joined by Grover Norquist for a frank discussion about every libertarian’s favorite part of the government: its tax-collection arm. Norquist shares how he got into politics, the idea behind his infamous tax pledge, and his plan for reining in the government’s power to tax its citizens. What’s the right amount of taxes? Zero? How do we get there? Given our nation’s anti-tax roots, h...

Daniel J. Ikenson explains the idea of free trade between nations on this week’s show. We discuss how Enlightenment-era economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo saw trade as a non zero-sum game and what their theories mean for continued economic growth today. We discuss in detail the idea of comparative advantage, and talk about the effects of regulation on trade. What is a trade surplus? What...

Edward H. Crane joins us this week as we talk about the beginnings of the Libertarian Party in the early 1970s and Crane’s involvement with that organization. We also talk about the founding and early history of the Cato Institute, and we talk generally about Cato’s purpose and mission. What was early-1970s libertarianism like, and how has libertarianism changed over the past 40 or so years in Ame...

This week George H. Smith joins us to talk about Individualism: A Reader , the first in a series of readers published by Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. In it, Smith and his co-editor Marilyn Moore have compiled 26 selections from 25 writers on the topic of individualism. How has the idea of individualism evolved over time? What are some common misconceptions about individualism? Is a c...

Timothy P. Carney joins us this week for a discussion on how the complex system of lobbying and regulating and subsidizing works in Washington D.C. He points out that big government and big business often scratch each others’ backs at the expense of the taxpayer, gives several examples of this behavior, and explains how it benefits both parties. Show Notes and Further Reading Timothy P. Carney, Th...

James Otteson is the author of  The End of Socialism (2014) and is a professor of political economy at Wake Forest University. This week he joins us to talk about socialism and explains several problems with the philosophy’s methodology that makes it unworkable in the real world. What exactly is socialism? What’s the distinction between socialism and corporatism? Why doesn’t socialism work? Hosted...