Free Thoughts

Chris Freiman joins us today to argue that the liberal egalitarian rejection of free market regimes rests on a crucial methodological mistake. Liberal egalitarians regularly assume an ideal “public interest” model of political behavior and a nonideal “private interest” model of behavior in the market and civil society. Why do we need the state? What is the free rider problem? What is ideal theory?...

How did the modern dynamist economy of wealth and opportunity come about? The processes of transformational changes could have started many times in history - but they first became sustained in North-West Europe about 240 years ago. The question of why this happened in that particular place and time is one that has exercised generations of scholars. What is modernity? What is a ‘civilization’? Wha...

Over the last forty years, there is a distressing history of foreign insurgent groups being able to manipulate U.S. policymakers and opinion leaders into supporting their cause. Frequently, that support goes far beyond rhetorical endorsements to include financial and even military assistance to highly questionable individuals, organizations, and movements. Sometimes those efforts have even entangl...

This week we welcome Alexandra Natapoff to discuss the various problems with how misdemeanors are handled. Eighty percent of criminal cases filed in our countries are misdemeanors. There are so many places in the misdemeanor system where wrongful convictions are definitely taking place. The system lacks rigor and continues to be sloppy because of it.  How powerful is the misdemeanor phenomenon? In...

                                                                                                                                                  “The Iron Throne” Photo Courtesy of HBO.com Now that we all have had time to digest the ending of Game of Thrones, we invited Ilya Somin on to the show to do an in depth analysis of not only the ending, but the show in its’ entirety. We cover the politic...

Russell Muirhead joins us to discuss the difference between conspiracism and conspiracy theory and how it has influence modern political discussions. Classic conspiracy theory insists that things are not what they seem and gathers evidence—especially facts ominously withheld by official sources—to tease out secret machinations. The new conspiracism is different. There is no demand for evidence, no...

Tyler Cowen joins us to discuss his new book; Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero . Throughout the conversation, Trevor and Aaron ask Tyler about crony capitalism, how Trump engages with big businesses, and the role of CEO’s. Cowen believes that big businesses are actually given a pretty unfair reputation as they create much more value than they are given credit for. Why is big bu...

Eric Mack joins our show again to talk about common objections to libertarianism by dissecting John Rawls view of libertarianism. Many people have reservations about libertarianism because they see it as lacking compassion, but in the long-run people who are on the lowest rung of society do better in a free market system. Some others argue that there isn’t enough substance to libertarianism to liv...

Now that Endgame has been released, we invited Jacob T. Levy to discuss the series as a whole. We talk about how it is possible to analyze the movies through a political lens, but it is important to remember that the message of many of these movies is metaphorical. Is Tony Stark a war monger? What does the Avengers series say about coercion and the abuse of power? What does society look like under...

Has the United States been a force for liberty around the world? Should it be? And if so, how? To answer these questions, Christopher A. Preble, in his new book, traces the history of U.S. foreign policy from the American Founding to the present, examining the ideas that have animated it, asking whether America’s policy choices have made the world safer and freer, and considering the impact of tho...

Jason Kuznicki joins us again to discuss the problem of political authority. His new book, Technology and the End of Authority: What is Government For? , examines the relationship between the state and technology over time. Technological developments may make the state more or less necessary over time, which is a consideration that is relatively new in the history of political philosophy, but incr...

No matter how often we debate America’s role in the world, we are not throwing around original ideas. This debate resurfaces each time we decide whether or not to intervene in a foreign country. It was the main discussion amongst Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and William Randolph Hearst who favored imperial expansion while other notable intellectuals; Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie valued...

Joshua Childress joins us today to explain why his growing dissatisfaction of his Customs Border Patrol work led him to resign. He thought he was joining a line of work that was deterring violent actors from entering the United States, but he quickly realized that the people he encountered on the border on a daily basis were not threatening and weren’t fitting the narrative he had been told. What...

Throughout the history of America, we have used a variety of methods to tax the income of the public. Prior to the World War II only a fraction of the population actually made enough money to reach a taxable threshold. However, during and after the war, that threshold was lowered so much that about 90% of the population qualified for taxes to be automatically deducted from their paycheck. With tha...

James Madison would have turned 268 on March 16, 2019 so we dedicated a whole episode to him! Even though Madison was not a great president (be sure to check out our upcoming profile of him as part of our Everything Wrong with the President’s Serie s), he was a great American. He was skeptical about who he trusted, which made him ever-cautious of who to create alliances with. Also, he would be dis...

Jonathan Blanks returns to our show to discuss how different versions of liberty were promoted by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X during the Civil Rights Movement. Malcolm X was very weary of trusting authority, which is seen as a favorable trait by libertarians. The discussion then shifts to whether or not racism has improved since the Civil Rights Movement and how that affects how we view...

Tim Carney joins us to discuss the premise of his book; how the decline of the American dream it is not purely the result of economics as the left claims, but the collapse of the institutions that made us successful, including (but not limited to): marriage, church, and civic life. While the well-educated and wealthy elites still enjoy strong communities, most blue-collar Americans lack strong com...

Revisiting the root of our ideas in freedom and liberty, Eric Mack argues that everyone has a claim to liberty because it represents the possibility to live a valuable life. With that being said, people believe in varying degrees of liberty, even libertarians. Mack believes that libertarians encompass a wide spectrum of thought ranging from classical liberal to anarchists.  What is libertarianism?...

Lenore Skenazy let her son ride the metro by himself at the age of nine after studying the map with him in order to prepare. Unbeknownst to her, this caused great unrest and scrutiny from a variety of parenting groups, so much so that she decided to write a book and start a project on letting your kid grow to be self-reliant. Should children ride the NYC subway by themselves? When did children sto...

Drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes are legal activities, but politicians use the law in order to discourage people from doing these things that may seen as poor for your health. This is inconsistent with John Stuart Mill’s famous principle that people should be free in the sense that they should be able to do whatever they like as long as they are not harming others. What is paternalism? Shou...

In Candice Delma’s book A Duty to Resist  she highlights a theory of resisting injustice as a duty in of itself. This specific duty could require breaking the law. She also defends uncivil disobedience and where it is limited in feasibility. Throughout this episode she makes us question how far we should go in order to fight an injustice. Delmas argues that the duty of justice, the principle of fa...

As the American “foodie” culture grows, it will clash more and more with previously established USDA and FDA rules and regulations since they typically promote uniformity. The USDA has taken it upon themselves to enforce standards of identity laws which allows them to basically enforce cosmetic standards. These laws encourage farmers to produce foods that are uniform and look gorgeous, but neither...

As more states aim to legalize marijuana, whether it be for recreation or medicinal purposes, there is an on-going talk debate about if public policy should determine what pleasures are okay to indulge in and which ones are not. Jeff Miron joins us today to discuss drug prohibition actually hurts the naive drug user the most.  Are drugs an economic good? What is the economic logic of prohibition?...

Peter Van Doren argues that consumers correctly consider fuel costs when making vehicle-buying decisions. However, CAFE standards cannot be justified as correcting some sort of consumer failure to appreciate fuel savings. The idea that CAFE reduces carbon emissions is slightly more reasonable, but it is a very indirect, inefficient and regressive method. For these reasons, it is difficult to not s...

Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve had a long-standing policy of maintaining a minimal footprint on the credit system. According to Selgin, the Fed use to be a “lean and mean” player in the credit system. However, on the eve of the 2008 financial crisis they made some changes to decades’ old policies that they believed would aid the financial instability of the country at the...