Free Thoughts

Sam Bowman joins us this week to talk about political trends in the United Kingdom and in Europe more broadly. What’s a neoliberal, and how is that different from American libertarianism?

What kinds of reforms are needed in European politics? Is there a connection between Brexit and Donald Trump’s election? What does a Trump presidency mean for the U.K.?

Show Notes and Further Reading

Here’s the Adam Smith Institute’s website...

William Irwin joins us for a discussion about the novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk and the movie it inspired. Are consumer choices authentic choices? Where does Tyler Durden go wrong in his thinking?

Show Notes and Further Reading

Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (1996) is a novel that’s well-worth reading if you haven’t yet. Here’s a link to the David Fincher movie (1999) starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter...

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 Reading

Here is the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group Ekins participated in...

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 Reading

You 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...

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...

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 Reading

Brennan and Jaworski’s book is Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests (2015)...

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...

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 Reading

Thales Academy, Franklin Academy, St. Thomas More Academy

Here’s a short video from Reason.tv’s Jim Epstein featuring Luddy and his work...

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...

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?

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