In my lifetime, the kind of arguments that we're talking about have fallen out of fashion. And I think that the challenge that I was trying to suggest earlier is why that might be the case. If you go back and look at Barry Goldwater's acceptance speech before the 1964 Republican Convention,. It's a philosophical essay. It's nothing like a modern political acceptance speech. The idea that they wrote this together or came together on this is, of course, someone entertaining.
Is the perfect really the enemy of the good? Or is it the other way around? In 2008, Duke University economist Michael Munger ran for governor and proposed increasing school choice through vouchers for the state's poorest counties. But some lovers of liberty argued that it's better to fight for eliminating public schools instead of trying to improve them. Munger realized his fellow free-marketers come in two flavors: directionalists--who take our political realities as given and try to move outcomes closer to the ideal--and destinationists--who want no compromises with what they see as the perfect outcome. Listen as Munger talks to EconTalk's Russ Roberts about two different strategies for achieving political goals. Along the way, they discuss rent control, the minimum wage, and why free-market policies are so rare.