"I always use prohibition as my poster child for why it's bad to do those things," he says. "The idea was that something I'd never known was that the agency, the feds, who were the prohibition enforcers, they actually poisoned,. put poison in whiskey bottles and so they literally murdered thousands of people." He adds: "If you believe in a free society, it's better to live in a world where you say, like you have a lot of choices and you're responsible for your choices"
Nick Gillespie is the host of the Reason Interview and an editor at large at Reason. Nick is one of the most interesting libertarian thinkers in America, and has been described by the New York Times as being to libertarianism “what Lou Reed is to rock ‘n’ roll, the quintessence of its outlaw spirit". Important Links:
Show Notes:
- Is libertarianism dead?
- Saying what you think
- The case for rational optimism
- Labels and empathy
- President Nixon, the Great Reshuffle, Bitcoin
- Bureaucracy and responsiveness
- The rapidly changing world
- Prohibition and legalisation
- Why America does not have enough immigration
- The enfranchising power of social media
- Obscenity and moral panics
- Empathy with the dispossessed
- And MUCH more!
Books Mentioned:
- The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America; by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch
- The Rational Optimist; by Matt Ridley
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; by Douglas Adams
- The Population Bomb; by Paul Ehrlich
- The Beginning of Infinity; by David Deutsch
- Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy; by Joseph Schumpeter
- The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism; by Howard Bloom
- One Summer: America, 1927; by Bill Bryson
- The War on Alcohol; by Liza McGirr
- Immigration and Freedom; by Chandran Kukathas
- The Illuminatus! Trilogy; by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea
- What It Means to be a Libertarian: a Personal Interpretation; by Charles Murray
- Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society; by Tipper Gore
- Ulysses; by James Joyce
- The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It; by Will Storr
- Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine; by Derren Brown