#6 - David Friedman: anarcho capitalism and the future of governance

David D. Friedman is an economist, legal scholar, and author of The Machinery of Freedom, a foundational book in anarcho-capitalist thought. Son of Milton Friedman, he has written widely on legal systems, decentralized order, and political philosophy.

We talk about how societies can function without a state, how history informs libertarian models, and how theory meets practice in real-world alternatives to government. Topics are outlined in the timestamps below.

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Timestamps

00:00 – Intro

02:48 – Enforcing law without government

05:36 – Parkinson’s Law and institutional critique

08:24 – Real-world examples of anarchic projects

11:12 – Estonia, e-residency, and economic leverage

14:00 – Private schools and the state’s declining necessity

16:48 – Two fronts for decentralizing education

19:36 – Iceland and China: decentralized historical models

22:24 – Trust systems and behavior on platforms like eBay

25:12 – Rationality, family influence, and agreement

28:01 – The economist and the hungry bear story

30:49 – Speech norms and informal censorship

33:37 – Social labels, reputation, and polarization

36:25 – Government boundaries and philosophical grounding

39:13 – Historical fiction and building imagined systems

42:01 – Being raised by two economists

44:49 – AI as a transformative, uncertain technology

47:37 – Why foundational questions matter

50:25 – Thinking practically about building a freer society

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