Free Thoughts

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 ReadingHere is the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group Ekins participated in.And here is her report on “The Five Types of Trump Voters.”Ekins also mentions FiveThirtyEight’s Pollster Ratings project. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 ReadingYou 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.This lecture on distributive justice in our guide to political philosophy is a great place to start for those new to the thought of John Rawls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.Show Notes and Further ReadingThe essay that inspired this episode, “Manifesto for a New American Liberalism, or How to Be a Humane Libertarian,” can be found here on McCloskey’s website.Here’s a previous Free Thoughts episode with McCloskey on her excellent Bourgeois Era book series, which are linked below:The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (2007)Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (2011)Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (2016) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 ReadingBrennan and Jaworski’s book is Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests (2015).Markets without Limits is partially a response to this book, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (2013) by Michael J. Sandel.One of our very first Free Thoughts podcast episodes was with James Stacey Taylor on this very same topic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.What’s it like in federal prison? How did Hopwood become a jailhouse lawyer? If people do in fact “age out” of criminal activity, then what should our prison system look like?Show Notes and Further ReadingHopwood’s book is Law Man: My Story of Robbing Banks, Winning Supreme Court Cases, and Finding Redemption (2012).Here’s the New York Times article by Adam Liptak that Hopwood mentions, “A Mediocre Criminal, but an Unmatched Jailhouse Lawyer.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 ReadingThales Academy, Franklin Academy, St. Thomas More AcademyHere’s a short video from Reason.tv’s Jim Epstein featuring Luddy and his work.Other Free Thoughts episodes on education and school choice:“Why Schools Haven’t Changed in Hundereds of Years” with Kevin Currie-Knight“Teaching School Choice to the American Education System” wth Jason Bedrick“The Education Apocalypse: How It Happened and How to Survive It” with Glenn Reynolds“The State of State Education in America” with Neal McCluskey Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.What explains the Trump phenomenon? How did we get President Trump? Just an electoral appetite for “shaking things up,” or is it something deeper? How does Trump think? How does he make decisions?Show Notes and Further ReadingOur other episode with Levy on his book “Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom” is required listening if you’re interested in what’s being played out in the political sphere these days.Levy also mentions this essay he wrote on identity politics, “The Defense of Liberty Can’t Do Without Identity Politics.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Julian Sanchez joins us this week for a discussion about online privacy in the era of mass data collection. When we’re online, what kind of data are we creating, and who’s watching us?We talk about data mining, ad blockers, the internet of things, developer keys, passwords and fingerprint security, encrypted messaging apps, and more.Further ReadingOther Free Thoughts episodes about online privacy:“Deconstructing the Surveillance State “with Julian Sanchez“The CIA Listens to Free Thoughts “with Patrick EddingtonSanchez mentions the browser ad-ons Ghostery and NoScript and the Tails operating system.He also mentions The Art of Invisibility: The World’s Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data (2017) by Kevin Mitnick. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

John Pfaff joins us this week to talk about the United States’s unusually high rate of incarceration. How many Americans are in prison or in jail? What did they do to get there?If we have roughly the same crime rate as we did in 1970, but have five times as many people in prison as we did then, what are those extra people in prison for?Show Notes and Further ReadingPfaff’s book is Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration—and How to Achieve Real Reform (2017).Other books mentioned in this episode:Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America (2015) by Jill LeovyLocking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (2017) by James Forman, Jr.Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court (2010) by Amy BachListeners may also be interested in our Free Thoughts podcast episode with Bernard Kerik, “From Jailer to Jailed: Bernard Kerik’s Story.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.