Free Thoughts

For most of human history, most people lived in abject poverty and cultural and technological stagnation. Only in the past 200 years or so has humankind seen a flourishing of new ideas that has led to our current state of relative health, wealth, safety, and happiness.Deirdre McCloskey says the difference lies in the power of market institutions and a burgeoning respect for those that participate in them. Celebrating innovation—not protecting people from it—is the key to explaining this exponential growth.Show Notes and Further ReadingThe 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.

Socrates could have had his friend Crito pay a bribe to get him out of prison and escape his death sentence, but he didn’t. Why? Do we always have a duty to obey the law?Brian Wilson from Combat and Classics joins us this week to continue our discussion on the last days of the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates’ life, as told by his student Plato.Show Notes and Further ReadingCombat and Classics is a series of free online seminars for active duty, reserve, and veteran U.S. military, sponsored by St. John’s College.Our first podcast in this series was on Socrates’ trial, as recorded by Plato in the Apology.The Crito is a dialogue by Plato that depicts a conversation between Socrates (who is sitting in prison, having been sentenced to death by an Athenian jury during the events in Apology) and his wealthy friend Crito, who offers to finance Socrates’ escape from prison. Socrates refuses Crito’s offer on the grounds that injustice may not be answered with injustice. A free, Creative Commons-licensed version of this text can be found here.Aaron mentions “The Humble Case for Liberty,” an essay he wrote in a collection published by the Atlas Network and Students for Liberty entitled Why Liberty: Your Life, Your Choices, Your Future (2013). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What counts as a conspiracy theory? Why do people have a natural tendency to see intent and design, even when there is none? Are there any conspiracy theories particularly prevalent among libertarians?Daniel Bier of The Skeptical Libertarian joins us this week to talk about belief in conspiracy theories as a social phenomenon and the damage they can do to the perception of libertarianism and the credibility of libertarian arguments.Show Notes and Further ReadingListeners may also be interested in the podcast episode we recorded with Jesse Walker on his book, The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What was the U.S. government’s original motivation behind drug prohibition? How has the way we view addiction changed over time? What happens when a country—or a state—decriminalizes drugs? What about hard drugs?Show Notes and Further ReadingChasing the Scream is available here, along with all of Hari’s interviews and notes used in writing the book.Hari mentions Jeffrey Miron’s work on the economics of drug prohibition; you can read Miron’s recent work here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What kind of person was Adam Smith? How does Smith’s theory of morality compare to other philosophers’ theories? What did economics look like before Smith?Paul Mueller discusses Adam Smith’s life and ideas, explains Smith’s “invisible hand” and “impartial spectator” analogies, and talks about the marginal revolution that occured in economics 100 years after Smith’s death.Show Notes and Further ReadingAdam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments are great places to start reading Smith in his own words.Listeners may also want to check out our Free Thoughts episode with Russ Roberts on his book, How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What’s the best way to teach the principles of economics and individual liberty to people? Is having ‘good character’ a timeless virtue?Lawrence W. Reed joins us this week to discuss his work at the Foundation for Economic Education and FEE’s history in the worldwide free market movement. He also shares a few stories about ‘Real Heroes’ of liberty.Show Notes and Further ReadingThe Foundation for Economic Education has made the full text of Henry Hazlitt’s classic book Economics in One Lesson available online for free here.Aaron mentions reading Reed’s essays on character and liberty. They are available here, organized into a short book The Great Hope: Essays on Character and Liberty.Reed’s ongoing Real Heroes series can be found here. New features are released every Friday; here is Reed’s account of the life of Witold Pilecki. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Murray Rothbard wrote The Ethics of Liberty in 1982 as a full moral theory of the ethical considerations libertarianism requires and what these considerations would prevent the state from doing.This week we begin a discussion on the second part of The Ethics of Liberty. What is Rothbard’s universal ethic? According to Rothbard, how can property originally be justly acquired? What would ownership in a Rothbardian free market system look like?Here is our discussion on part one of The Ethics of Liberty. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is it about British philosopher David Hume that makes him so popular? What was Hume’s attitude towards politics?Thomas W. Merrill joins us this week to talk about Hume’s thought and his skeptical, empirical attitude.Show Notes and Further ReadingMerrill’s book, David Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment (2015) is available from Cambridge University Press.The Philosophy Bites podcast asked philosophers who their favorite philosopher was. Many of their guests chose David Hume.The Amazon Kindle edition of Hume’s Essays is available for free.Many of David Hume’s other works are available for free at davidhume.org. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The contemporary British, Canadian, and American political systems come from the same democratic root, but have very different ways of separating and balancing power. How does the American presidential system compare to the parliamentary system? Does the government we have today function anything like the government the Founding Fathers envisioned?Frank H. Buckley joins Trevor Burrus this week for a discussion on his book, The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America.Is it accurate to say we have a “crown government?” What’s the danger in giving the president legislative power? Do presidential and parliamentary regimes tend to attract different types of leaders?Show Notes and Further ReadingBuckley’s newest book, The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America (2014).Gene Healy’s book The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power (2009) also explores these themes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we discuss the history of conspiracy theories in America with Jesse Walker. What counts as a conspiracy theory? What are the different kinds of conspiracy theories? Are there any theories that have turned out to be true?How do these theories fade in and out of our national consciousness? Are there any uniquely libertarian conspiracy theories? Is there a way to recognize a conspiracy theory when we come across it?Show Notes and Further ReadingWalker’s books are The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory (2013) and Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America (2001).Walker mentions reading Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus! Trilogy when he was young. Here’s a video of Robert Anton Wilson speaking at the Libertarian Party’s nominating convention in 1987.Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 article “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.”Frederic Wertham’s 1954 book warning of the supposed dangers of children reading comic books, Seduction of the Innocent.Arthur Miller’s classic play “The Crucible,” which is a dramatized version of the Salem witch trials (and which was written as an allegory of McCarthyism).Joseph Uscinski and Joseph Parent’s American Conspiracy Theories uses empirical data to analyze trends in conspiracy theories between 1890 and 2010.Movies mentioned in this episode:Invasion of the Body-SnatchersThe Manchurian CandidateThey Live Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.