Free Thoughts

This week Matt Zwolinski joins us to talk about the fascinating life of one of the most radical libertarians of the nineteenth century: the lawyer, abolitionist, political philosopher, and entrepreneur Lysander Spooner, who believed adamantly that we have no obligation to do what the government tells us to do just because the government is telling us to do something.Near the end of his life Spooner wrote a letter to then-president Grover Cleveland. We discuss this letter and it’s implications on Spooner’s political philosophy, and the similarities between Lysander Spooner’s principles of natural law and contemporary philosopher Michael Huemer’s ideas on ethical intuitionism.Show Notes and Further ReadingLysander Spooner’s 1886 “A Letter to Grover Cleveland, on His False Inaugural Address, The Usurpations and Crimes of Lawmakers and Judges, and the Consequent Poverty, Ignorance, and Servitude of the People” (Online Library of Liberty link).Lysander Spooner’s other, more popular works on slavery and vice, “The Unconstitutionality of Slavery” and ”Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty“ (Online Library of Liberty links).Michael Huemer’s 2005 book The Problem of Political Authority and the Free Thoughts podcast we did with him in 2014. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robert Nozick, in his essay “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?” proposed that many highly-educated public intellectuals tend to lean towards collectivism and authoritarianism because they expect society to work best in the way that schools and the academic system (which is the system they are most familiar with) operates. Was Nozick’s theory right? Why do academics, philosophers, journalists, sociologists, and other “wordsmith intellectuals” tend to skew left?Show Notes and Further ReadingRobert Nozick’s influential short essay “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?”Friedrich Hayek’s essay along similar lines, “The Intellectuals and Socialism”.George H. Smith also wrote about Hayek’s views on intellectuals in this column: “Intellectuals and Libertarianism: F. A. Hayek”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Where did the health insurance system as we know it come from? Why are so many people these days getting insurance through their jobs? Why are prices so particularly high in American health care? Is Obamacare working?John C. Goodman notes that what’s critical to understanding the American health care system is that the identity of the party that ends up paying the bill has a huge effect on pricing in the medical marketplace.Show Notes and Further ReadingJohn C. Goodman’s books A Better Choice: Healthcare Solutions for America (2015), Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis (2012), and Patient Power: The Free-Enterprise Alternative to Clinton’s Health Plan (1993). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With the Greek debt crisis in the news, everyone is asking “Are we the next Greece?” Is our current level of debt sustainable? How about our entitlement programs, like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid?Michael D. Tanner joins us fresh from the release of his latest book, Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis (2015). Together we discuss whether or not the American government’s profligate spending can be reined in in time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Michael C. Munger joins us to talk about voluntary transactions and questions of justice in market pricing.What would everyone agree is truly voluntary? Are disparities in bargaining power coercive? What’s wrong with using the state to address these disparities? What about price gouging situations? What about sweatshops?Show Notes and Further ReadingDr. Munger’s 2010 paper “Euvoluntary or Not, Exchange is Just”.Dr. Munger’s 2011 paper “‘Euvoluntary Exchange’ and the ‘Difference Principle’”.Aristotle’s best-known work on ethics, The Nicomachean Ethics.Harvard professor Michael Sandel’s 2013 book on coercion caused by circumstances, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets.James Taylor’s 1979 song about working in a textile mill, “Millworker”.A recently-rediscovered short essay by John Locke on the morality of price theory, “Venditio”.Dr. Munger’s new co-edited textbook, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics: An Anthology (2015). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Philosophy is concerned with three basic questions: “What is there?,” “How do I know about it?,” and “What do I do about it?” The three questions correspond to the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.Our Cato colleague Matthew Feeney joins us this week to talk about philosophy, rhetoric, why people disagree about politics, performative morality, the non-aggression axiom, and more.Show Notes and Further ReadingLast week’s Free Thoughts Podcast with Andrew I. Cohen on the intersection of philosophy and public policy.Our Free Thoughts Podcast with Michael Huemer on political authority and ethical intuitionism.Brink Lindsey’s book, Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter — and More Unequal (2012).Jonathan Haidt’s morality quiz at YourMorals.org. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Andrew I. Cohen discusses his new book, Philosophy, Ethics, and Public Policy: An Introduction. We talk about philosophy as a careful, methodical approach to thinking about issues.Is philosophy particularly powerful compared to other academic and scientific disciplines? What counts as public policy and how does philosophy influence it? Is it a good idea to “politicize” philosophy? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Jacob T. Levy joins us to discuss his new book, Rationalism, Pluralism and Freedom (2015).Can rationalism and pluralism be reconciled in the liberal tradition? Why not?How much authority is proper for intermediate groups? When does pluralism shift into illiberalism? How can the balance of power between intermediate groups be used to grow the power of a central state?Show Notes and Further ReadingMontesquieu, The Spirit of Laws (book) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What would a privately-administered legal justice system looks like? Bruce L. Benson joins us to give us a hint about what such a system would look like as we discuss his book, The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without a State.Is government necessary to provide law and order? How does thinking about the law in economic terms—as a good or service like any other—change how we think about the law? Could you really think of those under the protection of law enforcement as “customers”?How did the law as we know it today—a system of rules and courts provided by the government—come about? How are incentives aligned in our current legal system? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What’s wrong with K-12 education? What about higher education? How can we rebuild American education from the ground up?This week Glenn Harlan Reynolds joins us to talk about his new book, The Education Apocalypse: How It Happened and How to Survive It. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.