What would the American founders think of our taxation system today, given America’s origins? Daniel Mitchell answers this and other questions as we talk about the different kinds of tax schemes and the different incentives they offer taxpayers. Why is doing taxes so complicated? Why are there so many exemptions, deductions, incentives, preferences, etc. in the tax code? Are the rich paying their “fair share” of taxes? What’s the Laffer Curve and how does it work? What are consumption taxes and ...
Jun 15, 2015•47 min
Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek was one of the world’s foremost intellectuals in a variety of fields, including legal theory, economics, constitutional theory, and neuroscience. This podcast episode provides an introduction to his academic and popular writing. Steven Horwitz joins us for a discussion about Hayek’s life and ideas. What does it mean to think “Hayekian”? What is spontaneous order? Why doesn’t planning work? Show Notes and Further Reading Steven Horwitz, Hayek’s Modern Family: Classi...
Jun 08, 2015•53 min
This week we are joined by Peter J. Boettke, who explains this history and tenets of the Austrian tradition in economics. Boettke traces the school’s history from Carl Menger through Eugen Böhm-Bawerk and Joseph Schumpeter, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard to contemporary economists such as Israel Kirzner, Vernon Smith, and Mario Rizzo. He explains what Austrian economics does and does not do, and distinguishes between what he calls “mainline” economics and “mainstream” eco...
Jun 01, 2015•58 min
This week Bernard B. Kerik joins us to offer his perspective on criminal justice in America. Mr. Kerik was the New York City Police Commissioner from 2000 to 2001, and was later sentenced to four years in federal prison in 2010 for criminal conspiracy and tax fraud. He shares his experience in prison and how his own incarceration influenced the way he sees the American justice system today. Show Notes and Further Reading Bernard B. Kerik, From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Pol...
May 25, 2015•52 min
This week we’re joined by Grover Norquist for a frank discussion about every libertarian’s favorite part of the government: its tax-collection arm. Norquist shares how he got into politics, the idea behind his infamous tax pledge, and his plan for reining in the government’s power to tax its citizens. What’s the right amount of taxes? Zero? How do we get there? Given our nation’s anti-tax roots, have we become too complacent in paying taxes? Show Notes and Further Reading Grover Norquist, End th...
May 18, 2015•59 min
Daniel J. Ikenson explains the idea of free trade between nations on this week’s show. We discuss how Enlightenment-era economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo saw trade as a non zero-sum game and what their theories mean for continued economic growth today. We discuss in detail the idea of comparative advantage, and talk about the effects of regulation on trade. What is a trade surplus? What’s a trade deficit? Is one good and the other bad? Should we be worried about the loss of manufactur...
May 11, 2015•58 min
Edward H. Crane joins us this week as we talk about the beginnings of the Libertarian Party in the early 1970s and Crane’s involvement with that organization. We also talk about the founding and early history of the Cato Institute, and we talk generally about Cato’s purpose and mission. What was early-1970s libertarianism like, and how has libertarianism changed over the past 40 or so years in America? How did Cato get started and then grow into the organization it is today? What’s Cato’s role a...
May 04, 2015•52 min
This week George H. Smith joins us to talk about Individualism: A Reader , the first in a series of readers published by Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. In it, Smith and his co-editor Marilyn Moore have compiled 26 selections from 25 writers on the topic of individualism. How has the idea of individualism evolved over time? What are some common misconceptions about individualism? Is a commitment to individualism somehow antithetical to the idea of community? Hosted on Acast. See acast...
Apr 27, 2015•54 min
Timothy P. Carney joins us this week for a discussion on how the complex system of lobbying and regulating and subsidizing works in Washington D.C. He points out that big government and big business often scratch each others’ backs at the expense of the taxpayer, gives several examples of this behavior, and explains how it benefits both parties. Show Notes and Further Reading Timothy P. Carney, The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money (book) Timothy P. Carney, Obamano...
Apr 20, 2015•51 min
James Otteson is the author of The End of Socialism (2014) and is a professor of political economy at Wake Forest University. This week he joins us to talk about socialism and explains several problems with the philosophy’s methodology that makes it unworkable in the real world. What exactly is socialism? What’s the distinction between socialism and corporatism? Why doesn’t socialism work? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Apr 13, 2015•59 min
This week, Kevin Glass tells us about the mission of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity , which is to report on what’s happening in local and state legislatures across the United States. He explains why he believes it’s crucial to focus on the governments in our own localities, even in a world where we’ve only got so much attention to give to politics and so much of the news cycle today is monopolized by debates over the proper duties of the federal government while state an...
Apr 06, 2015•47 min
Matt Zwolinski joins us this week to talk about his recent paper, “Libertarianism and Pollution,” available on the Social Science Research Network. In it, he examines how various libertarian philosophers and economists, including Nozick, Rothbard, Ronald Coase, and Eric Mack have dealt with the problem of pollution. In a system of strictly enforced rights to private property, how should one account for pollution? Should it be allowed at all? And in either case, how can the term “pollution” be de...
Mar 30, 2015•58 min
Did FDR’s New Deal policies help pull America out of the Great Depression, or were they in fact responsible for the high unemployment in the country until the beginning of World War II? Jim Powell joins us for a discussion on America’s great 20th century experiment with big government. Is the picture we have of the New Deal Era accurate? What was the state of the country leading up to the New Deal? Were these new social programs successful in their goals—and what were their goals in the first pl...
Mar 23, 2015•55 min
This week Jonathan Blanks joins us to discuss civil liberties and police misconduct in America. This episode was recorded at the 2015 International Students for Liberty Conference and features Q&A from the audience. Is there an upward trend in incidents of police misconduct, and if so, why? Is this just a few bad apples, or something more integral to the nature of policing in America? Just how dangerous is it to be a law enforcement officer in America? Dangerous enough to justify the militar...
Mar 16, 2015•49 min
This week Jay Cost shares a history of corruption and factionalism in the United States from his newest book, A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption (2015). How does government grow? Where do political factions and interest groups come from? How have politicians handed out favors to these groups in the past, how do these systems work now, and is there anything we can do about it? Is political corruption worse now than it was in the 19th century and earli...
Mar 09, 2015•1 hr 9 min
This week Peter Suderman joins us to help suss out the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a law he says is so complex and opaque that “no one person” understands every single part of it perfectly. We discuss the long history of the idea behind a government-backed and mandated health care system and its unlikely origins, the “three legged stool” necessary for implementing the PPACA, and the philosophical ideas behind the law. We also discuss challenges to the PPACA, including King v. Bur...
Mar 02, 2015•1 hr
Modern campaign finance laws are incredibly opaque and labyrinthine. Allen Dickerson joins us this week to help make sense of them. What makes a fair election? Equal money? Equal time? How do PACs and Super PACs work? What’s a “dark money” group? How does the current campaign finance system hurt the little guy more than the established campaigner? Show Notes and Further Reading John Samples, The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform (book) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information...
Feb 23, 2015•54 min
This week Alan Gura joins us for a talk about gun rights at the Supreme Court. What does the text of the Second Amendment say, and how have courts interpreted it over the years? What’s the story behind District of Columbia v. Heller? McDonald v. City of Chicago? How did standing work in these cases? Why was the NRA opposed to these cases? And now that the right to keep and bear arms has been upheld by the Supreme Court as an individual right, what’s next for gun laws in America? Show Notes and F...
Feb 16, 2015•1 hr 2 min
This week Scott Bullock joins us to talk about eminent domain, civil asset forfeiture, and a few very important legal cases brought by the Institute for Justice . What is eminent domain? Can the government use eminent domain for “economic development”? Who is Susette Kelo, and why is her case special? What is civil asset forfeiture? Why do police get to keep the proceeds from forfeiture? How can we reform forfeiture laws to incentive police to do the right thing? Show Notes and Further Reading K...
Feb 09, 2015•1 hr 4 min
This week we’re joined by Michael Shermer to talk about his book The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom (2015). What exactly is science, and how does a belief in science advance culture? How are natural rights related to science? How does Shermer define human flourishing—and how does science and reason help us achieve it? What’s the difference between science and pseudoscience, and how can we tell? What, if anything, does government have to do with...
Feb 02, 2015•43 min
This week we’re talking with Mark Calabria about homeownership and federal housing policy in the United States and its role in the 2008 financial crisis. Why does homeownership seem to be so important in the U.S.—or at least so important to our politicians? How do mortgages work, and how has the government been involved in tinkering with the mortgage market? What do Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration do? How do inflation rates and interest rates affect Fannie Mae and...
Jan 26, 2015•1 hr 3 min
This week on the show Elizabeth Nolan Brown shares her thoughts on libertarianism and feminism. How can issues that affect women be approached from a libertarian perspective? It seems that there are more women among younger generations of libertarians. Is there an explanation for this? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jan 19, 2015•41 min
This week Peter Van Doren joins us to explain the economics of decision making in politics. What is public choice theory and how does it explain what happens in a majority rules democracy? Is public choice a type of macroeconomic theory? How does ordering a series of votes change their outcome? What’s rent-seeking? What does the phrase “concentrated benefits and diffuse costs” mean? What’s the median voter theorem and how does it affect our politics in America? Show Notes and Further Reading Ken...
Jan 12, 2015•58 min
This week we invite Timothy Sandefur to talk about the right to earn a living. Is this right to economic activity one that is upheld by the Constitution? Where did this right come from? How is the right to earn a living being violated in the United States today, and what does the legal environment surrounding this right look like? Show Notes and Further Reading Timothy Sandefur, The Right to Earn a Living: Economic Freedom and the Law (book) Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick...
Jan 05, 2015•57 min
This week we’re talking about one of the most bestial and savage things the state can do to the individual: torture. Our discussion is especially relevant in light of the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention and interrogation programs. What exactly did the C.I.A. do and why is it being seen as torture? How long has this program been going on? What makes people say that torture is okay in this situation? What happens now? Can we char...
Dec 29, 2014•49 min
This week we’re joined by Terence Kealey, Vice-Chancellor Emeritus at the University of Buckingham, to talk about the public funding of scientific research. Many people believe that science and research are public goods and thus need financial support from the government. But is science really a public good? How does government money sway scientific results? If we got rid of public funding, what would happen to scientific research? Show Notes and Further Reading “Does Public Funding of Science E...
Dec 22, 2014•51 min
This week we’re talking about energy, and specifically the fossil fuels that power everything in our modern world from electronics to manufacturing to heating to our trains, planes, busses, boats, and cars. What’s the “secret history of fossil fuels?” What is the moral case for using fossil fuels? Is it possible to eventually get renewable sources of energy to work well? If using fossil fuels is bad for the environment, should we care? Or is that the wrong way of looking at it? How much has foss...
Dec 15, 2014•54 min
This week we’re talking about Uber, Airbnb, and other business models that are based on “sharing” human and physical resources, often using information technology to facilitate these transactions. In other words, the sharing economy. How do these new business models work? Are they even all that new? Are consumer feedback systems effectively replacing the quality-control mechanisms that are ostensibly the reason for government regulation in these markets? Asked another way, how safe are these ser...
Dec 08, 2014•49 min
This week we discuss the philosophy of utilitarianism and it’s relationship with libertarianism. What is utilitarianism? How is utilitarianism related to economics? What makes utilitarianism seem to work so well when applied to economic thinking? And where does it go wrong? Show Notes and Further Reading Adam Gurri, “Morality, Economics, and the Problem with Preferences” (column) Adam Gurri, “Liberty with Dignity, Mutual Respect, and Morality” (column) Jeremy Bentham and J. S. Mill, Utilitariani...
Dec 01, 2014•52 min
Jim Powell claims that liberty is relatively rare thing in the span of human history. Why does it seem like liberty has gained a toehold and flourished in the United States in a way it hasn’t in other places around the world? And then, once it was established, how did liberty grow in America? Show Notes and Further Reading Jim Powell, The Triumph of Liberty: A 2,000 Year History Told Through the Lives of Freedom’s Greatest Champions (book) Captain John Smith, Writings with Other Narratives of Ro...
Nov 24, 2014•56 min
