¶ Art Carden, Professor of Economics at Samford University
Questions for you, a lot of criticism of the free market is not unique to the free market. For example, there is greed, and there is dog-eat-dog competition and it can disrupt and disorder. And there's no guarantee of my safety. Well, that all applies tenfold to the state because you dance data, funding them and they have no competition. Do you think there's anything that uniquely applies negatively to the free market? That justifies the existence of
a state? I really don't think there is a really don't think there is I Sigh. I'm I tend to believe that states are kind of inevitable in that. There's always going to be an organization with a comparative advantage in violence, which is kind of the way that my advisor to find a state when I was in graduate school, but I don't think it's necessary. So we're like this song in The Sound of Music with a girl
singing. Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better. I would say anything states, can do markets, do better and I don't think the state is necessary for any of the Problems that we any of the problems that we, that we, that we want to fix or any of the problems that we want to solve. I think the last four years have been a really nice illustration of the difference between between the market and the state.
When you consider the administration of Donald Trump and a lot of people are horrified at Donald Trump. As just it just a crass. Human being who is just as an opportunist and assume for sake of the sake of argument that everything everybody says about Trump is right. It is right that he's he's the Worst of the worst? Okay. Well, would you, would you prefer a world in which he's doing suspect real estate deals in New Jersey and New York. To a world in which he has his
finger on the nuclear button. And I think the answer is. Yes, I would much rather Donald Trump be confined his confined his efforts to, to trying to make money in the real estate market rather than trying to make America great Again by pursuing. All sorts of boneheaded policies, like immigration, restrictions and tariffs. Yeah. In your book, political
¶ Jason Brennan, Professor at Georgetown University
philosophy and introduction and in your book. Why not capitalism, you mentioned this excellent book, the problem of political Authority, and examination of the right to coerce and the duty to obey by Michael humor. Well, what is so important about this book? Yeah. It is one of my favorite books. So one of the main questions in political philosophy is what if anything justifies government? And in particular, government's claim to have two special moral Powers, which That means they're
different words and ones. He uses. I call them legitimacy and Authority legitimacy refers to a supposed governmental power to create and enforce rules within over certain geographic area against certain people. So, governments are a proper subset of a society, which claimed the right to have Monopoly power in coercively enforcing rules. That's what they are. So, what makes government legitimate? If anything, why would it have the right to create these rules?
Why would it be allowed to enforce rules that others cannot? Not Authority is another purported power of government where to have authority, as to have something like a power to impose. Another is an obligation to obey. So, if I say to you right now, you may not smoke marijuana. You don't think you have any obligation to follow my orders, right? I'm I order you. Not to smoke pot. You're like, who are you?
You don't have to listen to you, but when governments order us, not to smoke pot, most people believe that we acquire an obligation, not to do it in virtue of government, issuing, that order. So, The perplexing, why would government have legitimacy? Why would it have authority?
And what Mike doesn't that book is very carefully, goes through, you know, a couple thousand years of arguments, trying to show that governments have authority and legitimacy and it's amazing how bad these arguments are. It's like, basically, they all fail, you know, so the argument that you get in Heist, like in Middle School that your teachers tell you is well government has Authority because you consent to government and it's like, no. You don't.
There's no interesting. There's no plausible. Interpretation of the relationship between you and your A government under which its consent, they'll make other kinds of arguments as well. So my can Ferry carefully goes through and shows that none of these arguments work. He then gives us a psychological diagnosis about why we might believe in government Authority even though we don't have any good arguments on its behalf. And that's the first half the first half, you just basically shows.
We don't have any reason to believe in Authority or legitimacy. The second half then asks is anarchism feasible. So if we don't have reasonably even Authority or legitimacy, what about the alternative anarchism and Mike says look, we don't With it would work.
Maybe it would be a disaster. But he gives us some grounds for thinking empirically, that it would work better than people think a lot of the things they think would happen under Anarchy. Just, it's not as bad as they think and some other books you might read on that you're interested in, in Turk is among there's a book called Anarchy Unbound, which is a nice kind of case study in how anarchism is actually, I think the subtitle is why anarchism works better
than you think. And another book by Edward string and called private governance, where he points out that. As a matter of fact, this is an empirical claim. Most of the government are governance, the rule enforcing that protects your rights in your own life is not done by government. It's done through extra legal channels.
¶ Bryan Caplan, Professor of economics at George Mason University
It's incredible that he can be. So skeptical about market failure, but doesn't hold those same principles to the state. So people don't have tons of information in the market. So, they make bad decisions. What are people omniscient about politics and politicians? Of course. Well, there's greed in the Place, there's greed in politics. Do you see anything that uniquely applies to the monitor? The free market in a unique way that - and unique to the market that doesn't apply to the state
tenfold? Considering you can't opt out of funding them and they don't have competitors. Well, let's see. It's a tough question. It's a good one. I'll, let me come back to that in just a minute. So mean, here's the way, was very revealing to me about Paul Krugman. Now, Tyler Cowen did an interview with him and Tyler. Is able to actually ask him some really hard questions about why? Exactly. Would you think the government would do? Well, and here's the thing.
Paul Krugman doesn't think the government's do, well, when you actually get them on on that topic. So, yeah, this government really screwed up royally screwed up. And Tyler actually had what to me, is the million-dollar question of like, you're like, you know, you're very partisan Paul. You're very you really hate the Republicans. You really like the Democrats and yet, if we look at a bunch of states, where they have one party Democratic rule. Happy with Ivan what they've
done. So dude, what gives right and Paul did not Dodge the question. He did have some thoughts that were satisfactory, but he did acknowledge the issue and even went and said yeah, well, you know when like your one party Democratic stage, they wind up getting a lot of good ol, boys, club is basically and they're kind, they're corrupt and they don't really worry about pleasing voters anymore.
And sometimes they'll get a pragmatic, Republican governor in the Northeast and that works out kind of make it better, but no, it's not quite so, Say that. But that was the gist of it. So, you know, I mean to me, it really comes down to like at a core level. Can you just say? I just think I just think the government is going to mess it up or is it just a matter of it's messed up a bunch of times.
But there's no General lesson in other words, like I think for someone like Paul Krugman, he's happy to admit. The government is screwed a bunch of times but doesn't want to draw the lesson of. We should expect government to keep screwing up in similar ways in the future. So he wants to think of that as Sort of accidental Sonia for him government failures, more accidental. It just happened. Where's market? Failure is systematic. It's the way the system works.
And if you were say, yeah. Well, that's the way the government works to in a way would just be very hard for him to deal with that and he does Dodge that but he's not blind till he's a super smart guy, right? And again when you frame it in the right way, then he does actually acknowledge things that you might be surprised to see
colleges. Something that was one of my favorites and counters from I mean, I wasn't there but your Favorite expressions of his love the way that he thinks in terms of problems that markets have, the government's don't have ten times over. Let's see, I guess then we have a like the the probably the best answer is the problem of get it, of, of the transactions costs. So the key thing about markets
is to make things happen. You've got to get people to agree, and sometimes that is so expensive that it's just, no way to get it to accomplish it and government, basically, The ability to pull out a gun and saying, you know, we're going to save a lot of money on a negotiation now guess we're just going to do it my way. Shut up. All right. Now that head causes a bunch of other problems, but it does save on negotiation costs. All right, I'll give that one to you.
But but for the same reason we wouldn't say, you know, negotiation costs are high. Therefore the Koch brothers have the right to initiate aggression, against peaceful people to lower them. We shouldn't give it to Doug Ducey or Donald Trump either. Yeah. I agree, but still kind of thing. I would point to excellent. Thank you. Thank you for I'll often ask people if I don't like what
¶ Jason Brennan, Professor at Georgetown University
Olive Garden's doing and I go there, can I stop working there, or going there or what? If I do the same with Walmart? And people look at me and say, Obviously, of course, you have the right to stop funding them. However, when it comes to government services, people don't extend that same courtesy, how was it that people have been tricked or people understand government, to be held to a total different moral standard
than All other organizations. Yeah, well in general, you know, I work a great length on political psychology and a lot of my work is on thinking about what political psychology tells us about the justification of democracy and voting behavior. And in general, you what political psychologist find is that most people don't really have an ideology. They don't really have strong political beliefs. And the people who do for most of them. It's kind of a post-hoc rationalization.
Where the model is almost like this would be sort of personal. To me. It's like you're an Irish guy from northern, Massachusetts. Irish guys are more than Massachusetts. Tend to vote Democrat. Not because there's anything special about the Democrats helping them, but just because that's what people like us do in the same way that like you root for the Patriots. If you're in from the Boston area, right?
And then a small percentage of those people will then post hoc rationalization agree with the beliefs of their party. So I think when you look at what people believe about politics, you can't really get too excited by that. It's not the purpose of as Robin Hanson would say, the Piece of politics is not policy. Politics is not about policy. People's political beliefs are not about describing how they think the world really works or should work.
It's rather we use our political beliefs in the same way that we use these t-shirts. It's a way of showing certain people that I'm on their side and in part of their Coalition, so, yeah, you know, the fact that there's an inconsistency in most people's beliefs is not surprising because they're not using those beliefs to form a rational theory about the world.
They're using them for another social purpose, but you're right, there is there is a huge tension there in that the reasons that people give on against monopolies against it socially mandatory Monopoly. Why would it be bad? If Walmart were the only retailer and you were be forced to shop at Walmart? If there were no permission to have competition, they're going to give you some account for that. And if you ask them the same question, well, why doesn't your anti-monopoly argument apply to
government there? It's they're going to give you their it's not clear how they overcome that. The main thing that they're going to say, of course, is well, we Have to have a monopoly on violence. Violence is different governments? Enforce the rules with violence. And if we had competition, what that would mean is that we have warring factions on the street constantly fighting place for say and police force B would be shooting each other to try to maintain dominance.
And so, you know, is that true. Well again, I think you would look at that book, Anarchy and bounds by a release and and Mike humors book, the problem of political authority to give you an account of why, this view of Anarchy is probably not right that and Our kids on would not mean just constant violence on the streets between warring factions and gangs a lot of
¶ Johan Norberg, Swedish author and historian
criticism of the free market. You'll hear things like, well, there's corruption and there's greed and people don't have a lot of information, so they often get manipulated. The problem with virtually all of these criticisms is they apply tenfold to government intervention because you can't opt out of it and they don't face competitors to which you can go to. If you're not satisfied with the product or service. Do you see that? There's Any unique criticism of the free market.
That doesn't also apply to Socialism or the state know, what would that be? And I mean the the corruption thing definitely. I mean if You have to go to 11 bureaucrats, to start a business, or get your permit or license requirement. That's eleven bureaucrats, who can force you to pay bribes to do it. And that's one of the biggest problems in many poor countries.
You know, when I go, when I'm being to Kenya, people tell me in the slums that they have a saying that it's not safe to carry cash around here, because there are too many policemen and the policemen. They see. Oh, you got a store here, would be sad. If something happened to that. I you Of a permit, right? So just pay up. So the fewer restrictions and regulations the fewer opportunities for for
corruption. Well, is there anything unique you can say about the problems of a free markets that doesn't apply to it? They would have to be more. I think psychological. It would have to be something about Are we overwhelmed with Choice? Perhaps? We don't want as much Freedom as we have in a more open economy, perhaps it's better if someone tells us what to do and I think there are some intellectuals who are trying to make make that argument.
Well, we have Cass sunstein who wrote the book not judge who says yeah, unfortunately people have too much choice and it's the role of the state to coerce them into doing otherwise, so, unfortunately, That is one. But for the same reason, I oppose the state forcibly stopping me. I also oppose Walmart from stopping me and Amazon. So I just hold them to the same standard. I told anyone else. Yeah. Choice is bad, but it doesn't give me the right to go around
violently. Dominating Johan, Norberg. I'm going to need to see a copy of the book before I allow it to be published because you have too many choices with what you want to write about. So that it's always the other guys choices. That's a problem. Right? It's never your own have to be restricted. Stood, of course.