¶ Katherine Mangu-Ward joins the Chuck ToddCast
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¶ We're all more libertarian when we don't like the president
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¶ Motivation for writing NYT op-ed "Libertarians: We Told You So"
Well.
Joining me now is somebody I've actually multiple iterations of my podcast over the years, but I think it's the first time since I left NBC that I have had her on. It'sine Mango Ward. She's the editor in chief of Reason magazine, essentially the magazine of the libertarian movement. I would say, and I'll let her describe how closely aligned they are with the party itself. But what triggered the invite? And frankly, it was more of like, why haven't I had Catherine on sooner? Was this op ed?
She wrote a couple of weeks ago the New York Times that was so helpfully headlined, Libertarians tried to warn you about Trump, but maybe we got lost in an at Aleppo rabbit hole. But I'm sorry for that, Sorry for that little poke and joke there, going back to Gary Johnson, but Catherine joins me now, and Catherine, it's good to see you. Sorry it's taken so long.
Of course, thanks for having me on.
So you know, I use this all the time whenever I'm asked to do talks. I said, you know, we all find out how libertarian we are when we don't like the party that's in charge of our politics in any given moment, which is why when you see people from a majority party behaving as libertarians before they're partisans, it gives you a little bit of hope. But there's
not many of those folks that behave this way. But you know, I think fundamentally that's what the Supreme Court ruling last week in some ways was as a reminder that that there is structure that should you know, the whole goal of the Founders was not to let any body become a king and let unilateral control of government arguably a libertarian point of view. So tell me your
¶ Libertarian has been typically conservative in western U.S.
motivation for writing the outbed was it I told you so?
You know, I actually have said in public. In fact, that I told you so doesn't usually win arguments. But what I discovered is that there is an exception here, which is when the I told you so is also kind of validating in the readers, in this case, the readers of the New York Times, something they had been telling themselves too. So part of what this piece is about is, you know, libertarians have been making this sort of thorough going, consistent case against the rise of executive
power and kind of the imbalance that that's creating. But a lot of folks who identify as kind of mainstream Democrats or the kind of imagined reader of the Times are skeptical about those things when it comes to a bunch of the places where Trump has suddenly started pushing hard. So we're talking here about trade, we're talking here about immigration,
¶ Kentucky has been sending most libertarians to congress
that kind of thing. There was already a lot of commonality there, so in some ways it was more of a remember how you're a little bit libertarian to my friends and readers.
No, it's I like to remind people that this, and I think it's probably explains why it's been so difficult for the libertarian movement to fully unify, because there is a libertarian wing of the Democratic Party. It's you know, I feel like Jared Poulos and Colorad I was sort of the poster child that most repress. He would say, he goes, We're for freedoms, freedoms here, freedom on your body,
freedom of autonomy, things like that. And then of course we've we've known there's a libertarian wing of the Republican Party for some time, but it went dormant for a little while, but it was What's interesting is it's mostly been a phenomenon geographically out west right. When you look at the old Republican coalition pre Trump, it was the Western Republicans who were the conservatives who would surprise quote
¶ Different version of Op-ed could have been written under Biden
unquote surprise people by votes sometimes because there was a libertarian streak in them. Alan Simpson is probably the best example of this in the previous era, and maybe Lisa Markowski is the best example of this today well.
And you do see this in some unexpected places as well, like in Utah, where of course the politics are often quite dominated by Mormons, but where they do actually quite a good job of protecting minority rights, probably because of the backstory of Mormons and other things, right, so they're riff for a Laws that protect religious freedoms, for example, are surprisingly libertarian. You see a lot of school choice out west for similar reasons, sometimes with bipartisan or kind
of mixed support. In terms of who's sending libertarians to the hill right now though, Kentucky, you know we have both right of all places, Primus Massey, who are neither neither I would say, are you know, as libertarian as I would like them to be every day, all the time, but pretty clearly deserve the title of most libertarian on the hill.
Yeah, I think they're culturally. You know, it's always culture where that I think gets somebody on either side of the spectrum tripped up on libertarianism, right, whether it's on racial or social justice on the left or on call it wokeness on the right.
Right, Yeah, I think that's true. I also think you know, there there's a version of this piece. We can get into the details a little bit more. But as I say that, the piece for the Times, the last you know, a couple of weeks ago, I focused on immigration and trade and speech where you know, Trump is kind of being the least libertarian, although quite unlibertarian in so many ways.
¶ American elections recently haven't given anyone a mandate
There's a version of this piece I could have written under the Biden administration on the other side of the equation, where.
Well, was that tell me, tell it, express it so that we're not just saying absolutely yeah.
I mean I think that the version of this piece here is, you know, libertarians have been warning you about the dangers of debt and deficit. We've been warned, and that actually, frankly, you can make that argument just as well under any administration. But you know, libertarians have been warning you about the dangers of an entitlement programs that are totally out of control, and we've been warrying about
the dangers of overregulation. And this would be places where people on the right would be in that moment when they are out of power and predisp supposed to be friendly to libertarians saying like, oh yeah, that is something libertarians have been saying, and it is something that you know, kind of Reaganite conservative maybe once said, but we might have lost sight of.
I think the one place where and this is where I want to, because you know, there are some sort of sixty thousand foot point of views of libertarianism where it's easy to get sixty or seventy percent in agreement of where government shouldn't be. And arguably, you know, if you read the Bill of Rights, you could argue that's
¶ Supreme Court begged congress to do their job in tariff decision
the libertarian that it's almost like we built in right, there sons of liberty for a reason. Right, libertarian is built off of liberty for a reason. Right. The first ten Amendments are those amendments that regardless of your personal ideology, and these and they were designed to protect minority rights. Right, people always forget the entire Constitution is premised on minority rights, and it's always something that I think the majority always seems to forget.
Yeah, well, when you're in the majority, you are tempted, understandably so to think, you know, this is where we The word mandate always gets thrown around, right, Oh, we have a mandate for first of all, American elections in recent memory haven't given anyone a mandate anywhere as far as I'm concerned. They're often very close. There's low participation.
To me, sixty percent of mandate and we haven't had a sixty percent president even in job approval ratings. You know, you had it briefly for Bush at after nine to eleven, and Bill Clinton only got it after they came after him to impeach him for sex. Like Soda was like, well wait a minute. You know we liked the job. This guy's do it, but it was only when it was threatened to take away. Right, you really haven't seen us with a with a sixty percent mindset as an electorate since the Cold War.
Right, So there's this temptation to say, like, we won the election, we do what we want, and I think not only is that poisonously bad politics, and especially not just we won the election, but we hold the presidency and we do what we want because increasingly that is
¶ Where are the conservatives now that warrantless entries are happening?
what it means to do things in politics in any way shape or form. Is emergency orders, executive orders. It's all coming out of the executive Congress. You know, the Supreme Court in their in their ruling this week begged Congress to do their jobs again.
Gorst chop ed was something.
Huh, it was so good.
Excuse me I called it a not ed because it really was.
You were right the first time.
It is it op ed He basically was like, I got to get something off my chest here. Yeah.
It was juicy. And you know, I have had my disagreements with some of Gorsch's rulings, but I think the way that he hit the nail on the head there is just, you know, it's undeniable.
By the way, a Western conservative avative. I mean, I'm just not saying, I'm just saying Colorado.
So I think, you know, this this kind of this idea that we hold power whoever we are and whatever power is, and so therefore speed ahead. When as you say, you know, our founding documents do not endorse that perspective on the presidency or the executive branch, and the American public doesn't actually think that either. They don't you know, when you look at the polling, especially about you know, about the ice enforcement actions in major cities, they don't
like it. They see it, and they don't like it. When you look at the you know, how the markets are responding to tariffs, they're seeing it and they don't
¶ Trump has bullied out libertarians and unsupportive Republicans
like it. And then you know, additionally, now we have how the court responds. They see it and they don't like it. And all of those signals are really meaningful and the founders meant them to be meaningful.
You know, you brought up in the in the times up at about you know, the warrantless searches when it comes to the ice agents and what we're seeing there. Where are all the conservatives who are up in arms about giving Obama you know this power, you know, supposedly eavesdropping power. Back when we were fighting the so called
warrant terror, we're quite a few conservatives. It wasn't majority, but it was a healthy minority of conservatives and a and a smaller but a healthy minority of liberals who did raise some civil liberties issues at the time on that issue. Where are those folks today?
I wish I knew I would find them. I would, you know, bring them into a safe shelter here at the Reason Offices. I would. I would give them a hot meal and a blanket, because surely they have been out in the cold for so long I think, I mean the So the actual answer, right is that over the over the years, the presence of Trump in particular and also just in general, the kind of will to power conservatism that has risen in the GOP, this kind of this idea that it is we are no longer
We no longer have to play fair. The other side has already cheated, so we simply have to seize power and use justify the means, justifies the means. That attitude has sort of become a sendant on the left and the right, but conservatives or Republicans, I should say, have had more chance to put that into action, and that has slowly pushed out a whole bunch of sub types of Republicans and Conservatives who were a little more on the libertarian side. So they've been primaried out. They've been
bullied out by Trump. You know he does. He is not afraid to use his you know, true social account to just say, you know, Thomas Massey's on the outscrew this guy, and and some of them I think just left in despair. I mean a lot of people who I joined the right, a lot of people who I admired in politics and who were sort of maybe slightly quirky figures, just said I can't do this anymore. Basically, anyone from Arizona ever.
¶ Biggest worries about big tech are worries about the state
Get out Matt Salmon, right, what happened?
Yeah, good old Matt Salmon, who I profiled when I was an Internet reason twenty five years ago, and who was you know, like quite libertarian and in many ways and just you know, in that case, actually I think he was part of the term limited crew, the voluntarily self term limited crew who all went out at the and that kind of end stage of the Gingra Revolution.
But here's where I think, you know, if I were to say, boy, this should be a moment for libertarianism, and there's we can and I think you're uped sort
of showed it a little bit. But if there's one giant area where I have my doubts, it's in how to deal with big tech m because right there's and to me, this is and and I'd love for you to get at this tension, right, don't know if I love the government forcing you know, sort of you know, picking winners and losers here overly regulating at the same time, these cats don't deserve an open runway without some restraint, and the market is not mature enough to restrain them
at this moment. Right, market restraint hasn't worked the way it should work. There's been too much consolidation. So let me start it this way. It's Teddy Roosevelt a libertarian.
For reasons if my own safety, among other things. I wouldn't presume to put a label on that man, even
¶ Don't want big tech to enable state actions against individual rights
this many years later, you know. I I think the thing about big tech is that almost always when people describe the thing they fear from big tech, what is the what is the consequence that we're looking to to prevent? When we talk about, you know, our worries with big tech, actually it is almost always a fear about the state. And so when I say that, I mean, well, okay, maybe I don't want you know, one company having all my data. Well, okay, why is it because you're worried
that they're going to sell you stuff? No, that's not Why is it because you're worried that they might aggregate that data and you know, paint a portrait of the market, or or even of the electorate. Okay, maybe, But what we actually are worried about is, well, what happens when the government gets its hands on that data and uses it to punish, in prison, censor or otherwise, you know,
infringe on your rights. And what we've seen, what we saw for example in the Twitter files was sometimes big tech gladly cooperates with the state, and I think that is gross and bad but I'm not sure that the entity at fault or kind of the place that I want to lay the blame there fully is with big tech, because of course they understand that, you know, in that instance, the Biden administration, but all presidential administrations, they hold a
huge amount of power in that relationship. You know, it's a nice it's a nice big tech company. You have there be a shame if something happened to it. Is kind of the energy that a lot of these interactions have. I for one, don't mind Mark Zuckerberg selling trying to sell me, or put in front of my eyeballs whatever videos of AI puppies and you know, Chinese toys he wants to try to sell me. I just don't want to have consequences to my personal freedom. And I think
¶ We might need a cultural sea change for congress to rein in big tech
the fear there is that the state acts, not that the tech companies act.
Well, so, I mean this is where I think that this is another But this is the tension that I I'm detecting, which is I think most libertarians agree they distrust anybody who's consolidating power.
Right, well, there are lots of types of libertarians, right so I actually think, you know, I hate to be that guy, but It depends what you mean by power. If you mean market power, not necessarily, if you mean monopoly on violence and the like.
I think it's money. I think, I know, maybe it's like pornography, you know, when you see it, it's the it's sort of you know, it's monopolistic power, where like Amazon may be a monopoly, but they kind of earned it, right,
they just outworked everybody perhaps, And you can make that case. Yeah, you know the fact that they get deliveries at my house, but the US Postal Service still isn't reliable since that first snowstorm, right, it like it tells you you're like, look, whatever you think of them, right, they are customer first. I mean, I kind of wish Jeff Bezos thought about that in the way he owns News a newspaper. But that's okay, But I digress. So they may be a monopoly,
but one could argue they earned it. But if you look at when government helps a company, when government is involved and the inner So I guess the question is, how do you prevent what Trump is doing right now
¶ Trump's cronyism has made citizens hate only corporations, not government
with the tech industry? Right, that has to come with some government, Like you're going to have to have government regulation intervened to stop government from doing what it's doing right.
And so this is this is where you get into a horrible circumstance because any of the solutions that I might proposed now at best are a balance of power solution where one part of government might constrain another part of government, but sometimes are just kind of like a cultural sea change type solution where we would just all agree in some way that this has gone too far and people would win.
Our founders would say, well, Congress, should.
It right their job. So I think this is you know, what what Trump has done. The place is where Trump has really pushed the envelope in terms of corporate governance, and this is often with respect to big tech, although
¶ Less government reduces opportunity for cronyism
not always is. He's really moved into like full fledged economic nationalism in ways that his predecessors were not always refusing to do, but a little more hesitant. So this is the Golden Shares. This is you know, with Intel and other This is approval of the TikTok deal just arbitrarily kind of coming from the from this the federal government a bunch of other things like that, where it's
a much more direct intervention in the market. And then when you pair that with the tariffs, where I think Trump just likes tariffs and he does tariffs because he just likes tariffs. And that's a bizarre thing that I can't fully understand. But what it does do is it creates infinite opportunities for cronyism. And that's what you're talking about, right, You're talking about where the prize of buying influence is
worth the cost. And so if we have a tariff, but if you know the right guy, you can get an exception from the tariff, and if that guy is always Donald Trump, are one of his children, then that, you know, that creates all these opportunities for the kind of cronyism that, for whatever reason, so often does seem to make Americans hate the corporations and not the government. And I would just say, like, hate the government. Hate the government for creating all these opportunities to buy influence.
And the solution is, you know, if tariffs are low and simple and implemented equally across the board, there's no influence to buy. The FCC is disempowered, there's no threats that can be made by the White House to you know, revoke your broadcast license, and that kind of move is just like a very classic libertarian move, Like, this is what libertarians have been saying all along is if there is no FCC, you don't have cronyism in that area.
If there is no elaborate new tariff scheme every time that someone comes into office, that reduces those opportunities.
¶ Tech CEO hearings were CEOs trying to lock in their place
So this is what you're basically saying is, look is regulatory capture can be just as damaging then no regulation itself.
Yeah. Absolutely, And I well, I mean I guess I think the fact.
That's what the cronyism leads to, right, which is a fact what the AI guys want. The AI companies are afraid of the state. It's getting involved in regulation, so they want federal right and they're just because they want to. You know, once they get market share, then they want to, wow, we've got Now we can fix the market because it'll
be designed around our piece of the pie. I mean, this is a totally non sequitur, but it drives me crazy, Like I do not want to hear from Nick Saban I'm fixing college football because Nick Saban just wants to restore the dominance he once had and Alabama once had. So he says, boy, college football is a mess because
¶ Market discipline does seem to be working in the AI space
there's no because the way the order that we previously had is no longer operable. Well from his point of view, it's a mess, and maybe it is a mess, but you don't want somebody who was the previous beneficiary to be the fixer of.
It, right, And so this is you know, as you say, regulatory capture is a huge issue here, rent seeking. I do think though, you know, my perspective is that is all the more reason to have few or simple and very egalitarian regulations. And I think you know, you see this, you see this temptation showing up all kinds of places.
I mean, you remember the period whatever it was, maybe like seven or eight years ago, when they kept bringing in the big tech CEOs and founders to sort of testify, and they did, they have hearings and they'd say, like, my iPhone's not working, and then it would be like, sir, I work for Google. Like that whole interaction that was happening regularly, and some of that was about the big tech companies that had become dominant trying to lock in
their place. And I think you're quite right that there is and will be more of a similar phenomenon with some of the bigger AI players. But at the same time, what we've seen is there's actually a lot of churn in big tech. Like one of the reasons that debate was happening around Facebook at that time where we were saying should we treat Facebook as a public utility is because it seemed like they were the biggest game in
¶ Where is some government regulation acceptable for libertarians?
town and no one would ever break Facebook's hold. And Facebook is certainly still big and certainly still around, but there are several major competitors and if you if you look at the market cap or the market you know, the share of users that these different companies have, it changes rapidly. So that does seem to me like market discipline is working to some extent. They're like, they're not permanent monopolies.
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¶ Trump has turned Democrats into free-trade activists
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could you know. This is what makes the FCC community, the whole FCC such a weird place now, because you know, the monopoly of broadcast television has been broken up by YouTube, right, and the FCC has no oversight over YouTube at all.
And on YouTube you can use say whatever word you want and on YouTube, you're going to whatever you know, there isn't the same FCC sort of you know, so I now it arguably took fifty years for a competitor to come up to break that monopoly, or maybe had they not had the FCC in the first place, there would have been more TV networks popping up on the spectrum than the three that we had.
So you know, well, that actually for sure is my argument. I think that is the argument of kind of dynamists or pro market folks, especially in media and communications, is you will you can almost always tell a story and
¶ The risks of economic nationalism
it's a pretty plausible one about how any amount of regulation is in a market where there's where, there will be competitors, where there's where, and it's an attractive market, is so likely to serve to lock in existing players and then they will capitalize on that.
So this is how it's like, we're in its purest form. Right. The libertarians sometimes get tossed aside by saying, well, they don't even believe in driver's licenses, right, like, and this is where, you know, where where do you draw the line where is some government regulation acceptable?
I mean, for me, libertarianism is directional, right, So I would like, if we get to a place where you and I have to come back on the Chuck Podcast and earnestly debate like the driver's license removal Bill of twenty thirty seven.
Is you're like, we're winning. I don't care, right, I'll lose this, Sue.
I am delighted if we get to that place, but we are so far from there right now.
No, in fact, just the opposite. I'm going to need a Burth certificate just to like go to the grocery store. And when we're all said and done, the.
Way you have a real id for this, you know.
Get airplan that I paid for a ticket, right.
So I think you know, I totally understand you know that people would say I'm interested in knowing where where you think the limits are, and that's a perfectly legitimate conversation to have. But at this point, and this is sort of what the Times editorial was meant to highlight,
¶ Where do libertarians draw the line on the social safety net?
like there are a bunch of places where it's just very very clear that from a libertarian perspective, the critique is broadly shared. Like I think trade actually is the most straightforward. The way that Trump has conducted trade policy in his second term is wildly unmoored both from good economic sense and from legality, like from any kind of constitutional understanding of who holds these powers and why. And that just doesn't seem like a hard one to me. That one seems like And.
In fact, who knew that this is how the free trade argument would end? Because I actually think in some way, you know Trump is going to be has been a useful mri on so many people entities and ideas. Trade
¶ Demands for safety net cuts fall very short of solving budget problem
is a big one, right, I mean, you've got an entire Democratic Party expressing free trade rhetoric in ways they
never would have done even five years ago. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm I'll know for sure that this is over when Shared Brown starts advocating for free trade in his center race, I'm very curious how that plays out, read because he's sort of like he is a a bridge to the older Democratic Party, the one that used to have all the union workers, and now that it's the it's Trump's party that does so I'm curious there. But it does feel as if this has been a useful lesson in Oh, free trade is why I can
get an avocado anytime maybe you're at the grocery store. Yes, And that was always the dream, and here we are right, like, hey, you don't understand. If you start getting rid of this stuff, then then free trade is going to benefit you in ways you haven't thought of. And to me, the produce section is the number one way to show people how free trade over the last twenty years. I mean, I forgot how seasonal the produce section used to be in grocery store. I worked in one in the eighties and
before when I was a night school in college. And now you're like, oh, right, we've gotten rid of seasonality basically in the twenty first century due to lowering trade barriers.
I was talking with my son who had heard about, but never consumed a red Delicious apple, and he was like, what was the deal with those? Because they were bad? Right? And I was like, well, okay, And we got into
¶ Student loan debt forgiveness would benefit higher earners
it right, and we're talking about how the supply chain used to be so different for grocery stores, and our transportation technology used to be so different. Consumers used to be so much less discerning. You know, we were prioritizing an apple the wooden bruise and would still look shiny and like who cares so much about the inside? And last long time, so what if.
It has no flavor on these And we had this whole conversation about how that thing made sense in that moment, and he has lived his entire life in a radically different moment that's totally marked by by free trade and by all of the technologies that support it.
I do think, though, the thing you're describing where a bunch of people on the left are suddenly like, ooh, free movement of people and goods across borders. That sounds great. The flip side, though, the other side of the horseshoe, where we have people on the left and the right agreeing deeply confusingly for me on we should all live simpler lives with only one kind of deodorant and do the manufacturing here. And you know the kind of Tucker Carlson meets Elizabeth Warren.
Uh. You know, it's a form of naomic policy.
Again. That's that's where we end up. And I think the shared rhetoric at that side of things is more reactionary, both from the left and the right. And you are right that what's happening is this kind of ever fatter middle that remembers that we like grapes. But we had
¶ More people want government to have a larger role
that a little at the end of Trump's first term, and then it sort of faded away. So I'm a little concerned that what looks like maybe a popular movement or some kind of agreement or god forbid, we call it again the libertarian moment, I'm concerned about how to lock that in.
Well, I mean, here's I'll give you another challenge. I for my subject this week, I wrote off of a survey that my friend Dante Cheni did with what he calls the what he works on. It's called the American Communities Project, and it put it divides the electorate up by county type, and it's like fifteen different types, and
it's it's so it's less ideological. It's more like, you know, here's what folks that live in the rural South versus the evangelical hubs things in this various And one of the he was writing about, where do where are their large agreements even between the most rural parts of this country and the most urban parts of this country. It's on the belief in the social safety net. So when I think about the quote libertarian moment, how do you have a libertarian moment and be supportive of the social
safety net? Like, where do you draw the line? And I know you talked about it directionally, but I think this is when I've thought about ways that where generally what the libertarians are advocating are very agreeable. When you start to get to specifics, that's where people fall off, right, And the social safety net is a big one.
And arguably the last libertarian moment was sometime around the Tea Party, which you remember, and you know that was about in its original form, was about fiscal responsibility and government spending, but it also gave us the immortal and frankly maybe apocryphal. I'm not sure if how real it was or how widespread, but the government hands off my Medicare protest sign?
Right? Oh? That was that was when Mike, uh oh, we really have a civics education problem.
I see, My uh oh? Wasn't we have a civic education problem?
Though we do?
My uh oh was we found that we found the edge of people's willingness to cut things, and it is well south of what we're going to need to cut to solve this problem. Right, So I would say, again,
¶ Is there a libertarian argument for nationalized healthcare?
there are plenty of folks who identify as libertarians and support some form of social safety net but I think that that is a radically different thing than what we have right now. So what we have right now is, you know, for older people, we have a universal entitlement, right. It is a it is a transfer to the It.
Was originally pitched as poverty prevention.
Right, And it's not if they transfer to one of the wealthiest demographics. It goes to everyone without much regard to their income. We've been extremely reluctant to push up the age limit more than just a couple of years, despite people living longer and being healthier. There's all these places where a thing that has that was pitched as a social safety net is is operating totally unlike you
would expect a reasonable social safety net to operate. And I think you can see that with social Security, you can see it with our health care entitlements, especially Medicare, and you know, we can also see it in all kinds of other places where I think you can get even more controversial, like education entitlements.
Right.
I'm not saying cut public schools tomorrow, but I am.
Saying what about loans.
Student loans is a great example of you know, we like the amount of student loan debt that is held by people in possession of master's degrees. Just that, like, just that simple fact really puts paid to me to the idea that that is a poverty alleviation program, right, and in fact, we've built it to encourage the acquisition of that kind of debt in particular. You know, people who will carry one hundred thousand dollars of student loan debt are people who are better off than most people.
And the idea is, why does a creditor agree to do that if you're trying to because they assume you're actually going to have better earning power, You're going to use that degree to go get better earning power and therefore actually be a pretty safe credit risk.
Well, and the fact that of course you can't dislarge dislodge student discharged student loan debt unlike other types of
¶ Regulation in healthcare & childcare have exploded costs
debts makes it a safer bad as well. So I think, you know again, that's that's another program, this hugely expensive that is sort of sold to some kind of you know, equity enhancing program and is in fact functioning nothing like that. If we had any appetite for talking about any of those things and cutting back benefits to the already wealthy and really building a real safety net. Lots of libertarians
would say like, fine, let's get there. And then again, if we want to talk about really intense, you know, minimal government stuff down the line, we can do it, but we're so far.
No. And that's the I mean, it's sort of like, while there's glimmers of hope for the movement, when you look at trade in other ways, right, I mean, the amount of people who think government should have an act a more active roles pretty pretty large now because.
It is although you know, you did see most.
Of all of our lives, government's been a big part of them.
Yeah, you did see. On the student loan debt question, there was some pushback, right and not just from the courts, who rightly noted that Biden's plans were all totally unconstitutional.
I never understood why that, because there was an easy way to sell that, which is, if you if they if you ask people to do something to get the debt retired, i e. Service to the country in some form, six months, here, work there, whatever it is, you'd had support for it, right like we there is sort of a the public would have been more supportive of the student debt relief if there had been something that that said student had to get back to the country.
I think that's true, but I also think there were just a lot of people who said, listen, I didn't go to college at all because I couldn't afford it, or I took out some debt and then I paid it back. And I don't know why we would be forgiving debt for people who are clearly not the neediest or at least twelve off in our country. And so
I do think that argument has some purchase. But you are quite right that the political coalition for cutting Medicare and Medicaid social security, which in the in the late
¶ Market forces haven't worked in healthcare pricing
nineties early oughts, there was like this little moment when it was like, oh, could we do it? Are we going to do it? And then absolutely not. We did not do it. The Tea Party tried again, absolutely not. So it's an idea that hasn't really risen into any kind of political reality in a long time.
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¶ We're being lied to about pricing practices in healthcare
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¶ Should insurance be able to price based on preexisting conditions?
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a libertarian on this thought? Because as I've been look I'm in an entrepreneurial stage, like a lot of people that leave a big company, big corporation after a period of time, and I've in the middle of starting a couple of different small businesses, and the biggest impediment in trying to get employees or something is the cost of benefits. They're just it's Is there a libertarian argument for national health care.
Oh no, we're going to go the other way on that one, my friend.
All right, but hear me out, which is, it is a lot easier to start a small business if I don't have to also worry about trying to figure out how to get a health care plan to pay for every get every health care, and get some people a childcare benefit. If the government took both of those things off my plate, I'd have an easier time starting up a business.
So I have good news for you. Uh, the government put both of those things on your plate, and it could take them off by changing some of our underlying
¶ Catastrophic coverage is basically illegal now
tax and legal requirements. So I'm sure you know this. The fact that employers provide healthcare insurance as a matter of course in the United States is entirely an artifact of the post World War two kind of leftover price controls and kind of regularly regulatory controls around conversation increases, so there were caps and how much you could pay people. Employers wanted to attract good employees. They realized they could offer these benefits and they didn't count against those caps.
So the tax benefit that accrues to you if you provide these benefits is kind of an extra little cherry. We could undo that whole system, and we could have a provision of healthcare that is done like we provide all kinds of other absolutely necessary to life goods, which is in the private market. So I agree it's a huge cost to people who want to start a business to have to figure out how to provide these services.
But you know, you don't have to provide food to your employees, right, even though that's totally they have to have food to live and work.
That's the best thing, right in theory.
So the kind of libertarianism one oh one argument is
¶ We should just pay out of pocket for small, regular procedures
there is no reason why we can't have a market in healthcare and or a market in health insurance, which of course are two different things. And similarly, you know, childcare is you know, absolutely choked with regulation right now get and that's getting worse. We're actually more aggressively regulating childcare providers than we ever have in the past, and it's creating a totally unsurprising set of shortages and price increases.
So I think these are places where, of course you're right that those are barriers to entrepreneurship, but it's not it's the solution, isn't What if the government just gave everyone every no.
And I hear you this is one of those where you're like, well, boy, I'd love to rewind the tape seventy years, but that's tough to do.
I mean, I think there's there are First of all, I am close personal friends with plenty of wonks that would be happy to sit here and talk for forty five minutes about exactly how we could do this stuff. You've been at parties with those guys and they are fun. But you know, I do think there are ways to unwind it, and we've tried over the years. In some perverse ways. Obamacare contained the seeds of some of that.
No, it did. I mean, it was trying to take I mean, the fact is there are people that stay in jobs simply because they can't afford healthcare. I mean, you know it is, you know. I it was interesting to experience what is clearly a fraudulent market. And I'll tell you what that fraudulent market is here in a second. When I was in the midst of changing insurance providers
¶ Charity or government subsidies should assist preexisting conditions
and there was a there was tech. I thought I followed all the rules so that there'd be no gap, but there was a one day gap and thanks to the friendly pharmacy benefit managers. They say, well, we only update our files once a week, and you're like, oh great.
So I basically had a week where I couldn't get the prescriptions covered by insurance until this paper the computer caught up, and if I wanted to get the prescription in that moment, and I'd have gotten reimbursed instead of costing thirty dollars, it was going to cost six hundred and fifty dollars. And you're sitting there going six hundred and fifty dollars. But if I have this insurance, it's
thirty dollars. What am I missing here? Right? This is something where neither price is accurate and these prices are phony, and yet this is the system we are. So it's like, well, geez, I got to have this benefits. But you're like, I have a feeling if everybody were staring at a six hundred dollars cost, by the way, for blood pressure medication, this is like mainstream medication. I wasn't talking about some
boutique cancer drug or even a nozepic. I mean just your basic sort of you know, to keep your blood pressure in check. And it was this false essentially, you know, it's either thirty dollars or it's six hundred dollars. You're like, it's something's missing here. The market's not involved.
Well, and I think the phrase like phony prices, like these fake prices, that's that is the key actually to almost all of the dysfunction in the way that healthcare is provided in this country. Because we no one can see prices anywhere in the system. Prices are very very invisible to all parties. So the doctor actually doesn't know how much you're getting charged. You don't know how much
you're getting charged. And the insurance company on some level has this information, but they of course are also taking their cues from the government set prices that come out of a I was going to be cret they come out of someone's head in a in a government office.
I know where you're going. Yeah, and and people have their head up there as well.
But yes, and all of the prices are fake. And I think one of the most important, like if you were to ask me one of the what is one of the core insights that has shaped your personal political philosophy, it's that prices contain information and we are being you know, totally deprived of that information.
In the healthcare well, that's where we're being gas lit sector.
Right, and we're being lied to. We're being given sort of seemingly true information, none of which is really true. And so of course we all think we're losing our minds. So I think again, it's we don't have to stretch
¶ How would a libertarian clean up the prediction markets?
that hard to imagine a world where we know the prices of things and then make decisions about how to consume them based on those prices. That's all the other market like, that's what I do when I think about whether I'm gonna buy books or food or even dental care, where we at least can sort of see those prices, right, I mean, that market has its flaws, but is much more efficient. And of course people are going to say, well, what about people who can't afford it? And that's what
a safety net might look like. Is for the for the people who really can't for their blood pushure medicine.
What do we do?
And we have as a society also a lot of answers to that.
Well, let me get you one area where to go back to Obamacare, which actually was creating where some would argue, this is why the market is it's just harder to make it competitive. Is if you if you tell an insurance company that cannot use a pre exit, they cannot use a pre existing condition to price your insurance policy, and that this you know. I well instead of me saying where's their tension in the libertarian movement, to me, this is right there right Like you are who you are?
Should you because of just how you were born, you were born with something, you automatically get charged more for something versus if you weren't born without it. You don't like that seems unfair?
Yeah, So I think there are a couple of things going on there. One is, you know, we do allow that in other markets. So just for example auto insurance, auto insurance rates are set to reflect a lot of things about you, including your demographics, including where you live and your driving behavior.
That's still behavioral, It is behavioral.
But behavioral is often closely connected to demographics, right, like men pay more for car insurance and women, for example, across the board. So I think that there's not as much daylight between the way that auto insurance functions and the way that health insurance could function as some people
would like to suggest. But also I think you know, we live in a time of incredibly complex and interesting financial instruments to deal with risk, and none of those instruments have been allowed to blossom do experiments exaction.
¶ Not a major difference between prediction markets & sportsbooks
That you might do that on a pre in order to mitigate the high price of covering somebody with a pre existing condition.
Right, So, I mean, I think at the very very baseline, we have the fact that you know, what we used to call catastrophic plans are more or less illegal now it's not quite true. There's a bunch of.
Short term time. My wife loves that her parents are both deceased died of can't had cancer policies, which is no longer right, They just they bought them early, and thank goodness, it saved their family a bunch of money. But you can't buy a cancer policy anymore. Right.
So that's one example of just you know, there are all you know, long term care insurance functions this way as well, the younger you buy life insurance functions this way. There are so many tools you can imagine where people could, in anticipation of various risks that they might that they I have get insurance against those risks that are the prices will still reflect the relative risk, but you can build a policy where the risk reward works for both
the insurance company and the consumer. And I think the fact that we are asking health insurance to also be basically a pre pay system for basic health care further complicates things. Right, there's no reason why you and I shouldn't just be paying out of pocket for basic health care. You know, you get in your infection, you should go to the doctor and pay the full price of that visit and call it good. And your insurance company shouldn't be involved in all that stuff.
But you're describing as homeowner's insurance, right, insurances?
Right?
So I think, like just the fact that in this conversation you and I have just named like forty different kinds of insurance, and they all are different shapes and they're all different sizes, there's just no reason to think we can't do that with health.
I guess I go back on health. The problem is that there's some people who are risks simply because they were born. And that does feel like if you're born with inalienable rights, right, you know that where every every other type of insurance we've talked about is somewhat behavioral triggered.
Yeah, so, and I think, you know, there are certainly people who are just born with disabilities or with extremely high risk for certain you know, traits or conditions, and they're gonna they're gonna be really hard to ensure. I think I can give you the science fiction answer and I can give you the real life answer. So the science fiction answer is, let's say I'm a carrier for a genetic illness. I should be able to buy insurance for my unborn children before they're born, when it's only
¶ Will libertarians have a moment at the ballot box in 2026?
a one and four odd that they'll have it, maybe instead of when they're already born. I don't know, I'm just making it up, but like insurance could be more complex and more and take into account even more of the probabilities of life if you could, if the market were truly open, I would bet you know, if I was a betting man, I might say, Okay, you're a carrier of disease. You're gonna do various things to mitigate your risk, but ILL sure, I'll take an insurance policy
out on your kid. On the flip side, I also think like this is again the role for charity or even potentially government subsidies if we can meaningfully circumscribe those people who you are talking about, Those people who truly, through you know, extreme circumstances and no fault to their own,
¶ Arizona has always produced mutant strains of libertarian
simply are not eligible to be too participants in this market. Okay, charity exists, and you know, simple kind of straightforward block grants or cash shubsanies do exist. I think most libertarians and most pro market types would say there's space for that in the world. There's no reason though, because of those people who we do want to protect that you and I should be part of any of this system, like us, participating in this system to somehow protect those
people is not working. Those people are not well protected, and it's making us miserable.
Well, look, I guess there's a part of me that thinks that, you know, you could get a directionally libertarian person to represent eighty percent of what you believe in like and then telling you I ain't touching ain't touch in healthcare. That's a different situation there.
And there are a bunch of people who identify as libertarians who would probably say that, And you know what, I welcome them. They're welcome to use the word liberty.
What you're saying is that your your eighty percent friend is not your one hundred percent enemy.
It's so true, and that like tattoo it on our foreheads, man, like.
That needs to be the problem. You know, the Bill of Rights was a compromise, and so is everything else. Right, let me get you out of here on this. The prediction markets, which is the ultimate in some ways, right, maybe this is the you know, a good way for some of these bedheadging and sort of libertarian basically to play out some libertarian policy ideas. But prediction markets need to be trusted, right, and you need to know they're not being gained or if they're going to be gained,
that the bad actors are caught. That takes some regulation, like this is not a market that self regulates, and I don't think yet maybe it will. I just you know, right now, it feels my concern of the prediction markets are for the things where you know somebody has the answer and if it leaks at like you know, the Nobel Peace Prize is the perfect was the perfect example
of that or what I know took place. I'm like ninety percent confident took place when Peter Navarro gained the jobs report and then suddenly it was the exact opposite of what he said twenty four hours later, and you're like, somebody made a bunch of money on cal she and so give me how a libertarian would clean up the prediction markets.
So I think there's a couple things. Many many years ago, Reason magazine did a cover story with Martha Stewart on it, and the cover line was something like, Saint Martha. You know she didn't do anything wrong. And while Martha Stewart's story is complicated, the piece was basically a defensive insider trading. So the I think the the kind of most entertaining or most colorful case I can give you is all markets have insiders, they just have smarter and stupider insiders.
And in fact that a market that incentivizes as many insiders as possible to contribute is the most accurate market. Now that's like a little tendentist. It's got a bunch
¶ Arizona has always been libertarian socially & economically
of you know, I understand why that's not going to like it's impect to find the cruct right and in fact, like in a market where you have the understanding that this type of thing is occurring, you know, a little spike here looks different, a little fall here looks different. If you understand, like, is that little spike Peter tomorrow is like a question you could be asking yourself or
his friends or his family whoever. I think we do already have an intuitive understanding that smaller market sort of much or more subject to gaming. Right, So the fewer participants in the market, the less the less resilient it will be, and the less likely we are too, you know, to uh to catch kind of anomalies before someone someone
profits on them. You know, I think almost all libertarians, myself included, would say fraud is something one of the very few things that we agree the state should prevent. And so I think so often in cases where you know, what we see are kind of you know, inappropriate behavior in those type of markets, it's a violation of the terms of service, or someone has misrepresented themselves, or there is in fact fraud occurring, and fraud should be illegal.
So I do also think there is there is a case for, like, some of this is going to be worked out through the courts, through torts, through kind of it's going to take a while, and you're right that, you know, many people are impatient for that process to play out, and as in so many cases, people often want a short circuit kind of evolutionary processes. With regulation, we already know what the rules should be. Let's just
make them and announce them. That goes wrong so often, and I think, especially with fledgling markets that can have so much power to be useful tools, I'm hesitant to just slap a regulation on it and say good now, this market is stable.
No, I mean, I've look I I look at the first of all, I don't understand why we call Calshie a prediction market, but FanDuel of sportsbook it's also a prediction market.
But that's indeed it is.
I don't think there is a difference between the two, which, of course, but everybody's trying to have one. But I I have I think that the look by adding more people to the system, we have found out who the people are that are cheating on the individual sports right the you know Who's Now the question is whether and
I think that this will be a market. This should be the If I were FanDuel, I might not want to do player props because they can get gained, because they can get manipulated, and so to me, instead of being told to not do them, you know, you just would have you know, you're going to have better you're going to be more trusted if you don't offer.
Them reputational mechanisms, right right, yeah, yeah, And I think people you want people to trust your brand, and you know this is you know previously in trade had you know a lot of these same questions and controversies around it. And I think you know, easily gameable markets or bets or hurt your reputation as a company. And it doesn't happen instantly. People are going to lose money. People are
going to make money for sure. So if your goal is that can't happen even once you know you're going to have a very heavy regulatory But I think I think that's not the way if we want again, you know, libertarians were very early and kind of pro market types in general. We're very early in saying we are underutilizing prediction markets in all areas of life, and that's turned
out to be true. There are tons of places in life where we are now using what are functionally little micro prediction markets, are betting markets to help us figure out how to do things. And to cut that off because some of the markets are inappropriately structured or gamable, doesn't seem like the right trade off to me.
What's the best place to judge whether libertarians are having a moment at the ballot box this year? What are the races that we should be following from a libertarian lens.
I don't know. I can't. It might be too sad to even think about this. No, I mean, obviously I would like to see some of the folks that I named in the Times are coal re elected at the very least. You know, we have a pretty short list, but you know, the gentleman from Kentucky I mentioned, Jared paul Is. You're quite right if he's up and down.
But the you know, there are.
There are some folks that are already on the way out run Widen. You know we've got you know, the the already small numbers are even smaller. Like I say, I'm a little obsessed with Arizona because Arizona does seem to kick out.
It's always been a liberty I mean.
You knows, I think is what I would say.
Like little well, you know it all like for me, my first taste of the crazy of Arizona was was Evan Meekham. I don't know if you know that story as a governor.
Tell me the story of Evan Meekham.
Well, I mean, he was sort of this whack of doodle governor that got elected in a sort of a weird three way race and they ended up having to impeach him. But the point was that he It was just Arizona has always been home to sort of a lot of different quirky politics and left right and center more on the right, and there's always been these you know, it's almost been a coalition of conservatives with these weird
strains to them. You know, there's been if you've had some religious based strains, you've had some sort of libertarian based strains, you've had sort of whatever you would call McCain, right, he was sort of he was his own ideology, right.
That was just as I wouldn't dare put a label on. So you can't. I shan't label McCain either, But.
I can't either because I can. You know, there's some things he was a libertarian on. There were some things he was you know, pro governing, you know what I mean. So it on American national security, he couldn't have been less libertarian, right, So, but I think on domestic policy he would have been very at home.
With I would say, my my, this is not my nit. Think it's the level answer, but as a macro answer, if it's gonna if a new kind of libertarianism that could be electoral electorally successful is going to come from anywhere, it kind of seems like it has to come out of whatever has been thrown. And you know, your Gerson cinemas, You're like, there's a bunch of.
The West is just filled with them West.
I feel like, yeah, I am interested in and keeping an eye on, but I wouldn't I'm not sure i'd go so far as to use the word optimism.
Yeah, I look at a guy like Dave Schweikert and Mark Kelly right from Arizona who both sort of aren't conventional trumpy or conventional liberal who you know, and maybe, but you're not wrong to look at Arizona. That feels like an interesting laboratory. I don't know what else to do. I mean, you know, I think it's because the sun fries people's brains there differently than it fries our brains.
To a delicious crisp, if you know what I mean.
I think I do. I think I think the biggest cryogenic labs are storage units are in Arizona. Right, isn't that where Ted Williams's head is at. I don't know.
I think maybe things didn't work out for Ted Williams's head in the end unfortunately. But yes, but that's the kind of thing that you do see out there, and that is it is also kind of adjacent to you know, it's it's the kind of futurism of those type of you know, it is both the sage sagebrush libertarians and the kind of futurest libertarians tend to meet right along that seam and and the folks that just kind of want to be left.
At the state the only the only state to defeat a ban on same sex marriage.
I don't know, but that sounds true.
I think that's right, if I'm not mistaken. The point is is that it it is pretty you know, there is there's some real evidence there that both on economic and social that they've you know, sort of there's been this unit. And that's the beauty of Arizona. If you really if you're really pushing the libertarian movement, is you've got the ballot referendum process to you know, you don't need a candidate to institute some libertarian ideas. Sometimes you just need a referendum at the ballot box.
That's true. I'm going out in a couple of weeks, so I'll let you know if I see any little reader. I'll be very working lurking in the in the landscape.
Catherine, this is awesome. I mean, look, I think there's a lot of Here's what's true. There's a growing plurality in America. The plurality of Americans are politically homeless. We see it every day. The numbers show it. Right. We're not at a third and a third and a third anymore. The Republicans have less than a third, the Democrats have less than a third. There's a whole bunch of people just sort of sitting there in search of something. So
let's see what happens. Right, That's all we can do, all right, Catherine, great to see you.
Thanks having me on