Beyond Talking Points

In this episode, Matt and Matt revisit COVID related public policy decisions. We discuss how our views of the policies have evolved and what to think of COVID policies going forward. Fortunately we agree on a lot on this topic (at this point) and put a lot of criticism in the government's and the public policy experts' direction.

In this episode, Matt and Matt talk about cosmic nihilism and it's implications. They talk about cultural decadence, the ways that people (maybe wrongly) use nihilism to inform their life and worldview. We argue about if there is any importance to cosmic meaning (and lack of cosmic meaning). We don't necessarily walk away in any solidified agreement on these topics, but we really do find a lot of common ground here.

In this episode, Matt and Matt discuss one of Matt's favorite movies, the 2019 A24 Horror/Drama "Midsommar". Because this movie is very bizarre, it only made sense to record our takeaways from the film and the themes it touches on. We talk about cults, feminism, culture relativism, and a little bit of nihilism.

In this episode, we discuss Mikhail Bakunin's excerpt from Michael Malice's book, "The Anarchist Handbook". We have a lot of thoughts, mostly discussing where Bakunin contrasts Marx and the ways Bakunin reminded Matt of Murray Rothbard. A fun discussion that covers a lot of ground.

On this episode, Matt and Matt discuss Chapter five of Michael Malice's "Anarchist Handbook", an excerpt from Herbert Spencer's "Social Statics". In it Spencer talks about the right to defy/ignore/withdraw from the state's authority. We talk about that as well as what secession would look like in the United States. Inevitably, we talk about if any government policy is ever good - lots of fun rabbit holes we chase in this one.

In this episode Beyond Talking Points, the Matts talk about Michael Knowles' case for censorship from a conservative standpoint, and how that relates to our ideas on free speech in general. This leads us into discussions around big tech and other hypothetical scenarios when speech could or should be restricted.

In this episode of Beyond Talking Points, Matt and Matt continue their deep-dive into Michael Malice's "Anarchist Handbook". This episode is about Chapter 4, an excerpt from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's "The Confessions of a Revolutionist", published in 1850. Proudhon was the first person to call himself an anarchist, and is also considered the founder of Mutualism, an ideology which Proudhon thought was "the synthesis of communism and property".

This brings up some meta-commentary on the differences between "left anarchists" and people like Noam Chomsky. We map out some of the differences that seem to reveal large rifts between different types of anarchists and statists.

Matt and Matt discuss chapter three of Michael Malice's Anarchist Handbook, an excerpt from Max Stirner's "The Ego and Its Own". The episode starts off with where we agree and disagree with Stirner's philosophy, and then the conversations leads to more discussion about individualism and collectivism.

On this episode, we start breaking down "The Anarchist Handbook" chapter by chapter. We begin with chapter two, which is an excerpt from "Enquiry Concerning Political Justice" by William Godwin about the social contract. Matt and Matt had different reactions to Godwin's arguments in the sense of how it should be framed and examined. We ended up getting bogged down in wanting to have different conversations surrounding Godwin's arguments. We decided to present the episode regardless (and there are a few insights/arguments that we successfully engage with), let the audience decide how much of a success or failure it was, and attempt to do better next week with Stirner!

In the sixtieth episode of Beyond Talking Points, Matt and Matt discuss the Austrian School of Economics. Matt Keck is a proponent of Austrian Economics, and Matt H is only beginning to go beyond the basics in the field of economics. Matt H, therefore, absorbs some Austrian economics content, and pelted Matt K with a thousand and one questions. We hope this gives the audience a greater understanding about these issues. We touch on several things such as scarcity, human action, interest rates, inflation, the Austrian Business Cycle, and misallocation of resources.