Free Thoughts

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Free Thoughts episodes

March 03, 2017 How Economists Think About Health Care
Peter Van Doren joins us this week to talk about health care economics. We talk about risk aversion, risk neutrality, expected value statements, guaranteed renewable care, the ACA as a health care redistribution program, and health-status insurance. How much should we spend on health care, and how would we know the answer to that question?

Show Notes and Further Reading

Van Doren mentions “The Market for Lemons,” (1970) a fascinating concept and paper by George Akerlof.

Mark Pauly’s 2003 paper “Incentive-Compatible Guaranteed Renewable Health Insurance” is mentioned several times in the episode.

Van Doren also talks about John Cochrane’s writings on health-status insurance. Here is a Cato Policy Analysis from 2009 on the topic.
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1 hr
February 24, 2017 A Muslim Case for Liberty
Mustafa Akyol joins us this week to talk about Islam. Is there a Muslim case for liberty? How has Islam traditionally treated the principles of political liberalism?

Show Notes and Further Reading

Akyol’s book is Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty (2013).
He also mentions this op-ed he wrote in the Feb. 13th, 2017 edition of the New York Times, “What Jesus Can Teach Today’s Muslims.”
Listeners may also be interested in this episode of Free Thoughts on libertarianism and Christianity.
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47 min
February 17, 2017 The Libertarian Student Movement
Wolf von Laer joins us this week to talk about the movement for liberty on college campuses around the world.

What are the biggest challenges to liberty for today’s university students? How difficult is it to communicate ideas on college campuses?

Show Notes and Further Reading

Listeners may be interested in our Free Thoughts episodes with Robby Soave and Greg Lukianoff on First Amendment rights on college campuses.

The 10th International Students for Liberty Conference is February 17th-19th, 2017. More details here.
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54 min
February 10, 2017 Taking Government Un-Seriously
Jeremy McLellan joins us this week to talk about his brand of politics and comedy. Does humor have a place in changing people’s political beliefs?

You can find McLellan’s comedy on Twitter and Facebook.
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50 min
February 03, 2017 The Truth About Immigration
Alex Nowrasteh joins us this week to talk about immigration in the wake of Donald Trump’s contentious executive order on the subject. Is immigration always good for a country?

In this episode, we discuss economic arguments for and against immigration, the rate at which immigrants culturally and politically assimilate in the United States, and the real odds of a successful terrorist attack carried out by immigrants or refugees.

Show Notes and Further Reading

For a deeper understanding of Trump’s executive order restricting permanent immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries, we recommend this Vox article by Dara Lind and this New York Times op-ed by David Bier.

Trevor mentions this Free Thoughts episode with John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart on the real risks of terrorism, and listeners may also be interested in the first episode we did on immigration with Alex Nowrasteh; it’s about the history of immigration in the US and the various laws governing it.
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56 min
January 27, 2017 Liberaltarianism and Trump
Brink Lindsey joins us this week to talk about his idea for an alliance between liberals and libertarians in the age of Trump-style conservative populism.

Where did the idea for liberaltarianism come from? How will Donald Trump’s presidency affect libertarians’ relationship with liberals and progressives?

Show Notes and Further Reading

Here’s Brink Lindsey’s Vox article, “Liberals and libertarians should unite to block Trump’s extremism.”

See also this article by Lindsey that appeared in the New Republic in 2006 that first coined the term “liberaltarian.”

Here’s our previous Free Thoughts episode with Lindsey on income inequality.

Lindsey mentions this book, The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth (2006), by Benjamin M. Friedman.

Here is Lindsey’s 2015 study, “Low-Hanging Fruit Guarded by Dragons: Reforming Regressive Regulation to Boost U.S. Economic Growth.”
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49 min
January 20, 2017 King Obama, King Trump: The Dangers of an Imperial Presidency
Gene Healy joins us for a special Inauguration Day episode of Free Thoughts. We assess Barack Obama’s legacy as President of the United States and think about what we might expect in the coming years from President Trump.

What will Obama’s presidential legacy be? How will recent expansions of executive power under Obama affect the actions of a Donald Trump administration?

How hawkish has Obama’s foreign policy been? What happened to the anti-war movement during Obama’s presidency? Can we expect them to come back during a Trump administration?

Show Notes and Further Reading

Gene Healy’s article in the February 2017 issue of Reason is “Goodbye, Obama”.

Other episodes of Free Thoughts that are mentioned in this episode:
America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power with Gene Healy
What Are the Risks of Terrorism? with John Mueller

Healy mentions Jack Goldsmith and Matthew Waxman’s “The Legal Legacy of Light-Footprint Warfare” (2016).

He also mentions Party in the Street (2015) by Michael T. Heaney and Fabio Rojas, National Security and Double Government (2014) by Michael Glennon, and “The Two Presidencies” (1966) by Aaron Wildavsky.
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55 min
January 13, 2017 Wages and Workers
Peter Van Doren joins us this week for a discussion on how wages are determined in a market economy.

Is there a correlation between a worker’s productivity and the value they provide for society? Why has CEO pay increased so much lately? Should the government have a role in fixing unequal or unfair wages?

Show Notes and Further Reading

Van Doren mentions this blog post by Robert Lawrence on the gap between real wages and labor productivity. See also this link for the same discussion (only with Canadian data) on the terms of trade between what workers make and what they consume.

Here are papers by Kevin Murphy and Steven Kaplan on CEO pay.

Van Doren also mentions The Homevoter Hypothesis: How Home Values Influence Local Government Taxation, School Finance, and Land-Use Policies by William Fischel.
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51 min
January 06, 2017 Arguments for Liberty: Kantianism
Jason Kuznicki joins us to discuss his chapter on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant in our newest book, Arguments for Liberty.
What’s Kant’s conception of the good, and what kind of government follows from that?
Who was Immanuel Kant and what were his moral and political theories? What does Kant’s categorical imperative tell us about how to live a good life? How do we get from the categorical imperative to a form of government? And why are some libertarians seemingly anti-Kant?
Show Notes and Further Reading

Arguments for Liberty is available here as a free .pdf and in Kindle and e-Book formats. It’s also available in paperback on Amazon.

For those interested in reading more of Kant’s work, Kuznicki recommends starting with Kant’s Idea of a Universal History from a Cosmopolitical Point of View, or Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason; both are in the public domain and are available for free download from Liberty Fund.
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52 min
December 30, 2016 Harambe to Trump: 2016 Was the Worst
David Boaz joins us to recap 2016. Did we just have the worst year ever in American politics?
Show Notes and Further Reading

Here’s our Free Thoughts episode on Donald Trump with Ben Domenech, recorded after Trump won the Republican primary but before he won the general election.

Boaz mentions the current issue of Cato Policy Report, which features an article by Tom Palmer on the new resurgence of three threats: identity politics, populist authoritarianism, and radical political Islam.

Boaz also mentions this article by Conor Friedersdorf, “Tyrant-Proof the White House—Before It’s Too Late.”
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53 min

About Free Thoughts

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A weekly show about politics and liberty, featuring conversations with top scholars, philosophers, historians, economists, and public policy experts. Hosted by Trevor Burrus.

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