The Reason Roundtable

Frederick Douglass was born 200 years ago this month, and while he's justifiably known as an escaped slave and influential abolitionist, he was also one of the 19th century's most outspoken classical liberals. "The great fact underlying the claim for universal suffrage is that every man is himself and belongs to himself, and represents his own individuality," Douglass declared. "The same is true of woman… Her selfhood is as perfect and as absolute as is the selfhood of man."

A proponent of "free labor," Douglass was at odds with socialist and communitarian abolitionists who denounced property and self-ownership as part of a broader exploitative capitalist system. In fact, Douglass called socialism, which was migrating from Europe to the United States during his life, "errant nonsense" and was a proponent of John Locke and liberalism.

Reason's Nick Gillespie spoke to senior editor Damon Root, whose new article on Douglass is available at Reason.com, about the historical figure and his broader impact on American thinking.

In 2015, Scott Adams, the cartoonist behind the massively popular comic strip Dilbert, boldly predicted that Donald Trump would win the 2016 presidential election.

Adams sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie in front of a live audience in San Francisco to talk about his book, his "extreme liberal" views, the popularity of his live broadcasts with followers via Twitter, and why Trump is a "master persuader."

Edited by Ian Keyser.

As you slept last night, yields on U.S. Treasury 10-year bond notes hit their highest level (2.885 percent) since January 2014. Coming on the heels of Friday's 666-point plunge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, this spike in the cost of federal borrowing has the financial markets all herky-jerky today. "Economists and money managers fear that the increase to the $20 trillion U.S. national debt could carry major blowback to markets," Yahoo Finance reported. And for good reason: In a bit of news last week that escaped political attention but hit Wall Street like a sack of wet rats, "The U.S. Treasury expects to borrow $955 billion this fiscal year, according to a documents released Wednesday. It's the highest amount of borrowing in six years, and a big jump from the $519 billion the federal government borrowed last year."

So on today's Reason Podcast, which features Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Matt Welch discussing news of the week, we start speculating on how to begin the long political road back to a fiscal sanity both major political parties have recklessly abandoned. What, Gillespie asked, will be the symbolic equivalent for debt realists of feminists burning their bras?

Other topics include (of course) The Memo, the hysteria, the weird FBI-love, right-to-try, deregulation, and how Howard the Duck is holding up after all these years.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

If you think libertarianism is just for middle-class white dudes, you really need to meet Kat Murti. She's the 29-year-old co-founder of Feminists for Liberty, a group that is "anti-sexism and anti-statism, pro-markets and pro-choice on everything." A native of both India and Texas, she wants to make libertarianism the default option among women, people of color, and millennials.

"We believe the state has been one of the largest perpetrators of gender inequality and gender violence," she told a reporter at the recent Women's March in Washington, D.C. "We want government to get out of the way and for people to live their own lives, their best lives."

Murti's day job is doing digital outreach for the Cato Institute and she's also a board member for Students for a Sensible Drug Policy. Reason's Nick Gillespie spoke with her about feminism, individualism, intersectionality, and more.

"Trump is a refreshing reminder that the guy that's in the White House is another human being," says Louis Rossetto, the co-founder of Wired and author of the new book Change Is Good: A Story of the Heroic Era of the Internet.

In 2013, Rossetto was the co-recipient of Reason's very first Lanny Friedlander Prize, an award named after the magazine's founder that's handed out annually to an individual or group who has created a publication, medium, or distribution platform that vastly expands human freedom.

Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Rossetto to talk about his new book (the paper version was lavishly designed and crowdfunded on Kickstarter), the 1990s tech boom, and why Trump "diminishes the power of the state" in our heads.

Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Ian Keyser. Cameras by Paul Detrick, Justin Monticello, Zach Weissmueller.

Machinery by Kai Engel is used under a Creative Commons license.

The Grammy Awards and State of the Union Address share the same root problem: The cult of the American presidency. So argues Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Matt Welch on the Reason Podcast. Other topics covered include immigration negotiations, the lousiness of the movie Chocolat, and the problematics of General Hospital's Luke and Laura.

On January 16, 2018, the Ayn Rand Institute's Yaron Brook argued the affirmative in a debate with Gene Epstein, former Barron's economics editor, over whether selfishness is a virtue. It was an Oxford-style contest, in which the audience votes on the proposition before and after the event, and the side that sways the most people wins. Epstein was victorious, picking up 15.38 percent of the undecideds vs. 9.89 percent for Yaron Brook. Judge Andrew Napolitano, senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel, moderated.

The event was held by The Soho Forum, Reason Foundation's debate series in New York City. Held every month at the SubCulture Theater in the East Village, it also serves as a gathering place for New York's libertarian community, with free food and a cash bar. Epstein is also the Soho Forum's director and usually moderates.

One-room schoolhouses are making a comeback in the so-called micro-schooling movement. While a typical public high school might cram 2,000 students into a single grade, micro-schools cap out at around 150 for all grades. That allows students to mix across ages and interests while building skill-based knowledge and proficiency. Teachers function more as guides than instructors and learning is intensely personalized and individualized. Think of micro-schools as "Montessouri meets Silicon Valley."

Reason's Nick Gillespie spoke with Tyler Koteskey, an education analyst at Reason Foundation, who has a story on the micro-schooling movement in the March issue of Reason. They discuss the personalized approach of micro-schooling, the militaristic, Prussian origins of American factory-model education, and the costs and benefits of different modes of learning.

On today's podcast, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, Robby Soave, and Matt Welch discuss what economics can tell us about sexual politics, whether there's generational divide over #MeToo, why we should laugh AND cry about the government shutdown, what relationship Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has with National School Choice Week.

"It's absolutely true that school makes people show up, sit down, shut up and that these are useful skills for people to have in adulthood, " says Bryan Caplan, a professor of economics at George Mason University, who blogs at EconLog, and is the author of the new book The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. "So the real question is if all we're trying to do is prepare people for a job, why not prepare them with a job?"

Caplan argues that schools are not only overpriced, but that traditional education fails to prepare students with job skills that reflect the needs of the labor market.

Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Caplan to make the case that the government needs to spend so much on education if it isn't relevant to our success in getting a job and earning higher wages.

Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Alexis Garcia.