The Reason Roundtable

There has been a staggering reduction in global poverty over the last four decades. In China, sustained rates of economic growth have lifted 800 million people out of extreme poverty. Ethiopia, a country once synonymous with famine, has grown faster than China while nearly halving its poverty rate over the last 15 years. Across the planet, developing countries large and small, from India to Ghana, have seen astonishing successes in alleviating poverty, exceeding even the most optimistic economic forecasts.

How did this extraordinary shift happen? Do poor countries need more markets, or more government?

Two of the world's best-known development economists, Joseph Stiglitz and William Easterly, met on August 27, 2018, at the SubCulture Theater in Manhattan's East Village to debate these questions. The event was sponsored by the Soho Forum, a monthly debate series partnered with Reason. Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein moderated.

Produced by Todd Krainin.

Watch two leading development economists debate at the Soho Forum.

If you live in one of 65 U.S. cities, you've probably seen electric scooters.

To unlock one, you just use an app on your phone. It costs one dollar to unlock and 15-cents a minute after that. You go where you need to go, and then just leave the scooter anywhere. The scooter stays there until someone else rents it. It has a GPS which allows riders to locate them and prevents theft.

John Stossel tested one in Washington, D.C. He wonders if this is the next revolution in urban travel.

Stossel says, as often happens, entrepreneurs invented something great. He wonders how many cities will impose destructive regulation.

Critiquing an ex-president's warnings about anti-media rhetoric, non-voting, and unelected bureaucrats

Joshua Childress, 37, spent seven years as a U.S. Border Patrol agent out of Arizona's Yuma Station, tracking footprints to catch crossers. He resigned last month after changing his mind about illegal immigration.

Though Border Patrol wouldn't confirm or deny the circumstances leading to Childress' departure, Reason obtained documentation showing that the resignation was filed for "personal" reasons.

Childress says that when he began at Border Patrol, he believed in the agency's mission and thought he could apply useful skills he'd acquired while serving in the military.

He says that in one memorable incident, he witnessed lash marks on a man's back. Upon further questioning, the man revealed that the scars resulted from a whipping that a drug trafficker gave him for refusing to carry drugs over the border.

What also changed his mind was listening to podcasts while driving around the border 8 to 10 hours a day, specifically a show called Unregistered, hosted by historian and Reason contributor Thaddeus Russell.

He says one particular episode featuring author and sex worker Maggie McNeill made him re-examine his fundamental beliefs.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by Paul Detrick and Weissmueller.

"Marimba on the Hunt" by Daniel Birch is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial NoDerivatives 4.0 License

Photo Credit: "Immigration activists hold signs against family separation." Joshua Roberts/REUTERS/Newscom

Photo Credit: "Estanislao Perez huge his son." Stringer/REUTERS/Newscom

Photo Credit: "Members of activist group Rise and Resist." Erik McGregor/ZUMA Press/Newscom

Democrats and Republicans are once again in the midst of a deep partisan battle, this time about whether Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is the most qualified Supreme Court nominee in history or a crypto-racist hiding his shadowy résumé. Days of speeches, protests, and calculated outrage have not changed the expected outcome, and Judge Kavanaugh will almost certainly become the next Supreme Court justice.

In the latest Reason video, we explore what we would have liked to see during the Kavanaugh hearings.

Written and starring Austin Bragg and Andrew Heaton. Edited by Bragg.

In 2015, psychology professor Jonathan Haidt and free-speech activist Greg Lukianoff published "The Coddling of the American Mind" in The Atlantic. It argued that speech codes, trigger warnings, and safe spaces on college campuses are "disastrous for education—and mental health." It quickly became the most-read article in the history of the magazine.

Now they've expanded it into a new book with the same title.

Lukianoff, a lawyer by training, heads FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which fights for free speech on campus. Haidt teaches at New York University and is a co-founder of Let Grow, the free-range parenting advocacy organization, and Heterodox Academy, which promotes intellectual diversity among faculty.

Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with them to talk about why they believe that, as their book's subtitle puts it, "good intentions and bad ideas" about the supposed fragility of young people is "setting up a generation for failure."

Edited by Alexis Garcia. Intro by Todd Krainin.

Before demanding censure or intervention, take a step back from the Twitter machine and ask yourself whether anyone really cares about this stuff.

Hearings begin today for President Trump's Supreme Court pick, Brett Kavanaugh.

John Stossel wonders whether Kavanaugh will be good for liberty.

Libertarians are right to worry. Kavanaugh has shown deference to government when it spies on people.

Should libertarians be happy with Kavanaugh overall, Stossel asks?

Zachary R. Wood came to national attention when, as a undergraduate at ultra-liberal Williams College, the student group that he helped lead was pressured to cancel its invitation to Suzanne Venker, a conservative author and critic of feminism.

Activists accused him of "causing actual mental, social, psychological, and physical harm" to his fellow students, and "paying for...the continued dispersal of violent ideologies that kill our black and brown (trans) femme sisters." After he invited the former National Review writer John Derbyshire to speak, the university president unilaterally shut the event down.

The self-described "liberal Democrat" and Hillary Clinton supporter says his commitment to open dialogue comes from dealing with his mother's mental illness, his frequent moves as a child, and being a black scholarship student at mostly white, wealthy schools. Around the fourth grade, he explains, he started going to private schools. "I was coming from a disadvantaged community and going to a school in a more affluent community and that meant I had to be open and making friends with peers from very different backgrounds." He notes that he and his new schoolmates were quick to project both negative and positive stereotypes on one another. "Part of what that experience challenged me to do was to assess those stereotypes and resist the inclination to make them."

In Uncensored: My Life and Uncomfortable Conversations at the Intersection of Black and White America, Wood writes about the urgent need for civil discourse and open debate, especially on college campuses. The recent graduate talked with Reason about how administrators are as much or more to blame as student activists for the repressive atmosphere at universities, and why he looks forward to exploring issues of class mobility and how school choice can benefit low-income minorities in his work as a journalist.