The Reason Roundtable

Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval (R) recently declared a state of emergency because the state's 37 licensed marijuana shops were running out of inventory. Why? The law legalizing recreational cannabis sales in Nevada granted an 18-month monopoly on distribution to liquor wholesalers, who lack the experience and infrastructure to transport marijuana. And most are too afraid to enter the market because they're regulated by the federal government, and cannabis is still illegal on the federal level.

The absurdity of the situation is playing out at Essence, a marijuana dispensary just north of the Vegas strip, which started out as a medical marijuana facility. When it was selling medical weed, owner Armen Yemendijian had his employees move inventory from the grow house to the storefront themselves. Now that the store is selling recreational marijuana, that's no longer an option.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller and Justin Monticello. Music by The Underscore Orkestra, Tri-Tachyon, and Chris Zabriskie.

"We don't see business as evil," says Forbes, marking the 100th anniversary of Forbes magazine, the iconic business publication started by his grandfather. "We see it as a noble undertaking."

And thanks to capitalism, progress in the 20th century will pale in comparison to what's coming in the 21st. "In 2117," he says, "we'll be infinitely better off."

Forbes sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas to discuss the legacy and future of the magazine, his assessment of President Trump, and where the legislative agenda for Republicans is falling short.

It's been a bad year for patent trolls, from a Supreme Court decision squelching their ability to funnel lawsuits to East Texas, to this week's ruling that Personal Audio LLC can't claim it owns a patent on the entirety of podcasting. In the latest Mostly Weekly, Reason's Andrew Heaton explores what patent trolls are, the damage they do, and the next step in driving them out of courtrooms and back into dank caves.

Trolls camp out on piles of weak and frivolous patents, hoping to one day sue inventors and businesses. Many of the patents they register or buy are vague, representing novel ideas only insofar as trolls are innovative at finding things they didn't invent to claim legal ownership of. It doesn't matter that these patents wouldn't hold up in court, because a business is more likely to pay off a troll than to hire an expensive attorney to fight them. Trolls suck more than twenty billion dollars out of the economy each year.

The parasitical nature of "non-practicing entities" (the PC term for trolls) has raised questions about whether the modern patent system helps or hinders innovation, and if the best solution is for comprehensive reform or just to burn the whole thing down.

Heaton has an idea to hinder patent trolls. It may not be a silver bullet, but it will definitely piss them off.

In her new book, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World, the third volume in a trilogy, economist Deirdre McCloskey argues that our vast accumulation of wealth over the past two hundred years— which she's dubbed "The Great Enrichment"—was the result of "massively better ideas in technology and institutions." Where did they arise from? "A new liberty and dignity for commoners," she argues, "expressed as the ideology of European liberalism."

McCloskey sat down with Nick Gillespie at Freedom Fest, the annual convention for libertarians in Las Vegas, for a wide-ranging conversation on topics including the roots of "The Great Enrichment," why her gender reassignment surgery was an "expression of [her] libertarianism", and the importance of advocating policies that "actually help the poor" instead of just "making people feel good about helping the poor.

If you have a gun, don't fly out of New York with it! Almost every week, New York City arrests someone who brings a gun to the airport–even when the person has a gun license from their state, notifies authorities about the gun and follows TSA procedures for flying with it. John Stossel interviews people who were arrested and confronts the assistant district attorney who prosecutes them.

In its battle against guns, New York City traumatizes law-abiding gun owners who pass through New York and its airports with guns. One man was even arrested for traveling with an empty magazine.

Bills have been filed in both chambers of Congress to make gun permits valid in all states, which would prevent cases like these.

Stossel interviews Patricia Jordan and Avi Wolf, who were arrested at the airport. Patricia had tried to declare her gun, which was unloaded and in a TSA-approved case. Avi was trying to declare an empty gun magazine–essentially a piece of metal with a spring in it.

Produced by Maxim Lott. Edited by Joshua Swain.

John Stossel investigates a New York City park bathroom that cost $2 million to build.

For that price you might expect gold-plated fixtures—but it's just a tiny building with four toilets and four sinks.

Edited by Joshua Swain.

Remy tries his best to explain why the nation's debt is reason enough to curtail government spending.

Lady Gaga parody written and performed by Remy

Music tracks and background vocals by Ben Karlstrom

Video by Meredith Bragg

"The intellectual backwardness of many of Trump's trade advisors contrasts dramatically with some of the very good advice he's gotten in terms of deregulation," says Roberto Salinas-León, president of the Mexico Business Forum and adjunct scholar at the CATO Institute. "Talking about your second most important trading partner in that [derogatory] vein—that's not the 'art of the deal.' That's just very bad business."

Salinas-León, an expert on trade and monetary policy, says that if Trump ends the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it would decimate jobs on both sides of the border.

Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Salinas-León at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas to discuss NAFTA's economic impact, his heated confrontation with Trump at Freedom Fest 2015, and how the president's anti-Mexico rhetoric propelled leftist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador ("a rabid, primitive, vitriolic, populist") to the top of the polls.

Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Alexis Garcia.

Whether you're a doctor, an electrician, a teacher, a cab driver, a hair stylist—even a tour guide!—the government increasingly demands that you get a license before you are allowed to work in your chosen profession. In the 1950s, only about one in 20 workers needed the government's blessing to do their jobs. Today, that figure is more than one in three.

Produced by Naomi Brockwell. Edited by Joshua Swain.

"Hopefully, over time, [the] two parties start to fall apart," says Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan) in an interview with Reason recorded last week at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas. "I can go straight to Twitter or Facebook or elsewhere and tell people exactly what I stand for."

First elected in 2010, the libertarian congressman helped co-found the influential House Freedom Caucus, sponsored bills to cut spending and defang the National Security Agency, and took an active role in the successful effort to depose John Boehner as house majority leader.

A critic of executive power and champion of constitutionalism, the Grand Rapids native is a thorn in the side of Donald Trump, serving as one of only two GOP co-sponsors of a bill calling for an independent, investigative commission into the president's Russia-related behavior. He frequently calls out the administration on social media, and is on the receiving end of a White House call to get primaried.

This interview was recorded on July 21, 2017.