Libertarian Radio - The Bob Zadek Show

Today's guest, renowned civil liberties attorney and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, raises the bar and exceeds the highest standards. Professor Dershowitz has published over a thousand articles and 50 books, including several national bestsellers. His autobiography Taking the Stand was a New York Times bestseller. Other notable books include The Trials of Zion, Rights From Wrongs, The Case for Israel, and Chutzpah.His forthcoming book Dershowitz on Killing examines the complex issue of determining rules regarding life and death decisions. Following the principles that have guided his long, distinguished career, he argues these rules should reflect the irreversibility of death.In this episode, Dershowitz explains how he became unfairly "canceled" for adhering to his principles, and what upholding these principles has cost him.His most recent book, The Price of Principle: Why Integrity Is Worth the Consequences (July 2022), takes a broad stance against the dangerous trend of cancellations—both of specific people as well as the very idea of neutral justice. It's not only right-wingers provocateurs being cancelled on college campuses anymore. Liberal ideas, including some of the most cherished principles of American government, are now being cast aside.Take the presumption of innocence. It's the bedrock of our adversarial legal system. We all pay lip service to the idea that everyone is entitled to a vigorous defense. Yet the principle seems to go out the window whenever the person being defended is unpopular, as when Dershowitz pointed out the shaky legal grounds for impeaching former President Trump.In recent years, Dershowitz himself has suffered the ‘price of principle' as the latest victim of cancel culture. Former friends like Larry David refuse to talk to him; he's been shunned from events at which he used to be top-billed speaker. And his principled defenses of unpopular figures like Trump have been used against him in the court of public opinion.Unlike most celebrities whom the “cancelists” go after, Alan was exonerated. Still, Dershowitz has found few defenders. He has had to defend himself.Furthermore, he writes that principles have taken a backseat to partisan identity politics. Partisan Democrats forget that his defense of Trump was based on the same principles he had used to defend Clinton against partisan attacks. He argues that too many people abandon their principles in favor of whatever stance benefits their political party or social group, and believes we are heading towards a "dystopia of partisanship and discrimination" if this trend continues.

Californians enjoy abundant choice when it comes to cuisine, entertainment and leisure activities. Yet in the political arena, we are stuck with just one choice. The Democrats have effectively had One Party Rule here for the last two decades. Since 1996, Democrats have continuously held a majority in the State Assembly and currently hold a dominant 62-18 supermajority in the 80-seat chamber. Most forget what happened in the 1990s that permanently changed the balance of power. In 1994, Proposition 187 passed by referendum, with strong support from then-Governor Pete Wilson. The law banned undocumented immigrants from accessing non-emergency healthcare, public schools, and other services in California. Since then, Hispanic voters have largely voted as a bloc for Democrats, leaving Republicans all but irrelevant. Tom Campbell served five terms in the US Congress, and one two-year term in the State Senate. He created the Common Sense Party to combine fiscal responsibility with inclusivity to appeal to the wide swath of voters who want more choice in their political candidates. Sounds a lot like libertarianism, without all the baggage that the word carries.Is it too much to ask for an independent-minded politician who is neither bought and paid for by the public sector unions, nor an anti-immigrant fanatic? The California Common Sense Party has aligned with Andrew Yang's “Forward” Party movement – trying to break the “two-party doom loop,” and find common sense solutions. Tom Campbell joins me this Sunday to break the latest news about their plans to disrupt California politics.

Back in early 2021, Cato Institute senior fellow Ted Galen Carpenter urged Washington "to abandon its efforts to torpedo Nord Stream 2." His warnings have been proven prescient by Seymour Hersh's recent revelations, which seem to confirm the US government's involvement in the destruction of the pipeline. Many journalists admit behind closed doors that they believe in the US's involvement, yet the media remains silent out of fear of provoking a response from Russia.In his new book Unreliable Watchdog, Ted Galen Carpenter argues that the news media has become a tool for propaganda rather than a watchdog for the American people, leading to a distorted view of U.S. foreign policy and a “garrison state” mentality.He examines the media's willingness to accept official accounts and policy justifications without skepticism, particularly in regards to the Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War, the Balkans, Iraq War, Libya and Syria civil wars, and post–Cold War relations with Russia and China.He questions why journalists and social media platforms collaborate with government officials in pushing an activist foreign policy, even when results are questionable or disastrous.Are we repeating the same mistakes with Ukraine as the media cheerleads the escalation of another unwinnable war?

George Will calls it the year's "most-needed book on public affairs"—Philip K. Howard's Not Accountable tackles public sector unions head-on, arguing that they're not only dangerous, but unconstitutional. Not Accountable is a non-partisan vision for fixing the biggest flaw in government. Consider a few data points: Public sector membership in the United States is around 7 million. 4.6 million teachers. 1.3 million service employees. California, with 300,000 teachers, is only able to terminate two or three per year for poor performance. 40,000 Californian retirees receive over $100,000 in pension salary. In the end, who pays? Our children do—both in lost learning outcomes, future taxes, and less money in state and federal budgets for other services. Howard, the founder of the Common Good organization, joins me Sunday to make the case for a legal solution – not a democratic one – for fixing the broken system. Progressives, libertarians, and conservatives alike should be up in arms about the lack of accountability for police officers, teachers, and all those who are supposed to serve the public good. What can we do about it? Find out this Sunday on the show of ideas.

Images of illegal crossings are disturbingly chaotic and make it clear that there is indeed an immigration crisis. People perceive that chaos means we need government to exercise even more control, even when government is to blame for the chaos (as in the case of immigration). And so we get the vicious cycle that ends with our broken immigration system.Alex Nowrasteh, the director of economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute, returns to the show Sunday to lay out pragmatic solutions for alleviating the chaos at the border.It starts with simplifying the system, and allowing more opportunities for immigrants to live and work here legally.Alex is the director of economic and social policy studies. His popular publications have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, and most other major publications in the United States.He is the coauthor (with Benjamin Powell) of the book Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions (Cambridge University Press, 2020), which is the first book on how economic institutions in receiving countries adjust to immigration. He is also the coauthor (with Mark S. Krikorian) of the booklet Open Immigration: Yea and Nay (Encounter Broadsides, 2014) and has contributed numerous book chapters about immigration to various edited volumes.Our own immigration series “Let Them All In” has answered 5 of the main populist objections to open immigration. The series will conclude with an essay on policy solutions - the topic for our show this week.

People, and families in particular, are fleeing California in droves. Last year, the population shrank for the second year in a row, in large part because of the lack of new housing and exorbitant prices of the dwindling existing stock. Politicians love to talk about “affordable housing,” but the plans to allow more development go out the window as soon as their talking points are pitted against the agendas of powerful lobbying groups. The infamous NIMBY's of California have found allies in unions, who have together weaponized an environmental “super-statute” that effectively blocks any new construction if it can be shown to increase carbon emissions.Christian Britschgi is an associate editor at Reason Magazine who has written extensively about housing policy. His work shines a light on the root causes of the housing crisis, and why the patchwork of solutions coming from California's legislative houses has failed to significantly ameliorate the problem.Christian will join the show of ideas to explain how the California Environmental Quality Act makes the approval of new housing nearly impossible.What will it take to break through the thicket of regulations when the most powerful lobbies have an interest in keeping them in place?

Everyone knows that special interests lobby government for favors. The Twitter Files have revealed that lobbying is a two-way street, with government lobbying corporations too – often to silence critics of its policies. Will Duffield of the Cato Institute has become the go-to expert on so-called “Jawboning” i.e., informally pressuring private companies to censor disfavored speech. The Jawboning-industrial-complex includes members of both parties. Major social media companies now have internal teams to handle “suggestions” from government officials. Ban this person. Silence that opinion. It's not exactly what Orwell pictured, but it's still concerning. I previously interviewed Jenin Younes of the National Civil Liberties Alliance on a related topic. NCLA has defended those who censored for contradicting official CDC stances on COVID, like Martin Kulldorff and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Getting banned from a private social media platform isn't the same as getting thrown in jail for speech. But what if the social media company is acting under implicit pressure from Congress? It's a classic “Your Money or Your Life!” decision. Does this kind of censorship violate the Constitution, even if no laws are passed? Duffield joins me Sunday to discuss the nuances of free speech law in the social media era, and to lay out a libertarian vision of digital expression.

Just when you think you've seen it all, the FBI goes and does something so egregious that it shocks even long-time Institute for Justice attorneys.If you've been following the issue of civil asset forfeiture, you may remember the case of Timbs v. Indiana*, in which the Supreme Court unanimously overturned a decision by Indiana's state Supreme Court, finding that the state's seizure of a $42,000 Land Rover violated the 8th amendment's “excessive fines and fees” clause.Law enforcement departments across the country have been colluding with federal law enforcement to effectively “police for profit,” with civil asset forfeiture being their primary tool. Under this practice, a person need not be found guilty for their property to be taken. Tyson Timbs, the defendant in that case, had the help of the IJ to fight through the long legal battle that he ultimately won. Many innocent victims of forfeiture laws simply throw up their hands and accept defeat.Mike Greenberg is an attorney at the Institute for Justice who will join me Sunday (1/22) to discuss a new case in which the FBI blatantly violated the terms of their warrant in seizing over $80 million in assets from the private vaults kept by a safe deposit company. A majority of the assets and precious family heirlooms have now been restored to their rightful owners – but only after a fight.Greenberg was part of the IJ's legal team that fought on behalf of Paul and Jennifer Snitko, whose belongings were wrongly seized and photographed by FBI agents in March of 2021 without probable cause. Doesn't the Constitution say something about that?“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. “– The Fourth Amendment to the ConstitutionSeems pretty clear cut to me. Greenberg and I will discuss the facts of the case before delivering a verdict.What will the consequences be for the FBI this time?

The word sustainability is rather slippery. We're told that our current energy consumption is “unsustainable,” and are thus cajoled into spending billions on Green New Deal type legislation by politicians and celebrities who criss-cross the country on jumbo jets. Even allegedly “clean” energy alternatives to goal and gas require material resources that often dwarf the emissions they're supposed to offset. It's not enough to just stop burning oil—sustainability proponents have to propose something to replace it. Point this inconvenient truth out, and you'll likely hear the retort that a least the projects create jobs in the Green Economy.Mike Munger, prolific blogger and Professor of Political Science, Economics, and Public Policy at Duke University, has another name for the typical thinking behind sustainability: sophistry.His latest article for AIER quotes Frederic Bastiat's “Economic Sophisms” at length to make the critical point that costs are not benefits. Destroying wealth in order to create jobs is a losing proposition.Munger, a modern-day Bastiat, skewers today's environmentalist sophists just by showing the logical conclusion of their preferred policies: “Burn all the gas-powered cars? Jobs! Tear down all the oil and gas-powered power plants, so we have shortages of electricity? So many jobs!” Munger returns to the show this Sunday to explore the seen vs. the unseen in green energy and sustainability.We'll focus on one of my personal bugaboos—recycling—and Mike will explain why it's typically worse for the environment than just throwing stuff away.Finally, we'll revisit Mike's clear-eyed defense of capitalism, Is Capitalism Sustainable?The question of sustainability boils down to this: how can we best fulfill the needs of the current generations without compromising the needs of future generations? We can talk all day about alternative energy, but Munger notes that there is no to alternative capitalism. Only the market can solve our sustainability woes.

Ashley Varner of the Freedom Foundation on the financial boon to the Democrats; Looking around today, do we see evidence that the government fears the people? Why should they?Remember when Lois Lerner targeted Tea Party freedom activists as head of the IRS? She retired with a full pension and never bore any consequences for weaponizing the agency she led against ideological opponents.More recently, the Biden administration was fearless enough to pass the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act,” which included a provision for hiring 87,000 new IRS agents. To quote Jefferson again, in his complaints against the Crown, “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.”They say the new agents will “mostly provide customer service,” and that we need to spend $80 billion in order to raise $200 billion in new revenue. Does anyone believe those claims?But there is another sinister feature of the move to bolster the most reviled of all bureaucracies. The IRS represents the single largest federal public sector union lobby, and 100% of its political contributions go to one party (guess which). Ashley Varner of the Freedom Foundation joins me this Sunday to discuss the perverse nature of public sector employee unions, which can lobby the government for direct pay raises – all at taxpayer expense. Varner will explain how the vicious cycle of political privilege is perpetuated by public sector unions and their boosters in government.The Freedom Foundation is a “Do Tank” based in Washington State that is leading a national movement of workers who are opting out of their union dues.We'll also discuss the unresolved IRS scandal of 2013, and the broader problem of public sector union influence – including the teachers union and their figurehead, Randi Weingarten. Finally, I'll talk about what the founders would have said about our current tax system, especially the Income Tax.

We all remember the bank bailouts of 2008, but almost nobody talks about the more recent COVID bailouts. $50 billion here; $25 billion there – pretty soon we're talking about real money. The airlines were one of several industries that enjoyed special treatment from the federal government on the grounds that they constituted an "essential business." What would happen if the airports shut down completely? Sounds scary.But the airline industry was never at risk of disappearing, notes Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. In a series of policy briefs co-authored with air travel guru Gary Leff, de Rugy shows the colossal waste of taxpayer dollars that took place while no one was paying attention. Rather than re-organizing under Chapter 11 bankruptcy laws, as businesses do all the time, inefficient airlines were able to keep paying dividends to their shareholders while less privileged businesses went under permanently.Now, politicians like Bernie Sanders are criticizing Southwest airlines for the debacle of its holiday cancellations (and he has a point)But what else should we expect from an industry that makes money whether it performs well or not?

It's said that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. The State of California has repurposed this adage lately, finding ways to remake the country in its own progressive image through the food industry. The last time Professor Richard Epstein joined the show, we took up the “pig case” aka NPPC v. Ross. The Supreme Court is now deciding whether California can foist its values on the rest of the country through regulations that would impact pork producers nationwide. Based on oral arguments in October, it looks like it will be a close call. Meanwhile, a new battle has been brewing over fast food restaurants and other franchises in the Golden State. Governor Newsom signed the FAST Recovery Act (AB 257) into law on Labor Day, celebrating the bill's dramatic minimum increase from $15 to $22 for fast food and other franchise workers. Organized labor cheered, but the bill has now been put on hold until voters can weigh in by referendum in 2024. We can hope that voters will see through the bill's lofty promises for workers to the harms of minimum wage increases for workers, employers, and consumers alike. Even the Washington Post called the bill “ham-handed.” Professor Epstein joins me to review the economic case against the minimum wage. However, this is not like normal minimum wage legislation. The FAST Recovery Act also gives sweeping new powers to the state – and “Emperor Newsom” in particular – to regulate every aspect of thousands of businesses in California that qualify as large franchises. Such powers were unthinkable for the Founders, but Epstein points out that the courts have increasingly deferred to state authority since the New Deal Era. The FAST Act takes the administrative overreach that has become common and goes a step fruther – consolidating that power into the governor's hand. Beyond the possibility of overturning the law by citizen vote, Epstein sees a larger opportunity to challenge its constitutionality on equal protection grounds – setting a precedent for similar cases of power grabs by state executives. The battlelines have been drawn. To quote an old Union hymn, Which Side Are You On? Team Liberty or Team Newsom?

Not long ago, many businesses competed to extend credit to consumers through unsecured lending, auto loans, home mortgage loans or installment sales. Sadly, true competition is no longer.In today's consumer lending environment, businesses are nothing other than agencies of federal and, to some degree, state governments acting under the veneer of a private business. They have an unholy alliance with government.The industry promised, "We will do your political bidding. We will give you political cover, so you can carry out the social policies you wish. In exchange, Mr. Government, you will make sure we never lose any money."That pact has been honored by both parties to the detriment of us – naive consumers.Todd Zywicki helps us understand how we got here, where we go from here, and how to spot it when it happens.

Two-term SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins is the chief executive of Patomak Global Partners – a New York and DC-based financial services consultancy. Paul served as a member of the congressional oversight panel for TARP (remember that?), was a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and an attorney with Davis Polk.Today's topic we can subtitle as “Financial markets meet Environmental Social Governance (ESG),” which sounds rather benign, but it's far from it. Imagine you're seeking the best physician to cure a serious medical condition. What's the likelihood you'll ask the prospective physician her opinion on immigration, cash bail, or criminal justice reform?As Paul will explain, financial regulation is forcing the politics of ESG into our financial markets, resulting in lower yields for all of us and the misallocation of capital.

“Innocent until proven guilty” has been the rule of the American justice system since its inception. It still is today. Unless, that is, you happen to be accused of wrongdoing on a college campus. In that case, you might as well be dragged before the modern-day equivalent of the Star Chamber, where campus administrators hardly even pay lip service to your due process rights.As we explored last week with Carissa Hessick, it is a far graver injustice to deprive an innocent person of the liberty than to let a guilty person go free. That is why the founders gave the accused so many protections in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) was created to uphold these protections against rules passed under the Title IX legislation that require colleges to effectively prosecute students outside of the criminal justice system. In these campus tribunals, those accused of serious misconduct like sexual assault have been denied basic protections like the right to a live hearing, to cross examine witnesses, and even to hear the full charges being levied against them.Joe Cohn, director of FIRE's Legislative and Policy department, joins me this Sunday to discuss a proposed rule change from the same administrative office behind the infamous 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter. The new language would turn certain kinds of constitutionally-protected free speech into a punishable offense under the broad umbrella of “sexual harassment.” Under the new rule, the “trial” that results from alleged misconduct would be conducted by a single college administrator acting as judge, jury, and prosecutor.Anyone connected with an American university that receives federal funding (aka, virtually all colleges) should tune in to this important broadcast. The first step to protecting your rights is to know what they are. Be sure to share this with any college students who may not know their rights, and check out FIRE's free Guide to Due Process and Campus Justice.

“How do you plea?”It's the first question the judge asks you in a criminal trial. But before the accused even has a chance to answer “guilty” or “not guilty,” there is another, prior legal proceeding that rarely gets talked about – even though it pre-empts the need for a trial in 97% of convictions. Jury trials were one of the founders' critical safeguards against the tyranny of overzealous government prosecutors. Thomas Jefferson viewed the institution as the most vital form of democracy – above the ability to vote for legislators. And yet the American legal system has largely abandoned this bedrock principle in favor of the “efficiency” of the plea bargain.Carissa Hessick is the director of the Prosecutors and Politics Project, Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, and author of an important new book, Punishment Without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining Is a Bad Deal.Professor Hessick joins me to explain how this practice persists as the norm, while jury trials have been turned into a rare exception. What would the Founders say about this state of affairs? And why hasn't the Supreme Court done something about it?

What do landscape architects, manicurists, kickboxing trainers, and yoga instructors from California all have in common? Besides making our state healthier and better looking, all of these professions require an occupational license.What's wrong with that, you might wonder? Licensing might sound like an important form of consumer protection. But does licensing actually increase the safety and quality of services offered? To answer that, we need data.Dick M. Carpenter, II, senior director of strategic research at the Institute for Justice, recently published a report analyzing Yelp! reviews for six occupations across several states – some with licensing requirements and others without.Unsurprisingly to anyone who understands the nature of licensing, the license made no difference to the service quality according to Yelp's ratings.In some cases, licensing actually seems to correlate with inferior service. The reality is that it represents a barrier to competition promoted by industry insiders to earn more profit.Carpenter joins me this Sunday to explain how good intent by legislators backfires when lobbyists get their way.We will discuss the constitutionality of various licensing requirements through Randy Barnett's "presumption of liberty" framework, and review the voluntary alternatives to licensing that actually improve service quality. Barnett argues that people should be presumed to have economic rights – i.e., the ability to work without government permission – unless there is a very compelling reason for the restriction.However, the Supreme Court has often decided in favor of a “presumption of constitutionality” – giving states the authority to interfere with our personal and economic liberties for virtually no reason at all. Hence licensing laws. Thankfully, the IJ is fighting for our rights every day in court and in the arena of public opinion.Read the IJ's report and tune in Sunday from 8-9am PACIFIC to the show of ideas – not attitude.

When things aren't going well, people always look for a scapegoat. When it comes to the opioid epidemic, the CDC's preferred scapegoat has been pharmaceutical companies. Meanwhile, the DEA blames doctors for over-prescribing pain medication, and has tightened regulations on the quantity that can be prescribed. As we've learned from Dr. Jeffrey Singer over the years, the crackdown on prescription opioids has missed the mark and made the problem worse: addicted patients have turned to the black market to satisfy their demand, and gotten hooked on far more dangerous drugs like illicit heroin and synthetic Fentanyl. Singer calls the misguided war on opioids a “war on pain patients” with no end in sight.More recently, Republican politicians have tried to score points against the Biden administration by scapegoating illegal immigrants for the problem of Fentanyl smuggling. Smuggling has indeed increased. However, a Washington Post op-ed by Cato scholars Singer and David Bier (associate director of immigration studies) reveals the folly of the Republicans' accusations. Illegal immigrants are not the ones bringing Fentanyl across the border, they note. It's mostly US citizens doing the smuggling. Ever since border enforcement has tightened, it has become more common for smugglers to conceal small amounts of the much more potent Fentanyl in otherwise legal border crossings.David and Jeff join the show of ideas to discuss the inevitable unintended consequences of both the war on drugs and the war on immigrants. We will investigate the issue from the angle of the failure of drug prohibition, as well as the failure of strict immigration policy. Both of these problems share a common root cause – they seek to interfere with free markets. The laws of supply and demand don't stop functioning just because an artificial legal boundary is erected – whether you're talking about drugs or people.The solution is simpler than you think – but first, we must assign the blame correctly. Will politicians examine their own role in creating the crisis, or will they continue to scapegoat innocent people?

Books about American history are often dry. Even more when the topic is political history. Most of us remember the boredom of civics lessons on log-rolling, pork barrel spending, and Gerrymandering – shortcomings in our democratic system rooted in the selfish interests of our elected officials. Nick Seabrook, however, has managed to turn the topic of Gerrymandering into a work of popular non-fiction that makes the “surprising history” come to life. The New Yorker even named it as one of the best books of 2022 so far.Seabrook is a professor of political science and public administration at the University of North Florida. He joins me this Sunday to explain why the biggest threat to our democracy comes from the way we draw lines on the map.The “Gerrymander” – named for the under-appreciated founding father, Elbridge Gerry – is a frightening creature, Seabrook says, because it reverses the traditional mode of democratic decision-making. Instead of the voters selecting their elected officials, the elected officials select the voters. The end result is a rigged system that favors incumbents and party insiders at the expense of We, the People.Nick will take us through the highlights of Gerrymandering history – from the most egregious examples to the pivotal moments when a Gerrymander forever changed the country's trajectory. He will also explain how the courts view their role in policing unfair redistricting practices, and which states are the worst offenders.Before casting your ballot for the midterms, be sure to catch this episode of the show of ideas.

Like most Americans, Justin Hart was minding his own business – a successful data visualization business – when the pandemic snuck up on us in early 2020. Seeing that something was amiss in the reported figures, he felt compelled to start the Rational Ground organization as an “answer to the flood of chaotic COVID-19 misinformation.”Nearly three years after lockdowns first went into effect, the early days of COVID hysteria are starting to recede into the collective memory for many of us. Some of us have stopped highlighting the government's insanity and deprivations of our essential liberties (I haven't done a show on COVID in almost a year). Justin, however, has continued the fight – leveraging his skills as a data guy to continue to expose the bureaucrats and COVID “Karens” for their hysterical overreactions.Justin's new book, Gone Viral: How Covid Drove the World Insane, has persuaded me to do whatever I can to help his message “go viral,” so that a majority of Americans will look back on this period with the appropriate level of cynicism about our health authorities. We must never let them persuade us to abandon our freedoms so readily for the sake of a false measure of security. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

My guest this Sunday is Cathy Reisenwitz, author of the Sex and the State Substack, and one of the clearest thinkers on the topic of decriminalizing sex work.Too often, Cathy notes, all sex work is conflated with the loathsome and illegal practice of sex trafficking. However, the response by well-intentioned religious groups and certain feminists has been to criminalize the choices of women who enter the profession voluntarily—making their work more dangerous in the process. Thus, these activist groups end up harming many of the very women they are trying to help.We witnessed the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s, which ruined the lives of those falsely accused of abusing children. Today, we see a similar moral panic around pornography and prostitution that must be exposed to the light of day. Cathy has the data on what happens when you legalize sex work, and how places like Germany and New Zealand have combatted genuine sex trafficking by cooperating with rather than prosecuting sex workers.

At the center of the competitive governance movement is Patri Friedman –the co-founder and Director of the Seasteading Institute, who more recently founded Pronomos Capital, a venture capital firm devoted to transforming the “governance industry” by promoting the idea of startup countries.Patri was one of my first guests when I started broadcasting in 2009. Much has changed since he first launched the Seasteading Institute, and I invited Patri to share what he's been up to and how the landscape (seascape?) has changed in the last 13 years.Seasteading and related land-based projects represent the next frontier for radical libertarianism, following in the footsteps of Patri's father – the anarcho-capitalist thinker David Friedman – and his grandfather, the late Milton Friedman. Milton Friedman showed how free trade areas like Hong Kong could supercharge growth and lead millions out of poverty. Patri's ambition is to revive the fading legacy of Hong Kong, enabling the establishment of a thousand new nations – floating or otherwise – to pull humanity into the more optimistic scenario for the future. However, as we will discuss, these new governing entities need not adopt libertarian principles to still advance the broader libertarian agenda of enhancing freedom and competition at the level of choosing one's jurisdiction. What freedom could be more important?

When you hear the words “mass surveillance,” you probably think of Edward Snowden's revelations that the NSA tracks everything we do online. However, such surveillace may not be our greatest concern. Jonathan Hofer, a research associate at the Independent Institute, notes that the most prolific tool of mass surveillance is in fact automated license plate readers (ALPRs).His report on the worrisome new technology caught my attention, and I wanted to learn more. What I didn't know when I invited him on my show is that Hofer himself was the victim of an error in the vast, byzantine database that law enforcement uses to link license plate numbers with suspected criminals.Tune in this Sunday to find out how Hofer ended up with his rental car being surrounded by half a dozen patrol cars, before being tackled to the ground by an armed police officer in a dark parking lot on a cold November night (Spoiler alert: he wasn't guilty).While the presence of cameras on the roads may not seem like a threat to our liberties, Hofer's personal story, and the countless other similar anecdotes he relays, should give us pause about adopting such mass surveillance technology given the propensity for serious “user error.”

Elizabeth Nolan Brown is a senior editor at Reason and the main author of Reason's morning newsletter, the Reason Roundup – an essential part of my daily reading. She is also co-founder of the libertarian feminist group Feminists for Liberty, and a professional affiliate of the journalism program at the University of Cincinnati. Last time she joined my show, Elizabeth and I discussed her work on the War on Sex Work:This week we take up the news of Biden's unilateral action cancelling billions of dollars of student loan debt. Elizabeth calls it a fiasco, and she's hardly alone in this sentiment. Even President Obama's former economic adviser Jason Furman has called the plan “reckless.”If we have time, we will also take up the question of whether Walgreens should be prosecuted as an illicit drug dealer for fulfilling opioid prescriptions (hint: no).

Much of the discussion around the 2020 election has hinged around the question of who won – i.e., who got the most votes – while skirting more important questions about the procedure. Was it fair?None of the members of Team Conservative were available to comment on their report in the NCC's Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy project, but I may have found an even better spokesperson for the frustration of the 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump, regarding the outcome.My guest, legendary political consultant Dick Morris, will be the first to admit that Biden won both the popular vote, as well as the electoral college count.“[T]he fact is, we ultimately lost because the Democrats got more legal, eligible voters to cast ballots than we did,” writes Morris in his latest book, The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback.However, the former advisor to the Clintons diagnoses a deeper flaw in the electoral system – one that can't be fixed by Congress or any branch of the federal government. Instead, Morris urges voters to elect Republican or neutral secretaries of state in key swing states to overturn the abuses of mail-in voting, same-day registration, and unaccountable tabulation methods – often used behind closed doors, long after the polls have closed. Morris continues:“The election of 2020 was, in a real sense, won by the Democrats in 2018, when swing states elected their governors, attorneys general, and secretaries of state. The Democrats knew that, in order to maximize the turnout of their voters in 2020, they had to build a network of complicit, election officials to cooperate—within the law, and outside it—to swell the Biden vote and diminish Trump's.”The book goes on to detail Morris's close personal relationship with Trump, and a strategy for leveling the playing field before the 2024 elections.After revealing how state governors and secretaries of state paved the way for Biden's win, Morris turns to Nancy Pelosi's attempt to institutionalize these sketchy practices at the federal level through HR 1 - aka the “For the People Act of 2021.” Nevermind that the founders explicitly gave state legislatures power to regulate elections, Pelosi and the Democrats want to “vest the power" to draw district lines and adopt other regulations about elections in the federal Department of Justice and the US attorney general, appointed by the president.Morris joined me to lay out the prospects for real reform in Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, and other states with Republican legislatures. What about Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where Democrats control the governorship? Who wins in 2024 could depend on whether the Republicans sweep the midterms in these states.Finally, Morris explained why the Republican nominee “Has to Be Trump,” along with the message that he believes will propel his campaign to victory.I was also joined in the second half of the show by my new friend John Georgopolous of Sports Grumblings, who recently interviewed me on the Big Questions with Big John podcast.

This week I continue my series on the National Constitution Center's Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy project. While most commentators are glued to the political horse race – obsessing over the 2024 midterms or the latest twist in the Trump saga – my show remains a place to discuss ideas and principles rather then ideology and personalities.Part 1 featured Ilya Somin representing Team Libertarian, who proposed foot voting (among other things) as a simple way to make American government more accountable to the people.Part 2 will feature Professor Edward B. Foley – Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law at Ohio State University – presenting the progressive team's ideas for safeguarding our democracy. Their report is worth reading in its entirety, regardless of your political persuasion. Foley and his co-author, USC law professor Franita Tolson, make a compelling case for reforming the way we elect our representatives to ensure that they actually represent the will of the majority. What a concept!While Foley is on the record saying he'd like to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote, the report takes a more modest aim of electoral reform – looking only to what Congress could accomplish through mere legislation, short of a constitutional amendment.Foley is particularly concerned with electoral procedures that allow more extreme minority factions to hold power. We've recently seen primaries in which the Democratic Party funds a far-right candidate who they believe will be easier to defeat in the general election. Foley criticizes this cynical ploy in part because it undermines the selection of “Condorcet Winners.” If you're unfamiliar with the Condorcet method, pioneered by the Marquis de Condorcet, be sure to tune in live this Sunday.The basic idea, summarized in Team Progressive's report, is that the winner of an election should be the candidate “preferred by a majority of voters when compared individually against each of the other alternatives.”One way to achieve this is through ranked-choice voting, which we recently saw in an Alaskan primary in which Sarah Palin advanced to the general. Dr. Robert Malone offers a valuable explainer on how ranked choice voting works on his Substack.Join Ned and me this Sunday at 8am PACIFIC, or subscribe to the podcast, to expand your civic numeracy.

Commentators across the political spectrum are scrambling for the hottest take on the raid of President Trump's Mar-a-Lago home, with Jonah Goldberg and Kurt Schlicter taking opposing views. But only the libertarians like Neily are consistent in condemning abuses of government power across the board.If only there was a way to step back from heated partisan debates and the 24-hour news cycle to assess what is fundamentally wrong with our democracy and propose a remedy. Indeed, my wish has been answered in the form of another brilliant thought experiment from the National Constitution Center, which assembled a libertarian version of the Dream Team to lay out a plan for Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy. They also solicited reports from Progressive and Conservative teams, but this Sunday my show will focus on the Team Libertarian's report.Team Libertarian includes both Clark Neily and Walter Olson of the Cato Institute, as well as frequent guest and friend of the show, Ilya Somin, who returns this Sunday to summarize the team's findings. The report puts a strong emphasis on criminal justice reform – something that the former President is likely to appreciate more now that he has been a victim of overzealous prosecution and the weaponization of the law. Their solution involves greater citizen participation, mainly through the restoration of jury trials as the norm in criminal cases, as opposed to plea bargains.Team Libertarian also takes Ilya Somin's ideas in Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom as a meaningful way to strengthen small-d democracy. Ballot voting, of course, is only one component of a healthy democratic system. When “voice” fails, citizens need many “exit” options to guarantee their liberties.

Last week I reported on a huge victory for state-based liberty in Arizona, where Governor Doug Ducey recently signed into law a bill that makes school choice available to all K-12 students in the Grand Canyon State.HB 2853 made universal an earlier “Empowerment Scholarship Account” program that grants parents a choice over where Arizona's tax dollars are spent for their kids' schooling.Matt Beienburg, Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute, touts the reform as the gold standard model for the rest of the country, and other states are sure to follow suit once politicians realize how overwhelmingly popular school choice has become with parents.The popularity of school choice has been steadily rising but reached a tipping point in Arizona during COVID-19, when parents could see firsthand the extent of indoctrination taking place in virtual public school classrooms. In the end, it would seem that teacher's unions' insistence on extended remote learning has backfired dramatically, as the parent-led revolution in taking back control over education continues.Beienburg joins the show this Sunday to discuss the Goldwater Institute's role in crafting the original ESA legislation that empowered particularly disadvantaged students to opt out of failing public schools. He will also answer some of the many objections to school choice trotted out by the left to insulate the government from competition in the arena of education.I previously covered many of these myths on my show with Corey DeAngelis, and it's thrilling to see the ideas from the book translated into concrete policy in Arizona:

My listeners know that I am an optimist, despite all of the doom-and-gloom type stories we read daily.This week, there has been more bad news – as usual. Two pieces from the American Institute for Economic Research especially caught my eye: one about the Fed's recent interest rate hikes, and another about attempts to combat climate change through “de-growth” (read: coercion and green energy handouts). Meanwhile, the National Bureau of Economic Research seems to be defining down the definition of a recession to exclude the past two months of consecutive negative growth.However, there is always good news to find if you just know where to look.Reason #1: There is Still Freedom in the 50 StatesThe biggest reason I find to be optimistic this week comes from a Cato Institute project led by AIER President and Cato research fellow William Ruger as well as Jason Sorens. Ruger and Sorens are the authors of the “Freedom in the 50 States” report, which gives an annual assessment of which states are increasing and decreasing in the rankings of a broad index of liberties.They both will join my show for the first time to discuss how the index weighs different broad categories of freedom – from regulatory, to financial to personal – as well as specific freedoms that vary in importance for different people. Of course, there are many people who would be happy to live in a state that restricts other people's liberty, while their own cherished freedoms are left untouched. But which states guarantee liberty for all? Find out this Sunday on the show of ideas what separates the #freestates from the unfree.

This Sunday, I'm happy to welcome F.H. Buckley back to the show to discuss his newest book, Progressive Conservatism: How Republicans Will Become America's Natural Governing Party.Progressive conservatism sounds like an oxymoron – a bit like an exact estimate, jumbo shrimp, or a dull roar. Buckley, however, argues that progressive conservatism is not only a meaningful political label, but that it has a rich history – both in America and around the world. A former speech writer for President Trump, Buckley believes that Trump voters will still determine the future of the Republican Party, even though Trump has disgraced himself.

You've heard of legally blind, and even legally blonde, but what about legally white?GMU Law Professor and Volokh Conspiracy blogger David Bernstein explores “the borderlands of legal whiteness” in his new book, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.Fellow conspiracist and Prof. Randy Barnett has already included it in the syllabus for his upcoming Georgetown Law seminar, Recent Books on the Constitution.Bernstein joins to discuss the many contradictions involved in the government's attempt to put clear labels on complex categories.Should Hispanics of Spanish descent be considered minorities, or European whites? Why are Asians discriminated against in college admissions – especially given the incredible range of geographies, cultures, and socio-economic statuses contained within that broad designation?What will the Supreme Court decide in the pending suit against Harvard and the University of North Carolina brought by the “Students for Fair Admissions” group?Tune in every Sunday morning on AM radio, or streaming onlineHaving had a sneak preview of the book, I can tell you that it is a must-read for Constitutional Law buffs, and anyone interested in American legal history.

Joe Biden's gaffes are usually unplanned slips of the tongue – not pre-meditated social media posts that presumably received approval from staffers prior to publication.However, his recent Tweet demanding that gas stations lower their prices to alleviate the “pain at the pump” is far more embarrassing than his accidental public speaking fumbles.Even Jeff Bezos had to correct the President for his ignorance of basic economics, which combined blatant scapegoating with a denial of the universal laws of supply and demand. However, in a nation where the vast majority of citizens have likely never taken an undergraduate economics course, can Biden be blamed for engaging in such classic political opportunism? Perhaps we can channel former President Barack Obama in considering this a “teachable moment.” Or as Rahm Emmanuel once said, we should never let a good crisis go to waste.I'm delighted to welcome Professor Emeritus ****Steven E. Rhoads to the show to discuss the new and substantially revised 35th anniversary edition of his best-selling book, *[The Economist's View of the World: And the Quest for Well-Being](https://amazon.com/Economists-View-World-Quest-Well-Being/dp/1108845940).* Rhoads wrote the book as an assistant professor at the University of Virginia (home of the Public Choice economics), and was surprised when the original edition skyrocketed to the tops of best-seller lists and made economic principles accessible to millions who would have otherwise believed the fallacies embedded in Biden's tweet.David Henderson – editor of the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics – calls it “A Wide-Ranging Book for Non-Economists and Economists" alike, and the WSJ named it one of the best books of 2021.Steven E. Rhoads and I attempted to distill an entire semester's worth of economic thinking into a full hour. Don't miss it.

I originally invited Clark Neily to join me to discuss his essay on what libertarians should think about the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Of course, it's nearly impossible to make everyone happy with a discussion of such a controversial issue. And yet Clark and his co-essayist Jay Schweikert do an excellent job threading the needle on what they call “the hard problem of abortion.” They write:Libertarianism tolerates a wide range of views on the policy question of abortion accessBut the policy question is only the beginning. The Constitutional question is what was taken up recently by the Supreme Court, and while the outcome may be disappointing to those who support abortion as a policy matter, Clark and Schweikert note that “there are still many valid grounds to criticize how the Court has constitutionalized abortion rights in particular.”What makes abortion different from other “unenumerated rights” discovered by the court in the modern era, like contraception, parental rights over their child's education, or the right to privacy in the bedroom? The *Dobbs* decision reconsiders *Roes* classification of abortion among these rights, and holds that question of individual liberty is not so straightforward where unborn life is concerned.To be sure, we got to these delicate questions, but we also talked about an area where the Court has refused to reconsider a prior decision that appears to be in error.The doctrine of qualified immunity, which the Cato Institute characterizes as an “Unlawful Shield,” protects prosecutors, police officers and other government officials from civil liability.While pundits endlessly argue about the legal reasoning *Roe*, Clark and I will be talking about the 1982 case of *Harlow v. Fitzgerald*, in which the Supreme Court made it harder to prosecute violations of individual rights perpetrated by members of the protected class known as government employees.Although I covered the topic in 2020, and Clark has been continuing the fight to “#AbolishQI,” it still doesn't get nearly enough attention.

“The bonds will be paid by Disney. They will be paying taxes, probably more taxes. They will follow the laws that every other person has to do, and they will no longer have the ability to run their own government.” – Governor Ron DeSantis, at a Fox News town hall (April 28)The story of how the Disney Corporation came to have the unique ability to run their own government on a swampy tract of land in Central Florida is documented in Richard Foglesong's remarkable book, Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando. Foglesong, a retired Professor of Politics at Rollins College, has become a sought-after commentator in the wake of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's move to revoke the special privileges granted to Disney over 50 years ago. The proximate cause? Disney's vocal opposition to Florida's new “Parental Rights in Education” law (HB 1557) – sometimes called the “Don't Say Gay” bill.Some argue that DeSantis is just leveling the playing field, and finally treating all corporations the same, but given his status as a rising star in the Republican Party – known for being pro-growth – one might ask why DeSantis isn't instead moving to give more legal autonomy to neighboring theme park resorts like Universal Studios, rather than put an end to one of the most successful experiments in private governance ever to be attempted?Hong Kong is often cited as the greatest growth miracle of the 20th century – demonstrating the power of legal autonomy and the free enterprise system to supercharge a city's economic engine. Free market Hong Kong outperformed communist China so spectacularly that the Communist Party had to effectively admit defeat and copy the free-market model in establishing its Special Economic Zones throughout the country.And yet Walt Disney World in Orland Florida may be an even better poster child for charter cities – a truly Magical Kingdom, that continues to produce growth and prosperity for the surrounding region. The population of Orange County, Florida, doubled in less than thirty years at the behest of Disney executives and the business-friendly government based in Orlando. The secret sauce behind this sensational growth was the agreement to structure the theme park development as a “special district” that effectively granted the Disney Corporation complete autonomy to build the infrastructure according to its own vision and needs. Unlike Disneyland in Anaheim, California, Disney World was birthed as an autonomous city within the state of Florida – free to build out Walt Disney's vision for the cities of the future.Why would DeSantis be inclined to break up a marriage that by all appearances has been a wildly successful one? To understand this, we must consult Foglesong and his book, which analyzes the 55-year experiment through the lens of the marriage analogy, complete with successive stages of “serendipity", “seduction,” “secrecy,” “marriage,” “growth,” “conflict,” “abuse,” “negotiation,” and finally, therapy.Today, Disney World's special district status is at risk, since Governor Ron DeSantis and the state legislature have moved to terminate the district in June of 2023. Foglesong, who knows the history of the marriage between Disney and Florida government better than anyone, is a trusted commentator on the looming “divorce.” He joined the show of ideas to discuss the implications of the dissolution of the Reedy Creek Special District, and what we can learn about urban growth and the politics of charter cities from the rich story he tells in his book.We also discussed the tension between the ideals of free enterprise touted by Walt Disney, and the centralized administration of the theme park and surrounding community. Finally, we discussed the question of democracy in the context of an autonomous city, where a single corporation wishes to make political decisions efficiently and unilaterally.Richard Foglesong reports in his remarkable book Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando that the population of Orange County, Florida, doubled in less than thirty years at the behest of Disney executives and the business-friendly government based in Orlando.The secret sauce behind this sensational growth was the agreement to structure the theme park development as a “special district” that effectively granted the Disney Corporation complete autonomy to build the infrastructure according to its own vision and needs. Unlike Disney Land in Anaheim, California, Disney World was birthed as an autonomous city within the state of Florida – free to build out Walt Disney's vision for the cities of the future.Today, Disney World's special district status is at risk, since Governor Ron DeSantis and the state legislature have moved to terminate the district in June of 2023. Foglesong, who knows the history of the marriage between Disney and Florida government better than anyone, is a trusted commentator on the looming “divorce.” He joined the show of ideas to discuss the implications of the dissolution of the Reedy Creek Special District, and what we can learn about urban growth and the politics of charter cities from the rich story he tells in his book.We also discussed the tension between the ideals of free enterprise touted by Walt Disney, and the centralized administration of the theme park and surrounding community. Finally, we discussed the question of democracy

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, there are few things more terrifying than a government bureaucrat who is trying to help us. In California, we are confronted with the stuff of nightmares on an almost daily basis. Baylen Linnekin of Reason Magazine reports on the latest do-gooder legislation that makes the problem it is trying to solve much worse:The law, S.B. 1383 … "requires supermarkets and other big food providers to divert as much as a quarter of edible food now destined for dumps to food banks to feed the needy," the Los Angeles Times.Sounds great, right? Not so fast…Yet multiple reports now highlight the fact that complying with the law is "proving easier said than done," ABC7 in Los Angeles reports. That's because grocers, restaurants, food banks, local governments, and others haven't "figure[d] out who is responsible for reclaiming [food] leftovers under the law, and how to pay the costs of doing so." Those costs have only skyrocketed due to [record gas prices. Given these challenges, it's "been hard for local food banks and small towns to implement the law due to climbing fuel costs and uncertainty over who pays for food recovery," Reuters notes.The problem of food waste is a perfect encapsulation of the broader issue of food freedom, and indeed of all “solutions” to perceived market failures. The government gets involved to right a wrong, without considering the myriad ways that the invisible hand is being thwarted in the process. Linnekin returned to the show to revisit his now classic book, Biting the Hands that Feed Us: How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable (Island Press, 2016), and how California's law fits the broader pattern we see over and over again.

Back in February, frustrated San Francisco parents voted to recall three school board members for spending more time renaming schools than planning their post-pandemic re-opening. Among the school names being “canceled” were Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John Muir, and even Dianne Feinstein – found guilty of exploitation and oppression. The pervasiveness of so-called critical race theory in school curriculums is not brand new, although it appears that remote learning during COVID caused many parents to start paying attention and to express their disapproval at the ballot box.The recall was a strong sign, like the ousting of Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, that most Americans still believe that schools should be in the education business, not the indoctrination industry. The term critical race theory has been thrown around a lot in the conversations surrounding the appropriate way to teach American history. Oddly, the proponents and defenders of critical race theory seem afraid to admit that it is already being taught in many places (as if they had a guilty conscience), while its detractors often seem confused about what they are opposing.Thus, Heritage Foundation fellow Jonathan Butcher has done the American public a great service with his new book, Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth. The book charts the evolution of the idea in understandable terms, from its Marxian roots in academia, through the law schools, and now trickling down into grade schools across the country. Forget the universities – they're too far gone. But can we still save elementary school kids from being lectured about privilege, while minority students are taught that they can't advance because of system racism in the United States?Butcher's book is a powerful antidote to the ignorance on both sides of the issue. If we are to preserve America's founding ideals, parents and policymakers must read and understand the ideas they are protesting. Butcher and I discussed the main points from his book. Be sure to subscribe to the mailing list for a condensed summary of the book, plus show highlights and announcements.

The sun has set on the Golden Era of Tobacco, much like the bygone Golden Era of Hollywood. Perhaps once movie stars stopped smoking cigarettes on the Silver Screen, audiences found the activity less glamorous. Or perhaps the dramatic decline in smoking rates was a more rational response by consumers and celebrities alike to new information about the dangers of tobacco products. However, the regulators at the FDA are not content with people's free and informed choices. They have moved to ban menthol-flavored cigarettes, along with many flavored “vape” cartridges, in the name of public health and (of course) protecting the children. [Guy Bentley](http://twitter.com/gbentley1), Director of Consumer Freedom Research at the Reason Foundation, has been the “Voice of Reason” in multiple respects on this issue, calmly and rationally pointing out the facts that regulators have ignored, such as…- E-cigarettes have helped countless adults quit smoking.- Vaping is far less dangerous than traditional cigarette smoking.- Menthol bans will disproportionately affect African Americans.And last, but not least, the continuation of failed prohibition policies — this time applied to cigarettes instead of alcohol or drugs — creates yet more victimless crimes and empowers law enforcement to abuse their power in new and creative ways.Remember the cautionary tale of Eric Garner, detained and ultimately suffocated to death by a policeman for selling “loosies” outside a corner store? Bentley reminds us of this, and other flaws with the seemingly “liberal” policy of protecting people from themselves. Guy joined me to review the evidence on relative harms to adults and children of various nicotine and tobacco products, and put the proposed FDA rule in its proper historical and modern context.

We've been hearing about the end of globalization for the better part of the last decade, and yet rumors of its demise appear to have been greatly exaggerated. The latest calls for American energy independence and re-shoring manufacturing are part of this broader trend, which seeks to insulate the domestic economy from turmoil in faraway regions. COVID-19 also brought the idea of “industrial policy” back to the forefront. While it's hard to pin down an exact definition, Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute relates some key features behind the misguided notion that the government must steer critical industries for reasons of national importance.Whether we're talking about steel, oil, or semi-conductors, the proponents of a robust industrial policy argue that we've become too reliant on our potential foes for strategic resources, and must set national production goals through legislation rather than impartial market forces. This can range from Soviet-style central planning (which led to the ultimate collapse of the USSR), to the use of trade barriers, tax incentives and subsidies - i.e., “picking winners and losers.”Even with the latter approach, Lincicome points out many flaws in modern American industrial policy. In a recent Cato white paper, Questioning Industrial Policy, he highlights the inefficiencies brought about by injecting politics into the market's discovery process, and notes how most recent attempts to “improve” the outcomes of global competition have tended to hinder even our vital domestic industries.Scott joined me to break down the report, and make the case for embracing globalization and free trade in the 21st century rather than hunkering down in our domestic silo.Check out Scott's excellent newsletter “Capitolism” at the Dispatch.

Politico's publication of a leaked draft of the Dobbs decision has turned the Internet upside-down, with rampant speculation about who the leaker was, whether the decision is final, and what will happen next if early-term abortion once again becomes a policy issue for states to decide rather than a right upheld by the Supreme Court.I find the details of the leak uninteresting (except insofar as it impacts the legitimacy of the court). I am much more interested in how the five Justices voting in the majority arrived at their tentative opinion. Evan Bernick, a law professor at North Illinois University's College of Law, is an expert on Originalism the judicial philosophy on which the Dobbs decision is ostensibly based. Bernick joined me to dissent from this assumption. Instead, he argues, Alito's decision stems from a judicial philosophy that seeks to “stop the Court from recognizing unenumerated rights.” Bernick believes in a more activistic judiciary when it comes to defending individual rights, as we discussed [the last time he was on my show.We discussed the constitutional considerations behind both the Roe decision and the *Dobbs* reversal of an almost 50-year-old precedent. I'll also ask Evan how the policy issue is likely to play out in the states, with progressive states becoming destinations for women seeking abortions.Follow Evan on Twitter, and check out his book, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, co-authored with Randy Barnett.

What do competitive markets have to do with truth? Ask a philosopher and you might get one answer. Ask an economist and you will get another. Ask an economist with a philosophical grounding, and you get Art Carden's fantastic piece, The Misuse of Knowledge in Society: Intervention Means Prices are Lying.Carden is a senior fellow with [the American Institute for Economic Research. He joined the show to discuss the article that caught my eye on AIER.org, which is one of the best explanations I've ever read of the price mechanism of free markets.What happens when we stop the price system of competitive markets from working? In a word, untruth. It's why price-gouging laws always fail, and increase human misery. A price control, Carden says, is a kind of institutionalized lie. Just because the government says it's so, doesn't mean that the underlying scarcity of the good has been altered.You don't have to be either a philosopher or an economist to understand the importance of having reliable information when making decisions. Hear Carden's accessible explanation of the complex topic of price theory only on the Show of Ideas, not attitude.

Hoover Senior Fellow and host of the Defining Ideas podcast “The Libertarian” , Richard Epstein returns to the program to discuss a new case making it's way to the Supreme Court:This past week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal in an important case that could determine the structure of American interstate markets for years to come. National Pork Producers Council v. Ross involves a constitutional challenge to Proposition 12, a 2018 California referendum that requires all pork products sold in the state be prepared in facilities meeting California standards of animal health and safety, no matter where they are raised. As the plaintiffs explain in their brief, virtually all of the pork products (some 99.8 percent) sold in California come from out of state. On the flip-side, California represents 13 percent of the national consumer market for pork products.In its unique and inverted version of federalism, California seems to always find a way to impose its own strict regulations on the rest of the country—using its economic might to foist “progressive values” on other states. Can California legislate outside its own borders? Well, it's complicated. As usual, when I'm faced with a complex hybrid legal/economic questions, I turn to the Libertarian himself. And as usual, we will try to pack a semester's worth of economics into an hour of radio. Epstein holds positions as a law professor at NYU, a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago, and Senior fellowship at Stanford's Hoover Institution.

“Science,” it has been said, “advances one funeral at a time.” In other words, what was once heterodox only became accepted as orthodox truth when the defenders of the old paradigm died off, or could no longer maintain their position of authority in the face of clear new evidence.Dr. Jeffrey Singer – senior fellow at the Cato Institute and contributor to Reason Magazine – has been my go-to guest on topics of medical science since well before the pandemic. His latest article in the May 2022 edition of Reason takes on a set of philosophical questions about the nature of scientific truth, and how we arrive at it. In it, Singer contrasts what he calls the “Priesthood” acting as gatekeepers of information, with the sole authority to decide which experts can be heard. Using examples from the pandemic, such as the silencing and smearing of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, Singer points out how often the “official” narrative has been proven wrong by subsequent studies, such as those confirming that in fact lockdowns did little to slow the spread.Now, the California Assembly is debating a bill that would threaten doctors with the loss of their license for offering any medical advice that is considered contrary to official CDC guidelines regarding vaccination. As epidemiologist and noted COVID expert Jay Bhattacharya notes, the law would essentially take away a physician's ability to offer individualized care to their patients, who may have valid reasons (like prior immunity or other conditions) for not getting the vaccine.It appears that politics has infected our public discourse around science. Someone call the doctor! The Doctor for Liberty, that is. Singer joined me to separate the real experts from the phony high priests of the public health establishment.

America's high prison incarceration rates are known around the world – an embarrassment for an alleged beacon of liberty. Yet few realize that we have another problem associated with our jails. Those charged with a crime are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but our bail system disproportionately punishes the poor and reverses the formula – making them guilty until proven innocent.I have previously covered the civil liberties issues associated with cash bail back in 2018, and how a wave of states was starting to test out alternatives. Since then, New York has joined that wave — eliminating their bail system for pre-trial offenders who are not deemed high risk. This is great news: other states have proven that it works to reduce jail populations and ensure that people who do not belong behind bars are released prior to trial.But just when I thought it was time to celebrate, Reason Magazine's Joe Lancaster informs me that these reforms are in jeopardy. New York Governor Kathy Hochul is working behind the scenes to roll back the reforms – expanding the number of crimes eligible for bail, against the findings of a new report that shows the change in the law is working as intended.Joe Lancaster, an assistant editor at Reason, joined me to break down the findings of the report, and the status of other state-based bail reforms.

In the years leading up to the American Revolution, a pseudonymous writer who called himself “Junius” came under scrutiny for his letters protesting the abuses by the Crown against his fellow Englishmen. Professor Jeff Kosseff recounts the myriad motivations Junius had for remaining anonymous (his identity is still not known to this day) in his new book The United States of Anonymous. From there, Kosseff explores “how the right to anonymity has shaped American values, politics, business, security, and discourse, particularly as technology has enabled people to separate their identities from their communications.”Who are the Junius's today whose anonymity requires protection?Jeff Kosseff is an Associate Professor of Cybersecurity Law at the United States Naval Academy. He is the author of Cybersecurity Law (Wiley), the first comprehensive textbook on U.S. cybersecurity laws and regulations, and in Spring 2019 he published The Twenty-Six Words that Created the Internet (Cornell University Press), a nonfiction narrative history of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Jeff has practiced cybersecurity and privacy law, and clerked for Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. He is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Michigan. Before becoming a lawyer, he was a journalist for The Oregonian and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

“This will only be the beginning.”Those six ominous words are not what many Americans will want to hear when it comes to the increased prices they've been paying for everyday purchases. Whenever I want to break the bad news to my audience about the state of out-of-control spending or inflation in the United States, I turn to my friend Jonathan Bydlak. Jonathan is director of the Governance program at the R Street Institute, and the creator of SpendingTracker.org – the first ever real-time spending site that tracks the fiscal records of Members of Congress. If you're looking for a hard dose of reality, follow Jonathan on Twitter – @JBydlak – and find out how much your representatives vote for in spending each year: Then, give his latest essay for The Spectator a read, on the topic of what's likely to result from our sanctions against Russia.Who's really behind rising gas prices? Moscow or Washington D.C.?I continued my on-going, in-depth coverage of the Russia–Ukraine conflict with insights you won't find anywhere else, as Jonathan Bydlak joined me for the full hour.

The Honorable Jeffrey Sutton, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, joined the show to discuss his new book, Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation.The book comes as a sequel to his 2018 book, 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. Astute listeners will notice an uncanny similarity between both book covers and my own book Power to the States: How Federalism 2.0 Can Make America Governable Again.Both books broadly make a case for states to take back powers from the federal government. But where my book emphasized the virtues of experimentation at the policy level, Sutton's books inspect the balance of powers between federal and state judiciaries. The cover of his book, arranging the outlines of each state under the capitol rotunda, foreshadows his argument that federal courts have assumed too much power to decide what count as constitutional rights.While this may sound like a classic argument for judicial deference to the legislative and executive branches, Sutton defends a more “activistic” approach to judging at the state level. He points out that the true precedent for judicial review was not Marbury v. Madison, as we all learned in high school civics, but in the many cases preceding it in the states that established the judiciary's role in deciding which law should apply: the “higher” law of the state constitution, or the laws passed by the legislature.Today, as the Supreme Court increasingly weighs in on partisan topics like vaccine mandates, it's especially important that we frame the issue correctly: it's not a question of how we or the judges feel personally about the outcome, but about who decides.

[@JustinTLogan](https://twitter.com/JustinTLogan) joined on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We will have the latest updates and analysis that you won't get on cable news – with the depth you can't find on Twitter or social media. [**Listen Live →**](https://860amtheanswer.com/)Logan says, “the US military cannot — and will not — come to Ukraine's aid.” Is there any role for western intervention? What should we make of the apparent bullying by Putin's Russia.As usual, restraint and insight are rare commodities.I hope we can go deeper than the superficial narratives and media coverage thus far.[Follow Justin's articles and other appearances at Cato.org](https://www.cato.org/people/justin-logan)**.**