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Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Joining me now is somebody I've actually multiple iterations of
Speaker 1: my podcast over the years, but I think it's the
Speaker 1: first time since I left NBC that I have had
Speaker 1: her on. It'sine Mango Ward. She's the editor in chief
Speaker 1: of Reason magazine, essentially the magazine of the libertarian movement.
Speaker 1: I would say, and I'll let her describe how closely
Speaker 1: aligned they are with the party itself. But what triggered
Speaker 1: the invite? And frankly, it was more of like, why
Speaker 1: haven't I had Catherine on sooner? Was this op ed?
Speaker 1: She wrote a couple of weeks ago the New York
Speaker 1: Times that was so helpfully headlined, Libertarians tried to warn
Speaker 1: you about Trump, but maybe we got lost in an
Speaker 1: at Aleppo rabbit hole. But I'm sorry for that, Sorry
Speaker 1: for that little poke and joke there, going back to
Speaker 1: Gary Johnson, but Catherine joins me now, and Catherine, it's
Speaker 1: good to see you. Sorry it's taken so long.
Speaker 3: Of course, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: So you know, I use this all the time whenever
Speaker 1: I'm asked to do talks. I said, you know, we
Speaker 1: all find out how libertarian we are when we don't
Speaker 1: like the party that's in charge of our politics in
Speaker 1: any given moment, which is why when you see people
Speaker 1: from a majority party behaving as libertarians before they're partisans,
Speaker 1: it gives you a little bit of hope. But there's
Speaker 1: not many of those folks that behave this way. But
Speaker 1: you know, I think fundamentally that's what the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: ruling last week in some ways was as a reminder
Speaker 1: that that there is structure that should you know, the
Speaker 1: whole goal of the Founders was not to let any
Speaker 1: body become a king and let unilateral control of government
Speaker 1: arguably a libertarian point of view. So tell me your
Speaker 1: motivation for writing the outbed was it I told you so?
Speaker 3: You know, I actually have said in public. In fact,
Speaker 3: that I told you so doesn't usually win arguments. But
Speaker 3: what I discovered is that there is an exception here,
Speaker 3: which is when the I told you so is also
Speaker 3: kind of validating in the readers, in this case, the
Speaker 3: readers of the New York Times, something they had been
Speaker 3: telling themselves too. So part of what this piece is
Speaker 3: about is, you know, libertarians have been making this sort
Speaker 3: of thorough going, consistent case against the rise of executive
Speaker 3: power and kind of the imbalance that that's creating. But
Speaker 3: a lot of folks who identify as kind of mainstream
Speaker 3: Democrats or the kind of imagined reader of the Times
Speaker 3: are skeptical about those things when it comes to a
Speaker 3: bunch of the places where Trump has suddenly started pushing hard.
Speaker 3: So we're talking here about trade, we're talking here about immigration,
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. There was already a lot of
Speaker 3: commonality there, so in some ways it was more of
Speaker 3: a remember how you're a little bit libertarian to my
Speaker 3: friends and readers.
Speaker 1: No, it's I like to remind people that this, and
Speaker 1: I think it's probably explains why it's been so difficult
Speaker 1: for the libertarian movement to fully unify, because there is
Speaker 1: a libertarian wing of the Democratic Party. It's you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like Jared Poulos and Colorad I was sort
Speaker 1: of the poster child that most repress. He would say,
Speaker 1: he goes, We're for freedoms, freedoms here, freedom on your body,
Speaker 1: freedom of autonomy, things like that. And then of course
Speaker 1: we've we've known there's a libertarian wing of the Republican
Speaker 1: Party for some time, but it went dormant for a
Speaker 1: little while, but it was What's interesting is it's mostly
Speaker 1: been a phenomenon geographically out west right. When you look
Speaker 1: at the old Republican coalition pre Trump, it was the
Speaker 1: Western Republicans who were the conservatives who would surprise quote
Speaker 1: unquote surprise people by votes sometimes because there was a
Speaker 1: libertarian streak in them. Alan Simpson is probably the best
Speaker 1: example of this in the previous era, and maybe Lisa
Speaker 1: Markowski is the best example of this today well.
Speaker 3: And you do see this in some unexpected places as well,
Speaker 3: like in Utah, where of course the politics are often
Speaker 3: quite dominated by Mormons, but where they do actually quite
Speaker 3: a good job of protecting minority rights, probably because of
Speaker 3: the backstory of Mormons and other things, right, so they're
Speaker 3: riff for a Laws that protect religious freedoms, for example,
Speaker 3: are surprisingly libertarian. You see a lot of school choice
Speaker 3: out west for similar reasons, sometimes with bipartisan or kind
Speaker 3: of mixed support. In terms of who's sending libertarians to
Speaker 3: the hill right now though, Kentucky, you know we have
Speaker 3: both right of all places, Primus Massey, who are neither
Speaker 3: neither I would say, are you know, as libertarian as
Speaker 3: I would like them to be every day, all the time,
Speaker 3: but pretty clearly deserve the title of most libertarian on
Speaker 3: the hill.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think they're culturally. You know, it's always culture
Speaker 1: where that I think gets somebody on either side of
Speaker 1: the spectrum tripped up on libertarianism, right, whether it's on
Speaker 1: racial or social justice on the left or on call
Speaker 1: it wokeness on the right.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I think that's true. I also think you know,
Speaker 3: there there's a version of this piece. We can get
Speaker 3: into the details a little bit more. But as I
Speaker 3: say that, the piece for the Times, the last you know,
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks ago, I focused on immigration and
Speaker 3: trade and speech where you know, Trump is kind of
Speaker 3: being the least libertarian, although quite unlibertarian in so many ways.
Speaker 3: There's a version of this piece I could have written
Speaker 3: under the Biden administration on the other side of the equation, where.
Speaker 1: Well, was that tell me, tell it, express it so
Speaker 1: that we're not just saying absolutely yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean I think that the version of this piece
Speaker 3: here is, you know, libertarians have been warning you about
Speaker 3: the dangers of debt and deficit. We've been warned, and
Speaker 3: that actually, frankly, you can make that argument just as
Speaker 3: well under any administration. But you know, libertarians have been
Speaker 3: warning you about the dangers of an entitlement programs that
Speaker 3: are totally out of control, and we've been warrying about
Speaker 3: the dangers of overregulation. And this would be places where
Speaker 3: people on the right would be in that moment when
Speaker 3: they are out of power and predisp supposed to be
Speaker 3: friendly to libertarians saying like, oh yeah, that is something
Speaker 3: libertarians have been saying, and it is something that you know,
Speaker 3: kind of Reaganite conservative maybe once said, but we might
Speaker 3: have lost sight of.
Speaker 1: I think the one place where and this is where
Speaker 1: I want to, because you know, there are some sort
Speaker 1: of sixty thousand foot point of views of libertarianism where
Speaker 1: it's easy to get sixty or seventy percent in agreement
Speaker 1: of where government shouldn't be. And arguably, you know, if
Speaker 1: you read the Bill of Rights, you could argue that's
Speaker 1: the libertarian that it's almost like we built in right,
Speaker 1: there sons of liberty for a reason. Right, libertarian is
Speaker 1: built off of liberty for a reason. Right. The first
Speaker 1: ten Amendments are those amendments that regardless of your personal ideology,
Speaker 1: and these and they were designed to protect minority rights. Right,
Speaker 1: people always forget the entire Constitution is premised on minority rights,
Speaker 1: and it's always something that I think the majority always
Speaker 1: seems to forget.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, when you're in the majority, you are tempted,
Speaker 3: understandably so to think, you know, this is where we
Speaker 3: The word mandate always gets thrown around, right, Oh, we
Speaker 3: have a mandate for first of all, American elections in
Speaker 3: recent memory haven't given anyone a mandate anywhere as far
Speaker 3: as I'm concerned. They're often very close. There's low participation.
Speaker 1: To me, sixty percent of mandate and we haven't had
Speaker 1: a sixty percent president even in job approval ratings. You know,
Speaker 1: you had it briefly for Bush at after nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: and Bill Clinton only got it after they came after
Speaker 1: him to impeach him for sex. Like Soda was like,
Speaker 1: well wait a minute. You know we liked the job.
Speaker 1: This guy's do it, but it was only when it
Speaker 1: was threatened to take away. Right, you really haven't seen
Speaker 1: us with a with a sixty percent mindset as an
Speaker 1: electorate since the Cold War.
Speaker 3: Right, So there's this temptation to say, like, we won
Speaker 3: the election, we do what we want, and I think
Speaker 3: not only is that poisonously bad politics, and especially not
Speaker 3: just we won the election, but we hold the presidency
Speaker 3: and we do what we want because increasingly that is
Speaker 3: what it means to do things in politics in any
Speaker 3: way shape or form. Is emergency orders, executive orders. It's
Speaker 3: all coming out of the executive Congress. You know, the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court in their in their ruling this week begged
Speaker 3: Congress to do their jobs again.
Speaker 1: Gorst chop ed was something.
Speaker 3: Huh, it was so good.
Speaker 1: Excuse me I called it a not ed because it
Speaker 1: really was.
Speaker 3: You were right the first time.
Speaker 1: It is it op ed He basically was like, I
Speaker 1: got to get something off my chest here. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It was juicy. And you know, I have had my
Speaker 3: disagreements with some of Gorsch's rulings, but I think the
Speaker 3: way that he hit the nail on the head there
Speaker 3: is just, you know, it's undeniable.
Speaker 1: By the way, a Western conservative avative. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: just not saying, I'm just saying Colorado.
Speaker 3: So I think, you know, this this kind of this
Speaker 3: idea that we hold power whoever we are and whatever
Speaker 3: power is, and so therefore speed ahead. When as you say,
Speaker 3: you know, our founding documents do not endorse that perspective
Speaker 3: on the presidency or the executive branch, and the American
Speaker 3: public doesn't actually think that either. They don't you know,
Speaker 3: when you look at the polling, especially about you know,
Speaker 3: about the ice enforcement actions in major cities, they don't
Speaker 3: like it. They see it, and they don't like it.
Speaker 3: When you look at the you know, how the markets
Speaker 3: are responding to tariffs, they're seeing it and they don't
Speaker 3: like it. And then you know, additionally, now we have
Speaker 3: how the court responds. They see it and they don't
Speaker 3: like it. And all of those signals are really meaningful
Speaker 3: and the founders meant them to be meaningful.
Speaker 1: You know, you brought up in the in the times
Speaker 1: up at about you know, the warrantless searches when it
Speaker 1: comes to the ice agents and what we're seeing there.
Speaker 1: Where are all the conservatives who are up in arms
Speaker 1: about giving Obama you know this power, you know, supposedly
Speaker 1: eavesdropping power. Back when we were fighting the so called
Speaker 1: warrant terror, we're quite a few conservatives. It wasn't majority,
Speaker 1: but it was a healthy minority of conservatives and a
Speaker 1: and a smaller but a healthy minority of liberals who
Speaker 1: did raise some civil liberties issues at the time on
Speaker 1: that issue. Where are those folks today?
Speaker 3: I wish I knew I would find them. I would,
Speaker 3: you know, bring them into a safe shelter here at
Speaker 3: the Reason Offices. I would. I would give them a
Speaker 3: hot meal and a blanket, because surely they have been
Speaker 3: out in the cold for so long I think, I
Speaker 3: mean the So the actual answer, right is that over
Speaker 3: the over the years, the presence of Trump in particular
Speaker 3: and also just in general, the kind of will to
Speaker 3: power conservatism that has risen in the GOP, this kind
Speaker 3: of this idea that it is we are no longer
Speaker 3: We no longer have to play fair. The other side
Speaker 3: has already cheated, so we simply have to seize power
Speaker 3: and use justify the means, justifies the means. That attitude
Speaker 3: has sort of become a sendant on the left and
Speaker 3: the right, but conservatives or Republicans, I should say, have
Speaker 3: had more chance to put that into action, and that
Speaker 3: has slowly pushed out a whole bunch of sub types
Speaker 3: of Republicans and Conservatives who were a little more on
Speaker 3: the libertarian side. So they've been primaried out. They've been
Speaker 3: bullied out by Trump. You know he does. He is
Speaker 3: not afraid to use his you know, true social account
Speaker 3: to just say, you know, Thomas Massey's on the outscrew
Speaker 3: this guy, and and some of them I think just
Speaker 3: left in despair. I mean a lot of people who
Speaker 3: I joined the right, a lot of people who I
Speaker 3: admired in politics and who were sort of maybe slightly
Speaker 3: quirky figures, just said I can't do this anymore. Basically,
Speaker 3: anyone from Arizona ever.
Speaker 1: Get out Matt Salmon, right, what happened?
Speaker 3: Yeah, good old Matt Salmon, who I profiled when I
Speaker 3: was an Internet reason twenty five years ago, and who
Speaker 3: was you know, like quite libertarian and in many ways
Speaker 3: and just you know, in that case, actually I think
Speaker 3: he was part of the term limited crew, the voluntarily
Speaker 3: self term limited crew who all went out at the
Speaker 3: and that kind of end stage of the Gingra Revolution.
Speaker 1: But here's where I think, you know, if I were
Speaker 1: to say, boy, this should be a moment for libertarianism,
Speaker 1: and there's we can and I think you're uped sort
Speaker 1: of showed it a little bit. But if there's one
Speaker 1: giant area where I have my doubts, it's in how
Speaker 1: to deal with big tech m because right there's and
Speaker 1: to me, this is and and I'd love for you
Speaker 1: to get at this tension, right, don't know if I
Speaker 1: love the government forcing you know, sort of you know,
Speaker 1: picking winners and losers here overly regulating at the same time,
Speaker 1: these cats don't deserve an open runway without some restraint,
Speaker 1: and the market is not mature enough to restrain them
Speaker 1: at this moment. Right, market restraint hasn't worked the way
Speaker 1: it should work. There's been too much consolidation. So let
Speaker 1: me start it this way. It's Teddy Roosevelt a libertarian.
Speaker 3: For reasons if my own safety, among other things. I
Speaker 3: wouldn't presume to put a label on that man, even
Speaker 3: this many years later, you know. I I think the
Speaker 3: thing about big tech is that almost always when people
Speaker 3: describe the thing they fear from big tech, what is
Speaker 3: the what is the consequence that we're looking to to prevent?
Speaker 3: When we talk about, you know, our worries with big tech,
Speaker 3: actually it is almost always a fear about the state.
Speaker 3: And so when I say that, I mean, well, okay,
Speaker 3: maybe I don't want you know, one company having all
Speaker 3: my data. Well, okay, why is it because you're worried
Speaker 3: that they're going to sell you stuff? No, that's not
Speaker 3: Why is it because you're worried that they might aggregate
Speaker 3: that data and you know, paint a portrait of the market,
Speaker 3: or or even of the electorate. Okay, maybe, But what
Speaker 3: we actually are worried about is, well, what happens when
Speaker 3: the government gets its hands on that data and uses
Speaker 3: it to punish, in prison, censor or otherwise, you know,
Speaker 3: infringe on your rights. And what we've seen, what we
Speaker 3: saw for example in the Twitter files was sometimes big
Speaker 3: tech gladly cooperates with the state, and I think that
Speaker 3: is gross and bad but I'm not sure that the
Speaker 3: entity at fault or kind of the place that I
Speaker 3: want to lay the blame there fully is with big tech,
Speaker 3: because of course they understand that, you know, in that instance,
Speaker 3: the Biden administration, but all presidential administrations, they hold a
Speaker 3: huge amount of power in that relationship. You know, it's
Speaker 3: a nice it's a nice big tech company. You have
Speaker 3: there be a shame if something happened to it. Is
Speaker 3: kind of the energy that a lot of these interactions have.
Speaker 3: I for one, don't mind Mark Zuckerberg selling trying to
Speaker 3: sell me, or put in front of my eyeballs whatever
Speaker 3: videos of AI puppies and you know, Chinese toys he
Speaker 3: wants to try to sell me. I just don't want
Speaker 3: to have consequences to my personal freedom. And I think
Speaker 3: the fear there is that the state acts, not that
Speaker 3: the tech companies act.
Speaker 1: Well, so, I mean this is where I think that
Speaker 1: this is another But this is the tension that I
Speaker 1: I'm detecting, which is I think most libertarians agree they
Speaker 1: distrust anybody who's consolidating power.
Speaker 3: Right, well, there are lots of types of libertarians, right
Speaker 3: so I actually think, you know, I hate to be
Speaker 3: that guy, but It depends what you mean by power.
Speaker 3: If you mean market power, not necessarily, if you mean
Speaker 3: monopoly on violence and the like.
Speaker 1: I think it's money. I think, I know, maybe it's
Speaker 1: like pornography, you know, when you see it, it's the
Speaker 1: it's sort of you know, it's monopolistic power, where like
Speaker 1: Amazon may be a monopoly, but they kind of earned it, right,
Speaker 1: they just outworked everybody perhaps, And you can make that case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know the fact that they get deliveries at my house,
Speaker 1: but the US Postal Service still isn't reliable since that
Speaker 1: first snowstorm, right, it like it tells you you're like, look,
Speaker 1: whatever you think of them, right, they are customer first.
Speaker 1: I mean, I kind of wish Jeff Bezos thought about
Speaker 1: that in the way he owns News a newspaper. But
Speaker 1: that's okay, But I digress. So they may be a monopoly,
Speaker 1: but one could argue they earned it. But if you
Speaker 1: look at when government helps a company, when government is
Speaker 1: involved and the inner So I guess the question is,
Speaker 1: how do you prevent what Trump is doing right now
Speaker 1: with the tech industry? Right, that has to come with
Speaker 1: some government, Like you're going to have to have government
Speaker 1: regulation intervened to stop government from doing what it's doing right.
Speaker 3: And so this is this is where you get into
Speaker 3: a horrible circumstance because any of the solutions that I
Speaker 3: might proposed now at best are a balance of power
Speaker 3: solution where one part of government might constrain another part
Speaker 3: of government, but sometimes are just kind of like a
Speaker 3: cultural sea change type solution where we would just all
Speaker 3: agree in some way that this has gone too far
Speaker 3: and people would win.
Speaker 1: Our founders would say, well, Congress, should.
Speaker 3: It right their job. So I think this is you know,
Speaker 3: what what Trump has done. The place is where Trump
Speaker 3: has really pushed the envelope in terms of corporate governance,
Speaker 3: and this is often with respect to big tech, although
Speaker 3: not always is. He's really moved into like full fledged
Speaker 3: economic nationalism in ways that his predecessors were not always
Speaker 3: refusing to do, but a little more hesitant. So this
Speaker 3: is the Golden Shares. This is you know, with Intel
Speaker 3: and other This is approval of the TikTok deal just
Speaker 3: arbitrarily kind of coming from the from this the federal
Speaker 3: government a bunch of other things like that, where it's
Speaker 3: a much more direct intervention in the market. And then
Speaker 3: when you pair that with the tariffs, where I think
Speaker 3: Trump just likes tariffs and he does tariffs because he
Speaker 3: just likes tariffs. And that's a bizarre thing that I
Speaker 3: can't fully understand. But what it does do is it
Speaker 3: creates infinite opportunities for cronyism. And that's what you're talking about, right,
Speaker 3: You're talking about where the prize of buying influence is
Speaker 3: worth the cost. And so if we have a tariff,
Speaker 3: but if you know the right guy, you can get
Speaker 3: an exception from the tariff, and if that guy is
Speaker 3: always Donald Trump, are one of his children, then that,
Speaker 3: you know, that creates all these opportunities for the kind
Speaker 3: of cronyism that, for whatever reason, so often does seem
Speaker 3: to make Americans hate the corporations and not the government.
Speaker 3: And I would just say, like, hate the government. Hate
Speaker 3: the government for creating all these opportunities to buy influence.
Speaker 3: And the solution is, you know, if tariffs are low
Speaker 3: and simple and implemented equally across the board, there's no
Speaker 3: influence to buy. The FCC is disempowered, there's no threats
Speaker 3: that can be made by the White House to you know,
Speaker 3: revoke your broadcast license, and that kind of move is
Speaker 3: just like a very classic libertarian move, Like, this is
Speaker 3: what libertarians have been saying all along is if there
Speaker 3: is no FCC, you don't have cronyism in that area.
Speaker 3: If there is no elaborate new tariff scheme every time
Speaker 3: that someone comes into office, that reduces those opportunities.
Speaker 1: So this is what you're basically saying is, look is
Speaker 1: regulatory capture can be just as damaging then no regulation itself.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, And I well, I mean I guess I
Speaker 3: think the fact.
Speaker 1: That's what the cronyism leads to, right, which is a
Speaker 1: fact what the AI guys want. The AI companies are
Speaker 1: afraid of the state. It's getting involved in regulation, so
Speaker 1: they want federal right and they're just because they want to.
Speaker 1: You know, once they get market share, then they want to, wow,
Speaker 1: we've got Now we can fix the market because it'll
Speaker 1: be designed around our piece of the pie. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a totally non sequitur, but it drives me crazy,
Speaker 1: Like I do not want to hear from Nick Saban
Speaker 1: I'm fixing college football because Nick Saban just wants to
Speaker 1: restore the dominance he once had and Alabama once had.
Speaker 1: So he says, boy, college football is a mess because
Speaker 1: there's no because the way the order that we previously
Speaker 1: had is no longer operable. Well from his point of view,
Speaker 1: it's a mess, and maybe it is a mess, but
Speaker 1: you don't want somebody who was the previous beneficiary to
Speaker 1: be the fixer of.
Speaker 3: It, right, And so this is you know, as you say,
Speaker 3: regulatory capture is a huge issue here, rent seeking. I
Speaker 3: do think though, you know, my perspective is that is
Speaker 3: all the more reason to have few or simple and
Speaker 3: very egalitarian regulations. And I think you know, you see this,
Speaker 3: you see this temptation showing up all kinds of places.
Speaker 3: I mean, you remember the period whatever it was, maybe
Speaker 3: like seven or eight years ago, when they kept bringing
Speaker 3: in the big tech CEOs and founders to sort of testify,
Speaker 3: and they did, they have hearings and they'd say, like,
Speaker 3: my iPhone's not working, and then it would be like, sir,
Speaker 3: I work for Google. Like that whole interaction that was
Speaker 3: happening regularly, and some of that was about the big
Speaker 3: tech companies that had become dominant trying to lock in
Speaker 3: their place. And I think you're quite right that there
Speaker 3: is and will be more of a similar phenomenon with
Speaker 3: some of the bigger AI players. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: what we've seen is there's actually a lot of churn
Speaker 3: in big tech. Like one of the reasons that debate
Speaker 3: was happening around Facebook at that time where we were
Speaker 3: saying should we treat Facebook as a public utility is
Speaker 3: because it seemed like they were the biggest game in
Speaker 3: town and no one would ever break Facebook's hold. And
Speaker 3: Facebook is certainly still big and certainly still around, but
Speaker 3: there are several major competitors and if you if you
Speaker 3: look at the market cap or the market you know,
Speaker 3: the share of users that these different companies have, it
Speaker 3: changes rapidly. So that does seem to me like market
Speaker 3: discipline is working to some extent. They're like, they're not
Speaker 3: permanent monopolies.
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Speaker 1: or American Financing dot net slash the chucktodcast. Well, I
Speaker 1: could you know. This is what makes the FCC community,
Speaker 1: the whole FCC such a weird place now, because you know,
Speaker 1: the monopoly of broadcast television has been broken up by YouTube, right,
Speaker 1: and the FCC has no oversight over YouTube at all.
Speaker 1: And on YouTube you can use say whatever word you
Speaker 1: want and on YouTube, you're going to whatever you know,
Speaker 1: there isn't the same FCC sort of you know, so
Speaker 1: I now it arguably took fifty years for a competitor
Speaker 1: to come up to break that monopoly, or maybe had
Speaker 1: they not had the FCC in the first place, there
Speaker 1: would have been more TV networks popping up on the
Speaker 1: spectrum than the three that we had.
Speaker 3: So you know, well, that actually for sure is my argument.
Speaker 3: I think that is the argument of kind of dynamists
Speaker 3: or pro market folks, especially in media and communications, is
Speaker 3: you will you can almost always tell a story and
Speaker 3: it's a pretty plausible one about how any amount of
Speaker 3: regulation is in a market where there's where, there will
Speaker 3: be competitors, where there's where, and it's an attractive market,
Speaker 3: is so likely to serve to lock in existing players
Speaker 3: and then they will capitalize on that.
Speaker 1: So this is how it's like, we're in its purest form. Right.
Speaker 1: The libertarians sometimes get tossed aside by saying, well, they
Speaker 1: don't even believe in driver's licenses, right, like, and this
Speaker 1: is where, you know, where where do you draw the
Speaker 1: line where is some government regulation acceptable?
Speaker 3: I mean, for me, libertarianism is directional, right, So I
Speaker 3: would like, if we get to a place where you
Speaker 3: and I have to come back on the Chuck Podcast
Speaker 3: and earnestly debate like the driver's license removal Bill of
Speaker 3: twenty thirty seven.
Speaker 1: Is you're like, we're winning. I don't care, right, I'll
Speaker 1: lose this, Sue.
Speaker 3: I am delighted if we get to that place, but
Speaker 3: we are so far from there right now.
Speaker 1: No, in fact, just the opposite. I'm going to need
Speaker 1: a Burth certificate just to like go to the grocery store.
Speaker 1: And when we're all said and done, the.
Speaker 3: Way you have a real id for this, you know.
Speaker 1: Get airplan that I paid for a ticket, right.
Speaker 3: So I think you know, I totally understand you know
Speaker 3: that people would say I'm interested in knowing where where
Speaker 3: you think the limits are, and that's a perfectly legitimate
Speaker 3: conversation to have. But at this point, and this is
Speaker 3: sort of what the Times editorial was meant to highlight,
Speaker 3: like there are a bunch of places where it's just
Speaker 3: very very clear that from a libertarian perspective, the critique
Speaker 3: is broadly shared. Like I think trade actually is the
Speaker 3: most straightforward. The way that Trump has conducted trade policy
Speaker 3: in his second term is wildly unmoored both from good
Speaker 3: economic sense and from legality, like from any kind of
Speaker 3: constitutional understanding of who holds these powers and why. And
Speaker 3: that just doesn't seem like a hard one to me.
Speaker 3: That one seems like And.
Speaker 1: In fact, who knew that this is how the free
Speaker 1: trade argument would end? Because I actually think in some way,
Speaker 1: you know Trump is going to be has been a
Speaker 1: useful mri on so many people entities and ideas. Trade
Speaker 1: is a big one, right, I mean, you've got an
Speaker 1: entire Democratic Party expressing free trade rhetoric in ways they
Speaker 1: never would have done even five years ago. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'll know for sure that this is
Speaker 1: over when Shared Brown starts advocating for free trade in
Speaker 1: his center race, I'm very curious how that plays out,
Speaker 1: read because he's sort of like he is a a
Speaker 1: bridge to the older Democratic Party, the one that used
Speaker 1: to have all the union workers, and now that it's
Speaker 1: the it's Trump's party that does so I'm curious there.
Speaker 1: But it does feel as if this has been a
Speaker 1: useful lesson in Oh, free trade is why I can
Speaker 1: get an avocado anytime maybe you're at the grocery store. Yes,
Speaker 1: And that was always the dream, and here we are right, like, hey,
Speaker 1: you don't understand. If you start getting rid of this stuff,
Speaker 1: then then free trade is going to benefit you in
Speaker 1: ways you haven't thought of. And to me, the produce
Speaker 1: section is the number one way to show people how
Speaker 1: free trade over the last twenty years. I mean, I
Speaker 1: forgot how seasonal the produce section used to be in
Speaker 1: grocery store. I worked in one in the eighties and
Speaker 1: before when I was a night school in college. And
Speaker 1: now you're like, oh, right, we've gotten rid of seasonality
Speaker 1: basically in the twenty first century due to lowering trade barriers.
Speaker 3: I was talking with my son who had heard about,
Speaker 3: but never consumed a red Delicious apple, and he was like,
Speaker 3: what was the deal with those? Because they were bad? Right?
Speaker 3: And I was like, well, okay, And we got into
Speaker 3: it right, and we're talking about how the supply chain
Speaker 3: used to be so different for grocery stores, and our
Speaker 3: transportation technology used to be so different. Consumers used to
Speaker 3: be so much less discerning. You know, we were prioritizing
Speaker 3: an apple the wooden bruise and would still look shiny
Speaker 3: and like who cares so much about the inside? And
Speaker 3: last long time, so what if.
Speaker 2: It has no flavor on these And we had this
Speaker 2: whole conversation about how that thing made sense in that moment,
Speaker 2: and he has lived his entire life in a radically
Speaker 2: different moment that's totally marked by by free trade and
Speaker 2: by all of the technologies that support it.
Speaker 3: I do think, though, the thing you're describing where a
Speaker 3: bunch of people on the left are suddenly like, ooh,
Speaker 3: free movement of people and goods across borders. That sounds great.
Speaker 3: The flip side, though, the other side of the horseshoe,
Speaker 3: where we have people on the left and the right
Speaker 3: agreeing deeply confusingly for me on we should all live
Speaker 3: simpler lives with only one kind of deodorant and do
Speaker 3: the manufacturing here. And you know the kind of Tucker
Speaker 3: Carlson meets Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker 1: Uh. You know, it's a form of naomic policy.
Speaker 3: Again. That's that's where we end up. And I think
Speaker 3: the shared rhetoric at that side of things is more reactionary,
Speaker 3: both from the left and the right. And you are
Speaker 3: right that what's happening is this kind of ever fatter
Speaker 3: middle that remembers that we like grapes. But we had
Speaker 3: that a little at the end of Trump's first term,
Speaker 3: and then it sort of faded away. So I'm a
Speaker 3: little concerned that what looks like maybe a popular movement
Speaker 3: or some kind of agreement or god forbid, we call
Speaker 3: it again the libertarian moment, I'm concerned about how to
Speaker 3: lock that in.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, here's I'll give you another challenge. I
Speaker 1: for my subject this week, I wrote off of a
Speaker 1: survey that my friend Dante Cheni did with what he
Speaker 1: calls the what he works on. It's called the American
Speaker 1: Communities Project, and it put it divides the electorate up
Speaker 1: by county type, and it's like fifteen different types, and
Speaker 1: it's it's so it's less ideological. It's more like, you know,
Speaker 1: here's what folks that live in the rural South versus
Speaker 1: the evangelical hubs things in this various And one of
Speaker 1: the he was writing about, where do where are their
Speaker 1: large agreements even between the most rural parts of this
Speaker 1: country and the most urban parts of this country. It's
Speaker 1: on the belief in the social safety net. So when
Speaker 1: I think about the quote libertarian moment, how do you
Speaker 1: have a libertarian moment and be supportive of the social
Speaker 1: safety net? Like, where do you draw the line? And
Speaker 1: I know you talked about it directionally, but I think
Speaker 1: this is when I've thought about ways that where generally
Speaker 1: what the libertarians are advocating are very agreeable. When you
Speaker 1: start to get to specifics, that's where people fall off, right,
Speaker 1: And the social safety net is a big one.
Speaker 3: And arguably the last libertarian moment was sometime around the
Speaker 3: Tea Party, which you remember, and you know that was
Speaker 3: about in its original form, was about fiscal responsibility and
Speaker 3: government spending, but it also gave us the immortal and
Speaker 3: frankly maybe apocryphal. I'm not sure if how real it
Speaker 3: was or how widespread, but the government hands off my
Speaker 3: Medicare protest sign?
Speaker 1: Right? Oh? That was that was when Mike, uh oh,
Speaker 1: we really have a civics education problem.
Speaker 3: I see, My uh oh? Wasn't we have a civic
Speaker 3: education problem?
Speaker 1: Though we do?
Speaker 3: My uh oh was we found that we found the
Speaker 3: edge of people's willingness to cut things, and it is
Speaker 3: well south of what we're going to need to cut
Speaker 3: to solve this problem. Right, So I would say, again,
Speaker 3: there are plenty of folks who identify as libertarians and
Speaker 3: support some form of social safety net but I think
Speaker 3: that that is a radically different thing than what we
Speaker 3: have right now. So what we have right now is,
Speaker 3: you know, for older people, we have a universal entitlement, right.
Speaker 3: It is a it is a transfer to the It.
Speaker 1: Was originally pitched as poverty prevention.
Speaker 3: Right, And it's not if they transfer to one of
Speaker 3: the wealthiest demographics. It goes to everyone without much regard
Speaker 3: to their income. We've been extremely reluctant to push up
Speaker 3: the age limit more than just a couple of years,
Speaker 3: despite people living longer and being healthier. There's all these
Speaker 3: places where a thing that has that was pitched as
Speaker 3: a social safety net is is operating totally unlike you
Speaker 3: would expect a reasonable social safety net to operate. And
Speaker 3: I think you can see that with social Security, you
Speaker 3: can see it with our health care entitlements, especially Medicare,
Speaker 3: and you know, we can also see it in all
Speaker 3: kinds of other places where I think you can get
Speaker 3: even more controversial, like education entitlements.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying cut public schools tomorrow, but I am.
Speaker 1: Saying what about loans.
Speaker 3: Student loans is a great example of you know, we
Speaker 3: like the amount of student loan debt that is held
Speaker 3: by people in possession of master's degrees. Just that, like,
Speaker 3: just that simple fact really puts paid to me to
Speaker 3: the idea that that is a poverty alleviation program, right,
Speaker 3: and in fact, we've built it to encourage the acquisition
Speaker 3: of that kind of debt in particular. You know, people
Speaker 3: who will carry one hundred thousand dollars of student loan
Speaker 3: debt are people who are better off than most people.
Speaker 1: And the idea is, why does a creditor agree to
Speaker 1: do that if you're trying to because they assume you're
Speaker 1: actually going to have better earning power, You're going to
Speaker 1: use that degree to go get better earning power and
Speaker 1: therefore actually be a pretty safe credit risk.
Speaker 3: Well, and the fact that of course you can't dislarge
Speaker 3: dislodge student discharged student loan debt unlike other types of
Speaker 3: debts makes it a safer bad as well. So I think,
Speaker 3: you know again, that's that's another program, this hugely expensive
Speaker 3: that is sort of sold to some kind of you know,
Speaker 3: equity enhancing program and is in fact functioning nothing like that.
Speaker 3: If we had any appetite for talking about any of
Speaker 3: those things and cutting back benefits to the already wealthy
Speaker 3: and really building a real safety net. Lots of libertarians
Speaker 3: would say like, fine, let's get there. And then again,
Speaker 3: if we want to talk about really intense, you know,
Speaker 3: minimal government stuff down the line, we can do it,
Speaker 3: but we're so far.
Speaker 1: No. And that's the I mean, it's sort of like,
Speaker 1: while there's glimmers of hope for the movement, when you
Speaker 1: look at trade in other ways, right, I mean, the
Speaker 1: amount of people who think government should have an act
Speaker 1: a more active roles pretty pretty large now because.
Speaker 3: It is although you know, you did see most.
Speaker 1: Of all of our lives, government's been a big part
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you did see. On the student loan debt question,
Speaker 3: there was some pushback, right and not just from the courts,
Speaker 3: who rightly noted that Biden's plans were all totally unconstitutional.
Speaker 1: I never understood why that, because there was an easy
Speaker 1: way to sell that, which is, if you if they
Speaker 1: if you ask people to do something to get the
Speaker 1: debt retired, i e. Service to the country in some form,
Speaker 1: six months, here, work there, whatever it is, you'd had
Speaker 1: support for it, right like we there is sort of
Speaker 1: a the public would have been more supportive of the
Speaker 1: student debt relief if there had been something that that
Speaker 1: said student had to get back to the country.
Speaker 3: I think that's true, but I also think there were
Speaker 3: just a lot of people who said, listen, I didn't
Speaker 3: go to college at all because I couldn't afford it,
Speaker 3: or I took out some debt and then I paid
Speaker 3: it back. And I don't know why we would be
Speaker 3: forgiving debt for people who are clearly not the neediest
Speaker 3: or at least twelve off in our country. And so
Speaker 3: I do think that argument has some purchase. But you
Speaker 3: are quite right that the political coalition for cutting Medicare
Speaker 3: and Medicaid social security, which in the in the late
Speaker 3: nineties early oughts, there was like this little moment when
Speaker 3: it was like, oh, could we do it? Are we
Speaker 3: going to do it? And then absolutely not. We did
Speaker 3: not do it. The Tea Party tried again, absolutely not.
Speaker 3: So it's an idea that hasn't really risen into any
Speaker 3: kind of political reality in a long time.
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Speaker 1: life insurance is something you should really think about it,
Speaker 1: especially if you've got a growing family. Could you sell
Speaker 1: a libertarian on this thought? Because as I've been look
Speaker 1: I'm in an entrepreneurial stage, like a lot of people
Speaker 1: that leave a big company, big corporation after a period
Speaker 1: of time, and I've in the middle of starting a
Speaker 1: couple of different small businesses, and the biggest impediment in
Speaker 1: trying to get employees or something is the cost of benefits.
Speaker 1: They're just it's Is there a libertarian argument for national
Speaker 1: health care.
Speaker 3: Oh no, we're going to go the other way on
Speaker 3: that one, my friend.
Speaker 1: All right, but hear me out, which is, it is
Speaker 1: a lot easier to start a small business if I
Speaker 1: don't have to also worry about trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to get a health care plan to pay for
Speaker 1: every get every health care, and get some people a
Speaker 1: childcare benefit. If the government took both of those things
Speaker 1: off my plate, I'd have an easier time starting up
Speaker 1: a business.
Speaker 3: So I have good news for you. Uh, the government
Speaker 3: put both of those things on your plate, and it
Speaker 3: could take them off by changing some of our underlying
Speaker 3: tax and legal requirements. So I'm sure you know this.
Speaker 3: The fact that employers provide healthcare insurance as a matter
Speaker 3: of course in the United States is entirely an artifact
Speaker 3: of the post World War two kind of leftover price
Speaker 3: controls and kind of regularly regulatory controls around conversation increases,
Speaker 3: so there were caps and how much you could pay people.
Speaker 3: Employers wanted to attract good employees. They realized they could
Speaker 3: offer these benefits and they didn't count against those caps.
Speaker 3: So the tax benefit that accrues to you if you
Speaker 3: provide these benefits is kind of an extra little cherry.
Speaker 3: We could undo that whole system, and we could have
Speaker 3: a provision of healthcare that is done like we provide
Speaker 3: all kinds of other absolutely necessary to life goods, which
Speaker 3: is in the private market. So I agree it's a
Speaker 3: huge cost to people who want to start a business
Speaker 3: to have to figure out how to provide these services.
Speaker 3: But you know, you don't have to provide food to
Speaker 3: your employees, right, even though that's totally they have to
Speaker 3: have food to live and work.
Speaker 1: That's the best thing, right in theory.
Speaker 3: So the kind of libertarianism one oh one argument is
Speaker 3: there is no reason why we can't have a market
Speaker 3: in healthcare and or a market in health insurance, which
Speaker 3: of course are two different things. And similarly, you know,
Speaker 3: childcare is you know, absolutely choked with regulation right now
Speaker 3: get and that's getting worse. We're actually more aggressively regulating
Speaker 3: childcare providers than we ever have in the past, and
Speaker 3: it's creating a totally unsurprising set of shortages and price increases.
Speaker 3: So I think these are places where, of course you're
Speaker 3: right that those are barriers to entrepreneurship, but it's not
Speaker 3: it's the solution, isn't What if the government just gave
Speaker 3: everyone every no.
Speaker 1: And I hear you this is one of those where
Speaker 1: you're like, well, boy, I'd love to rewind the tape
Speaker 1: seventy years, but that's tough to do.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think there's there are First of all,
Speaker 3: I am close personal friends with plenty of wonks that
Speaker 3: would be happy to sit here and talk for forty
Speaker 3: five minutes about exactly how we could do this stuff.
Speaker 3: You've been at parties with those guys and they are fun.
Speaker 3: But you know, I do think there are ways to
Speaker 3: unwind it, and we've tried over the years. In some
Speaker 3: perverse ways. Obamacare contained the seeds of some of that.
Speaker 1: No, it did. I mean, it was trying to take
Speaker 1: I mean, the fact is there are people that stay
Speaker 1: in jobs simply because they can't afford healthcare. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know it is, you know. I it was interesting
Speaker 1: to experience what is clearly a fraudulent market. And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what that fraudulent market is here in a second.
Speaker 1: When I was in the midst of changing insurance providers
Speaker 1: and there was a there was tech. I thought I
Speaker 1: followed all the rules so that there'd be no gap,
Speaker 1: but there was a one day gap and thanks to
Speaker 1: the friendly pharmacy benefit managers. They say, well, we only
Speaker 1: update our files once a week, and you're like, oh great.
Speaker 1: So I basically had a week where I couldn't get
Speaker 1: the prescriptions covered by insurance until this paper the computer
Speaker 1: caught up, and if I wanted to get the prescription
Speaker 1: in that moment, and I'd have gotten reimbursed instead of
Speaker 1: costing thirty dollars, it was going to cost six hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars. And you're sitting there going six hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars. But if I have this insurance, it's
Speaker 1: thirty dollars. What am I missing here? Right? This is
Speaker 1: something where neither price is accurate and these prices are phony,
Speaker 1: and yet this is the system we are. So it's like, well, geez,
Speaker 1: I got to have this benefits. But you're like, I
Speaker 1: have a feeling if everybody were staring at a six
Speaker 1: hundred dollars cost, by the way, for blood pressure medication,
Speaker 1: this is like mainstream medication. I wasn't talking about some
Speaker 1: boutique cancer drug or even a nozepic. I mean just
Speaker 1: your basic sort of you know, to keep your blood
Speaker 1: pressure in check. And it was this false essentially, you know,
Speaker 1: it's either thirty dollars or it's six hundred dollars. You're like,
Speaker 1: it's something's missing here. The market's not involved.
Speaker 3: Well, and I think the phrase like phony prices, like
Speaker 3: these fake prices, that's that is the key actually to
Speaker 3: almost all of the dysfunction in the way that healthcare
Speaker 3: is provided in this country. Because we no one can
Speaker 3: see prices anywhere in the system. Prices are very very
Speaker 3: invisible to all parties. So the doctor actually doesn't know
Speaker 3: how much you're getting charged. You don't know how much
Speaker 3: you're getting charged. And the insurance company on some level
Speaker 3: has this information, but they of course are also taking
Speaker 3: their cues from the government set prices that come out
Speaker 3: of a I was going to be cret they come
Speaker 3: out of someone's head in a in a government office.
Speaker 1: I know where you're going. Yeah, and and people have
Speaker 1: their head up there as well.
Speaker 3: But yes, and all of the prices are fake. And
Speaker 3: I think one of the most important, like if you
Speaker 3: were to ask me one of the what is one
Speaker 3: of the core insights that has shaped your personal political philosophy,
Speaker 3: it's that prices contain information and we are being you know,
Speaker 3: totally deprived of that information.
Speaker 1: In the healthcare well, that's where we're being gas lit sector.
Speaker 3: Right, and we're being lied to. We're being given sort
Speaker 3: of seemingly true information, none of which is really true.
Speaker 3: And so of course we all think we're losing our minds.
Speaker 3: So I think again, it's we don't have to stretch
Speaker 3: that hard to imagine a world where we know the
Speaker 3: prices of things and then make decisions about how to
Speaker 3: consume them based on those prices. That's all the other
Speaker 3: market like, that's what I do when I think about
Speaker 3: whether I'm gonna buy books or food or even dental care,
Speaker 3: where we at least can sort of see those prices, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, that market has its flaws, but is much
Speaker 3: more efficient. And of course people are going to say, well,
Speaker 3: what about people who can't afford it? And that's what
Speaker 3: a safety net might look like. Is for the for
Speaker 3: the people who really can't for their blood pushure medicine.
Speaker 1: What do we do?
Speaker 3: And we have as a society also a lot of
Speaker 3: answers to that.
Speaker 1: Well, let me get you one area where to go
Speaker 1: back to Obamacare, which actually was creating where some would argue,
Speaker 1: this is why the market is it's just harder to
Speaker 1: make it competitive. Is if you if you tell an
Speaker 1: insurance company that cannot use a pre exit, they cannot
Speaker 1: use a pre existing condition to price your insurance policy,
Speaker 1: and that this you know. I well instead of me
Speaker 1: saying where's their tension in the libertarian movement, to me,
Speaker 1: this is right there right Like you are who you are?
Speaker 1: Should you because of just how you were born, you
Speaker 1: were born with something, you automatically get charged more for
Speaker 1: something versus if you weren't born without it. You don't
Speaker 1: like that seems unfair?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think there are a couple of things
Speaker 3: going on there. One is, you know, we do allow
Speaker 3: that in other markets. So just for example auto insurance,
Speaker 3: auto insurance rates are set to reflect a lot of
Speaker 3: things about you, including your demographics, including where you live
Speaker 3: and your driving behavior.
Speaker 1: That's still behavioral, It is behavioral.
Speaker 3: But behavioral is often closely connected to demographics, right, like
Speaker 3: men pay more for car insurance and women, for example,
Speaker 3: across the board. So I think that there's not as
Speaker 3: much daylight between the way that auto insurance functions and
Speaker 3: the way that health insurance could function as some people
Speaker 3: would like to suggest. But also I think you know,
Speaker 3: we live in a time of incredibly complex and interesting
Speaker 3: financial instruments to deal with risk, and none of those
Speaker 3: instruments have been allowed to blossom do experiments exaction.
Speaker 1: That you might do that on a pre in order
Speaker 1: to mitigate the high price of covering somebody with a
Speaker 1: pre existing condition.
Speaker 3: Right, So, I mean, I think at the very very baseline,
Speaker 3: we have the fact that you know, what we used
Speaker 3: to call catastrophic plans are more or less illegal now
Speaker 3: it's not quite true. There's a bunch of.
Speaker 1: Short term time. My wife loves that her parents are
Speaker 1: both deceased died of can't had cancer policies, which is
Speaker 1: no longer right, They just they bought them early, and
Speaker 1: thank goodness, it saved their family a bunch of money.
Speaker 1: But you can't buy a cancer policy anymore. Right.
Speaker 3: So that's one example of just you know, there are
Speaker 3: all you know, long term care insurance functions this way
Speaker 3: as well, the younger you buy life insurance functions this way.
Speaker 3: There are so many tools you can imagine where people could,
Speaker 3: in anticipation of various risks that they might that they
Speaker 3: I have get insurance against those risks that are the
Speaker 3: prices will still reflect the relative risk, but you can
Speaker 3: build a policy where the risk reward works for both
Speaker 3: the insurance company and the consumer. And I think the
Speaker 3: fact that we are asking health insurance to also be
Speaker 3: basically a pre pay system for basic health care further
Speaker 3: complicates things. Right, there's no reason why you and I
Speaker 3: shouldn't just be paying out of pocket for basic health care.
Speaker 3: You know, you get in your infection, you should go
Speaker 3: to the doctor and pay the full price of that
Speaker 3: visit and call it good. And your insurance company shouldn't
Speaker 3: be involved in all that stuff.
Speaker 1: But you're describing as homeowner's insurance, right, insurances?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: So I think, like just the fact that in this
Speaker 3: conversation you and I have just named like forty different
Speaker 3: kinds of insurance, and they all are different shapes and
Speaker 3: they're all different sizes, there's just no reason to think
Speaker 3: we can't do that with health.
Speaker 1: I guess I go back on health. The problem is
Speaker 1: that there's some people who are risks simply because they
Speaker 1: were born. And that does feel like if you're born
Speaker 1: with inalienable rights, right, you know that where every every
Speaker 1: other type of insurance we've talked about is somewhat behavioral triggered.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, and I think, you know, there are certainly
Speaker 3: people who are just born with disabilities or with extremely
Speaker 3: high risk for certain you know, traits or conditions, and
Speaker 3: they're gonna they're gonna be really hard to ensure. I
Speaker 3: think I can give you the science fiction answer and
Speaker 3: I can give you the real life answer. So the
Speaker 3: science fiction answer is, let's say I'm a carrier for
Speaker 3: a genetic illness. I should be able to buy insurance
Speaker 3: for my unborn children before they're born, when it's only
Speaker 3: a one and four odd that they'll have it, maybe
Speaker 3: instead of when they're already born. I don't know, I'm
Speaker 3: just making it up, but like insurance could be more
Speaker 3: complex and more and take into account even more of
Speaker 3: the probabilities of life if you could, if the market
Speaker 3: were truly open, I would bet you know, if I
Speaker 3: was a betting man, I might say, Okay, you're a
Speaker 3: carrier of disease. You're gonna do various things to mitigate
Speaker 3: your risk, but ILL sure, I'll take an insurance policy
Speaker 3: out on your kid. On the flip side, I also
Speaker 3: think like this is again the role for charity or
Speaker 3: even potentially government subsidies if we can meaningfully circumscribe those
Speaker 3: people who you are talking about, Those people who truly,
Speaker 3: through you know, extreme circumstances and no fault to their own,
Speaker 3: simply are not eligible to be too participants in this market. Okay,
Speaker 3: charity exists, and you know, simple kind of straightforward block
Speaker 3: grants or cash shubsanies do exist. I think most libertarians
Speaker 3: and most pro market types would say there's space for
Speaker 3: that in the world. There's no reason though, because of
Speaker 3: those people who we do want to protect that you
Speaker 3: and I should be part of any of this system,
Speaker 3: like us, participating in this system to somehow protect those
Speaker 3: people is not working. Those people are not well protected,
Speaker 3: and it's making us miserable.
Speaker 1: Well, look, I guess there's a part of me that
Speaker 1: thinks that, you know, you could get a directionally libertarian
Speaker 1: person to represent eighty percent of what you believe in
Speaker 1: like and then telling you I ain't touching ain't touch
Speaker 1: in healthcare. That's a different situation there.
Speaker 3: And there are a bunch of people who identify as
Speaker 3: libertarians who would probably say that, And you know what,
Speaker 3: I welcome them. They're welcome to use the word liberty.
Speaker 1: What you're saying is that your your eighty percent friend
Speaker 1: is not your one hundred percent enemy.
Speaker 3: It's so true, and that like tattoo it on our foreheads, man, like.
Speaker 1: That needs to be the problem. You know, the Bill
Speaker 1: of Rights was a compromise, and so is everything else. Right,
Speaker 1: let me get you out of here on this. The
Speaker 1: prediction markets, which is the ultimate in some ways, right,
Speaker 1: maybe this is the you know, a good way for
Speaker 1: some of these bedheadging and sort of libertarian basically to
Speaker 1: play out some libertarian policy ideas. But prediction markets need
Speaker 1: to be trusted, right, and you need to know they're
Speaker 1: not being gained or if they're going to be gained,
Speaker 1: that the bad actors are caught. That takes some regulation,
Speaker 1: like this is not a market that self regulates, and
Speaker 1: I don't think yet maybe it will. I just you know,
Speaker 1: right now, it feels my concern of the prediction markets
Speaker 1: are for the things where you know somebody has the
Speaker 1: answer and if it leaks at like you know, the
Speaker 1: Nobel Peace Prize is the perfect was the perfect example
Speaker 1: of that or what I know took place. I'm like
Speaker 1: ninety percent confident took place when Peter Navarro gained the
Speaker 1: jobs report and then suddenly it was the exact opposite
Speaker 1: of what he said twenty four hours later, and you're like,
Speaker 1: somebody made a bunch of money on cal she and
Speaker 1: so give me how a libertarian would clean up the
Speaker 1: prediction markets.
Speaker 3: So I think there's a couple things. Many many years ago,
Speaker 3: Reason magazine did a cover story with Martha Stewart on it,
Speaker 3: and the cover line was something like, Saint Martha. You
Speaker 3: know she didn't do anything wrong. And while Martha Stewart's
Speaker 3: story is complicated, the piece was basically a defensive insider trading.
Speaker 3: So the I think the the kind of most entertaining
Speaker 3: or most colorful case I can give you is all
Speaker 3: markets have insiders, they just have smarter and stupider insiders.
Speaker 3: And in fact that a market that incentivizes as many
Speaker 3: insiders as possible to contribute is the most accurate market.
Speaker 3: Now that's like a little tendentist. It's got a bunch
Speaker 3: of you know, I understand why that's not going to
Speaker 3: like it's impect to find the cruct right and in fact,
Speaker 3: like in a market where you have the understanding that
Speaker 3: this type of thing is occurring, you know, a little
Speaker 3: spike here looks different, a little fall here looks different.
Speaker 3: If you understand, like, is that little spike Peter tomorrow
Speaker 3: is like a question you could be asking yourself or
Speaker 3: his friends or his family whoever. I think we do
Speaker 3: already have an intuitive understanding that smaller market sort of
Speaker 3: much or more subject to gaming. Right, So the fewer
Speaker 3: participants in the market, the less the less resilient it
Speaker 3: will be, and the less likely we are too, you know,
Speaker 3: to uh to catch kind of anomalies before someone someone
Speaker 3: profits on them. You know, I think almost all libertarians,
Speaker 3: myself included, would say fraud is something one of the
Speaker 3: very few things that we agree the state should prevent.
Speaker 3: And so I think so often in cases where you know,
Speaker 3: what we see are kind of you know, inappropriate behavior
Speaker 3: in those type of markets, it's a violation of the
Speaker 3: terms of service, or someone has misrepresented themselves, or there
Speaker 3: is in fact fraud occurring, and fraud should be illegal.
Speaker 3: So I do also think there is there is a
Speaker 3: case for, like, some of this is going to be
Speaker 3: worked out through the courts, through torts, through kind of
Speaker 3: it's going to take a while, and you're right that,
Speaker 3: you know, many people are impatient for that process to
Speaker 3: play out, and as in so many cases, people often
Speaker 3: want a short circuit kind of evolutionary processes. With regulation,
Speaker 3: we already know what the rules should be. Let's just
Speaker 3: make them and announce them. That goes wrong so often,
Speaker 3: and I think, especially with fledgling markets that can have
Speaker 3: so much power to be useful tools, I'm hesitant to
Speaker 3: just slap a regulation on it and say good now,
Speaker 3: this market is stable.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, I've look I I look at the
Speaker 1: first of all, I don't understand why we call Calshie
Speaker 1: a prediction market, but FanDuel of sportsbook it's also a
Speaker 1: prediction market.
Speaker 3: But that's indeed it is.
Speaker 1: I don't think there is a difference between the two, which,
Speaker 1: of course, but everybody's trying to have one. But I
Speaker 1: I have I think that the look by adding more
Speaker 1: people to the system, we have found out who the
Speaker 1: people are that are cheating on the individual sports right
Speaker 1: the you know Who's Now the question is whether and
Speaker 1: I think that this will be a market. This should
Speaker 1: be the If I were FanDuel, I might not want
Speaker 1: to do player props because they can get gained, because
Speaker 1: they can get manipulated, and so to me, instead of
Speaker 1: being told to not do them, you know, you just
Speaker 1: would have you know, you're going to have better you're
Speaker 1: going to be more trusted if you don't offer.
Speaker 3: Them reputational mechanisms, right right, yeah, yeah, And I think
Speaker 3: people you want people to trust your brand, and you
Speaker 3: know this is you know previously in trade had you
Speaker 3: know a lot of these same questions and controversies around it.
Speaker 3: And I think you know, easily gameable markets or bets
Speaker 3: or hurt your reputation as a company. And it doesn't
Speaker 3: happen instantly. People are going to lose money. People are
Speaker 3: going to make money for sure. So if your goal
Speaker 3: is that can't happen even once you know you're going
Speaker 3: to have a very heavy regulatory But I think I
Speaker 3: think that's not the way if we want again, you know,
Speaker 3: libertarians were very early and kind of pro market types
Speaker 3: in general. We're very early in saying we are underutilizing
Speaker 3: prediction markets in all areas of life, and that's turned
Speaker 3: out to be true. There are tons of places in
Speaker 3: life where we are now using what are functionally little
Speaker 3: micro prediction markets, are betting markets to help us figure
Speaker 3: out how to do things. And to cut that off
Speaker 3: because some of the markets are inappropriately structured or gamable,
Speaker 3: doesn't seem like the right trade off to me.
Speaker 1: What's the best place to judge whether libertarians are having
Speaker 1: a moment at the ballot box this year? What are
Speaker 1: the races that we should be following from a libertarian lens.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I can't. It might be too sad
Speaker 3: to even think about this. No, I mean, obviously I
Speaker 3: would like to see some of the folks that I
Speaker 3: named in the Times are coal re elected at the
Speaker 3: very least. You know, we have a pretty short list,
Speaker 3: but you know, the gentleman from Kentucky I mentioned, Jared
Speaker 3: paul Is. You're quite right if he's up and down.
Speaker 1: But the you know, there are.
Speaker 3: There are some folks that are already on the way
Speaker 3: out run Widen. You know we've got you know, the
Speaker 3: the already small numbers are even smaller. Like I say,
Speaker 3: I'm a little obsessed with Arizona because Arizona does seem
Speaker 3: to kick out.
Speaker 1: It's always been a liberty I mean.
Speaker 3: You knows, I think is what I would say.
Speaker 1: Like little well, you know it all like for me,
Speaker 1: my first taste of the crazy of Arizona was was
Speaker 1: Evan Meekham. I don't know if you know that story
Speaker 1: as a governor.
Speaker 3: Tell me the story of Evan Meekham.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, he was sort of this whack of
Speaker 1: doodle governor that got elected in a sort of a
Speaker 1: weird three way race and they ended up having to
Speaker 1: impeach him. But the point was that he It was
Speaker 1: just Arizona has always been home to sort of a
Speaker 1: lot of different quirky politics and left right and center
Speaker 1: more on the right, and there's always been these you know,
Speaker 1: it's almost been a coalition of conservatives with these weird
Speaker 1: strains to them. You know, there's been if you've had
Speaker 1: some religious based strains, you've had some sort of libertarian
Speaker 1: based strains, you've had sort of whatever you would call McCain, right,
Speaker 1: he was sort of he was his own ideology, right.
Speaker 3: That was just as I wouldn't dare put a label on.
Speaker 3: So you can't. I shan't label McCain either, But.
Speaker 1: I can't either because I can. You know, there's some
Speaker 1: things he was a libertarian on. There were some things
Speaker 1: he was you know, pro governing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So it on American national security, he couldn't have been
Speaker 1: less libertarian, right, So, but I think on domestic policy
Speaker 1: he would have been very at home.
Speaker 3: With I would say, my my, this is not my nit.
Speaker 3: Think it's the level answer, but as a macro answer,
Speaker 3: if it's gonna if a new kind of libertarianism that
Speaker 3: could be electoral electorally successful is going to come from anywhere,
Speaker 3: it kind of seems like it has to come out
Speaker 3: of whatever has been thrown. And you know, your Gerson cinemas,
Speaker 3: You're like, there's a bunch of.
Speaker 1: The West is just filled with them West.
Speaker 3: I feel like, yeah, I am interested in and keeping
Speaker 3: an eye on, but I wouldn't I'm not sure i'd
Speaker 3: go so far as to use the word optimism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I look at a guy like Dave Schweikert and
Speaker 1: Mark Kelly right from Arizona who both sort of aren't
Speaker 1: conventional trumpy or conventional liberal who you know, and maybe,
Speaker 1: but you're not wrong to look at Arizona. That feels
Speaker 1: like an interesting laboratory. I don't know what else to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I think it's because the sun
Speaker 1: fries people's brains there differently than it fries our brains.
Speaker 3: To a delicious crisp, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I think I do. I think I think the biggest
Speaker 1: cryogenic labs are storage units are in Arizona. Right, isn't
Speaker 1: that where Ted Williams's head is at. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think maybe things didn't work out for Ted Williams's
Speaker 3: head in the end unfortunately. But yes, but that's the
Speaker 3: kind of thing that you do see out there, and
Speaker 3: that is it is also kind of adjacent to you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's the kind of futurism of those type of
Speaker 3: you know, it is both the sage sagebrush libertarians and
Speaker 3: the kind of futurest libertarians tend to meet right along
Speaker 3: that seam and and the folks that just kind of
Speaker 3: want to be left.
Speaker 1: At the state the only the only state to defeat
Speaker 1: a ban on same sex marriage.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but that sounds true.
Speaker 1: I think that's right, if I'm not mistaken. The point
Speaker 1: is is that it it is pretty you know, there
Speaker 1: is there's some real evidence there that both on economic
Speaker 1: and social that they've you know, sort of there's been
Speaker 1: this unit. And that's the beauty of Arizona. If you
Speaker 1: really if you're really pushing the libertarian movement, is you've
Speaker 1: got the ballot referendum process to you know, you don't
Speaker 1: need a candidate to institute some libertarian ideas. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: just need a referendum at the ballot box.
Speaker 3: That's true. I'm going out in a couple of weeks,
Speaker 3: so I'll let you know if I see any little reader.
Speaker 3: I'll be very working lurking in the in the landscape.
Speaker 1: Catherine, this is awesome. I mean, look, I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of Here's what's true. There's a growing plurality
Speaker 1: in America. The plurality of Americans are politically homeless. We
Speaker 1: see it every day. The numbers show it. Right. We're
Speaker 1: not at a third and a third and a third anymore.
Speaker 1: The Republicans have less than a third, the Democrats have
Speaker 1: less than a third. There's a whole bunch of people
Speaker 1: just sort of sitting there in search of something. So
Speaker 1: let's see what happens. Right, That's all we can do,
Speaker 1: all right, Catherine, great to see you.
Speaker 3: Thanks having me on