ReImagining Liberty
Aaron Ross Powell
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www.aaronrosspowell.com
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What's Wrong with Anarcho-Capitalism (w/ William Gillis)
ReImagining Liberty
12/14/22 • 59 min
I sometimes hear market anarchists say that "Anarcho-capitalism isn't anarchism." This claim, and the disagreements about the nature and values of a free society underpinning it, raises a lot of fascinating questions about liberty, radical liberalism, the characteristics of capitalism, how you even define that term, and the broader movement for liberty.
My guest today is William Gillis (@rechelon). He a fellow at the Center for a Stateless Society and one of the most interesting writers out there on radical politics.
We talk about freedom and coercion, the legitimacy of power, the role of privilege in political action and inaction, and the ways the culture and incentive structure of the mainstream liberty movement make it less effective, principled, and radical than it should be, and sometimes even lead liberty advocates to become apologists for the status quo.
ReImagining Liberty is a project of The UnPopulist, and is produced by Landry Ayres. Podcast art by Sergio R. M. Duarte.
Join the ReImagining Liberty Discord community and book club.
Music: Finding the Balance by Kevin MacLeod | Link | License
Get full access to Aaron Ross Powell at www.aaronrosspowell.com/subscribe
The Reasonableness of Radicalism (w/ Jason Lee Byas)
ReImagining Liberty
11/30/22 • 59 min
Years ago, a then colleague and I pitched the idea of a book called "The Reasonableness of Radicalism," which would've set out the case for an unapologetically radical political liberty and defended it against calls for moderation. The project never went anywhere, though, because we were told by the people making decisions that they didn't like to use the word "radical," because it might turn people off.
Clearly, that's not a worry I share, and neither does my guest today. Jason Lee Byas is a PhD Candidate in Philosophy at the University of Michigan and a fellow at the Center for a Stateless Society. He's also the author of the best essay I've read in a long time, "Radical Liberalism: The Soul of Libertarianism," which I strongly encourage you to read.
ReImagining Liberty is a project of The UnPopulist, and is produced by Landry Ayres. Podcast art by Sergio R. M. Duarte.
Join the ReImagining Liberty Discord community and book club.
Music: Finding the Balance by Kevin MacLeod | Link | License
Get full access to Aaron Ross Powell at www.aaronrosspowell.com/subscribe
Liberty in a Changing World (w/ David Boaz)
ReImagining Liberty
11/16/22 • 54 min
I've spent my entire career as what you might call a professional liberty advocate. But the last six or seven years have forced a lot of re-thinking on my part about how best to discuss these ideas in the evolving political landscape. The fundamental case for freedom, grounded in shared dignity and mutual respect, remains strong, but it feels like Americas, and much of the world, have proven more willing to reject it recently. Liberalism is ceding ground to the base desire to use power to reward friends and punish enemies.
To help me get a handle on how things have changed, were we stand now, and were it all might be headed, I'm joined today by David Boaz, distinguished senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and my boss for the 13 years I spent at Cato.
ReImagining Liberty is a project of The UnPopulist, and is produced by Landry Ayres. Podcast art by Sergio R. M. Duarte.
Join the ReImagining Liberty Discord community and book club.
Music: Finding the Balance by Kevin MacLeod | Link | License
Get full access to Aaron Ross Powell at www.aaronrosspowell.com/subscribe
What to Do About Poverty (w/ Michael Tanner)
ReImagining Liberty
11/02/22 • 44 min
We all want to alleviate poverty, and help those living with it. The hard question is how. The left has a set of ideas, focused on redistribution and the welfare state. The right tends instead to view poverty as the result of moral and cultural failings. Libertarians have their own set of answers, but have often been pretty bad at talking about them in persuasive ways, developing a reputation for just not caring about the poor.
My friend Michael Tanner (@MTannerCato), senior fellow at the Cato Institute, has the kinds of ideas we need more of, and talks about them in the way I wish more of us did. He's had great success in bridging ideological divides while advocating for principled, market and liberty based ways of addressing both immediate and long-term poverty.
ReImagining Liberty is a project of The UnPopulist, and is produced by Landry Ayres. Podcast art by Sergio R. M. Duarte.
Join the ReImagining Liberty Discord community and book club.
Music: Finding the Balance by Kevin MacLeod | Link | License
Get full access to Aaron Ross Powell at www.aaronrosspowell.com/subscribe
Critical Race Theory (w/ Sam Hoadley-Brill)
ReImagining Liberty
10/19/22 • 63 min
Few terms in our contemporary political scene provoke stronger reactions than “critical race theory.” If you listen to much of the right, CRT is a Marxist plot to literally destroy America by teaching children to hate the country, its founding principles, and even themselves. The resulting moral panic has led to anti-CRT legislation, and acted as a precursor to the growing anti-trans and anti-gay backlash among reactionary conservatives.
But what is critical race theory? Because few of those people with strong opinions seem to have much of an idea.
Today I’m talking with Sam Hoadley-Brill (@deonteleologist), a PhD student in philosophy and a fellow at the African American Policy Forum. Sam has written extensively about critical race theory, the movement against it on the right, and the way concerns are being manipulated by dishonest activists like Christopher Rufo to roll back the achievements of social liberalism.
ReImagining Liberty is a project of The UnPopulist, and is produced by Landry Ayres. Podcast art by Sergio R. M. Duarte.
Join the ReImagining Liberty Discord community and book club.
Music: Finding the Balance by Kevin MacLeod | Link | License
Get full access to Aaron Ross Powell at www.aaronrosspowell.com/subscribe
Don Lavoie and the Case Against Planning (w/ Pete Boettke)
ReImagining Liberty
10/05/22 • 58 min
Chances are, you've never heard of Don Lavoie. I certainly didn't run across him when I was getting into libertarianism in college, and it wasn't until years into my time working for the Cato Institute that I learned about him from my boss, David Boaz.
But Lavoie is arguably the North Star for what the liberty movement needs to become if it wants to reestablish itself in America's shifting political landscape, and if it wants to be more than just a somewhat limited government version of conservatism.
So for today's episode, I'm chatting with George Mason University professor Pete Boettke, one of Lavoie's students. We discuss Lavoie's scholarship, his updating of Hayek's Knowledge Problem argument against economic planning, the problems of socialist calculation, and how to build a case for radical liberty within a politically left framework.
- Get Don Lavoie’s books.
- Mercatus video on Lavoie’s work and influence.
- Boettke and Candela’s paper on technosocialism.
ReImagining Liberty is a project of The UnPopulist, and is produced by Landry Ayres. Podcast art by Sergio R. M. Duarte.
Join the ReImagining Liberty Discord community and book club.
Music: Finding the Balance by Kevin MacLeod | Link | License
Get full access to Aaron Ross Powell at www.aaronrosspowell.com/subscribe
Growing the Liberty Movement (w/ Trevor Burrus)
ReImagining Liberty
09/21/22 • 56 min
Across nearly a decade, and over four hundred episodes, of the Free Thoughts podcast, Trevor Burrus and I talked a lot about liberty.
Today I invited him on ReImagining Liberty to continue that conversation. At issue is the question of how to approach being an advocate for radical liberalism in a political environment that seems to have lost its taste for it.
We range, as we often do, rather broadly, from how not to talk about liberty, to how to start fruitful arguments, to the dangers of contrarianism and over-attachment to narratives.
Trevor Burrus is a research fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor of the Cato Supreme Court Review. He's also the continuing host of my beloved Free Thoughts podcast, and it was joy getting to sit across microphones from him again.
ReImagining Liberty is a project of The UnPopulist, and is produced by Landry Ayres. Podcast art by Sergio R. M. Duarte.
Join the ReImagining Liberty Discord community and book club.
Music: Finding the Balance by Kevin MacLeod | Link | License
Get full access to Aaron Ross Powell at www.aaronrosspowell.com/subscribe
Liberalism vs. Leftism (w/ Akiva Malamet)
ReImagining Liberty
09/07/22 • 49 min
What's the relationship between libertarianism or radical liberalism and the ideas of the left? Most place them in clear and direct opposition, and argue that liberty advocates should have more affinity for conservatism, at least in its American variety.
My guest today argues otherwise. Akiva Malamet (@akiva_malamet), a writer and philosopher, and contributor to my old website, Libertarianism.org.
We discuss the shared concerns those of us who see radical liberty have with the political left, but also draw important distinctions between socialism and liberalism.
(Here’s the article on libertarian and leftist views of power that Akiva and I discuss.)
ReImagining Liberty is a project of The UnPopulist, and is produced by Landry Ayres. Podcast art by Sergio R. M. Duarte.
Join the ReImagining Liberty Discord community and book club.
Music: Finding the Balance by Kevin MacLeod | Link | License
Get full access to Aaron Ross Powell at www.aaronrosspowell.com/subscribe
Making Criminal Justice More Just (w/ Radley Balko)
ReImagining Liberty
08/24/22 • 47 min
We can argue at length about the proper role of government. But if we're to have any state at all, one of its clear jobs is to protect us from crime, and to punish criminals.
And yet the American criminal justice system is anything but just, and a full accounting of just how bad it is can be pretty harrowing. The criminal justice system is the most direct application of violence by government on its citizens, and it's overrun by corruption, self-interest, racism, and brutality.
To talk about just how bad things are and how we can build a more humane system, I'm joined by journalist Radley Balko (@radleybalko). For years, he's been the top writer in the country when it comes to investigating, exposing, and cataloging the horrors and corruption of the American criminal justice system.
Radley and I talk about the state of our system, the prospects for reform in the wake of the widespread protests after the murder of George Floyd, and why many in the liberty movement tend to turn into law and order, bust some heads conservatives whenever those pushing back on police violence and state injustice get even the slightest bit unruly.
ReImagining Liberty is a project of The UnPopulist, and is produced by Landry Ayres. Podcast art by Sergio R. M. Duarte.
Join the ReImagining Liberty Discord community and book club.
Music: Finding the Balance by Kevin MacLeod | Link | License
Get full access to Aaron Ross Powell at www.aaronrosspowell.com/subscribe
How to Do Politics Well
ReImagining Liberty
01/18/23 • 45 min
Welcome to the first episode of ReImagining Liberty at its new home with The UnPopulist. This is a show about the emancipatory and cosmopolitan case for radical social, political and economic freedom. With every episode, host Aaron Ross Powell explores and defends liberalism by talking with scholars, activists and others working to build a freer world.
For this first episode at The UnPopulist, Aaron offers a monologue about why America’s political culture seems so broken, and why this has led to rising illiberalism. He traces the problems to what he calls an “unskillful” approach to politics, and to a widespread lack of the virtues necessary for citizens to be good liberal citizens.
ReImagining Liberty is a project of The UnPopulist, and is produced by Landry Ayres. Podcast art by Sergio R. M. Duarte.
Join the ReImagining Liberty Discord community and book club.
Music: Finding the Balance by Kevin MacLeod | Link | License
Get full access to Aaron Ross Powell at www.aaronrosspowell.com/subscribe
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