 Hello everybody. Welcome to a special videotape bonus episode of the Reason Roundtable podcast. I am Matt Welch sitting stiffly in a room at an L shaped table as either Peter or Catherine recently pointed out and we are here to ask and answer all of the questions that you send to us as part of our annual Webathon fundraiser that we do here at the Reason Foundation. Peter stop making faces over there. I can see you, you know, you're in the same room. Okay, so what we're going to do before we start is, and this is unplanned, so it's going to make certain members of this table physically uncomfortable, is go for a lightning round. Everything here is a lightning round because we've got so many questions, great questions from all of you, and also some really bad ones that we'll get to. We are going to go to a first lightning round from each participant at this table, elevator pitch. Why should you viewers, listeners, readers, dancers, why should you donate to this year's Reason Webathon? Start with us. Gimpy, one-legged Catherine Mangue Award. Thank you for just getting that the broken knee up right at the top of the pod. The reason people should donate is because now more than ever we are screwed. Libertarianism is in trouble and basically every political actor in the country is now trending authoritarian and Reason stands alone, a voice of sanity in the wilderness, and you'll be glad we're still here when the insanity lifts. Well done. Nick Gillespie, do you want to add to that? Were your voice in public debates over the size, scope, and spending of government and also maximizing human freedom, innovation, and experimentation? A furiously note-taking Peter Suderman? Because your donations make the Reason Roundtable possible. There we go. Now we're talking. I would add just to that that... And if you double them, we will never do this again. But then the tripling is the question. If you triple them, we slowly eliminate one of us at a time in a dramatic manner. At some point, I think there needs to be a matching grant to have little bangles put on the tassels of Nick's coat so that when he walks, it's like Santa Claus announcing. Everything has a price, Matt. I think you learned that about your virility a few years ago. Anyways. Wow. It's so much better when we're all in the same room. It really is. My reason is just that this helps make us independent. Most of magazines and publications of political opinion do not make money by selling advertisements and subscriptions. They make them through one way or another. I think we think that the best way to do it is to have a broad-based nonprofit so that not a single donor can tell us what to do because we have so many of you individuals making it possible. So thank you for that. Give early and often just like you're voting in Chicago. All right. This one goes to the front of the line. This question from Chris. And it's not necessarily because he says, PS Catherine is my hero. Non-voters unite, but don't organize. That's a pretty good slogan. Do we know it's a man? Nope. And says, happy holidays to the reason gang. My first question is for Catherine. We're going to have group questions, individual questions. He has both. So bear with me. A few years ago, I asked the panel on the Webathon who among you was the boss. And if you'd ever been tempted to fire any of the other gang members, Catherine after more years of listening to Peter go on about superhero sci-fi stuff and video games and Matt talking about booze and music. What? That's probably older than your parents. And Nick, well, just being Nick, have you reconsidered the possibility of a mass firing? You know, I don't know whether it's the drugs for the knee or what, but like, I'm actually going to go a little schlocky here and say, no, I love you guys. And, you know, I think over the years I have come to appreciate that even though everybody is a, you know, absolutely insane individual personality, that it's very, very rare to have colleagues, especially in a kind of mission driven nonprofit type situation, who you love and want to work with and believe in and know that you share a vision with. So actually, screw you. I know you was, I was supposed to be mean here, but I want to fire no one. And I'm delighted to be a part of this lovely reason team. I think that's a sign we should be updating our resumes. Yeah. And also, we should clear signal. Message received. Maybe firing Catherine's pharmacologist at this point because it's just dulling the getting on that supply chain. Don't be jealous. First of all, I thought that's what the reason speak is. It was all about New York. Nick, Chris adds a second question, bit more serious with a growing population and a static number of representatives. It's academic that each representative will represent a larger number of citizens with so many different viewpoints to consider, along with the allure of increasing government power and the benefits of that power. It seems reasonable to assume that eventually said representative will forego. This will be pithy people will forego his constituents is interest in favor of their own, especially if they face no consequences for doing it like a 90% plus income to serate. My question is this, does any kind of representative government have a population limit? And is it a given that any government overseeing a large enough population will eventually tip over into authoritarianism? This speaks to nothing about other issues that could affect this such as growing polarization or disinterest among weather, and etc. Nick, do we have a like a hard limits? Like this population growth mean that representation is going to lead inexorably to authoritarianism? Quickly, Arnold Kling, K-L-I-N-G wrote a book about this very question a while ago, certainly within the past 15 years. It is true that each representative has more power because they're representing far more people than they were 50 years ago. And they also do less, which is a strange thing. I think so, but I think the comedy and tragedy of America is that we have a representative government. So you can monkey at the edges to have more representatives, fewer representatives limit things, but you know, the real problem is we've got the government that most of us want, and we need to change what we want. Suderman, do you have something to add over there? I would just say that if you think this is a problem, a solution might be expand Congress. That sounds gross. Speaking of on libertarian positions, Steven Schatz asked hello roundtable gang for each of you on what question or issue do you find yourself holding the least libertarian position, Suderman? So I am on record on this podcast as being kind of a skeptic of a cryptocurrency. And so not of the blockchain itself. I think it's going to be a very useful decentralized protocol for creating trust. But I'm not sure it's great money that like it's going to do the thing that money needs to do, which is hold and record value. And I think, you know, I would say that the last couple of weeks or so have provided a little bit more evidence for my belief that crypto is, again, a useful technology, but maybe not great as like just as currency. Bandwagon much there, Peter. Catherine, what's your least libertarian position as the edit tricks in chief of the whole thing? Yeah, I mean, I think that there can be no such thing as a position and reason that is not consistent with my doubt. Obviously, that's not true. Among other things, we publish debate issues, right? We like to have a variety of libertarian views in the magazine. I do, I think probably my most kind of unlibertarian view or at least, you know, debatably libertarian view is that I would love to figure out how to price externalities effectively. And if we could do that, I would be okay with passing some laws about it, like given a, you know, a status quo, right? So this is like when the very loud cars go by my window at night, I'm like, there's got to be a price for that. And we can figure it out and we can impose it. And you know, it's a math problem that we haven't been able to solve. But if we could, maybe I would make those laws. But isn't the way that we're going to solve that not by passing laws because the whole problem is that passing the laws to solve that pricing problem is not the way that it's going to work. This is my argument. It's that someone is going to invent an app where you can just say right now, anybody who's thinking about driving on my block, I'll give you 20 bucks. Don't do it. Don't do it. If you avoid the block would love a market solution. We have failed it. I agree that creates some bad incentives to just for everybody to be like, I was going to be on Catherine's block, but no, I'm not giving me 20 bucks. But no, it's going to be a decentralized thing. It's not like a small squishy position that I've also hedged in so that I never have to actually turn it into action. And anyway, we should have no laws. So problems got a lot of ifs there, Nick. What's yours? That government is not always wrong or ineffective or, you know, or bad. I think it can be a force for good in a lot of ways. I also find the creep in the Libertarian movement towards anarchy to be stupid and distasteful. Who are you calling creep, Nick? Wow. I'm not calling anybody a creep. I'm talking about anarchism. Mine, I mean, where to begin, where to choose. But I will choose one that I was actually influenced by Tucker Carlson on a long time ago, which is that, and this is where my mother, who is not a libertarian, is more libertarian than I am. I'm against assisted suicide, baby. I think it's wrong. Yes, I am. Yes, I am. I think that it is wrong to get professionals in the business of helping people die. What about involuntary suicide? I think that you have to work for it. Yeah. Yeah. That's my suicide. Shouldn't be painless. You should like put a little effort into it. So you are especially upset about what's going on in Canada, where they... That ad is horrifying to me. Where in order to save money on the Canadian health system, they're basically like, you know, you could not be a cost center anymore if you're kind of old and sick. Yeah, that's, I find that to be horrifying. I think we're very, very committed to not being a cost center when I'm old and sick, not for the people just for me. But you can do it. Just don't draft, don't incentivize other professionals, especially if they've taken the Hippocratic off both. How is this different than all other things? Like, I want people to figure out how to make money by providing me this service. You're in favor of occupational licensing for people who would help people commit suicide, onerous. I'll have to think about that. The unifying position here is obviously that the Canadian health system is bad because of the way the system is structured. Euthanasia becomes like something that the government wants to encourage people to do. Canadian health system is bad. We all came together on it. Checking out Soiling Green and the wonderful moment when Ebergie Robinson goes to the Reclamation Center or whatever to take him off the public, the public fisk. One of our devoted listeners, Leanna Almog has pointed out, Romanian, like all the best people, has pointed out that every, any movie that has Edward G. Robinson is a better movie because of it. Because of it. Yeah. I think there's no question about that, especially the Ten Commandments, which I recently rewatched and, oh boy. He brings the Lower East to the Middle East. He really does. Liam has multiple questions. They're, they're pithy though. To Catherine, how's your knee? It's, it's terrible. Thank you for asking, Liam. To everyone, what's your favorite four-dimensional platonic solid? Oh, I have an answer. Catherine. Obviously, I have an answer. I'm particularly fond of a dodecahedron. And that is because when I was in ninth grade geometry class, I made a very nice one and then hung over my desk for the whole year from the ceiling. And it's a good looking 12-sided item. Did you make it into a die or a dice? It was, it was very large and made of a foam board. So, so not to be all correction, but isn't that a three-dimensional platonic solid? And the question was about four-dimensionals. Oh, it exists in time? Because my favorite is obviously the hypercube, the subtitle of cube two hypercube. Wow. Corrected. Corrected. I accept your correction. Still, dodecahedrons are bomb. I don't know what you call it. And it doesn't, it's not four-sided, but the 20-sided die was great. It's not, it's not sides, it's dimensions. It's dimensions, my man, like a Tesseract. You might have heard the throat clear. I said it's not four-dimensionals. My answer is not. Right. There's a built it in. But it's the 20-sided die because you can use it both in Dungeons and Dragons and Stratomatic. Oh, yeah. And that's the synthesis. Nick, do you have an answer to this question? Uh, no, but I will talk about my one friend who created a Stratomatic game where everybody had great baseball nicknames like Jerry Groty was Groty to the max. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was just, yeah, some fond memories that will take me out of this question. And the fact that Play-Doh was a punk. Fuck Play-Doh. We got the headline. Yeah. Um, to everyone, Liam is still going here. If you had to do a player trade with another podcast, this is pretty good. IE, send one Reason Roundtable host to another podcast, bring one of that podcast host to the Roundtable, who and for whom I will answer the question first to take the pressure off. Obviously, trade me immediately so that I work less, even less, I should say, and trade me for Russ Roberts, I think, like, like. You couldn't hold Russ Roberts' jock. That's the point. That's the point. I'm here to improve Reason, Nick. I think that's the way. Catherine, you must answer this question. Yeah, I'm just going to, I'm just going to straight up replace Nick with Joe Rogan for pure, for pure subscriber count purposes and also maybe no one will notice. There's no winners in that. That's the first lose-lose-voluntary exchange. Peter. I'm going to replace myself with Katie Herzog because she has a great dog, and I think would add a lot to this podcast. Apparently, not Jewish. I recently learned what to say. Careful there, Kanye. Yeah, that came up in that conversation, actually. I would like to also make a trade for Jesse Single to come on this so that you guys can teach him about libertarianism and economics, and I would like to hang out with Katie Herzog in cyberspace. Yeah. She's funny and smart. For a woman. All right. Let's go to, what? I'm just trying to. The double whammy on that one. If I can't replace myself with Russ Roberts, I can at least get the internet to fire me. Joseph Hinshaw says, when I listen to the opinions of round table staffers, I like the idea that this is a staffed podcast. I surprisingly find myself agreeing with viewpoints I wouldn't normally have had before. What strategies do you use to persuade others to share your views and beliefs? Catherine. I try to be nice. I don't always succeed. I try. I mean, I actually do think that that's part of it. Like this podcast and in general, I think the tone of a lot of the arguments that Reason makes are not, I'm going to beat you down with my superior intellect, though the temptation to attempt that is always there, especially on the part of the high percentage of debate team nerds that hang out around here. But I think that it's much better to invite people in. And because libertarians are the eternal minority, it makes sense to start with, hey, maybe we agree about this and then take one more step. And I hope that we do that on this podcast sometimes. Peter. I think I like to use the tools of journalism. I and we at Reason, we tell individual stories about things that have actually happened to real people. And, you know, so if we're going to tell a story about eminent domain, we're not going to start with a bunch of legalese and the constitutional history and like what we might get to that eventually. But we're going to start with a person who lost their house involuntarily, a thing that actually happened. And I think when you when you get away from the abstract legal arguments and tell true stories about things that actually happen to people, you're more likely to convince them. We just got a little slice of Peter Suderman features editor, which is not the guy we always meet on this podcast. He's normally like Peter Suderman Star Wars drinker. But the not that he drinks Star Wars. I mean, he probably does. But but yeah, that's Peter's other job, by the way. And something your donations would fund from the Reason Webathon is paying for Peter to commission and edit the cool features you read in Reason Magazine and at Reason.com. This reminds me of last year when Catherine was the one who kept reminding us that we have to go Webathon. We are. She's got a commission. She's got a good commission. I guess so, Nick, what is your successful strategy? I like persuading people. Yeah, work blue. I like to curse a lot, make Holocaust jokes. And I was going to get there. And show our map. Yeah. Speaking of the Holocaust. I would, besides wincing, I try to persuade less. What? Fantastic. I know. I think we're done. What I mean is that you don't have to persuade people all the time. I think there's a lot of libertarians, especially the more on the spectrum, the better will will like this is an opportunity to persuade someone of my superior opinion. And that's not really a necessarily effective way to go through life all the time. And when you try to just sort of add to the conversation, the broader knowledge of things in the pseudomanian way, I think that people find that sort of helpful. And then when called on to persuade, then persuade like the dickens because they'll notice the change in your tone. This is what your counselor is telling you about how to engage your teenage daughter, Matt. You gotta park that. That's no way to do anything. We're going to go to a lightning round of individual questions. Just because Catherine teed one up for Peter, which is not the one that Peter wants to answer. But this one here from David. Peter, in light of your praise for the Andor series, will you be developing a rev nog drink for your cocktail newsletter? The beverage they weren't supposed to be drinking on Moralana one in the first episode. I don't have any idea what any of that is about. Well, I hadn't planned on it, but obviously I'm going to have to now. I'll just say that egg drinks are delicious. Put eggs in your booze. It's wonderful. There's a whole egg drink in the Thanksgiving edition this year. It's a whole category of cocktail called flips. And it's just booze and egg and sugar and you shake it together. And it's like a little instant egg nog, except thicker and more, more awesome. And that's obviously what this is because this is a rev nog. And that's so canonically. We now know that there are eggs and eggs and booze together in the Star Wars universe. Thank you. There are chickens in Star Wars. You're telling me. Did we already know that? Maybe we already knew that. Not just the little baby or whatever the hell they were in the last Jedi. Joe, maybe they're pork eggs and you can make a pork egg cocktail. Finally, this is for Catherine from Joe Taska, who begins his email with, hi guys, love your work. Thank you, Joe. Catherine, just wondering when I'm going to get that precious bookshelf picture inside joke with that whittled down collection of dead tree. Yeah, I did. I got rid of most of my books last year. I shed the piles of paper that I had been schlepping around with me. And I think mentioned that on the podcast, talked about it somewhere and people were troubled, alarmed, concerned. But this person had sent a note saying, hey, send me a picture of the bookshelf that you're sometimes in front of, because I like to creep on people's bookshelves. And this obviously is the bookshelf. It's not my bookshelf. But I guess I didn't send him a picture of my remaining books, and I should do that. What do you what do you read on? I read on the Kindle app on my phone, and I will fight anyone who says that that is the wrong way to do it. It is the right way to do it because you always have your book. Yeah, no. Speaking of books, this one's for Nick from Brandon. Who begins his let's go Brandon Brandon says hello again. This is becoming my favorite holiday tradition. That's right, Brandon. The reason Webathon is our favorite holiday capital has totally destroyed any tradition, community heritage for Nick. I enjoy hearing about the framing of current issues in terms of the books that you have been reading, not on your phone. He didn't add. For example, you repeated references to Hirschman's exit, voice and loyalty. Interested me enough to buy my own copy, not on his phone, which I now appreciate. My question is asking what other examples of mid late century social science books have you encountered outside of the libertarian canon that is similarly useful for understanding ideas from a libertarian or individualist perspective? Boy, I would say because it's not quite canon, but it's adjacent to libertarianism. Arthur E. Kirch Jr. is the decline of American liberalism is just a fantastic classical liberal reading of history, of American history. I think right now and he's no libertarian, he's anti-libertarian, and he's being used by anti-libertarians more and more. Christopher Lash is the minimal self. It's like psychic survival in an age of diminished expectations, something like that is an absolute, I mean, it is a perfect guide to the world we're in now, particularly millennial and Gen Z mentality, even though he was writing about the boomers, the minimal self. Very good. This one comes to me from David Halstrom, who's a frequent correspondent on the Twitter machine. He asked me, I would like to know if Matt would rather be able to play second base like Bobby Gritch or play guitar like George Harrison? That is, as we know, a trick question because if you are 54 years old, you're just really happy if your knee doesn't hurt a whole lot, so playing second base doesn't seem all that fun. Ask me that question a half a lifetime ago. There's no question that you'd rather be Bobby Gritch. Long Beach is finest deserving Hall of Famer, but I'm 54 now and I can actually still play guitar while sitting on my fat keyster, so I would rather be able to have George Harrison's talent, not his personality, but certainly his guitar playing. Would you like to have his mustaches? I mean, that's an interesting Bobby Gritch, George Harrison mustache. I want to have like the George Harrison poodle haircut that kind of developed in the late 80s and early 90s. It was so sad that he made it come back right as his hair was just going down the toilet. And his clothes too, wearing the parachute pants and stuff. Yes, it's not right. Ross Anton asks a two part question, but they're brief. Question of one, animals in all caps. If your version of libertarianism was represented as an animal, which one would it be? And he adds, no porcupines, no eagles. Catherine. I feel like it's unfair to go to me first of the registered animal hater in this group, but I guess I will give you a, I don't know, like something, something reclusive, something, something, one of maybe one of those. You don't know what animals are. No, I don't. I don't. More soupial? No, I don't know. Let's let's just go with a bear, but one of the ones that hibernates a lot and then steals your garbage. That sounds about right, Peter. Why, why does libertarianism steal your garbage? I feel like Matt immediately recognized why this was right. And like whatever it is that Matt felt, that's, that's what I'm channeling here. Just the kind of like, you know, I don't follow your rules. Vibes is what I'm trying to capture here. Yeah. I mean, obviously it would be a bullmastiff. The greatest dog breed that exists. Bullmastiffs are great defenders of property rights. They're also, they're not, they're, they're like really friendly. They're your best buddies, but they're a little bit obnoxious too. And they're not for everyone. Nick, save us. And they have to be walked twice a day. Yeah. Whether they need it or not. Subservience to humans. Yeah, I don't really have an answer for this. Yeah. A cat. I tried. She did try it. I go to the obvious one. Wolfs. Wolfs. Wolfs. Surprise, no one said a sea creature. Right, like couldn't libertarians be an octopus? Right, much smarter than you think, but a little bit weird and nobody understands them. And they squeeze into really small spaces. I will go to question two and direct this at Nick. Since he didn't. Do libertarians squeeze into small spaces? Oh, we have a small spaces right now. That is true. Who wins in a physical fight wrestling match between Mises Rothbard Rand and Friedman? Nick. Okay, Mises Rothbard Rand. Is this tournament style? Can we? You know, it's got to be Mises. Mises. It's Rand. It's obviously Rand. Are you kidding me? She would fight so dirty. She smokes so much. She has like no wind. Are you saying that Rothbard wouldn't fight dirty? Yeah, it doesn't matter. That's fair. I think he would do terrible things. I think a better question is who would win in a game like a tournament of Street Fighter II Turbo? What is your answer to that? That's Mises, obviously. That's Mises. And human activity actually predicts the whole video game arcade system that we live under now. Right, yeah. Under, Jordan McElroy asks, over the past two years we have seen a back and forth between Congress and the Pentagon in regards to UAP, meaning UFOs. There has been legislation introduced in the past to NDAA, that's the National Defense Authorization Act, establishing task forces to collect and analyze data from the relevant agencies and provide reports to Congress and the public. This has resulted in a June 2021 report on UAP and the first public hearings in 50 years on the topic. This past May, there seems to be a largely apolitical contingent of folks interested in the topic. And as we've seen, these stories do gain immense traction across the political spectrum. I have two questions. Is there an opportunity for the LP to leverage the UAP topic into a platform to garner more support? I'll be the quick answer to that. Nope. And lastly, what say you roundtablers is disclosure, whatever it may be, a worthy pursuit? Or am I as high as Nick Gillespie? And need to visit betterhelp.com. Wow, wow, that is a real fan. Catherine, you're the resident space person. Yes, we did include an article about UFOs or UAPs or whatever we're calling them in our special space issue that just came out. And it was mostly from a fairly skeptical perspective. By Mick West, we also had a video out about it. So if you missed those, I encourage you to check it out. But I'm always up for government transparency. Like, sure, let's get the reports. Let's see what the government thinks it knows. I am not part of the, we got to get the space to find out who's out there crew. I'm part of the, we got to get to space so that we can be the people who are out there crew. So UFOs are not exactly my jam. But yeah, I want to know what the government knows. Why do they get to keep that stuff secret? Screw them. My answer to that question is that we should want maximum disclosure because what we'll find not necessarily is UFOs at the end of the rainbow, but we'll find a lot of government military aviation programs and stuff that they lied about to us. And in some cases actually tried to boost UFO conspiracies to cover up what the government was building plainwise in various desert locales. We should want to know all that stuff. They keep way too much stuff secret from us and that's bad. I grew up near Gulf Breeze, Florida, which was for a long time the semi maybe official UFO capital of the world. And it's maybe not an accident that it's also right next to a whole bunch of military bases, including Eglin Air Force Base, which is where the military tests like munitions and like crazy missiles and stuff. You'd drive across the bridge to the bay so you'd have a big open sky in the middle of the night and you'd just see all sorts of crazy stuff in the sky and you'd be like, well, maybe that's a UFO or maybe that's my tax dollars at work. Or maybe they put the Air Force Base there to cover up that that's the UFO landing spot. That's my belief. I live near Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, one of the main loci of UFO stuff. But I think the more important question is when are we going to acknowledge that the Apollo mission was a full employment act for our crisis actors? Yes. I think we acknowledge that in last year's Webathon. Webathons, which are fundraising vehicles for the recent foundation, which is a 501c3 non-profit, your tax-deductible donations of any type of currency that you want, right? Any type of currency. Yeah, it includes one of the Peter Suderman kiboshes. Is that a word? Not in that way, but yeah. It's just reason.com slash donate. That's how you do it. Thank you. Brian asks, I can't remember the last time I missed a Reason Roundtable podcast. You are all amazing. That's how you do it, Brian. I have three teenagers that I would like to... I don't know how to do that. Like to expose to libertarianism. How do I go about accomplishing this in an engaging, teenager-friendly way? Are there any books, movies, videos, podcast episodes that you recommend, Nick? Uh, well, I will recommend a book called The Declaration of Independence. Wow. How libertarian politics can fix what's wrong with America. Because if there's anything that teens love, it's a slightly outdated book by you two. No, it'll be... It's like Wikipedia. You will be intrigued and spend hours chasing down all the references. And basically all of the people who are in that book are still in power. They're just older and slightly less competent. Um, I would say, watch if they're boys or girls. Actually, Legends of the Fall is a great movie. No. To watch, Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Joint. Yeah. Katherine, start there. Your kids are almost a teenager now? I have an 11-year-old. So I got a little... Yes. ...a little... ...in the today's society. I'm a big believer in the reverse psychology approach. So I think if you want them to be libertarians, you should probably act slightly protective or even prohibitive about libertarian materials in your home. Like, oh, I'm listening to the reason round table. Sorry, it's not for you and putting your headphones. But then you let them hear a little bit of it. Like, I think that that's really... I was raised by parents who were like of the... It's okay if you do drugs, but do them in the basement so we can drive kids home. And as a result, I did no drugs when I was in high school. So like the opposite of that. But the one thing... Like the one way I figured out how to rebel was like... The one way I figured out how to rebel was to say, I'm a big fan of Iron Rand. That was it. Like, I found my way. So I suggest a light prohibition on libertarian materials, but especially those books with good-looking covers or... You know. Make it seem dangerous. That's no good, though. That's going too hard. It just has to be light, gently, gently. I don't know if it got me there, but my stepdad tried to get me into libertarianism when I was a teenager by having me a pile of Iron Rand books, by which I mean one of Iron Rand books. And then also, which I read a couple pages of like, oh, God, no. And then a bunch of Robert Heinlein books, which I liked because there was a lot of killing. I mean, that's the real answer. Which... Do you remember which book was like, okay. I grok libertarianism. Um, probably... Probably Strange or Strangeland, which I wrote my high school essay on, which I've told you before, but comparing the ways that it both predicted and directly influenced the summer of love and the diggers in the San Francisco, which made a lot of sense. Including it all being underwritten by the Department of Defense. Yes, that's the important part. Peter, you don't have any teenagers. Do you have anything to add to this? I would just say that I did not know what... Are you bringing the full mastiff to libertarianism? Like I said, they're already the representatives of libertarianism. They are our mascots. They love property rights, and they're quite friendly, except when they're, you know, defending their people and their stuff and their food and trying to play with your eyeballs with their giant claws. No, I would say I did not know what libertarianism was when I was 15 years old. I don't think I was... I might have been vaguely familiar with the word, but I certainly couldn't have defined it for you, but... And my parents weren't libertarians. But I had a couple of engineer brain sci-fi uncles who kind of identified as libertarians, and my parents kept a ton of science fiction books around the house. And some of them were Robert Heinlein, but a lot... I mean, I read a lot of Isaac Asimov, as I've said on this podcast before. And I would just say that even if you're not reading libertarian science fiction, reading classic science fiction is a gateway to libertarian thinking because it gets you to think about the idea of the future and technological progress. And if you are... If you think of that as like, that's the thing we need to be always thinking about, then that is one of the core sort of mental modes, sort of modes of operation of thinking that leads you into a libertarian worldview, I think. If we're going to go with something a little more contemporary, a little more sort of like what the kids might be interested in these days, have them play the Bethesda series of role-playing games, in particular Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, and Elder Scrolls 5, Skyrim, all of which have like an embedded libertarian worldview in which usually there are multiple competing factions that are like, they all kind of want to be in charge in a different way. And what you realize is none of them are good. They're all just bad in a different way. And Skyrim in particular has like a competition between the Nords who are like kind of racist actually, and that's bad. But they're just like country people who want to do their religion and like live in the place that they've always lived in. And then there's the High Elves who are like, actually racism is bad, but we want to control your life. And they're the sort of urban technocrats. And it's like that, and you have to choose one of them, except the point is the choice is stupid and it's irritating to have to choose one of them, but that's the choice that we get. And it's, I wouldn't say that the game is like deeply steeped in libertarian philosophy, but there is a libertarian undercurrent to that game and all of the other games made by Bethesda soft work, or I should say all the other role-playing games. There's also just like something deeply libertarian, I think about video games that are built on the idea of how much choice can we give the player, how much can we give the choice to give them in terms of defining themselves and who they are, like choosing your race and your sort of, like all of your different traits and all of this stuff and then being able to manipulate them, but also how you go about playing the game. I mean, these games are so sort of broadly, they're not like, they're not linear sort of progressions of like you have to do the one thing first and then the next thing, you just sort of get to go experience a world and a set of stories on your own terms. And that is something that like, that's a libertarian idea that is being put to work in video game form. I'd like to add up my previous answer, probably the first Heinlein book that made me aware that there was an ideology or a philosophy at stake or being a bandit about was Farnham's Freehold, which was rough. And I read that, I'm like, wow, I don't know about this stuff. This is a little bit harsh. They should also probably get a job and the thing they should read is that first paycheck. Like honestly, if I'm thinking back, like one of the things that really pushed me pretty. Great literature. I mean, when you think you're about to get $1,000 and then you get $700, you're like, what, where's my money? And like right there, that's like a big teachable moment. It's all going into the Medicare trust fund that's just about to be insolvent. Thank you for playing your first person character. This is a related question from Enneas. What do you guys in the gender neutral sense think of, and I'm going to send this to Catherine for obvious reasons, the Prometheus Award. Do you regularly read the winners? I do. I love the Prometheus Awards. I have even been a panelist at one of their events during COVID. And I find it a great source for what should I read next when I am at a loss. I also think that it's, you know, there's been a lot of turmoil in the science fiction awards universe in the last several years. Sorry for that sentence. And you know, the politics of that I think are very off-putting for some people. The Prometheus Awards are a good reminder that you really can just kind of look at books on their own terms and also look at them through the lens of a specific kind of worldview. I particularly like their lifetime achievement or kind of Hall of Fame list because it reminds me when I have missed a classic. Peter, you're presumably a consumer. Love them. Strongly recommend. Nick? Yeah. Same. Final in this category for 500. Are there any good libertarian children's books per your recommendation? We metaphorically burned our copy of The Rainbow Fish. Thank you for the metaphorical. You could just give it away. It's fine. Compost it. No, you should burn it. Those little foil bits probably go up nice. As Matt Welch pointed out in a memorable piece, those little foil bits were super expensive for them to produce. So in order to make a really good communist book, they had to pay extra money to make it look really sparkly and wonderful. Any good libertarian children's books? I was going to say, if we're talking Rainbow Fish, we need to point out the giving trend. Yes, every time. Equally just evil. I am a big fan of... Oh, sorry. I didn't... Did I mention who asked this question? Joe and Heather Kachinsky. Sorry. Go on. I am a big fan of Click Clack Moo and Duck for President if you're looking for books for little kids. That ducks on my president. They are deeply, deeply cynical children's books about politics. Click Clack Moo features a strike that goes horribly wrong when it is manipulated by the messenger between the two parties. And Duck for President ends in Duck climbing the tree of power only to attempt to avoid work. And in the end, he wins by getting to write his memoirs. It's genuinely... They are both genuinely libertarian, but also genuinely delightful. Cannot recommend them enough. So for the little kids, that's an excellent Rainbow Fish substitute. This is more Catherine's oldest speed, but the fourth, I think it is, fourth and fifth Harry Potter books. I think the Order of the Phoenix is the one that gets into the awful government bureaucracy and then also the death eater of people. It's bone-chillingly libertarian, in my view. Okay. Joe and Heather Kachinsky also ask bonus question for... I was... Go ahead. Can I... Yeah, please. For young kids, the PD Eastman classic Go Dog Go, which is about a self-organizing party, which even has self-organizing traffic rules as all the different dogs are going to the thing. It's a beautiful, beautiful book that ends in a big party, which is kind of what libertarianism is all about. Wear what you want, but choose what you wear, and then climb a tree and have a big party. And only when you go to the party is the guy gonna like your party hat. That's right. Like, after he loosens up, eats a cake. Why did that book make such an impression on all of us? I'm like, that's true. She doesn't care about his opinion about her hat. And that's great. I think she does because she keeps asking. She's also... She doesn't take it off. One of those authors who had to go under PD because it was perceived that if people knew she was a woman, they wouldn't read the book. So she's kind of like Essie Hinton or Jacob Rowling. But her entire corpus is fantastic. And then the other thing for older kids, the Hunger Games and Divergent are just great. So, Joe and Heather have a bonus question for Peter. I'm moving to Florida next month. Joe and Heather, that's a wee. I'm moving to Florida next month, but I only drink whiskey. Why are whiskey cocktails so rare at Florida restaurants? And what should I try instead? Wow, this is a very tailored question. So the reason that whiskey cocktails are rare at Florida restaurants is because Florida has a lot of beach and people like to drink rum at the beach. And so you should probably just drink rum drinks. Many of them will not be very good. But if you want to drink a Florida-specific local cocktail, go to the Panhandle, pretty much anywhere between Pensacola and Panama City. And go to pretty much any beachy seafood shack place that is like at least pretty close to the water. And order a drink called a Bushwacker. It is like a crazy ice cream, coffee, ridiculous, gross, oversweet, original to the area cocktail. And there's a hilarious backstory about the different bars and bartenders who all claim credit for having invented it. I worked at a seafood restaurant in Destin, Florida for many summers while I was in college. And we served a house version of this that I won't tell you the name, but it was ever so slightly modified. Why won't you tell us the name? Because it would reveal a few things that we don't need to bring into this podcast. But if you ever, if you write to me and I'll tell you, or come up and find me at an event, but strongly recommend the Bushwacker, not necessarily because it's good, but because it's so fantastically terrible. Let's continue our round of individual questions here at the Reason Webathon, where we invite people to donate to us. Go to Reason.com, donate. This is for Nick from Hank Meyer, Oklahoma City. How did it feel to make John Cleese laugh? I'm jealous. Oh, I mean, he's a great performer and he was just being generous. But it was great to talk to John Cleese. Who was, you know, certainly bucket list responsible for a ton of stuff that I just love dearly and obviously millions of people do. It was fun. And his book on creativity is really worth reading. Ian Sutherland asked Catherine, complicated question. I hope you did your homework. Not long ago on the Reason Roundtable, Catherine Mangueward opined that judicial philosophies like originalism and textualism are, I believe she said, always motivated reasoning. Which I took to mean that they're just ways that judges rationalize decisions they make they make on other basis, like politics or personal morality. If so, how does she explain Neil Gorsuch's opinion in Bostock, Bostock versus Clayton County, holding that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act applies to discrimination against gay or transgender people and Mick Gert, great name, versus Oklahoma, holding that much of the state of Oklahoma is Native American land. Is Neil Gorsuch a two-spirit First Nations mole on Skotis, obviously? Or is Catherine being too cynical? Feel free to discuss the general libertarian take on matters judicial. And he also says PS, I hope Catherine is recovering well from her injury. Thank you. I am too cynical. That is always a good bet. But I think the thing about these theories is that people say I'm an originalist or whatever and then they believe their own wrap on this, right? So when I say I'm motivated reasoning, I mean that people will either bend these theories for their own purposes, as you correctly guessed here, for either their personal morality, the political ends they would like to see. This is because Supreme Court justices are human and all people are like this. This is nothing special to Supreme Court justices. But that sometimes they will sort of not do the directly expedient thing for the outcome that they want because it is important to them and to their self-image to maintain this idea of themselves as originalists, right? They want to be originalists and they want to get the ends that they want. And usually those things are congruent and sometimes when they are not, they choose their kind of self-identity or their consistency. I don't again think this is like something that is special and bad and different about legal thinkers. I just think people put labels on themselves and then they also have the stuff they want and they sometimes struggle to reconcile those two things. Is there no way out of that kind of epistemological sinkhole? No, I don't think so. And that's why I began my answer with like is Catherine Deucinical maybe? Yeah, I mean I think this is the sort of memorable image of like the elephant and the rider, right? I mean I think we think we're the elephant and we're the rider. Like we are just kind of going along with some sort of very powerful subterranean forces and that the labels and verbiage that we slap on top are very, very often kind of after the factualization. Can I ask just as a follow-up, do you think this is more likely, I would say with legal philosophies, are conservatives bigger bullshitters? Like people like Antonin Scalia are Clarence Thomas than liberals? Nope, I think everyone is basically the same amount of bullshitters because again, I think the bullshit comes not from some special perfidy or from some kind of situational thing, but just because that's how humans are. Follow-up. Wow, we've got more. We've got questions from the actual listeners. This is actually interesting, man. Let the adults talk. Okay. Spicy. Do people who claim not to have a political philosophy are they lying to themselves? Yeah, I mean, yes. Everyone's lying to themselves all the time. I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm just in a dark place here, but yeah. I think people who say, Matt Welsh, I don't like labels. People who say that they are- That's just on shirt collars. Hashtag all the labels. Pragmatists, all that kind of thing. It's the same mechanism. It just is manifesting slightly differently. I do this too. I do not exempt myself from this. I am a libertarian. I have all these conclusions that I've come to because I'm super consistent, great libertarian. Or am I? I don't know. But I do think it's particularly on display in Supreme Court proceedings because they have to write down their reasons, right? I mean, it's somewhat unique in our political process, unless you're Justin Amash on Facebook, to have a straightforward explanation about why I did the thing I did that matters to millions of Americans. And Supreme Court justices have to do that. And so, it's a bit easier to see the ways in which they are reaching, twisting, or perverting their stated principles. Pop it. Pull it. Spin it. Pop it. This one's kind of for me. From Leslie, no question. Just many thanks for the great weekly podcast. Gang, nothing lights up my Mondays, like giggling at Catherine's size or expressions of exasperations at Peter's asinine remarks or puns during the pod. Keep it up. And please consider segment titles, Matt. I will consider them and reject them because I want you to look forward to when Peter is filling in and hosting. It's an exciter. People love them and it's great. And it's a trademark thing for Peter. So, but thank you for the nice words about the podcast. Another one for Suderman from Brandon says, For Peter, you wrote an excellent 2019 magazine article about Elizabeth Warren and the history of her ideas. My question is on the extent to which these ideas are gaining acceptance in federal state politics and popular media, besides Warren herself. And he puts an asterisk on the E on Warren. I'm not really sure why that's happening. Have you identified, maybe he's trying to avoid being tracked. Have you identified any other individuals or organizations to have become leading proponents of Warrenism since your 2019 article was published? So, I think Elizabeth Warren's ideas have infiltrated the Joe Biden administration in some pretty obvious ways. And I'll just pick one here, which is antitrust. Last year, Joe Biden issued some sort of presidential order saying every agency that has some sort of purview over antitrust needs to pursue it much more aggressively, particularly with healthcare and with tech companies. And as a result, the agencies have pursued antitrust cases in the courts much more aggressively than you might have expected otherwise over the past year. Now, the good news is, I think that most of those cases have been rejected by the courts. In fact, the Biden administration has a real record of failure with one recent exception that's kind of notable and interesting, which is that they did succeed in blocking two of the big publishing houses that published like nonfiction books and fiction books, right, sort of just kind of the mega publishers. They did succeed in prohibiting them from merging. And what's really interesting is you can't see the court's order on this because there's a bunch of kind of protected information. But you can see the argument that the Biden administration made and you can see their star witness who was Stephen King. And what Stephen King came and said was, well, you know, if these companies merge, then the advances for authors are going to be lower. And so what the Biden administration ended up doing in pursuing Elizabeth Warren's or a Warrenite view of antitrust is protecting bigger advances for a guy like Stephen King who when he was, when this ruling came down, he had his most recent novel was something like number five or number six on the best seller list. This guy is obviously, you know, like Stephen King is doing fine. And his argument was, you know, if we have only one company to negotiate with, then we can't play them off of each other for bigger advances. And so that's kind of the place where they have succeeded. I would also say that the antitrust ideas that Warren has espoused have found their ways, their way into conservative circles as well, in some cases in some worrying ways just this week, there was, I think, a pretty bad piece by a conservative writer in a conservative publication arguing that people on the right, that Republicans and conservatives should consider supporting antitrust action against Microsoft in its acquisition of a big video game company that publishes a game that you may have heard of, Call of Duty. So this is really funny for a bunch of reasons. One is that the main reason why Microsoft should be prohibited from doing this is, well, then they might make Call of Duty a platform exclusive, which basically means that you can only play it on the Microsoft platform, which is Xbox. As if Sony doesn't own a dozen plus very big studios that are devoted entirely to making big budget platform exclusives, including one of the best selling games of this year, God of War II, their competitor does this all the time. And so it's just an argument that doesn't really make any sense. It's also very funny that the author of this piece decided that this was somehow or another about woke corporations engaged in lefty, woke. Call of Duty is the most military fetishistic game in history to the point where every year when a new edition comes out, lefty writers for video game sites are just like, this game is so right wing. We hate it. There was the second, one of the most popular additions of this game, like when you die, you'd get Dick Cheney quotes would just like pop on your screen. A couple of years ago, the main story mission was like, hey, player, it's the 1980s. Your job is to do war crimes for Ronald Reagan. And there's a whole scene where Ronald Reagan was just like, good job, boys. And you'd go off and kill a bunch of, I don't know, San Anistas or something. This is not woke nonsense. This is just a company that wants a big game for their platform, just like big platforms always want big games. And there's nothing, there's nothing in particularly nefarious about it. All right. Reminder, lighting around everything here. This one comes from beloved listener, Andy Jabour, who every time we post a roundtable podcast, does a really great little Twitter summary of it, it makes it sound even more interesting than it already is. Thank you, Andy, for all of that. And knowing that we would have to read this question, ask the following, thank you for tolerating my incessant Twitter comments, threads, and then the audacity of professional outreach today. I'm reaching out to ask you to weigh in on an important date that my youngest son, 18, and I are having. He is firmly convinced that those of us who eat raw cookie dough and who love it in our ice cream and protein bars are clearly of lower intellect. I have been an avid cookie dough eater since I was 15 and developed the world's greatest Sunday while an employee of my Okan Virginia-friendly ice cream store, your take, raw cookie dough and cookie dough flavoring, fantastic gift from heavens, the heavens, or are those who delight in it showing a clear sign of poor brain functioning? Matt, what is cookie dough standing in for here? It's obviously a metaphor. This is just a question about cookie dough. I don't want to go to a Sopranos episode, but I don't know. I don't think he's talking about cookie dough. I don't know what that means. Okay. But obviously, yes, cookie dough, the raw or the better. Wow. Okay. Catherine, can you help us? Probably not. But I am team eat the raw cookie dough. I am not team cookie dough in ice cream. I think that's the correct view because it gets too hard and then that's not delicious. I will say that this is a great example of the market providing because you can purchase cookie dough that is raw, that is made to be safe to eat. So if you, like so many fools, heed CDC warnings and don't want to eat your raw cookie dough because you are scared of various pathogens, the good people at Nestle, I think, have produced pre-made cookie dough that you can eat right out of the bin. If that is not a case for capitalism, I don't know what is. Yeah, but if there's no salmonella risk, then it's not as enjoyable. You're in it for the thrill. It's just food. Yeah. Cookie dough is wonderful. It's not great as an ingredient. And I would just say to Andy, we don't tolerate those threads. We celebrate them. That's right. I would like to try this Friendly's concoction. I was a big Virginia Friendly's girl in my childhood. So I'm team Friendly's. Are you going to defend the hamburgers on toast? I'm not. I'm in it for the fribble. Yeah, the fribble was pretty delicious. And that's not a word. For some reason, my father would go insane if we were like, can I get a fribble? Like I won't get anything else. And he just couldn't stand the fribble. In Santa Barbara, California, we had a frimple at a frimple's restaurant, which is one of the most incredible. Hey, guys, give us money to support. Give us money to support our podcast and our investigative journalism. Yes, Mike. Can I also point out Andy Gervour also sent a couple of cups around. That's true. Catherine is using one. And Andy Gervour crafted mug. Oh, that's very nice. Yeah. We do have one, too. Joseph Hinshaw asks if Twitter dies, where will the Reason Rat live, Catherine? I guess the Reason Rat will go to Mastodon. I don't know. The Reason Rat is. Is it going to be on the journalism instance of Mastodon? Elizabeth Nolan-Brown wrote a very handy Thanksgiving weekend explainer about how to pop over to the latest Twitter competitor. But also, the Reason Rat is unofficial. This is not a sanctioned Reason product. We certainly don't have any rats in this office. And we definitely don't have any rats in this office or know who writes that account. So who can say what would happen with that? The Reason Rat's going to live where it's always lived in our coffee machine. I was going to say. Or in the hearts of every sideburned, martial delinquent, juvenile delinquent. Twitter's not going anywhere, people. Yes. And it's certainly not going to Mastodon. Kevin writes, a two-part question, first part, of all the what are we consuming recommendations mentioned at the end of every podcast? What has been everyone's favorite from the past year? Suderman? I don't know. Andorra is really great. It's on my mind. It's so. Star Wars Andorra is just wonderful. It's so good and it's so satisfying to see Star Wars done right after all of these years. There's probably one that I like better. I don't know. But Star Wars Andorra is certainly what's on my mind. Nick? All of them. Yeah. This is why I'm asking for questions in advance. And we're giving them twice. There's a Google document that Hunts provided. And then there's a follow-up email. I didn't know we're answering all of them or what, not because you're Mr. Curator. My favorite is your least favorite, which is when Suderman and I converge on a recommendation and then just talk about it for a really, really long time while you guys take a little nap. So when there's a Neil Stevenson book that comes out, and we got to talk about that for a long time. Or occasionally a new contemporary lady novel. Sometimes we converge on the same lady novel, and I do enjoy that as well. You're Sally Rooney's, et cetera. You're Tana French's. And here is a question that may be, Nick Willow. Did you go, man? Actually, no. What is your answer? No, I wanted to not answer to provoke that response because that's what the kids like to pay us for. What free minds and free markets moment over the past year has given you hope for the future, Nick? All of them. Oh, my God. Now, you know what, actually, for me, it's the protests in China and Iran. Because these are people who are doing stuff at real physical risk. And they are saying, no, enough already. And I love we have a video out recently. I think I've mentioned it in a couple places of the Human Rights Foundation recent Oslo Freedom Forum meeting in New York. But the founder of that group, Thor Halverson, at some point talks about how in countries that have these protests, at some point, the people aiming the guns say, fuck it, I'm not doing it anymore. And the Iranian protests, the Chinese protests, and there's lots else in Cuba, in Venezuela, elsewhere, that is incredibly inspiring. And God, I hope that they get what they need. That is exactly my same answer. My answer, the previous question is the, because I specialize in consuming products 50 years after they've been done, was probably the Zombies Odyssey and Oracle record, which I'd never listened to in its entirety. The Skibiria, it's a perennial. Catherine, what free minds and free markets moment of the past year? I mean, I think I'm contractually obliged here to say rockets. There have been so many rocket launches. It's been really delightful, including, of course, the big Artemis launch that just happened. It was the SLS, which is my least favorite rocket, but I'm still happy that it was because it was produced by a bloated, horrific, expensive government process and will probably never be used again after this because it'll just be replaced with a SpaceX rocket if anybody has any sense. And increasingly, the people making these decisions do. So I'm hopeful about that. But rocket launches, just rocket launches every Tuesday, just all the time. We're just hanging out and it's like, oh, a rocket launch. Love that. Absolutely delightful. I know that I am a cartoon of myself, but I nonetheless sincerely feel welling up in my heart of free market joy every time a rocket that someone built for money takes off successfully. Peter, I have somewhat mixed feelings about this, but midterm losses for Trumpy Republican election-denying candidates. Fair enough. This one comes from beloved listener, Starchild. One of the great joys of being the editor in Chief of Ries Magazine is the annual Starchild telephone call. I don't know if that's still a tradition, but I always enjoyed it back when I was doing that. There's been much concerned talk lately about the supposedly resurgent appeal of authoritarianism. I think this has been overstated and that most of the world's people continue to want freedom and democracy. But to the extent that there's a grain of truth in it, I think it's occurring in part because media outlets have been failing to distinguish between relatively free and unfree countries and to call things what they are. Dictators like Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman are called by respectable titles like President and Prince and commentators refer to things by the propagandistic titles bestowed on them by autocrats like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the totalitarian slave state of North Korea would be more apt, or the People's Liberation Army more like the regime's oppression army without even a nod and a wink. What can be done to get independent non-state media outlets in the world's freer countries to stop undermining democracy by euphemizing great work tyranny and legitimizing tyrants by referring to them in the same manner as democratically elected leaders who have at least some marginal claim to legitimacy. Catherine, do you have an answer to that question? Yeah, I understand that people want to pursue this like renaming of things strategy. I get it because words matter and the words that people use like shape their thinking. At the same time, I would always rather say President Putin is an authoritarian douchebag who should be deposed and not mess around with the terminology because the other thing that language is for is clearly communicating who and what we're talking about. And so it's fine in my mind to use agreed upon terms. This is why I also use the terms left and right even though they are deeply flawed and liberal and conservative even though they mean different things to different people. So I think it's legit to debate these things but in the end I'm just going to call them public schools and then say that they're bad. I'm not going to call them government schools. My answer to that is to hopefully be consistent about always saying red China because that's how we win. And yeah, it's difficult to do. Calling things by the proper names is a very potent and time-honored tactic by dissidents to authoritarian regimes. Can I go orthogonal to the question and just talk about one of the other things that we're talking about, truth telling, we are so phenomenally free right now. Like certainly in most of the Western world, certainly in America, you can live your life exactly the way you want without changing anything. It doesn't mean things shouldn't be made even easier but I wish we would stop talking about like the current day as if we are on the precipice of Armageddon and all of this kind of stuff. And I'm thinking about this particularly if you're into like culture, if you're into movies and books and other forms of creative expression. It's just so fucking great right now. And you can choose to be who you are and live that way and have a wonderful productive life. And I think libertarians first and foremost need to get back to that recognition that we have won in so many profound ways and yet we're grousing as if it's 1971 all over again. I don't know if you want to add to that, Peter. If not, we can move on. I would just say that to me the mark of an authoritarian regime is that they imprison or murder journalists. And one of the things that we take for granted and that we should take for granted in a lot of ways while also defending and protecting, but we should just like rest easy in the fact that here in the United States, no one worries about going to jail because you say this president, this senator, this state legislator sucks. This person just sucks. I hate everything about them. You can just say that. You can say it all day long. You can make a profession of saying that. And that's something that, again, it's so easy here. And it's not in China. And if you look at the reports coming out of China right now, one of the things that really stands out is that they are putting journalists in jail and they are making it extremely difficult for Western journalists to report on what's actually going on. Philip asks, speaking of Catherine's left and right paradigm, I'd like to get the roundtables to share some thoughts on right libertarianism versus left libertarianism. Reason seems to lean toward the former. We lean toward right libertarianism, everyone. While the free markets part of the slogan often seeming to get taken to the extreme of, with the extreme of private companies should be able to do whatever they want, period. Though I have seen reason occasionally published and compliment left libertarians on certain issues. But if it's bad for elected state power to be unfettered, isn't it also bad for unelected corporate power to be unfettered? Surely the monopoly on violence isn't the only thing we should care about when defining freedom. I am a diehard capitalist, but I'm very tired of feeling like important cultural questions are being decided in institutional boardrooms rather than by the demos and right libertarianism's apparent solution of just start your own Google seems far less serious than a left libertarian's solution of pass a law that says you can't fire your database engineer for things like refusing to affirm that there are 57 genders. Catherine, I think the overall tilt of reason has been called into question. But first, I want to know how many genders are there? Not answering that question. An infinite number, Peter. I, unsurprisingly, would take issue with the question and say we're not right libertarian or left libertarian. We're just libertarian. We're just that. That's the thing we are. There are some people who find more frequent common cause with the right and some people who find more frequent common cause with the left. But for instance, a huge part of what we do is reporting on criminal justice reform. That is very clearly a left identified issue. We have more staffers on that beat than any other. And, you know, so that is I think just one example of a place where we lean that way. I am of the opinion that we should unfetter our corporations. I think the last week has been a very interesting case study, though, in how sometimes what looks like bad corporate decision making when you dig down turns out to be government pressure. And I'm thinking here about the supposedly soon to be revealed Twitter files, which will tell us whether or not the White House is, in fact, pressuring companies to take down what they perceive to be miss or disinformation about elections, COVID, and much more. I think it is very, very often the case. And, you know, this could be motivated reasoning, but I think it's very often the case that when you look hard enough at what looks like a bad corporate decision that restricts free speech, especially somewhere in there is the poison of the state. Somewhere in there is fear. About repercussions. Somewhere in there is pressure, formal or informal. Somewhere in there is a law that looms over an entire industry. Not always. Sometimes corporations just do crappy stuff. That's absolutely true. Just like individuals do crappy stuff all the time. I think that stuff should always be legal. But I want to eternally be casting a suspicious eye on what the guys with the guns are doing when you see something that seems systemically bad. Can I speak up for the reader's premise, which I think is accurate or is worth thinking about, which is to recognize and run with the idea that government is not the only source of meaningful power in people's lives. And this, I think, is partly a distinction between a classical liberal libertarian tradition and a more anarchistic one. But, you know, one of the great achievements and modes of progress was liberals, classical liberals and libertarians, attacking the way that churches and religion regimented people's lives. And they didn't say religion should be made illegal. They didn't say that there should be a law against it or anything, but explaining how religion oftentimes worked to stultify people and repress them and suppress them through their own, you know, mind apparatus, that's like a great way of thinking about power and all of that kind of stuff. It's also true with corporate power. The state is not the only place where power is exercised. And it doesn't mean that you respond to it in the same way you would respond to state power because the state wields a different type of power. But I think it's absolutely essential to the libertarian project that we look at where power is coming from and how it is composed and how to critique it and how to give people more forms of exit and choice in the power that they live under, both literal and figurative. Aureliano writes a question, and we had a few like this, and we're not going to be able to get to everyone's questions. I now realize in minutes 75, that's funny. Dear Roundtable panelists, there's a lot of discussion about what this election means for MAGA, wokeism, Trump, DeSantis, arithmetic skills in Arizona, et cetera. But one thing it does confirm is that like generalissimo Francisco Franco, the libertarian party is still dead. Libertarianism is alive and healthy in many Americans, but the existence of the LP is as confusing as the platypus. Do you honestly think the LP is a functional organization? Does it have any influence on the US domestic and foreign policy? I thought political parties exist to win elections. Does the LP deserve any time or attention from the libertarians in the country? I'll take first crack at not answering the question, which is to say that even in the midterms that libertarian party is the biggest third party, it's the tallest dwarf in America still. So if that is a meaningful thing in and of itself, then the answer is there's still some use to having a identifiable third block of politics in this country. Libertarian parties the first since the 19th century to come into third place in three consecutive presidential elections. I don't know. I don't think I would take a bet right now that there's going to be a fourth, given all the internal dissension of the LP and the upset over the Mises Caucus takeover and some of the social media behavior and other types of behavior among some of the people associated with the Mises Caucus. Who knows? We'll see. There's certainly a lot more people who vote libertarian than have any idea what the Libertarian party is all about, which is kind of interesting. And you can eat a bag of Richards, Mr. Let's ask Catherine 17 questions about anachronism. We will. I found them interesting. Yeah, that makes one of them. All right. John L. asks, ideal 2024 perspective, Libertarian perspective, who are your ideal 2024 candidates, presidential candidates for the big three parties? For example, Ron DeSantis, Rand Paul, Republican, Jared Polas, Tulsi, Gabbard, Democrat. Got a problem with that one. Justin Amash, Mike Lee, Libertarian, says the avid commute listener, John L. Lightning round, Nick. I would love to see Justin Amash run for president. Yeah. In 2024, I'm really excited about avatar three. Death, Catherine. Like that question, as asked, reminds me how very, very much of a none of the above person I am. Like I won't be voting. I don't think any of those people deserve my vote. I don't think any of those people deserve your votes. If you are a reason round table listener, in most cases, I love me some Justin Amash, even though he broke my knee. And, you know, I'd be delighted to see him. That was a violation of the non-aggression principle. It was. It was. I was listening to his podcast when I fell off my e-scooter, for those of you who are not up to date. But mostly, no, it's all bad. They're all bad. I don't want it. No, thank you. We're not going to get our ideal in 2024. Leonard Goodnight, beloved listener. Leonard Goodnight. Hello, good people and also Nick. Our political system isn't perfect, and we're trying to make it better. Right between the lines, Leonard. But that said, where do we look for an alternative? Ignoring issues of technology, modern dentistry, air conditioning, hair dye, air travel, et cetera. What modern or historical government system would you? Governmental system would you prefer to live under? And why? The Roman Empire. Icelandic Commonwealth. Hasmonean Kingdom. Sengoku Jidai, Japan. I'm going to do a racism here somewhere. The Iroquois Confederacy. Hunter Gatherer Tribe asks Leonard. Good night, Nick. You've been mentioned. Go. I like the system we're under now. Yeah. That's what I wanted to hear. That's why we went to you. Could be a little bit better, but it's pretty good. It's not a webathon unless we talk about medieval Iceland. So I appreciate that Lenny has brought that in for us. But it is a webathon. It is. Oh, that's a great point, Peter. It's a webathon. If people would like to donate, they could do that at reason.com slash donate. Well done. Mike in La Fonte City. Is that how you pronounce it here? Is it possible to play Pseudermen at 1.5 times during podcasts to make time for the other roundtakers to get equal time in the pod? Love the Pseudermen, but it's only for everything. If you've thought about it, it's just like porn. If you've thought about it, there's a version of it out there, but do it yourself. The rule 34 of the reason roundtable. God help us all. Yeah, we love all Peters. Rex asks two questions. I'll get to the first one because it's above the second one, which I just found that remind me I have a question from Rex. Lightning round, Matt, please. Who says hello comrades, my name is Rex. I'm a Christian libertarian and I'm curious about your thoughts on my subgroup of subgroup of the population. My parents who are ultra conservative and pretty heavy in the Donald Trump camp seem to think that I have gone woke liberal liberal even have gone so far as to call me a communist on topics such as immigration and even my middle of the road stands on abortion. My leftist atheist friends, however, make me feel like I'm a Randianite that has no concern for my fellow man. What is the panel's perspective on Christian libertarianism? And specifically, do you see them as analogous or contradictory worldviews? Love you guys, even you, Nick. More of this. Why don't I read these first? That's my question. But to be fair, Nick did spend a significant percentage of a previous answer being like, smash the church. So I feel like that's a fair framing. No, but I love Christian libertarians. I love libertarians. And if they're Christian libertarians, they're coming out of the Roger Williams tradition of live and let live and of creating a fully secular government that does not warp religion. I do think there is an increasing trend of treating anyone who descends at all from either a left or right orthodoxy as if they automatically join the other side. And I think we've seen that. We have a lot of freelancers and contributors for a reason who sometimes just agree with us on one topic or have something to say, especially about, for instance, cancel culture. They write for us and then people say, ah, I see, you are Bill Buckley. And it's like, no, those aren't the only two choices. Like you don't have to be left or right. I agree that there is this deep, deep desire to force people into one of those boxes. And if they don't, it makes everyone very uncomfortable. I say, go out there and make everyone uncomfortable. Love that for you. And Stephanie Slade. I grew up in an even pretty steeped and evangelical conservative culture in the Florida Panhandle, which is functionally Southern Alabama, in terms of culture. In the 1990s, I went for a couple of years to an evangelical Christian school of the sort that the teachers pray at the beginning of class and chapel is mandatory. I did not graduate from there, but many of my closest, oldest friends are people who I met there. And a lot of them are very committed Christians and many of them are, I would say, on the libertarian spectrum. In that they like to shoot guns a lot. In that they like to shoot guns a lot and they think the government isn't very good at a lot of stuff. And they're like, it's totally compatible. And I think that one of the great things about libertarianism is that it recognizes that there are just different ways of living life and have sort of organizing yourself and your belief structures. And some of those can be ways that might seem restrictive to other people and to outsiders. And that's okay as long as you're not demanding that other people who don't want to follow that restrictive way of living as long as you're not saying, hey, that's the policy now and we're going to set it at the state or the federal level and we're going to send people with guns to your house if you don't do that. And that to me is sort of one of the core ideas of libertarianism is you get to decide that and you get to join with other people who might believe something that other people think is weird. All right, we'll get to our final question now on the Webathon. Thank you for donating, watching, listening, reason.com slash donate. That's how you do more of it. This one, and again, this is a lightning round, comes from Nicholas Durpech. So as I have a question, which I feel Peter Suderman might be the best to answer for at 1.0 speed, the concept and the description about how a fully market-oriented health system would work sounds really good in theory and people from libertarian organizations like Reason and Cato make a good case for it. However, how is it possible, if it is at all, to establish such kind of a system when a society already has a public or socialized system, whether an explicitly socialized one like in Europe or indirectly socialized like the American one, particularly what do you do with the people who already have such big generous entitlements, in the case of the U.S. especially senior citizens who are such a big fiscal burden for the rest of the young people, it's a harsh language, and wouldn't be kind of unfair for the young ones not to have the right to such entitlements after having paid the taxes to fund Medicare, which examples are there, if any, of countries that successfully transitioned from a socialized public insurance and entitlement system to one based on out-of-pocket payments, self-reliance on savings, and private insurance, lightning round go? There's no sort of quick answer here, but the short version is it's not going to happen overnight. There's not going to be a law that you pass that says, well, we're not doing socialized healthcare anymore in a country that has been doing socialized healthcare for 40 years. Instead, what's going to happen is in some ways you can think about it like what's happened in New York with taxis and Uber. New York didn't cancel taxis, it's just that everybody started writing Uber instead, and in fact this is already happening in a bunch of countries that have big government single-payer systems where for a long time, even through the 1990s, they were like essentially everyone was using the government system, and over the past 20 or 30 years, you've seen a lot more people migrate into private care for at least some, if not all of their care. That's how it's going to happen is that people are going to make the choice to move into a private system because those options are going to become available to them, and so I would say that if you are looking for legislative solutions, don't think about the big picture thing that you can do to end this system. I mean, you should think about that. But like the actual, the practical way that you are going to move out of a socialist system or a quasi-socialist system is people is that you are going to give people private options and they are going to be more attractive. Amen. Thank you for listening and watching. The reason's Webathon, Roundtable extra bonus friend. Catherine, do you want to send them off with one final benediction of prayer? What did we learn today? What did we learn today? We learned that your donations can support all of whatever this just was. I don't know. It seems worthy of support. Reason produces a lot of stuff. The Roundtable might be what you came for, but we also make videos. We send you newsletters. We have other podcasts. We have a whole magazine that we send in the mail. And ofcoursereason.com. It takes a lot of money to make all that stuff and sometimes it also takes a lot of money for lawyers to make that stuff. Sometimes it also takes a lot of money for a plane ticket to make that stuff. Sometimes it also takes a lot of money for CJ Cermella to file 5,000 FOIA requests. And your donations for this Webathon are a big chunk of what pays for that. So thank you. If you already donated, I hope we got to your question. And if you haven't yet, now is the perfect moment to close this nightmare escape and give us some money. Reason.com slash donate. Get by friends. See you next Monday.