The Limits of Libertarianism

A podcast interview of me about, well, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And just about everything else.

I took this selfie at John Wayne Airport in Orange County when flying home from California on December 29, 2021. Did the Duke think about terrible, terrible freedom? I have no idea, but highly recommend his last film, The Shootist, directed by Don Siegel (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Killers, Dirty Harry) and featuring Ron Howard, Jimmy Stewart, and Lauren Bacall. A phenomenal, elegaic film not just about the end of life but the end of a way of life (and the studio system).

As some of you know, I've been thinking a lot lately about the implications of what some people call "superabundance" (Human Progess’s Marian Tupy is working on a book about this) or a "post-scarcity world" in which the basic material concerns for the vast, overwhelming majority of people on the planet (and certainly in the OECD countries) have been met. We live increasingly in a world of almost fully symbolic activity and meaning; we're all existentialists now, our gods are dead, and we must create our own meanings, narratives, traditions, communities and narratives for ourselves. (Go here to read my thread on this.)

This is immensely liberating and represents a triumph that was unthinkable to my parents (born immigrant-poor in the 1920s), much less to thinkers during the Enlightenment. It is also daunting as fuck and forces all of us, ready or not, to live intentionally and thoughtfully. Every bit as much as coffee drinks, existential angst has become a mass, personalized phenomenon. As Stewart Brand put it in The Whole Earth Catalog, "We are as gods and might as well get good at it."

That's the backdrop for this podcast I did with filmmaker Jay Shapiro, a thoughtful and insistent critic of much of what I (and probably you) believe. Jay got me jawing for two hours (!) on subjects related to libertarian ideas of freedom, autonomy, meaning, and much more. In many profound (but always imperfect and transient) ways, we must rebuild our world every morning, like Camus’ Sisyphus. In a contemporary context, too many of us are seeking to do that through politics and ideology—systems ill-equipped to address the sorts of questions we face because they are ultimately about control more than liberation. Over the past 500 years—and certainly over the past 50—politics and ideology have brought us to a place where we are now more free than ever to live our lives how we see fit. But they can’t supply us with answers about what to do now that we can get on with our lives.

I hope you take a listen and let me know your reactions in the comments.