Is Northwestern University professor Andrew Koppelman and hes also an author this his eighth book burning down the house how libertarian philosophy was corrupted by delusion and greed. Mr. Koppelman you opened this book in south tennessee. What happened . What happened was that the county, albany county, decided to essentially privatize its fire so that each individual homeowner would pay a fee for Fire Protection and. One of the homeowners, an old man whod, been paying his fee for years, forgot one year and his house fire and the Fire Department came to protect his neighbors but watched his house burn down because. He hadnt paid his fee and it was generally understood at the time. This was early in the Obama Administration and that judging what the Fire Department did here was basically the same argument that people were having about obamacare is there a collective obligation taken to protect people from undeserved and preventable misfortunes . I if fire in your house is one and your disease is another and so i wrote a book about the obamacare litigation that followed. And i concluded after learning about it that the attack on obamacare was driven by philosophy called libertarianism, which holds that everybody on their own. And the only legitimate function of the state is to protect peoples persons and property from violence. And thats it. And so i wrote that book. I was called the tough luck constitution and the on health care reform. And after finished it, i just had more thoughts about libertarian ism because i discovered when i was writing book that nobody had written good account of libertarianism as a political philosophy. And thats it is its basically an account of what the state ought to do. And it has essentially two components. One, which i think is uncontroversial in the united or although controversial elsewhere, is that people should be free to live their lives as they like. This is something that most americans there are other places where people dont it the governments of russia and china and iran dont believe it. But whats distinctive about liberty arianism is the claim that the to achieve that is to the power of the state to make American Government a lot smaller. And thats a mistake. Its just a bad strategy for making people genuinely free. People arent genuinely free if they are vulnerable to undeserved disease, death, if there arent roads, bridges, things that unless the government can do lots of things, other than prevent Rights Violations. Well, lets back to that house fire in south tennessee. Youre law professor. Argue in favor of what the Fire Department didnt do do. Whats the argument for the Fire Department back . Its that if you want services have to pay for them. If you dont pay your fee, then you to accept the consequences of not paying your fee. And this was the argument that was made at the time by commentators like glenn beck and Jonah Goldberg that this is appropriate, what the Fire Department did, because itll give people incentives to, do the right thing, and pay the full what they consume. You write in your book, burning the house, that libertarianism is most persuasive when it the commitments of the left. What is that . So one of the commitments certainly of early libertarianism, the libertarian ism that you find in Friedrich Hayek, who really begins the modern movement by writing the road to serfdom in 1944, he that centralized government control socialism, which was quite popular the 1930s not just in russia and, in germany, but in the United States and as well that it was inevitably going to be counterproductive and wasteful. And if you want to raise the standard of living of the poorest people, allowing markets to operate without, interference is the best strategy for accomplishing that. And thats the core concern of the left is protecting people on the bottom from undeserved preeminently poverty. But i you know, interference with the liberty of minorities is another concern. And hayek thought that free markets are a good way to accomplish that. And hayek out to be right. But set the standard of living of the whole human race has risen pretty dramatically since 1870, when about percent of the human race was living at about 2 a day. Poverty. Today its less than 10 . Redistribution didnt do that. Markets did that. But you can have markets and still have pretty aggressive regulation to deal third Party Effects like pollution and redistribution for people who just havent got anything to sell on market, people who are old, people who are sick people who havent got an education, people who are doing low prestige jobs. They were sitting in this hallway that somebody cleaned last night. The person who cleaned this hallway night deserves decent insurance. Whether or not their wage it. So mr. , copperman, do you consider yourself in any way shape or form a highiq libertarian . I think that hayek is right a lot of things. One of the things that i discovered when i was writing the health care book is that i agreed with hayek about more than. I expected and thought relevant to the obamacare debate of the things i talk about in the book is, that hayek proposed something very much like obamacare in 1960 and his book, the constant of liberty, as an alternative to the British National health service, where all of the doctors are on a government payroll. He thought that you should just make people buy health and government should subsidize it and require insurers to cover anybody however sick they are. And i just described obamacare thats the basic outlines of the program that will you write quite a bit in here about ayn rand, who is very wellknown for libertarians. How do you feel about. Well, what its so ayn rand and other quite doctrinaire libertarians like her are among other things political philosophers. They offer a political philosophy, the middle of the minimal state. They try to support it with argument. Thats what i do, which i dont think that other books about libertarianism do, is look at her arguments, take her seriously. A political philosopher. Here is a starting point. Here is how she gets to her conclusion. Are the arguments good arguments or are they bad arguments . Now, it turns out taking ayn rand seriously as a political philosophy her is not a nice thing to do to her because shes a terrible political philosopher in the arguments are really bad, but youve got to take her seriously. Look at the arguments in order to figure out that thats the case. You write, john galt is a sell. Yes. So i speak in the title corruption and greed. Libertarianism really attracts two different kinds of people. They are idealists who honestly believe on the basis of bad philosophic arguments that a minimal state, the way to achieve freedom. The other part, the coalition is Business People who would like to be able to hurt other people without being bothered by the police. And i think preeminently the fossil fuel industry which has been using libertarian rhetoric to resist any effort by government to address the impending threat, climate change, bringing about the weather catastrophes that we are experiencing right now as i am this. And so to the extent that libertarians embrace this thinking that they are promoting freedom, they are really useful idiots manipulated by somebody else sort of like the leftists in the 1930s who opposed racism and as a consequence embraced stalin. So, mr. Koppelman, take it that you consider yourself to be a liberal or a progressive generally, politically. Why are you here at freedomfest, the Libertarian Convention . Because i want to engage with people who believe bad arguments. I in the lie. You dont go to persuade people who already agree with you and people who come to freedom fest generally are not manipulative, reprehensible people. They are generally idealists. They are generally ordinary citizens who believe this for reasons on the basis of certain arguments, which i think are on bad arguments. So im trying to persuade them to other people that come into your book. Richard epstein well, well see. Richard epstein, a law professor at, the New York University and the university of chicago. Epstein has an argument for many, has made arguments for a drastically curtailed state not so much on basis of arguments of abstract, but on the basis very optimistic predictions about what an unregulated market will produce. So, for example, with to health care he wants there to be no government provision of health because he thinks that private will take care of it. I think and you know this is an unprovable disagreement that the private providing health care for, all the people who cant afford it is way beyond the means of private charity. It is, you know, even if you got rid of all of the waste and inefficiency that there is, we are talking about some approaching 10 of the us economy. So we have a disagreement as of prediction about that. There are other of hayek who bring comparable levels of optimism to and use that to support their libertarian as a Milton Friedman who i talk about in the book is another murray rothbard. Murray rothbard is for the most important political philosopher who you never heard of. He was active the Libertarian Movement really from the 1950s through the eighties. He was the mentor to Randy Barnett who brought the obamacare challenge to robert nosek the best the libertarian political philosopher. And he was the one who persuaded charles koch to help found the libertarian and to found the cato institute. And rothbard was really an he was so opposed to any kind of state power that he thought that its illegitimate for the state to exist at all. The taxes and is theft and based this in part on terrible philosophical about the wrongness having any kind of state power at all and in part on extremely optimistic arguments about would happen if as is inevitable the case with anarchy. You have multiple of armed power within same geographical area. Weve had experience with this there cold warlords. It is not good living them Andrew Koppelman kind of begin with hayek in the thirties, but wasnt werent there some versions of it that were earlier on. Oh yeah, yeah. Well so libertarianism to the extent that those ideas are popular in the 19th century, they are not against socialism so much as against slavery. And so it has a completely different context meaning in the 19th century and the modern Libertarian Movement. Arises as opposition to the new deal and much larger structure of regulation and redistribution that we have had since the new deal. And that really begins with hayek, the road to serfdom in 1944. So thats the modern movement that im covering in book. And it really in United States, it begins with a category mistake because when hayek is argued against centralized state control and he really is pushing back on a big intellectual current in the 1930s, the worlds most admired economic managers are stalin and adolf hitler, because they are the ones whove turned their economies around while the United States and france and britain are still in the depression. So hayek is arguing against centralized control and there are businesspeople whove been opposed. Roosevelt in the new deal really have any intellectual material to push back with. And so they grab hold of hayeks book like a drowning man, grabbing a plank and say, you know, this is it, this is the argument against the new deal. But theres a category mistake of the american big is not stalin or hitler or even the British Labor party. It is free market capitalism with regulation and redistribution. And you can have quite a lot of redistribution and still have free market capitalism. Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the United States and it has a much bigger welfare state. Well, the United States i dont know if we need to make this distinction. Political conservatives also claim hayek, as do libertarians. Well, thats because some political conservatives are also opposed to the new deal. Big state. And so to that extent, the extent that they do that, they are the libertarians. Hayek also thinks hes got a conservative streak. He thinks existing institutions embody some latent wisdom that we ought to respect and that a conservative. But to be the most influential ideas of hayek are against states. But again, you know if youre opposed in the big american state the biggest american state project in the 1950s is the interstate highway system, which not a minimal state. The interstate highway system does not protect you against force and fraud. It just vastly facilitates the us economy and its the brainchild of dwight eisenhower. If you are so devoted minimal state philosophy that you cant tell the difference between dwight eisenhower, joseph stalin. You need better eyeglass. So how do we get Friedrich Hayek to how you describe libertarianism today . Well, i what i do in the book is i go through a series of political philosophers from, hayek to the present, and i show really a series of mistakes that lead them to the kind of absolutism that you see now. I want to read another quote from your book, mr. Koppelman . Perhaps the most powerful moral basis, libertarianism, is what ill call the common sensical proper story. Whats that story . So the common sensical Properties Story is i had a job i built a business. Heres my pretax income. Its mine. And when government takes away from me, they are taking property. Taxation is robbery. Thats the idea that underlies murray rothbard. I philosophy and libertarianism as a moral philosophy more generally. But the problem that you know i played by the rules by building up what i earned but the rules included Big Government. I earned what i earned in a context where there are roads there, regulatory agencies, there is a redistributive structure provides the Political Support for maintaining capital. And so when im taxed to support those things, i am being taxed to support the very structure made it possible to earn ive earned. So theres just confusion in thinking that i am morally entitled to my pretax income. I could not have produced my pretax if the state wasnt there to make it possible. But some will argue that Big Government and big business are in cahoots to keep out competition. And that is sometimes the the case. That is sometimes the case. The most useful thing that libertarians do is they look for evidence of crony capitalism and they look for evidence of and of sweetheart deals that are stifling competition. And a lot of that happens. But have to do what at retail. Legitimate regulation can be abused and exposing that kind of abuse of legitimate regulation is really the most important and valuable thing that libertarian fans do. Some of the time theyre right but youve got to look at the particulars each case to figure out whether or not youve mentioned corporations as being greedy in our conversation here. But today, theres a thing called capitalism that a lot of libertarians and conservatives would say is not positive or well corporations and corporations any other business theyre there make money and theyre essentially there just in order to get people to invest in businesses without risking their life savings. Thats why there are corporations. Woke capitalism. It stands for a number of different things. To the extent that corporations responsive to some peoples views want to help make the United States more welcoming to transgender people. For example whos a very Welcome Development if support human liberty and you support peoples capacity to live as they like while chant transgender people are people and to the extent that there are social movements to do that, thats quite valuable. But there are other movements on the left that are repressive speech that make it harder to air friendly to capitalism. And my book is in many ways quite friendly to capitalism. And part of my audience is people on the left who capitalism, which i think is a mistake. And to the extent that corporations pander to that, theyre appropriate criticized. But the question of whether corporations are a appropriately taking stands on social issues is another that youve got to consider. At retail it was woke capital ism in 1947 when the brooklyn dodgers recruited jackie robinson. They were a statement. It was terrific. It was valuable. So when corporations make a public statement, youve got to look at the statement, your definition. Libertarianism. Let me read this and tell me what is wrong with this. In a nutshell, government. If it has any purpose, all and many libertarians doubt that it does should be restricted the protection of its citizens persons property against direct vile and theft that claim has big policy implications. Limited government means a small one short of almost all the apparatus we have come to take for granted during the last 60 years. The freedom at which it aims is precisely freedom from government. In a nutshell, is that the liberty and philosophy, in your view, are you absolute deep suspicion government and libertarians are right that government can be a threat to peoples capacity to live as they like. Poverty is threat disease is another threat. The only reason why were able to beat covid is because government was concerned with other things then Rights Violations. The virus doesnt violate anyones rights. Viruses arent with obligations. So a government that can only address Rights Violations couldnt have committed the bill eons of dollars of research that went into coming up with the vaccine and with it and with the astonishing speed it did. Its one of the great accomplishments in human history. So its too narrow a conception of what government should do. Heres the book, burning down the house how philosophy was corrupted by delusion and greed. The author Northwestern University law professor andrew coppins, thanks very much. Appreciate