'Some Birds Aren’t Meant to be Caged'
| Jonah Goldberg | Jun 17, 2020 | 17 | 34 |
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| 0:00 | -1:25:41 |
Escaping household chaos, a car-bound Jonah talks prisons with Brown University’s David Skarbek. Bolivian jails and Soviet gulags are just two choices in this long game of Where’d-You-Rather: Incarceration Edition. Skarbek takes us through the highlights of his upcoming book and touches on the delicate subject of policing.
Show Notes:
-Skarbeck’s upcoming book: The Puzzle of Prison Order: Why Life Behind Bars Varies Around the World
-Pirates, Prisoners, and Lepers: Lessons from Life Outside the Law, by Paul and Sarah Robinson
-Caged Heat (There’s more than one of these???)
-German phrase for “Attaining freedom once you reach a city”
-Alex Tabarrok on street safety policy
-Andersonville prisoner of war camp
-Peter Leeson, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates
-ExpressVPN.com/remnant for 3 months free with a year plan
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
| 17 | 34 |
The variety of topics and speaker backgrounds that appear on The Remnant is amazing. I found this podcast fascinating.
Who knew constitutional law and prison gangs overlapped on a Venn diagram?!
Great episode.
I know I harp on certain subjects here, but, you know, but that's the danger when you open comments to subscribers. For a small monthly fee, you have to suffer scrolling past the Integralist position on many of these subjects.
The huge problem when Integralists talk to Libertarians or Classical Liberals is the definition of Freedom and Liberty. Libertarians and Liberals seem to believe that the utmost in Freedom is found in doing what you want. The older definition favored by Catholics is that Freedom is found in fulfilling your created purpose. This is quite clear in certain extreme examples. Jonah's brother, who had a drug addiction problem, did what he wanted, according to the Economic Principle of Revealed Preference, but would not normally be described as being "Free". He was enslaved to his drug addiction.
Jonah often makes the bumper-sticker condemnation of Integralist position of "The State CANNOT Love you". I think there's some truth that the current State DOES NOT love you. It is either Apathetic toward you, in which case it serves the needs of the political class and bureaucracy or it Hates you, which is the contention of many of those who are demonstrating in the streets these days.
Another definition that I think we disagree on: Love. Love is seeking the good in the other and seeking Union with them. (Thomas Acquinas). Without going down the rabbit hole of asking everyone to define love, as some 60s talk show host did, I think this is not the operational definition most use. That said, I want a Government that does in fact seek my good and seeks Union with its people. The alternatives are horrible.
The example of prison guard unions is illustrative. We think these Unions are problematic, but without them, who looks after the interests of the Prison Guards? They have an extremely difficult job that pays poorly, but we expect the highest degree of integrity. Similarly, those in Government who are not motivated by Love in the definition given above have a very difficult job, they have their own interests and, if not addressed, they'll take it out on the people being governed.
I recognize that the devil is in the detail. How do we get to a Government that exercises Love? I don't have a worked out plan, but I still believe it should be the goal. Note that I've quoted here before that Vermeule has come out against coercion, but not against encouraging or nudging people in the direction of the Greater Good.