From Sea to Privatized Sea

Libertarian guru, wisdom-dispenser, and Jonah’s good friend Ron Bailey, science correspondent for Reason magazine, joins ...

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Libertarian guru, wisdom-dispenser, and Jonah’s good friend Ron Bailey, science correspondent for Reason magazine, joins us on The Remnant. Ron guides us through the myriad reasons that the coronavirus pandemic doesn’t justify expanding the government and federal bureaucracies to unprecedented levels, before spending the second half of the podcast enticing Jonah to join him in the strange exotic land of the libertarians. If anyone can pull that off, it’s Ron.


Show Notes:

–Ron’s page at Reason

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  1. Avatar photo
    Mkapnick

    Jonah....in this episode you say you are not prepared to go into a full "Bill Kristol" mode and elect Democrats. In other episodes you have also acknowledged what a disaster it is for the Republican Party to have essentially shed its classical liberal roots (which means neither Party has much use for the constitution or the framework of gov't as originally contemplated). Given as much, I guess I am curious why Bill Kristol is wrong (assuming he believes this I have't checked) that seemingly quickest way to get the Repubs to shed as much of Trumpism as possible and gets back more of its classical liberal roots is for the Repubs to lose and lose and lose. I don't think Kristol wants progressive policies any more than you or I and so one would not want the Dems to have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, but a good political punch in the nose might serve the Repub party well...no? And I guess I take comfort in knowing that if Dems have majorities in the House and Senate with a Biden Presidency, the "majority makers" will come from purple districts or red/purple states which should keep any House or Senate Dem from voting for anything too crazy. I am not saying its full proof, but I have not heard of any other idea that gets the Repubs off the Trump crazy train....

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    CynthiaW

    Worth the time just for the concept of either privatizing or regulating.

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      CynthiaW

      Gracious, you guys do go on and on, like my pastor now that there's no congregation. "And I read this other book, too!"

      95 minutes uphill on the treadmill. I'm going to be so thin!

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    James Spiller

    A very good podcast. One quibble: “Old Whigs” were not libertarians; the utopians/ libertarians were the New Whigs that Burke was distinguishing himself from. If libertarians in the Fox mold understood prescription, they’d be conservatives. I applaud your not being a pawn of a party, but I feel like you might at least defend your own beliefs rather than watching your inheritance get stolen from you.

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    J Carpenter

    I thought the refrigerated (best kind!) morgue trucks in New York came about through a moratorium on funerals. If that weren't the case it would be a much better indication of the seriousness of the problem than "the data." We still don't know enough to use the data for more than back-of-the-envelope calculations and WAGs. Nothing wrong with that--electronic circuit designers avoid designing to spec--unless you pretend to a greater accuracy than you actually have and then base policy decisions on that. Even years from now we'll only have a rough idea of what happened. Examples: the Italian government back-adjusted causes of death (always a weak stat) to come up with 10% of the COVID-19 deaths previously reported; the scarifying Imperial College model assumed 80% of us will get the disease, which is just highly improbable. The error bars on this thing have got to be ridiculous.

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  5. John Shaw, Solomons, MD

    Excellent, as always. It's gratifying to know one is not alone, huddled at the most acute apex angle of today's cultural/political isosceles triangle of opinion. Were it not for the Wills, Williamsons, Goldbergs, Gillespies, and Baileys of the world, I'd feel like #6 held captive in the Village. (Pardon the simile - I've recently been enjoying my VHS cassettes of "The Prisoner".)

    I've enjoyed Ron Bailey's science and technology coverage in Reason for some time. And though I agree with him on accelerating and expanding the COVID testing regime, it's far from a magic bullet (and he'd probably agree). The invaluable, Pulitzer-grade reporting of Jim Geraghty during the last several weeks raises a couple insurmountable problems with testing: The inadequacy of swab testing at home - i.e., one's disinclination to ram a swab up the back of one's nostril - and the snapshot nature of swab or serum testing (Canadian client-to-working girl: "When did you say the doc last visited and tested for STDs at the Mustang Ranch? Two weeks ago, eh?") (Geraghty's May 4th 'Morning Jolt' link: https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/testing-and-masks-can-only-help-so-much/ )

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  6. Emory

    Of course Ron Bailey knows that .8 percent of a million is not 80,000. But he did agree that it was. He misheard Jonah or misspoke or whatever. Please edit this out. Some jerk is going to pick it up and attack him - and Jonah.

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  7. Joe O

    Wish I knew what kind of testing you re referring to. Please explain.

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  8. Joe O

    Wish I knew what kind of testing you re referring to. Please explain

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    1. PM

      I don't know either. Is this like a pregnancy test?

      I was under the impression that actual testing isn't available to all due to inadequate availability. And that it was far from DYI. We have at least a couple of places where you can go and be tested but fortunately I've been spared so far.

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  9. Francisco Hoyos

    Jonah, this was truly another great episode. Also just listened to a conference call with Andrew Roberts hosted by Rich Lowry and I have a couple of ideas for you for a podcast. As I self identify with the Remnant, it occurs to me that one of the missions of the podcast should be on occasion to address long standing grievances members of the Remnant have, whether with damaging ahistorical political myths and fallacies or culinary heresies (i.e. the myth of political tolerance in medieval Muslim Spain, the myth of Neapolitan pizza superiority over Roman pizza), such as you do with half baked ideas not ready for prime time. What is the best email to use to send you these ideas?

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  10. Avatar photo
    Jason Ramin

    Great episode!!! Wish you would dedicate some real discussion to the merits of drug legalization. Obviously people are going to look crazy if you ask them about the maximalist position of airing heroin commercials during children's TV, but there are good responses to that. It's not that everything is going to be peachy, but there are tradeoffs in both directions and the responsible libertarian believes the results of criminalization are worse.

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