The Curious Task

Ep. 200: Alex Aragona - 200th Episode Celebration

Sabine interviews our regular host Alex Aragona as they discuss the first 200 episodes of the Curious Task.

Ep. 199: Nathan Goodman - What Does Immigration Have To Do With Climate Change

Alex speaks with Nathan Goodman about the implications of Climate Change for immigration policy and how coercion and polycentricity factor into that conversation.

References: 

- Adapting to Climate Change through Migration: Justus Enninga and Nathan Goodman https://www.thecgo.org/research/adapting-to-climate-change-through-migration/ 

- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Summary for Policy Makers https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/chapter/summary-for-policymakers/#:~:text=Climate%20change%2C%20through%20hazards%2C%20exposure,adapt%20and%20mitigate%20within%20limits 

- Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems: Elinor Ostrom https://www.jstor.org/stable/27871226 

- The case for open immigration Chandran Kukathas https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/237298126.pdf 

 

 

Special Episode 17: Paige MacPherson - What Does School Choice Look Like?

In August of 2022, Alex spoke with Paige MacPherson about school choice - and the lack thereof - in each of Canada's provinces.

Special Episode 16: Peter Jaworski - What Is Libertarianism?

Alex Aragona speaks with Peter Jaworski as he explores his definition of libertarianism, and how different kinds of morality can lead to certain conclusions about libertarian institutions.

Ep. 198: Tony Gill - Why Do We Tip?

Alex speaks with Tony Gill about the curious practice of tipping and why despite all our groaning, it may just be a habit worth defending.

Further Reading (some more of Tony Gill's writings on the subject):

https://www.polisci.washington.edu/news/2019/03/18/tony-gill-tipping

http://journal.apee.org/index.php/2018_Journal_of_Private_Enterprise_Vol_33_No_1_Spring_parte6 

https://www.aier.org/article/in-defense-of-tipping-part-ii-price-discrimination/ 

https://www.econtalk.org/anthony-gill-on-tipping/ 

Ep. 197: Kevin Vallier - What Are The New Religious Threats To Liberalism?

Alex speaks with Kevin Vallier about his new book "All The Kingdoms Of The World", in which he takes a global view of anti-liberal integralist strands in political thought and warns of the consequences of following them toward a rejection of liberal freedom and democracy. 

Episode Notes:

• The conversation focuses primarily on Kevin’s book:
  • https://www.kevinvallier.com/books/all-the-kingdoms-of-the-world-radical-religious-alternatives-liberalism/ 
• Introduction to Catholic Political Integralism: 
  • https://thejosias.com/ 
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integralism 
• Introduction to islamic political anti-liberalism 
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamism 
• “The Confucian Tradition and Politics” Youngmin Kim, Ha-Kyoung Lee and Seongun Park https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.991

Ep. 196: Stefanie Haeffele - Can We Live Better Together?

Alex speaks with Stefanie Haeffele about her recent book Living Better Together, which explores the work of Elinor Ostrom and Viviana Zelizer. 

Episode Notes:

"Living Better Together" by Stefanie Haeffele and Virgil Henry Storr:

https://a.co/d/hJNCxw6 

Viviana Zelizer's homepage at Princeton:

https://sociology.princeton.edu/people/viviana-zelizer 

Elinor Ostrom's bio and short autobiography on the Nobel website:

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2009/ostrom/facts/ 

Nonneutrality of Money in a Social Perspective by Julia Włodarczyk

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274184545_Nonneutrality_of_Money_in_a_Social_Perspective 

Zelizer's "Circuits of Commerce"

https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520241367.003.0009

Ostrom's "Governing The Commons"

https://a.co/d/gcUDVWq 

Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy by
Viviana A. Zelizer

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691139364/economic-lives 

"Testing Circuits of Commerce in the Distant Past: Archaeological Understandings of Social Relationships and Economic Lives"
by: Crystal A. Dozier

https://www.springerprofessional.de/testing-circuits-of-commerce-in-the-distant-past-archaeological-/23930708 

 

Ep. 195: Scott Scheall - How Are Carl and Karl Menger Important For Liberalism?

Alex speaks with Scott Scheall about Carl and Karl Menger and their influence on the history of economics, liberal theory, and - yes - mathematics. 

 

Further Reading:

"Karl Menger as Son of Carl Menger" - Scott Scheall & Reinhard Schumacher

https://philarchive.org/rec/SCHKMA-4 

Econlib Biography of elder Menger:

https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Menger.html 

1871. Principles of Economics. Translated by J. Dingwall and B. F. Hoselitz, with an introduction by Friedrich A. Hayek. New York: New York University Press, 1981.

 

1892. “On the Origin of Money.” Economic Journal 2 (June): 239–255.

 

“Mises Introduces the Austrian School,” http://mises.org/daily/3512 from Ludwig von Mises, Memoirs.

 

Joseph T. Salerno, “Biography of Carl Menger: The Founder of the Austrian School (1840-1921),” http://mises.org/about/3239

 

Biography of Karl Menger 

 

https://www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/kmenger.htm 

 

Including the following Major Works:

• Dimensiontheorie, 1928
• "On Intuitionism", 1930, Blatter der deutschen Pilosophy
• Kurventheorie, 1932
• "The New Logic", 1933, in Krise und Neuaufbau in den Exackten Wissenschaften
• Moral Wille und Weltgestaltung, 1934.
• "The Role of Uncertainty in Economics", 1934, ZfN
• "Remarks on the Law of Diminishing Returns: A study in meta-economics", 1936, ZfN
• "The Logic of Laws of Return: A study in meta-economics", 1954, in Morgenstern, editor, Economic Activity Analysis.
• "Austrian Marginalism and Mathematical Economics", 1973, in Hicks and Weber, editors, Carl Menger and the Austrian School of Economics
• Morality, decision, and social organization : toward a logic of ethics, 1974.
• Selected Papers in Logic and Foundations, Didactics, Economics, 1979.
• Reminiscences of the Vienna Circle and the Mathematical Colloquium, 1994.   (ed. L. Golland, B. McGuinness and A. Sklar) [prev]
• "On the direction of ideas and the principal tendencies of the Vienna Mathematical Colloqium", 1998,  in E. Dierker &  K. Sigismund, editors, Karl Menger Ergebnisse eines Mathematischen Kolloquiums

 

 

Special Episode 15: Jason Lee Byas - How Should We Deal With Historic Injustice?

Alex speaks with Jason Lee Byas about the complexities of responding to questions of historic injustice, reparations, and compensation within a libertarian framework. 

Originally Aired as Episode 140 on Wednesday May 04, 2022 

Ep. 194: Nigel Ashford - Can We Change The World For Liberty?

Alex speaks with Nigel Ashford about the prospects for a freer world and how the memory of history, the hope of younger persons, and the teaching of ideas can shape the future of classical liberalism. 

 

Further Reading:

https://libertarianism.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/socin003.pdf

Chapter 2 of this book: https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Blundell-interactive.pdf

https://fee.org/articles/the-tide-in-the-affairs-of-men/

https://cdn.mises.org/Intellectuals%20and%20Socialism_4.pdf

https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/why-do-intellectuals-oppose-capitalism

http://wordlist.narod.ru/Government-Failure.pdf

Ep. 193: Jake Monaghan - Is Just Policing Possible?

Alex speaks with Jake Monaghan about ideal vs. ideal theory approaches to policing, the history and function of the police as an institution, and how to respond to police abolitionists. 

Episode Notes

Jake's book - the subject of the conversation - can be purchased here: https://a.co/d/ewVS0h9 

References are made to G. A. Cohen's Why Not Socialism, which can be read here: https://www3.nd.edu/~pweithma/Readings/Cohen,%20Gerald/Cohen,%20G%20(Why%20not%20Socialism).pdf 

... and to "The Dispossessed", which can be read here: 

https://files.libcom.org/files/Le%20Guin%20-%20The%20Dispossessed.pdf 

Ep. 192: Trevor Burrus - What Is The Statrix?

Alex speaks with Trevour Burrus about his concept of the Statrix and why the solution to every problem should not be more government programs, intervention and restriction. 

Episode Notes:

Introductory YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eavx1ZVVyzM 

 

Seeing the Statrix: Invisible and Omnipresent

by Trevor Burrus: https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/burrus-cap-research-center-10-18-2018.pdf 

 

The Boris Yeltsin Grocery Store Visit:

https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php#photo-6130394 

 

Trevor’s CATO article about the dairy industry:

https://www.cato.org/commentary/rebel-farmers-government-cartels-how-new-deal-cartelized-us-agriculture 

Ep. 191: Camden Hutchison - Why Restrict Freedom of Expression?

Alex speaks with Camden Hutchison about the nuances of freedom of expression laws in Canada and the United States, and the ways in which immature understandings of free speech can obfuscate the public discourse surrounding this fundamental right in North American law and politics. 

 

Episode Notes

 

Freedom of Expression: Values and Harms - Camden Hutchison

https://albertalawreview.com/index.php/ALR/article/view/2733 

 

Guide to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Including Freedom of Expression)

https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/how-rights-protected/guide-canadian-charter-rights-freedoms.html 

 

Guide to The Constitution (Including the First Amendment) 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/our-government/the-constitution/#:~:text=The%20First%20Amendment%20provides%20that,the%20right%20to%20bear%20arms 

 

Overview of Bill C-19 (Including Division 21 criminalizing various forms of Holocaust denial)

https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/trans/bm-mb/other-autre/c19/remarks-remarques.html 

 

Ep. 190: Pete Boettke - Is Hayek Still Relevant?

Alex speaks with Pete Boettke about the relevancy of Friedrich Hayek in the contemporary context, what it means to be a "Hayekian" and the curious tale of how Hayek came to be the focus of his latest book "F. A. Hayek: Economics, Political Economy and Social Philosophy"

Episode Notes

• Pete’s book “F. A. Hayek: Economics, Political Economy and Social Philosophy“ https://a.co/d/ah7SpwW 
• Hayek on The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/friedrich-hayek/ 
• Introduction to Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” https://mises.org/library/road-serfdom-0 
• Murray Rothbard’s “Man, Economy and State” retrospective https://fee.org/articles/rothbards-man-economy-and-state-at-50/ 
• Milton Friedman’s “Free To Choose” https://www.proglocode.unam.mx/sites/proglocode.unam.mx/files/docencia/Milton%20y%20Rose%20Friedman%20-%20Free%20to%20Choose.pdf 
• Hayek “Prices and Production” https://mises.org/library/prices-and-production-and-other-works 
• Introduction to economics of Lucas https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Lucas.html 
• Steve Horowitz on Hayek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5dR0zgC1ZI 
• Herbert Dreyfuss “What Computers Can’t Do” https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262540674/what-computers-still-cant-do/ 
• Horowitz quote on Hayek “we have to learn to live in two worlds at once” https://www.jstor.org/stable/41560288 
• Hayek’s “The Fatal Conceit” https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3643985.html 
• Kenneth Boulding “After Samuelson, Who Needs Adam Smith?” https://read.dukeupress.edu/hope/article-abstract/3/2/225/12381/After-Samuelson-Who-Needs-Adam-Smith
  • “The Extended Present” (concept) https://medium.com/extended-present/about 
• The “Grapes vs. Cucumbers as pay for Monkeys” experiment (youtube video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg 
• The Constitution of Liberty - Hayek https://www.mises.at/static/literatur/Buch/hayek-the-constitution-of-liberty.pdf 
• Chandran Kukathas’ Liberal Archipelago https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-liberal-archipelago-9780199219209?cc=ca&lang=en& 
• Kind vs. Wicked learning environments. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/experience-studio/202007/experience-kind-vs-wicked 

 

Ep. 189: Darwyyn Deyo - How Does Occupational Licensing Increase Barriers for Workers?

Alex speaks with Darwynn Deyo about the many ways in which occupational licensing can in fact reduce efficiency in the workforce, make it harder for people to cross borders, and ultimately reduce economic mobility for already disadvantaged groups. 

 

Episode Notes and Further Reading:

 

License To Work: A National Study of Burdens from Occupational Licensing (2022) https://ij.org/report/license-to-work-3/ 

 

Policy Brief: Licensing Barriers for Women in the Workforce - Dr. Darwyyn Deyo (2022) https://csorwvu.com/policy-brief-licensing-barriers-for-women-in-the-workforce/ 

 

Policy Brief: Survey of Universal Licensing Reforms in the United States - Dr. Darwyyn Deyo (2022) https://csorwvu.com/policy-brief-survey-of-universal-licensing-reforms-in-the-united-states/ 

 

Testing Licensing and Consumer Satisfaction for Beauty Services in the United States

in Grease or Grit?: International Case Studies of Occupational Licensing and Its

Effects on Efficiency and Quality - Darwyyn Deyo (2022)

 

Have license, will travel: Measuring the effects of universal licensing

recognition on mobility - Darwyyn Deyo & Alicia Plemmons (2022)

 

Occupational Licensing: Improving Access to Regulatory Information - Morris M. Kleiner & Edward J. Timmons (2020)

 

Licensing massage therapists in the name of crime: the case of Harper v Lindsay - Darwyyn Deyo, Blake Hoarty, Conor Norris and Edward Timmons (2020)

 

Effects of Occupational Licensing and Unions on Labour Market Earnings in Canada

- Tingting Zhang (2019)

 

Guild-Ridden Labor Markets: The Curious Case of Occupational Licensing - Morris M. Kleiner (2015) 

 

Ep. 188: Fiona Harrigan - How Does Immigration Make Us Freer?

Alex speaks with Fiona Harrigan about the state of immigration in the United States and elsewhere, and the ways in which "outsiders" make "insiders" better off - both instrumentally and categorically. 

Episode Notes:

• The Government Is Turning Border Surveillance on Everyday Americans by Fiona Harrigan https://reason.com/2023/03/28/the-government-is-turning-border-surveillance-on-everyday-americans/  
• Cutting Legal Immigration Won’t Help Low‐​Skilled American Workers By Alex Nowrasteh https://www.cato.org/blog/cutting-legal-immigration-wont-help-low-skilled-american-workers 
• NFAP study on Immigrant-founded startups https://nfap.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Immigrant-Entrepreneurs-and-Billion-Dollar-Companies.DAY-OF-RELEASE.2022.pdf 
• “Title 42 has ended. Here’s what it did, and how US immigration policy is changing” by Colleen Long https://apnews.com/article/immigration-biden-border-title-42-mexico-asylum-be4e0b15b27adb9bede87b9bbefb798d 

Ep. 187: James Harrigan - What’s Wrong With Utopias?

What's the harm in dreaming big? Significant, James Harrigan believes. Alex and James discuss the many ways in which Utopian theory has led to disaster in practice - From Plato to Lenin and into the present day. 

Episode Notes:

• Keynes on Eugenics, Race, and Population Control https://mises.org/wire/keynes-eugenics-race-and-population-control 
• Phillip W. Magness, James R. Harrigan; John Maynard Keynes, H. G. Wells, and a Problematic Utopia. History of Political Economy 1 April 2020; 52 (2): 211–238. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-8173298
• Plato’s Republic - Ethics and Politics https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics-politics/ 
• Thomas Moore’s Utopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(book) 
• “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design” - F.A. Hayek

Ep. 186: Daniel Weinstock - Should Adolescents Vote?

Daniel Weinstock makes the case for lowering the voting age and extending the right to vote to teens who have much more in common with the general voting public than we may think.

Episode Notes:

Daniel Weinstock - “What’s So Funny about Voting Rights for Children?”, in Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, vol. 18, no. 2 (2021), pp. 751 – 771. https://www.law.georgetown.edu/public-policy-journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2021/09/Weinstock.pdf 

• Kant’s views on voting rights and the “underclasses” https://academic.oup.com/book/4831/chapter-abstract/147152492?redirectedFrom=fulltext 
• Rousseau on “the general will” and deliberation, the force of the better argument. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/#PoliPhil 
• John Stewart Mill on weighted votes and plural voting https://www.jstor.org/stable/26220010 
• “Votes for children! Why we should lower the voting age to six” by David Runciman https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/16/reconstruction-after-covid-votes-for-children-age-six-david-runciman 

 

Ep. 185: Jacob Levy - Is Liberalism Neutral?

Alex speaks with Professor Jacob Levy about the concept of neutrality within the history of liberalism and how many historical thinkers have approached the subject within that tradition. 

Episode Notes:

• Michael Oakeshott on “adverbial rules” https://lawliberty.org/forum/michael-oakeshott-on-the-rule-of-law-and-the-liberal-order/ 
• John Locke’s religious beliefs https://rb.gy/1yg43 
• Heresy of Americanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americanism_(heresy) 
• Deirdre McCloskey’s Bourgeois Virtues Thesis https://www.deirdremccloskey.com/docs/bv_selection.pdf 
• Ronald Dworkin “Liberalism” https://www.scribd.com/document/313373358/Ronald-Dworkin-Liberalism# 
• Stephanie Slade, "Must Libertarians Care About More Than the State?" https://reason.com/2022/03/19/two-libertarianisms/ 
• Alexis De Toqueville’s concerns about the rising liberal democratic order https://www.economist.com/schools-brief/2018/08/09/de-tocqueville-and-the-french-exception 
• John Stuart Mill “On Liberty” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Liberty 

Ep. 184: Aurelian Craiutu - Why Not Moderation?

Alex speaks with Aurelian Craiutu about the importance of moderation when it comes to virtue, political discourse, and the balancing of extremes in a world full of radicals. 

 

Episode Notes: 

 

• Aurelian Craiutu - Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals https://a.co/d/1LVcadG
• Aurelian Craiutu - Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes  https://a.co/d/6cVwv5F 
• Thomas Osborne - Moderation as Government: Montesquieu and the Divisibility of Power  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10848770.2023.2172780 
• The Golden Mean in Philosophy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_mean_(philosophy) 
• The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence Paperback by Balthasar Gracian https://a.co/d/hgyXcYG 
• The 48 Laws of Power Paperback by Robert Greene   https://a.co/d/96ifKoz 
• A Propensity to Self-Subversion by Albert O. Hirschman https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674715585