Holiday Break (and Two Requests)
Hello Everyone,
The LP Papers will be off for the next two weeks for the holidays. I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Since we’re taking this break, I wanted to make two requests of you and also recap what we’ve done so far.
Request #1: If you’re liking this series, please please share it with others!
Email people links, talk about it on social media, get in arguments about it on Reddit, whatever you want- go wild! Now that we’ve got 15 already out, I think any new people who come to this will find a good body of work already there.
Request #2: If you have any suggestions for people you would like me to invite to contribute an essay to the series, I am all ears. Relatedly, even you if you don’t have a particular contributor in mind, if there is a particular topic that you’d really like to see covered, I’d love to hear that too.
Ok, with those requests out of the way, here’s a quick recap of the series thus far.
LP #1: “A New Alliance” opens up the series making an argument for this new coalition of progressives and libertarians. It lays the groundwork for the rest of the essays.
In LP #2: “Occupational Licensing Reform is Having a Moment”, my RSI colleague and all-around rock star Shoshana Weissmann makes the case for reducing burdensome and inequality-reinforcing regulations that get in the way of people being able to do the jobs they’re qualified to do.
The reason I wanted occupational licensing to go first (after the introduction) can be summed in one person’s name: Sandy Meadows.
In the early 2000s Sandy Meadows lived in Louisiana. After her husband passed away, Sandy- who had taught herself how to arrange flowers- supported herself by working as a florist at a grocery store. When the Louisiana Horticulture Commission found out, they threatened to shut down the grocery store’s florist business since Sandy did not have a license. Louisiana, alone among the fifty states, required a license to be florist. The exam to get the license is judged by other florists who no doubt see the applicant as a competitor. Little wonder then that more people fail the exam than pass. Sandy couldn’t pass the test. Sandy’s manager had no choice but to fire her. Without a job, Sandy couldn’t afford to pay bills or rent. Her health deteriorated and she died impoverished and alone.
This was indifference to the point of cruelty.
Let’s dwell on this case for a moment. A woman died impoverished and alone because the state, via onerous regulation, made it impossible for her to support herself after her husband’s death. What happened to Sandy Meadows was monstrous. My heart breaks every time I think about that story. The emotional core of this whole project is a bottomless commitment to advocating for policies that do right by the Sandy Meadows of the world. Liberty, equality, and justice are not just words. They are the means by which we live out compassionate, humble, thoughtful politics. When Shoshana makes the case for occupational licensing reform, she is not making some technical, obscure point. She is arguing for a world in which we don’t treat people the way Sandy was treated.
In LP #3, “Libertarianism for Transgender Issues”, Sophia Hottel advances a powerful argument for how libertarian means can effectively advance the progressive ends of improving how trans people are treated in society.
As I said publicly at the time this essay was released, I was thrilled when Sophia accepted my invitation to contribute to the series. I’m proud to be associated with her and proud that she saw fit to be associated with me. She’s a solid human and I’ll share a foxhole with her, literal or metaphorical, any day of the week. I’m a moderate, a “suit”, and a straight white guy, but if you’re reading this and your trans, I want you to know that I think you’re totally normal. There’s nothing radical about you and there’s nothing you should be ashamed of. You can sit with me at lunch anytime you like.
In LP #4, “The LP Vision on a Bun”, I discussed how plant-based meats concisely demonstrates libertarian-progressive ideology. It’s a progressive social change, but it’s driven by cultural shifts and market reactions to those shifts, with minimal state intervention. I think people can guess at some of the topics that are to be covered in this series, but I also want to keep things fresh for the reader and have some essays like this one that are more unexpected.
It’s possible that the Jones Act is the single dumbest law in America, and there’s no one who’s better at explaining its various stupidities than the Cato Institute’s Colin Grabow. If you’re a progressive and aren’t yet familiar with this ridiculous law, read LP #5, “The Progressive Case for Jones Act Reform” and catch up on how this one law undermines the fight against climate change, entrenches special interests, and hurts Puerto Rico, all at the same time.
Of all the essays for this series that I’ve written, I think LP #6 “The Chasm” is the one that I’m most proud of. It’s about race, Gettysburg, and the American political project.
In LP #7, “Covering Our Blind Spots”, Daniel Takash of the Niskanen Center explains how libertarianism and progressivism can tame the worst aspects of each other.
In LP #8, “Free and Equal- The Philosophical Common Ground of a Libertarian-Progressive Alliance”, Lior Erez, a political theorist at the University of Haifa as well as my good friend and former colleague, discusses the philosophical relationship between liberty and equality. There are some great lines in this essay!
Some of the more populist conservatives like Oren Cass and Rod Dreher have remarked on the ongoing divorce between conservatives and business. In LP #9, “Why Progressives Should Stop Hating Big Business” I argue progressives should welcome that divorce and also adopt a friendlier attitude toward business. There are certain areas where I think libertarians need to be more progressive, but attitudes around capitalism and business are one of the main areas where progressives need to be more libertarian.
Of all the Federalist Papers, Number 10 might be the most highly regarded, so anyone coming to this series with a background knowledge of the Federalist Papers will be expecting something excellent out of Number 10. So I saved a great one for this spot. In LP #10 “The Jury is Out—And That’s a Problem”, Clark Neily, Senior Vice President for Legal Studies at the Cato Institute, lays out a powerful indictment of what is perhaps the single greatest and least understood pathology of the criminal justice system: the removal of citizen participation from it.
I want to take a moment here and return to the story of Sandy Meadows. While she was going through that horribly unjust ordeal, the Institute for Justice filed a lawsuit on her behalf. Clark Neily was the lawyer.
As a political science professor, I have a lot of students who come talk to me about attending law school. There are some bad reasons to go to law school but there are some sound ones as well. One of those sound ones is that a law degree can help you do a lot of good in the world. Clark does a lot of good defending liberty day in and day out. I was honored when he accepted my invitation to contribute to the series and proud to feature his essay at #10.
The Sandy Meadows connections keep coming.
The first person who told me about Meadows’ story was Matt Mitchell of the Mercatus Center, the author of “LP #11: Deregulation- A Code Word For Safeguarding the Economic Rights of the Vulnerable.” When I read Matt’s essay, I very clearly remembered how poignantly he told that story. He makes a great case here for progressives rethinking their opposition to deregulation.
Whereas in LP #9 I argued with progressives over their opposition to business, in LP #12, “Burning the Gadsden Flag”, I argued with the crank libertarians over the misanthropic posture they take toward others as symbolized by the Gadsden Flag. To be frank, I think the Mises Caucus and their ilk are terrible. This essay is aimed squarely at them.
In LP #13 “Neoliberalism and the Built Environment”, Nick Cowen presents a really fun and persuasive essay on London’s congestion pricing.
In LP #14, “Intellectual Property: A Policy That Needs to be Put in Its Place”, Dean Baker, Senior Economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, argues for a more balanced approach to intellectual property and raises a number of thought-provoking points. Here is just one example:
“In the harmful category, we have situations where intellectual property monopolies give companies incentive to mislead people about the quality of their product. The most obvious example of this problem is in the case of the opioid crisis, where several major pharmaceutical companies paid billions in settlements, over the allegation that they deliberately misled doctors about the addictiveness of the new generation of opioids. If these drugs were selling as cheap generics, it is unlikely the companies would have made as much effort to push them so widely.”
In LP #15, “What Would David French Do?”, I make the argument that progressives should not call in the state to punish private actors who do not want to embrace gay marriage. I contend that, with regards to gay rights, the best way forward is a combination of the progressive instinct to love our gay and trans fellow citizens combined with the libertarian instinct to respect conscience.
So that’s what we’ve done so far. 15 out, 70 more to go. We’ll be back on January 3rd with LP #16. Until then, enjoy the holidays!
-Gary