Liberty in Review: A Conversation with Todd Zywicki

The Liberty Exchange
S02E01 -

We must think carefully about how we distinguish between public and private violations of individual freedom. We are in an era in which both public and private sectors have significant impacts on liberty.

Download Episode
Subscribe:
RSS
Hosts
Lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org
Guests
Todd Zywicki

Todd J. Zywicki is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, Senior Scholar of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and Senior Fellow at the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. In 2009, Professor Zywicki was honored as the recipient of the Institute for Humane Studies 2009 Charles G. Koch Outstanding IHS Alum Award. Since 2006 he has served as Co-​Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review.

Jonathan Fortier

Jonathan Fortier is the director of Lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org. Over the past 25 years he has worked to promote the principles of a free society with many organizations, including Liberty Fund, the Institute for Humane Studies, and the Fraser Institute. He earned his MPhil and his doctorate at the University of Oxford.

SUMMARY

As part of our “Janus Week” in which we look back on 2023 and forward to 2024, Jonathan Fortier and Todd Zywicki discuss the recent high points for liberty and potential threats on the horizon. Zywicki distinguishes between positive wins and defensive moves as they discuss the election of Milei, the rolling back of Covid restrictions, the Supreme Court’s apparent moves to rein in the administrative state, the checks on DEI and ESG and much more. Zywicki encourages us to think more carefully about simplified mental models that libertarians traditionally used to distinguish between public and private violations of individual freedom, and suggests that we are living through a different era, where these two sectors are both more intertwined, but also a period in which, arguably, both the public and private sectors have extremely significant impacts on liberty.