"the following is a conversation with Jennifer Burns a historian of ideas including the evolution of economic political and social ideas in the United States in the 20th century to today she wrote two ..."

"Burns you have written two biographies one on Milton fredman and one on Ein Rand so if we can we will focus on each one separately but first let's talk about the ideas that two of them held in common ..."

"high level are there interesting differences between them you already mentioned a few maybe in terms of who they are personally maybe in terms of how they approach the justification for capitalism may..."

"plays out in their lives in that Ein Rand is incredibly schismatic I mean she wants her friends to believe what she believes and support what she supports and she's willing to break a relationship if ..."

"also an arc to ran she gets kind of angrier and angrier and crankier and crankier over the course of her life yeah what I enjoyed about my research is I was able to get into this early moment when she..."

"something Rand could do I think there's a thread throughout this conversation where we should actually also say that you're kind of a historian of ideas I am a historian of ideas yes and so we're talk..."

"much more in the psychological register she's creating character that people identify with and people relate to experiences they've had and that's one of the reasons she hits so deep and she's also of..."

"important today for Milton fredman even just on the economics level so let's dig in um let me try I took some notes let me try to summarize who Milton fredman is and then you can correct me yeah okay ..."

"it's you know 800 Pages it's a reinterpretation of the history of the United States through money like the central character is money whether it's spec Greenback or the US currency and they have a who..."

"the Great Depression is all about that it's a financial system meltdown it's a liquidity crisis and that it in some ways well in many ways they they argue very strong counterfactual argument the Feder..."

"really going to be the place he makes his Mark there's a lot of things to say here uh so first the book we're talking about is the a monetary History of the United States in part for which milon Freem..."

"do something about this to figure out what it is and also I'm going to reject the mainstream narrative about why this happened yeah so uh the other piece of the puzzle when he goes to recers he thinks..."

"with the mathematical Economist Henry Schultz but he gets there and he thinks Schultz is kind of dumb he really does he's incredibly arrogant and he he just thinks this guy's not that smart and it see..."

"mentioned neoc classical we mentioned kenian economics we mentioned uh what else did we mention well The Chicago School of Economics right where does uh Austrian economics fit into that pile and marxa..."

"political economy to economics as it's understood today comes with the marginal Revolution and the marginal Revolution is a scientific revolution that happens in a couple different places simultaneous..."

"intellectual tradition this is the root of Austrian economics and people picking up the marginal revolution in the German speaking lands are opposed to the historicists um who are thinking in a more e..."

"States this ends up mapping onto debates about capitalism and so more historically minded economists um tend to be interested in the Progressive Movement and which is invested in taming and regulating..."

"institutional economics is what's Kenzie in economics and The Chicago School of Economics I guess is a branch of neoclassical that's a little bit more empirical versus maybe model based and kenian is ..."

"Kan says sure that's one Theory but something different is happening right now part of why it's happening is because we have work the working class is more empowered now they're not simply going to ju..."

"together and and American economists realize that you can construct models in the Keynesian perspective and if you can use numbers in these models you can go to Washington DC with numbers and you seem..."

"are different and there's this famous episode where John manard kees comes to DC and he goes to dinner and he comes back and he says to one of his friends in London he oh yeah it was really interestin..."

"what is a government's role and because he's lived through the Great Depression he's not Les a fair and he won't ever be Les a fair now interestingly hyek living through the Great Depression at first ..."

"Nation so nepon steel could come and invest in US steel and there would be no grounds in which to reject that um or you could as a billionaire in the United States relocate you and all your money to a..."

"Still Remains very hardcore and is not um really open to things like unemployment insurance or um other other state-based interventions what does vona say about like human suffering that's witnessed i..."

"went all the way to L Fair no no he didn't see that and what's really interesting is the number of incredibly radical proposals that he and his teachers were floating so I've mentioned Frank Knight an..."

"permanent alterations between State and Market where the Keynesian assumption is things have changed times have changed we're in a new dispensation and we need a new relationship so fredman is very uh..."

"Spirits Frank Knight is in touch with him Henry Simons is in touch with him they all see themselves as liberals they call themselves old-fashioned unreconstructed liberals and so even before he become..."

"Freedom keeping in mind that if there aren't basic social supports needed the market is apt to generate the type of either inequality or social instability that will the whole system into question so ..."

"he will develop the theory of monetarism so what is monetarism the easy way to summarize it is this famous dictum of of Milton fredman's inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomena and it'..."

"because the in order to pay for World War II the federal government sells a lot of bonds IT issues a lot of debt and it wants to pay this debt back at a low interest rate and it wants people to keep b..."

"position now at the same time Freeman comes out very publicly in 1964 is a supporter of Barry Goldwater and keyy and economics has found a home in the Democratic party its probably brightest moment in..."

"right as he's pushing [Music] monitormusicpatternphotographyproductssci sell stuff and there's this fascinating complex dynamical system of people um Contracting with each other in this beautiful way ..."

"postal Savings Banks and Credit Unions so but fredman is one taking the focus to these aggregate amounts of money and saying um these really have a lot to do with economic booms and busts when we have..."

"in a world where we believe this and the Federal Reserve chair can't open their mouth without headlines being generated m fredman is saying this at a time when the Federal Reserve is like a mysterious..."

"you could say well people get what they deserve under capitalism but then he kind of stops and he says that's not really true because we're born with such different endowments and there's a huge quoti..."

"believes he can justify capitalism through the ethic of freedom and he also believes that inequality um is a problem that can be addressed through specific policies and it's not a fundamental feature ..."

"he's really kind of taking political freedom for granted now later in his career when he becomes famous he's traveling the world he spends time in Chile and this country is now being ruled by a dictat..."

"let's fast forward to the end of his life and he's witnessing the emergence of what we call the Asian tigers so capitalist economies that are doing very well but they don't have political freedom but ..."

"coming to China anytime soon and he did oppose the Dual track system of China meaning like the market is bottom up the government in China is top down and you can't have both he thought you couldn't h..."

"believed that's what he believed yeah I think it's it's more complicated than that right the the people who gain out of a system of economic freedom could decide to collude in a system where there isn..."

"going back to monetarism the core of monetarism is a rule Freeman called it a monetary growth Rule and so again what keeps the economic game going is a rule about how much the money grows that everybo..."

"in a market and they would turn their attention to getting control of the rules or the rul makers so if there's clear transparent rules then you're free to play the game yes exactly but then depending..."

"friend Liv she's a poker player philosopher of sorts great human being she has a podcast called win-win that everybody should listen to and uh the whole purpose of the podcast and her whole way of bei..."

"just incredibly social creatures we're incredibly attuned to our status to rising and falling to where we sit Visa others and so that absolutely has to be attended to it can't just be an economic anal..."

"well is there something that Milton fredman said and thought about you know how to control the psychology of humans at scale no I mean it what's interesting is he does talk especially in his later wor..."

"liberalism right and he basically says we have advanced societies we have prosperous societies we have decided in keeping with our morals and our ethics that people should not be starving in an advanc..."

"businesses instead of hiring that higher pric labor would not hire or like we could think of today right they put an electronic checkout you know or something like this where you don't actually need t..."

"this much and he decided once Mass taxation had come in you could do it through taxes and you could just rebate people who didn't pay income taxes got a rebate that actually came to pass it's the earn..."

"incentives to work etc I mean there's a big body of research on this most of it seems to show um one it's way better than the current benefits Cliff where you have to not work to get your benefits um ..."

"inspiring yeah you call Milton fredman the last great conservative um maybe to be a little bit sort of controversial and make bold statements that get everybody excited but uh what do you mean by that..."

"having broken down it it is is scattered into different pieces and we don't know where they're going to come back together again but you know fredman's push for open Global markets unfettered free tra..."

"exactly what he did you've also spoken about the fact that the times when he was sort of out in public the there was more of an open Battle of ideas where conservatism often had you know William F Buc..."

"argumentation and so um it seems that era has passed it seems like we're driven much more more quickly um by moods rather than thought through ideas right now it seems like the ideas come after the th..."

"media environment we're in and it's just power of the media messages to get out so fast what do you think Milt Freeman would say about Donald Trump about uh him winning in 2024 and just in general thi..."

"and grows and so he ended up believing like even deficits aren't so bad because they make politicians cautious he thought about continuing to spend um but I have to believe he would be concerned about..."

"that uh the pricing signals and all these kinds of things are just immediately available to people that seems to be the lwh hanging fruit government you know it systems could be vastly improved him on..."

"intense he doesn't have uh the same sort of gifts of salesmanship and setting people at ease that say someone like Ronald Reagan had but it seems to be that's what his country was calling for right no..."

"be more of a balance and it's just it's hard to make such Global statements and you have to break them down into what actually do you mean but again Malay is coming from a very different context a ver..."

"Administration is an interesting case because so I've been talking about inflation and the different consequences it had one consequence it had is that it began to undermine the brettonwoods currency ..."

"so then comes the moment where the US Treasury Department realizes we're going to run out of gold what should we do and they everybody decamps to Camp David and Nixon decides we're just going to stop ..."

"there now he's very ambivalent about Nixon I mean he sees that Nixon is not an honest person he thinks he's very intelligent um and Nixon Nixon's dream is to create a new Centrist majority so he does ..."

"just pushing it through and he also tells Reagan very pragmatically you better do this now you've got a four-year term do this in the first two years of your term things will have turned around 1984 w..."

"the government will fall and another one will replace it right so if you look at episodes of hyperinflation they don't go on very long because they're so upsetting to people if we can go back in time ..."

"Knight fell into this terrible depression and to cheer him up they planned a big party and they went back through all of his previous writings and they assembled them into a book that was published th..."

"a foundation of his thinking fascinating is there something you could say about the thinking process that Milton Friedman followed like how he developed his ideas you mentioned there's a strong collab..."

"life for sure anyway sorry that that's a that's a fun story but like can we just generalize to how he engag in collaboration how he developed his ideas is there like a thinking process so he taught at..."

"Hampshire and so he would have these he had a studio separate from the house he would go and he would work and then at night his friends would come his friends are all economists there's a whole like ..."

"bit of a sad thing she said she said um when I married Milton I lost half of my conversations when David came along I lost the other half so this a household that was just dominated by male voices and..."

"actually has yeah it's always sad and it always makes me wonder about the the the the private secret conversations between partners yeah because they're you know they're they might not show up in the ..."

"rationality only works in her view as an individual capacity and that rationality teaches that what you should do is pursue your interests and so she ends up calling that selfish now It's tricky becau..."

"able to singleand ly recreate them the way she wants them to be yeah I mean she's not doing herself any favors by like taking on the words and trying to Rebrand them completely like writing the virtue..."

"yeah I mean that was that was one of the things I found in in researching and writing about her like she's an incredibly unusual human being you know and so that was that was like her strength right b..."

"Frank Knight you haven't read on ran yet you know my beer yeah you're a little too early because that's what she does she takes the outcomes of capitalism and of Market competition and says these have..."

"mentioned we the living is one of the books that you like of hers uh the most but can we uh stay in the Mythic register with the Fountain Head and Al Shrugged uh what to you are some sort of memorable..."

"think there's also the scene or or with the dean of architecture school that's speaking to what you're saying I think to me is inspiring so this is the dean of architecture that expels oror and it bri..."

"all kinds of sacrifices for the collective and I think paradoxically as they do that they're drawn to this vision of someone who doesn't have to compromise at all you know who is leading their life ex..."

"that power and you know Rand knew that she was doing that and she she knew what she was doing you know she this wasn't an accident and people say oh she's a bad writer oh her characters are so heavy-h..."

"Fountain Head yeah I and I sometimes get criticized for using words that are too simple I think simple words can uh can have power and the cliche thing sometimes needs to be said as sometimes if effec..."

"that kind of lack of Charity and and part of that in her work is because she creates this fictional world where she can set everything up just so and so you don't have have um contingency or accident ..."

"say that's her main blind spot the main flaw of objectivism is just how black and white it Paints the world or if not mean what what what would you say are the flaws of objectivism so I mean the big f..."

"happens in Ran's life and I describe this in some detail in the book is she essentially creates a cult of reason around her and people who are drawn into this cult it's called the collective it's a gr..."

"damaging cult-like circle around her Plus for for a cult of reason they get awfully emotional when there's any disagreement with I mean it's it's it's kind of hilarious it's absurd but it's um I mean ..."

"there's um so Murray rothbard is a famous Anarchist falls into the irran cult and then he disagrees and it there's some type of show trial where he told he's wrong about everything and then he has a l..."

"irran moves to Hollywood where she's going to help in the writing of the film she wants a lot of creative control and she's also still working in screenwriting and things like this and so she gets a l..."

"her home and she moves to New York here I am I like New York better and so that becomes the seedbed of the collective and the Brandon they get married they change their name to Brandon they've never p..."

"relationship and although it's open with in these four people it is not open more broadly and so in all these meetings of the collective got Allan Greenspan all these other people coming up you know d..."

"wife begins an affair with another young woman and at this point he has started the Nathaniel Brandon Institute to teach objectivism and he's making good money he's becoming quite famous she supported..."

"to Nathaniel Brandon you know you have to tell her this has just G gone on too long so she finds out and the whole thing blows up and she Exiles him and she breaks off contact with him and nobody's ev..."

"objectivism flows into the student libertarian movement some objectivists become conservatives it just kind of spreads out more generally and you don't have to drink the Kool-Aid you don't have to tak..."

"about like um should there be a female president or something this is like the beginning of feminism and she says um no um no woman should ever be president because if she's president she wouldn't be ..."

"did you know she was fair to women in her life promoted them in her life but did not I mean she was very negative about feminism and then because like they dress terribly you know and then the other t..."

"tried to rationalize is her way through it and it came out in these very strange theories why do you think that IR Rand is maybe you can correct me but as far as I can see never mentioned in the list ..."

"who compile these lists really dislike her work and they think it shallow because they find her fiction overdrawn they find her work in the Mythic register simple and she's also a grand systematic thi..."

"resonate um and so I think I think a lot so so as an intellectual historian I'm studying ideas always putting them in their historical context like what is happening that is making these things resona..."

"mean to be an individual what does it mean to live in this Mass Society because it's also a time of great social Conformity and where people are suddenly you know they're working for large corporation..."

"Echoes with Rand in that you know the the ideology and its p form is is almost it's a it's a rationalist ideology of some ways it's an analysis of history and how things are supposed to be and I think..."

"you know fascism to me is unleashing more something Primal something sort of dark and Primal within people and and it's more a permission structure to indulge in that that is normally not there those ..."

"anyone can direct that hate towards anything yeah towards uh yeah towards any group towards any idea towards anything just because we're we could get caught up in the Massy Thea of the the hatred it's..."

"postmodernism you know it first struck me you know these if you read the original postmodern thinkers it's really tough goinging I mean I make my students do it and they suffer I think they see it's w..."

"remember this might be before the internet but when I was in college reading dared Fuko and like not knowing context at all it interesting all right this is like I'm able to read pure encapsulations o..."

"work for a politician to work for a think tank to work for a party it's absolute traffic now not everyone there's plenty of people who read on Rand who don't take the politics in it's a nice story it'..."

"and you're trying to understand their relationships it's so fascinating like reconstruct in a dark room trying to reconstruct shine a light on relationships through Reading letters it's interesting ye..."

"the thing that Milton Freeman did which is in parallel yes do their own parallel curriculum exactly exactly what advice would you give in terms of reading about ideas you agree with than reading ideas..."

"about the dramatic formulation of that same question do you think there's some ideas that are good and some of that are evil do you think we can draw such lines or is it more complicated like the old ..."

"I definitely think it's possible to create autonomy in the realm of ideas and to be an autonomous consumer of ideas but I think on balance most people are not and that's fine they want to have experie..."

"conversation but in general let me say that I've read a lot listened to a lot and had a lot of private conversations with people on the ground I have many flaws but being unprepared for this conversat..."

"I don't think this is the right time for me to dive into that data point and be critical I'm not interested in being critical for the sake of criticism I am interested once again in productive convers..."

"Vladimir Putin it is certainly true that Ukraine is best positioned to negotiate from a place of strength after the invasion of February 24th 2022 I believe there were three chances where peace was mo..."

"now there is unlikely to be another chance like this for a long time just to zoom out on the conversation piece of this I interviewed Donald Trump and may do so again I interviewed Vladimir zalinski a..."

"to bring out the best in president zalinski as a leader and a human being and to give him every opportunity possible to signal that he is ready to make peace and to lay out his vision for what that pe..."

"figure very few leaders in recent history would be able to pull off what he did to stay in Kiev to unite the country to convince the West to join the war effort to the degree they did he is also a sho..."

"his situation this is where humor and camaraderie was essential and I would return to it often though it was very difficult given the stakes the heaviness the seriousness of the topic of the war so in..."

"made I give the president every single chance to Signal willingness to negotiate knowing that both Trump and Putin will listen to this convers ation I don't think he took it and instead chose to speak..."

"to treat you with this is what I was pushing for all that while also putting my ego aside and letting the president shine which is necessary to accomplish both goals one and two that I mentioned previ..."

"hard to come to an agreement with him you have to look at him as a serious person who loves his country and loves the people in this country and he conducts yes destructive military actions the presid..."