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Is there anything to the argument that “socialism would work if we were just better people” and had perfect information?
This week Jason Brennan joins Aaron and Trevor to discuss his newest book, Why Not Capitalism?, which is a response to G. A. Cohen’s 2009 book Why Not Socialism? Brennan says that Cohen commits the fallacy of comparing idealized socialism with perfect actors to real markets with imperfect actors, and offers an illustrative example as proof that when comparing idealized capitalism to idealized socialism and real capitalism to real socialism, it is capitalism—not socialism—that claims the moral high ground.
Is there anything to the argument that “socialism would work if we were just better people” and had perfect information?
Jason Brennan is the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Associate Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at Georgetown University. He is the author of Against Democracy (2016), Markets without Limits (2015), Compulsory Voting: For and Against (2014), Why Not Capitalism? (2014), Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know (2012), The Ethics of Voting (2011), and A Brief History of Liberty (2010). Brennan also blogs at Bleeding Heart Libertarians.
Aaron Powell founded Libertarianism.org. He is now the host of (Re)Imagining Liberty, a podcast about the case for radical freedom.
Trevor Burrus was a research fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. His research interests include constitutional law, civil and criminal law, legal and political philosophy, legal history, and the interface between science and public policy.
He is the editor of A Conspiracy against Obamacare (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Deep Commitments: The Past, Present, and Future of Religious Liberty (Cato, 2017). Burrus holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a JD from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. He also contributed a chapter to Libertarianism.org’s Visions of Liberty.