Unbiased

Arjun: Prostitution, sex trafficking, abortion. These are some of the most important issues today, but there's seldom discussed publicly in a nuanced way because of how sensitive these issues are. Today's guest has written extensively on these issues, often pointing out how regulating these activities backfires in ways that we don't expect.
Elizabeth Nolan Brown is the senior editor at Reason, a prominent libertarian magazine where she's been writing on all these topics since 2014. She's been published in dozens of other outlets as well, from the New York Times, Fox News, Playboy to Political. She's also co-founder of the Libertarian Feminist Group, Feminist for liberty.
I've been reading Elizabeth's reporting for a long time. She's intelligent, blunt, witty, and willing to say, I don't know, which I think is quite rare for someone who is so well versed in her topic areas. So Dan and I are delighted to welcome her to the show today. Welcome, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Hi. Thank you for having me, and thank you for that lovely intro.

Arjun: You've written a lot about prostitution and you seem to be generally in favor of allowing consenting adults to exchange sex for money. Why do you have this viewpoint?

Elizabeth: I think that there are several ways to approach it. I mean, just from a traditional sort of right-based viewpoint, people should have, people have a right to bodily autonomy.
They have a right to privacy. They have a right to freedom in who they engage with and who they form romantic relationships with. So I think that from that standpoint, it just follows that if adults want to have sex with someone or engage in sexual activity with someone and exchange money or other things of value for that, then that should be allowed.
I also think though, from, from another perspective, is a harm reduction perspective. And that's when you look at any potential harms that come from criminalized industries in general and in particular in prostitution. When it's criminalized, it creates a lot more harms. And so decriminalization would help anyone engaged in the sex trade be safer. Whether those are sex workers who are willingly doing it and, and their customers, or whether it's people who are maybe not necessarily doing it by 100% choice, they would still be safer under a decriminalized system.

Arjun: Got it. And maybe just to follow up on that, you know, libertarians, argue for decriminalization rather than legalization of prostitution, which I believe is what we have in the state of Nevada. What is the distinction and what can we learn from Nevada's experience with this setup?

Elizabeth: Yeah, decriminalization just means a total removal of penalties and legalization is a system where, you know, there's a lot of different rules. This is, like you said, what we see in Nevada or what we see in a lot of countries in Europe where prostitution is legal if you work in these particular sort of state license brothels or if you work in this particular red light district, or if you get a sex worker occupational license or something like that. I think that there's nothing wrong with those systems existing, and those could exist on top of decriminalization.
But decriminalization is important because at base we just shouldn't be arresting people for doing this. One of the problems we see in Nevada and in various European countries is that people who are arrested outside, who are working outside of these legal systems still get arrested and are still suffering from all the same harms of a criminalized system.
So like in Nevada, you actually have tons of prostitution arrests all the time because not very many people work in these few counties where there are legalized brothels. And if people can't be working in those brothels, then they can still have cops arresting them, then they can still get a criminal record, they still have to keep things underground, which makes it more dangerous.
When you only legalize it and say you can only do it in these circumstances, it just creates a lot of the harms. I think that we need to have decriminalization first, and then if people want to have brothels that are licensed by the state or some sort of certificate that sex workers can get as a voluntary thing, then, that should be allowed too.

Dan: Elizabeth, so I have some anecdotal experience with women and children involved in sex work. So to just shed a little light, I've been active in the foster care system. My wife and I have been foster parents, and so what I've seen through that experience are often, you know, women who've encountered trauma as children.
And they enter a profession where violence is commonplace. You have issues where children run away from state custody and end up entering prostitution or ended up and end up getting coerced into prostitution as a way to survive. And, and I guess I wonder how do we decriminalize prostitution and at the same time ensure there are safeguards against the violence and exploitation without either increasing law enforcement or creating another regulatory body to oversee that?

Elizabeth: Yeah, that's a really good question. Because, you know, shocking and tragic amount of, of people who are underage teens in sex, which is by definition there are sex trafficking victims, uh, come from state care or come from foster care, I think, you know, Whether or not it's criminalized, you are going to have people who are desperate, which includes, adult women in abusive relationships, which includes just low-income people of all sorts, which includes children who are runaways.
Unfortunately, whether it's criminalized or decriminalized, you're going to have some of those people turning to selling sex because that is one of the few options available to them. I think the benefits of a decriminalized system are that regardless of why someone is doing it, if they're doing it because they're just like, Yes, this is what I wanna do, or if they're doing it through any of these things, they will be less likely to experience all the negative consequences in a decriminalized system. For one thing in a decriminalized system, if someone does, tries to do something to them, They can go to the police and they can report the crime against them.
Right now, so many people that are doing sex work are afraid to go to the police if they are robbed, if they are raped, or if anything bad happens to them. Because very often then they get either arrested right then, or then they get on police's radar as a sex worker and maybe sort of, you know, monitored in the future.
You also have the clients of sex workers or other people who are just in their sphere afraid to go to the police and sex workers often say like, you know, we're in the best position to know if someone in our community is actually underage, or if someone is being exploited and has like a violent pimp or something.
But we can't go to the police to tell them about these other people because again, you know, they run into those problems. So that's one of the major advantages. You also have, unfortunately, a lot of violence against sex workers being done by police and they are able to do that in part because of the criminalized status that they can use against them.
And then you also have, you know, sex workers aren't allowed to work in ways that can keep them safer. They aren't allowed to, screen clients openly. Clients are much more reticent to give them their real identification and things like that, that things that could help them, you know, screen clients. Things like employing a bouncer or employing a driver or working together with another sex worker. All of these things are illegal in a criminalized system, which, if it was decriminalized, could keep, could, you know, keep them safer.
So I think it's, it's a matter of just looking at it like, yes, like there's, there's no way to ensure that everyone's selling sex is always going to be doing it 100% free of any sort of coercion, unfortunately.
I think decriminalization is the best way to keep anybody regardless of, of, of that safe.

Arjun: Those make a lot of sense. That actually there's so many sort of second and third order things that you just mentioned there that never occurred to me like, oh my God, that does actually help. Like the police are kept in line.
Those are really good points. One of the things I think about when I read Reason and other Libertarian sort of outlets, you know, Reasons motto is Free Minds Free Markets, which I quite like actually. And it seems something that I think a lot of people can appreciate. It's kind of like a little bit of bedrock of American capitalism if you will, but I feel like in its writings, its principles, its viewpoint, it ignores or doesn't talk much about the impact that people have on the communities and societies that they live in.
So for example, we're talking about prostitution here and decriminalizing or legalizing it, and the benefits are very, very good as you just outlined. Is there a chance that it sort of makes prostitution sort of more readily accepted and then you have a society where a lot of mostly men predominantly use these services and don't have healthy relationships anymore with a partner? And don't even know what a healthy relationship is like now because you sort of separate sex from, you know, relationships.
Do you end up with a society that's kind of rotten if we do this? Maybe I'm being too puritan, but I'm curious.

Elizabeth: I was gonna say, I think that the, ship has failed on the separating sex from relationships in our society. I think, you know, what way you're talking about is really the sort of second wave feminist or, or RAs feminist argument against this, which is that, you know, it sends a bad message or, or like you said, like it, it's bad for sort of women maybe across the board, I think.
I mean, in, in a proper society. I just, I don't think that the role of government can be to enforce a particular morality or can, can be to enforce, you know, particular forms of relationships or anything like that. I think that that's just not a desirable thing in general. But even if we set that aside, I mean, if we just look at sort of competing rights here, it's like even if we say like, Yes, the government has an interest in promoting, you know, healthy, monogamous.
You know, man, woman relationships or whatever. Um, which, you know, again, I don't, I don't think necessarily does, but if we say that it does, when we talk about that versus criminalizing prostitution, we're saying, Okay, what is the right that a woman maybe has in, in this relationship? Like, they don't want their husband to cheat on them with a sex worker.
Okay, but what is the sex worker's right here and their right is to be not like locked up in a cage for having sex. And I think that just that right outweighs any right. That, you know, the person has. Have their husband have a little less temptation not to cheat. I, I also don't think that necessarily that if sex work was legal, that suddenly it would create a whole new, you know, massive market for, for anything.
Because, you know, sex is so, Readily, easily, easily able to have gotten in, in this day and age and, you know, um, so I don't, I don't think that that premise is necessarily true anyways. But I also just think that even if it is, we can't say that we can deny people bodily autonomy and that we can deny people these sort of basic civil liberties just to make some other people's relationships more convenient.
I have a follow up question on this, which is, and this is something I didn't, I didn't even think to ask, but what are the penalties. For prostitution, like, and I'm sure they vary state by state, but yeah, in most states it's, it's a misdemeanor in, in a few places. If it's, if you do it in a certain number of times, it can be a felony.
I think the thing to think about here though, you know, even if it's a minor penalty, you know, once you've got that criminal record, it can make it harder to find regular work in the future, which is another good argument for Dre because you have people who are like, they wanna get out of doing prostitution maybe, but they can't because their options are limited because they have this prostitution.
Um, solicitation, same thing. It tends to be a, that's, you know, offering to pay someone for sex. It tends to be a misdemeanor, although there's a big push to make it a felony. And I think a few states they have done that. And then, um, there are crimes like around it, like promoting prostitution, which is usually a felony and.
That's a really tricky one because a lot of people are like, Well, of course that should, law should exist because like it's been painted as a way to go after like pimps and traffickers. But we have laws that are against violence and, and we have laws that are against, um, you know, forcing someone in the sex train.
The way that the promoting prostitution or assisting prostitution law works in practice is that it's often used to arrest sex workers who are doing things for other sex workers. Like, well, it's usually, you know, if one sex worker places an ad for her and a friend, It could be used against them. Or if someone has rented a room to a sex worker, it's been used against them.
Or if a sex worker employs a bouncer or a driver or something like that, it can be used against them. So I think that's one of the, That's one of the worst because it carries a lot of hard penalties for people who are not really doing anything that is that that has a victim. It just occurred to me, Elizabeth, I'm Canadian and I think in Canada.
They're a little bit less strict about prostitution. I vaguely remember when I was in college, whatever, 25 years ago, in political science, they always differentiate between solicitation and prostitution. And solicitation was the one that they said, Look, you have people on street corners selling sex that doesn't do good things for our neighborhood.
That's not what we want children to see. We don't want people to feel like a red light district is around the corner from their house, but you do it in the privacy of your home, it's fine. Which is why if you open the Yellow Pages in Toronto, for example, You would see lots of advertisements for escort services.
It's fine. It's not a problem. So I think that's the distinction they used to make in in America. Solicitation usually is used to refer to people paying for sex or offering to pay for sex, and prostitution used to refer to the actual selling of it. So that might be a little bit different. But, um, there is an interesting case study out of Rhode Island, which sort of had what you effectively talked about where from, I think the 1980s through like 2004, where indoor prostitution was legal because it had been illegal before that and then they re criminalized it.
But there's been sort of, they passed the law. That act they kind of didn't exactly realize was. Make indoor prostitution not counted under the law. But so, um, sex workers knew that though, and they had been pushing for it. So anyways, it sort of wounds up decriminalized indoors there for, for a few decades.
And they had, um, lower rates of sexual assault across the population, not just of sex workers and lower rates of gonorrhea. Um, were, were the big, there's some findings on this that this, this man, Scott Cunningham has done a lot of research on. Okay, great. And by the way, listeners, we'll put these resources in the resources section below so you can look up those studies.
So, Elizabeth, you brought this up earlier. You, you briefly mentioned feminism, and, uh, you're the co-founder of this organization, Feminist for Liberty, which describes itself as, uh, quote. We share many of the concerns of mainstream feminists, but believe the best means of creating change in society isn't based on coercion, criminalization, censorship, or bigger government end quote, which is sort of a lot of what we've been talking about.
Why did you start this organization and, and what's the impact that you hope it will have? Yeah. Uh, because a lot of people that we know that are, you know, or a lot of people in the feminist sphere are like, libertarians can't be feminists, and a lot of libertarians we know. Libertarians can't be feminists or feminists, you know, both, both sides seem to think it's incompatible of each other.
Hmm. And, um, my co-founder and I ka Marty, we think that's sort of silly because, you know, libertarianism is at, its at its core about individual rights and treating people like individuals and treating people equally under the law regardless of, you know, their sex, their gender, their religion, race, whatever.
So, um, you know, we thought it's, it's really weird that this is a thing and also, you know, there's a large libertarian feminist, or if you wanna call, Individualist feminists, classical liberal feminists, that goes by several different names, but there's a large tradition of that, um, in, you know, American history and in, in feminism all over the place.
Um, up, even up in, you know, a lot of the first wave feminists were maybe what we would consider libertarian feminists. Now, um, even up through the nineties, there was an association of Libertarian m that was very active. A lot of these libertarian feminists that were right in America culture. So it's really just sort of disappeared in the past few decades, and we hope to sort of highlight how a libertarian feminism exists, um, uh, offers an alternative solution to, to some of these issues than we might see in the mainstream.
It's funny because, you know, we actually overlap a lot with leftist feminists. Not, not in the economic realm, but in other realms because, you know, there's a lot of like socialist feminists or leftist feminists who are also out there being like, Hey, we need to not like invoke the police on. On every issue.
But a lot of the mainstream feminists, especially since the, you know, 1970s in America in the seventies through now, I mean, it's sort of, that's like their go to thing. Like there's a problem. It's like, okay, we need more government spending on this problem. We need to probably create some sort of law enforcement penalties for it, or some sort of regulation in it.
We need to make sure that like, there's more penalties, more crime, attention to this. And I just think that that, that backfires in a lot of ways. I think one of the cool things too, I'll, I'll, I'll bring up is if you go to the Feminist for Liberty website, there's a great recording of you and a pro-life Catholic libertarian feminist debating abortion, which first off, if you don't think fem feminism and libertarian were compatible.
You're really gonna have a tough time with pro-life Catholic feminist libertarian. That not withstanding getting to the issue of regulation, one of the tenets of traditional feminism is that the, the legal structures, the economic structures have had a, a gender bias basically built into them, and that changes in the law are necessary to reverse this.
What do you, what do you say? I mean, I don't think that, that's always not true, but I think that where that exists, what we should be doing is making sure that the law treats people, treats men and women equally, as opposed to being like, Okay, we need to then overcorrect and make sure that like women have, you know, certain special privileges under the law, which is a, a lot of times sort of what, what the case has.
One of the issues, and we'll probably get into this a little later on, but you know, one of the blind spots I think in corporate culture and in our legal system is pregnancy. Our legal structure. Our economy is really built for people who don't get pregnant. And I, I, I wonder, do you feel that's one of the areas where legal protections are in order?
Um, no. I feel like this is a, a good example of, of sort. This should be left to, to the market. I mean, I think that we've done a pretty good job. Like it's just, we've seen, you know, more and more, more and more flexibility for working mothers and people who get pregnant. We've seen more and more companies. I mean, there's still a long way to go, but I think that this is a thing where we should be advocating for changes at in corporate culture as opposed to.
You know, mandated that every business do this. Because I think a lot of times when we do see, you know, people are always like, Well, what's the downside of, of saying that? Um, and even if we sort of leave, you know, like constitutional protections aside, like there's, there's, it can backfire. We've seen this in some of the, some of the Nordic countries and other countries where they've, you know, said certain things about equal pay or certain things about, you know, a year of child leave and things like that, where women might be more likely to keep working after they, um, have a baby, but they also are less likely to get promoted and less likely to be earning as much and things like that.
So I think you can't actually just sort of go in there and say like, Ha, you have to do this, and like nothing will change except that women will keep working as a pregnancy. There's, it's always gonna just distort things in some other. Dan brought up abortion as well based on that chat that you guys had on, on the website.
And so recently you wrote an article titled The Moderate Majority on Abortion. This was on that online, uh, magazine called Persuasion. Uh, it's a great magazine, by the way, folks we're listening to this. You should check that out. Very good magazine. Tell me what you meant by the moderate majority on abortion, and what's your data behind this point?
There is a ton of data, which it, it, there's, I've cited a lot of it in that article, um, showing that people, the vast majority of Americans are, are not sort of, uh, on the extremes of pro-life or pro-choice side. It's interesting because it feels like we fight in the public sphere and in politics, like at these sort of extremes, like abortion should be legal under any circumstances with no restrictions, or abortion should be banned entirely.
And that, you know, the vast majority of people say that abortion should be legal in some circumstances. Um, it depends on how the, you know, the polls are worded, which, you know, how they think. Some people, they might think like it should be mostly illegal except in, you know, cases of rape and inces. Um, or it should be legal up to 15 weeks.
It should be legal up to 20 weeks. But you find that the vast majority of people do think that it should be legal in some circumstances. And usually, um, at least through the first trimester when, when people ask based on trimesters. So I think that Republicans in the United States are just really, actually.
Very out of step with what the vast majority of people here want, and we're starting to find that out a little bit. As you know, they, for so long, they've just had to cater to. The very extreme pro-life side because you know, that was a very vocal constituency. They were out there, they were pushing politicians to lean this way, and there was no downside really, because it was not gonna happen.
So Republican politicians, like they didn't have to worry about their, any people in their base or any independents, not voting for them over abortion because it was sort of a non-issue. It was like they might. Super pro-life view on abortion, but it's not actually gonna be put into law. So whatever. But now that it is actually have to be put into law, and they're gonna have to contend with this fact that most people don't want, you know, it to be criminalized throughout the entire pregnancy.
Most people don't wanna see, um, criminal penalties for abortion, which is what some of these laws have. Most people don't wanna see, you know, a whole new police state set up to catch abortion drugs being mailed between states or to stop moving from traveling outta states for abortion. And these are the things that the, that the pro-life side in America, at least, you know, the pro-life activists are really pushing right now.
And it is really outta step with, with the more moderate views that I think the average American has. I think if we frame this in the libertarian sense too, the, the pro-life and pro-choice sides, it's a very interesting situation because you have the pro-life side really takes the argument that it's bodily autonomy that we're fighting for pro-life side says the unborn child is a life and therefore has this right to uh, right to life.
Do you think this is a case where both sides are so I reconcilable that it really does have to be a matter for. And the states really have to determine kind of what do they feel is an acceptable threshold for Libertarians. It comes down to a lot of what you, the podcast you were talking, you know, with me, my colleague and, and friends, Stephanie Slade was the, was the woman on the podcast with me.
Um, you know, one of the things we talked about is that libertarianism cannot. Tell you whether abortion is right or wrong. It is. It is very much how you feel about abortion is very much determined on, you know, your religious beliefs, on your sort of, uh, you know, where you begin, believe life begins, all sorts of things like that.
What, what? You know, competing claims you give to, to, you know, women's bodily autonomy and, and a fetus at various stages. So I think, you know, it's, it's very much, it's not a question that, you know, the libertarian position has something to say, Um, is abortion morally right or wrong? Um, for Libertarians though, where it comes down to is that prohibit, you know, prohibition is, is pretty much always wrong, like, I think that a lot of, a lot of pro-life libertarians will say like, you know, like I am opposed to abortion.
I think it's morally wrong. I think that people shouldn't do it, and I will work to try and convince them that they shouldn't do it, but the government banning it will create more harms because it will just, you know, create black market systems or just be more of an infringement, embarrassed ways. So I think that that, that's where libertarians tend to tend to come down.
As far as, you know, what, what the states are deciding. I mean, I, This is probably an unpopular position in feminist circles where it was like, I don't hate the idea of it being left up to. Because I am a big believer in states' rights, and I think that if some states want to ban abortion, um, you know, I would, I, I would be, you know, like, you know, we should lobby for politicians that are gonna change that, et cetera.
But I don't think it's, it's terrible for it to be left up to states. Um, unfortunately though, what you see in here now after, um, the, the decision overturning row is that, The pro-life side was actually never gonna be content to just leave it up to states. I mean, already we're seeing people talking about, talking about and introducing federal abortion ban legislation.
We also see a lot of these state laws that are trying to, you know, talk about ways to get people to be not allowed to leave their state for abortions or to penalize people in other states for, you know, mailing abortion drugs in like that and stuff. So I think that if it was just like, Okay, we'll just see this in the States, that would be one thing.
The pro-life side is not actually content to do that. Which, you know, if you think abortion is murder, it, it makes sense, but it just, it's, it makes it even more complicated. The issue of how we actually leave this to the states, you know, Argen, I just wanna put a point on that before we go to the next question, which is, my mom was at one point very active in the pro-life movement.
If this is back in the eighties, and her position is more moderate than the hard right positions you're seeing at the state level. I just wanted to put that in context as to where we are and, and to reemphasize your point Yeah. They're, they're not gonna be satisfied until it's a full, full on band. Yeah.
And I think what you bring up is, is a good point too, because a lot of people that consider themselves pro-life are more, more moderate than the pro-life. organizations or activists or the politicians that are sort of mm-hmm. , um, out there really in front of this issue because a lot of people, like, again, it's, some of the polls show that people like 70%, 70% of people in the same poll will say they're pro-life and say that they're pro-choice.
Yeah. Like a lot of people do use the term pro-life to mean like, I wouldn't have an abortion, or, I think it's wrong, but I don't think it should be totally illegal in all circumstances, So. Mm-hmm. . So Elizabeth, this is a little bit of a conjecture question. If the majority of people are not at the extremes, and it seems like it's pretty well known, like we know.
Most of the country is not at the extremes. Why do you think Republican legislatures are pushing so hard for these fairly extreme bands and seeming to get them passed? Do they know something that we don't about their ability to get reelected on this platform? I think we're gonna see now because this is really the first sec.
Like again, up until like we haven't had an election since the Supreme Court decision up until now. They could push whatever extreme rhetoric they wanted about. And they could even pass these laws and it wouldn't matter because the laws were, you know, routinely just struck down by courts. And it was almost, everyone knew this, you know, like, we knew this was not going to be a thing.
So I think it, it just hasn't mattered as much at the, at the, at the ballot box to them yet. And whether it will, you know, our first test is gonna be in this November. Certainly a lot of their base does. Agree with what they're doing. There are people, you know, I'm not saying that there aren't a lot of people out there that do agree with it, but I think it really comes down to, yeah, more moderate Republicans or swing voters who might not.
And we'll just have to see. But it's unfortunately like so many issues in American politics where it's just like, I think that the extremes dominate because there are, you know, most people don't care that much about an issue, even if they feel one way or the other about it, they're not like totally obsessed with it.
And the people that are totally obsessed with it tend to be the ones that have the most extreme views. So to politicians, it can feel like, The views that they need to take into account because those are just the people that are being the loudest on social media or in, you know, calling their Congress people or whatever.
Yeah, that's exactly right. In fact, that's kind of the premise of the unbiased show. And, and, uh, both Dan's other podcast, you don't have to yell, I mean, it's called, You Don't Have To Yell , literally, that's kinda what he's about. Uh, and then I have this, uh, company called The Factual, which is about finding, well research credible news from across political spectrum so you can see different angles to the stories.
And we routinely pull our audience on these anonymous polls. Very simple, sort of, yes, no maybe kind of options. Tough questions. And on the ones on abortion, we have multiple times seen that there is a big chunk in the middle that's say, you know, abortion to some, uh, time period is acceptable, especially with, you know, doctors' permission or something like that.
And usually it's around 15 weeks, which I didn't realize, by the way, is internationally sort of more of a standard. That 15 weeks is a very common cutoff in most Western nations versus the 26 that we had with Roe, or 24, I think with Roe. It's actually, we were a little bit out of step when we had row in place compared to other western nations.
And now of course we've gone sort of way over the other side. Yeah. I dunno a ton about the abortion laws in other countries. I know there some people have pushed back on that a little. Um, what you just said. I mean, it is true that 15 weeks tends to be the standard. But I, I've, there's been a couple of pieces lately.
I think there was one in The New York Times even about how in a lot of these other countries, it's much easier to get exceptions. That's right. In the 15 week band. So like there's a 15 week band, but like the, the woman's health is at risk and health could be like her mental health or something like that.
Like, then they can still get one. So yeah, I think that's right. There's something I've been rolling around in my head that I'm, and I'm interested in your take on this, which is, you know, as I mentioned before, my mom was, was very, very pro-life, right. That movement was really given life by Roe v. Wade. So in a lot of ways you could view, and I think, I think on the pro-life side, they did view Roe v Wade as something that circumvented the normal standard debate we have over important issues and state and federal legislatures.
And I think there's a strong argument to be. That the issue might not have had a fair shake at the time cuz legislatures were dominated by men. But I'm curious on your thoughts. Do you think Roe back in 1973 was the right decision? Or do you think that was overreach and there should have been that more deliberative process of, of adjusting the laws?
I honestly don't know . Okay. Um, I can see, I told you I go off road. Yeah, no. I can see, I can see arguments on both sides of this. I mean, sometimes I'm a little bit convinced when people talk. How it was just a bad decision on, on legal grounds, um, that it sort of just doesn't actually fit with what the Constitution says.
But then I'll read people like my colleague Damon at reason, um, has written about how he thinks that actually, you know, it, it does make perfect sense with our. Allows, and I, I then I'm convinced that way too, so I could kinda see arguments both ways. Maybe switching gears a little bit, one of the other things that I think you've written about this as well, Elizabeth, but it's, it's a big deal right now is free speech around social media networks.
This is endlessly debated and you know, Texas has got a law out there and Florida's got one now in front of the courts on if social media network. Should be regulated as common carriers. They're so popular, they're so big, and so this be subject to regulation on what speech they can and cannot ban. For example, they cannot ban a politician no matter what they say.
So I'm guessing, you know, you are generally like don't regulate, so it's kind of obvious where you're gonna be as, but I'm curious if you think there's a point at which. A private enterprise is so dominant that it is actually a public utility that we can't ignore the fact that it is where the public discourse happens anymore.
In social media, is there a threshold for you? Short answer, No. ? No, I don't think so. Um, I think that the whole discussion about, about common carrier status or, or public utilities is, is kind of misleading in general because, um, you know, there's not actually any sort of rhyme or reason to what makes something a, a considered a common carrier in, in US law.
Um, you know, historically it was like railroads, telephone companies is another good one, or, you know, radio and TV broadcast stations. But now, you know, A court has ruled that Disneyland is a common carrier, so it sort of just seems like it's almost like. A thing that people want the authority to regulate more strictly without really, you know, necessarily having the popular but just to regulate or, or necessarily the authority.
They want to regulate work strictly. So they're like, Well, it's a common carrier, so now we get to have more say over it. But when most people talk about these historic forms of, of, you know, things being common carriers, it's, it's. In situations of scarcity, right? Like, you know, there was one railroad going from one place to another.
There was one phone company in town, so you couldn't use that railroad or you couldn't, you know, use that phone thing. Then you couldn't travel cross country, you couldn't talk on the phone. That is not, you know, the situation we find ourselves in. Now with the internet, uh, you get kicked off Twitter, you can talk on Facebook, you get kicked off Facebook, you can talk on your own blog.
I mean, there is just like countless opportunities for, for people to be able to engage and get their messages out on the internet, even if they're kicked off of one platform. I also think that another way it's, it's very different is that, So many more First Amendment concerns here than there are with a lot of these other ways that we're talking about regulating things as utilities.
Um, the First Amendment protects, you know, the right not to have to say government messages. It protects the right not to have compelled speech just as much as your right to, to speak. And so to force these companies to carry certain messages that they wouldn't want to, would very much violate the First Amendment rights of the people who are, who are running these c.
And then lastly, I think it's important just to note that it's different because, you know, say forcing the phone company to, uh, give a phone number to the kkk, which is, you know, what would have to happen under, under common carrier status, like, That doesn't affect anyone else's phone experience. Like you're not harmed in, you're using your phone by the fact that the KKK has a phone number where it is as much different with some of these social media laws.
Like a lot of them, some few of them that have been proposed to the federal level too are say, you know, you have to carry messages. Any speech that's. Protected under adverse amendment you have to carry. Um, that's sort of, you know, they're, they're all a little bit different. The Florida one just relates to politicians, The Texas one says about political speech, But effectively what a lot of this could do was mean that.
The user experience in general on these platforms would be a lot worse because the companies would not be allowed to regulate pornography, spam bots, hate speech, you know, um, any of these things like harassment, um, any of that. Like, so if they weren't allowed to regulate that, you know, your, your platform could just very quickly fill up with things that made your ordinary user not want to be there or just have a much more difficult time being there.
And so I think, I mean, that's why it's really. You know, in the flip side of that issue are the, the antitrust concerns. So an example that's often cited is meta, who just has the scale to be able to buy up competitors and buy up market share. Is there a concern that. One platform could become so dominant that they effectively can throttle speech and, and also throttle competition.
I don't think so. And I wrote, I wrote a big piece for this, so I made a cover story on reason about this, um, last summer about the case against. Treating tech companies as being monopolies. And I just, I just don't think that there's, there's evidence that this is happening. Um, you know, again, for one, you often have politicians who are making these arguments going on Twitter to be like, Facebook is a monopoly, and then posting their video about it on YouTube and things like that.
And it's like, it's very self evident that this is not a monopoly. Um, you know, even if Facebook buys up, Certain companies and stuff. There's, there's still just many examples. Um, also, you know, it seemed like for a long time Facebook was gonna be dominant forever, right? And now it's been for the past, like two or three years now, shedding US users as things like TikTok gain a ton more users and are, you know, almost sur or definitely sur growth.
And if we look to the past, you know, there was big US antitrust space against Microsoft in the nineties going into the early two thousands. It was like, no one will ever just place Microsoft. It's too, it's too big. It can never be displaced. And then, you know, um, Apple and Google and all these things came along and now Microsoft is, you know, I mean, it's still a huge company and stuff, but it, it is nowhere nearby having like a, a dominance in, in any of these industries.
So I think that the market. Actually takes care of these things and, and dynamism within the markets, take care of these things a lot better than government can because for government to say it, they, they have to predict, you know, like what's gonna happen in the future of tech. And tech just moves so quickly and is so dynamic that it's just, They're looking at it right now at Facebook, while it feels like it might be, you know, dominant forever, like it's not going to be.
It's, it's on a down slide for sure. Already. You know, Elizabeth, everything I hear about what you're saying, which are really libertarian principles and, and letting the markets decide as much as we can, minimal regulation, it's quite appealing. A lot of these ideas are. Sound very logical. And so I'm wondering why do you think the Libertarian party or the Libertarian platform remains relatively small from an exposure standpoint in the United States when it seems logical, and I feel like a lot of people, especially who are not strictly hard left or hard ride could sort of get behind like, yeah, it kind of makes sense.
Why does libertarianism remain fringe, if you will? Yeah. I mean, you would think, right? What a, um, what I was just saying about the text though, it's funny. Everyone hates our position on tech stuff. like the left and the right just des spies us on tech stuff. Like they can come together about how much they hate libertarian positions on tech stuff.
So that's been really fun over the past few years. And it's funny too though, because you know, we used to agree with the right on economic issues more and we used to agree with the left more on, on issues surrounding speech and civil liberties and things like that. And there's been shifts within, within both parties that have made, um, like the Republicans and Democrats that have made.
Both further from us. Like the Democrats have started to turn away from, you know, free speech absolutism a lot. And the right has started to be like, well, you know, maybe we should regulate tech, uh, private companies a whole lot more. So it's just really interesting cuz it's like, oh God. Like now, where we used to find alliances a little bit with both parties now, like harder, they've just sort of abandoned us some entirely.
I think that a lot of people are very libertarian though in America at their core. I've sort of baked into the American views of things, but it's just that we are dominated by a two party system. A lot of people don't even know libertarianism is a thing. Uh, it's very hard for third parties regardless to of any sort to get valid access in the United States.
And you have both parties, like in my home state of. Both parties were found guilty by the Supreme Court of scheming to keep libertarians off the ballot, like changing the ballot access rules so that they can, you know, keep third parties off. So it's just very hard for libertarian politicians already third party politician to get hold.
And then also the Libertarian party in the United States, like we distinguish here between small L Libertarians, which is just, you know, I believe in Libertarian for not philosophy. And the Libertarian party, the large L Libertarians libertarian party is a bit of a mess. and I, I just thinking remember a few years ago, because it looked like it was starting to maybe turn some things around and it's, it's had some recent changes where it's just become.
Total mess again. So, um, I would, I wouldn't blame a lot of other things, but I will also share like a little bit of the part is deserves on us. So outside of this, I do some work with an organization called Rank the Vote that promotes rank choice voting nationwide and yeah, I think that would be great.
Yeah, Liber Libert, the Libertarian Party's actually been a big advocate for us, and, and part of the reason is to your point, you know, both parties really rely on gimmicks in order to keep the third parties out. So if a, if a third party candidate gets coverage, it's really to talk about how they're a spoiler.
Rather than talk about their platform. And so as a result, they never get it out with rank choice, voting spoiler effect is gone. So, uh, Libertarians would be heard, the platform would be heard. But right now, again, because of the way our system is really, and this gets back to our discussion on abortion. As in as somebody seeking office, you're much better suited to seek some wedge issue as a differentiator, like guns, abortions, and, and what have you, than you are talking economic policy that might meaningfully impact people's lives.
Stuff like that. Yeah, I'm big fan of brain choice voting for exactly why you said, and it's just, it is frustrating because every time, you know, in elections it's like if you know you shouldn't vote for a third party because you're throwing away your vote, we hear that so, And as parties here get a lot more polarized and as politics becomes just much more volatile in the past, you know, however many years, um, I think it, it's even worse situation for third parties because it's, it's even easier now for people to say like, Hey, you've got to vote for a Republican, or You've got to vote for a Democrat because the stakes are so important.
And if you don't, you know, the other side is like all totalitarian and evil and how dare you let them win? So like you can't vote for a third. Which makes people feel like, you know, Yeah. Like that, you know, they have to stop evil with their vote and, and that's a very silly way of looking at politics. I think just kind of shifting gears, but an article I read of yours made a case against the disclose act.
Which for those of you who don't know, stands for Democracy is strengthened by casting light on spending at Elections , which is a terrible name. Just stop at Washington, please. Uh, at any rate, the act, the good part of the act is that it requires organizations to disclose the identities of those who contribute more than 10,000.
And some data from Open Secrets shows that less than one fifth of 1% of Americans have contributed over 2,700. Dollars in the most recent election cycle, about two thirds of American make under $100,000. So a $10,000 donation is gonna be quite a chunk out of their, their budget. And is there an argument to be made that just rising income inequality has given fewer people enormous power in our political process and that there has to be some sort of regulation to ensure that government policy isn't skewed towards the interests of a very small but very We.
Contingent of Americans, I think, you know. Arguably people have more say in our democratic process than ever before. With, with being able to speak online and on social media and things like that, which was never the case. I think there's more ways for people to make their voices heard without any money than there ever has been.
Conversely, I think people with money, even if they have to disclose their donations or not, are still going to find ways to influence the, you know, the political process. Um, you know, they can, they can give directly to political campaigns, which already requires disclosure, and which they can already do in, in large amounts.
They can give to various things. So I think that, I don't really think that it would make a difference in, in how people's voices are heard, but I think it's, it's, you know, rich people have First Amendment rights too. And I think that people should be able to give, to give a lot of money to causes and that they believe in without, you know, necessarily having to have it out there.
You know, you see a lot of progressives championing this law, like, yeah, it'll, you know, get rid of money in politics. But I think that. It would honestly be the worst for progressive causes because these are some of the most controversial causes. Like if we talk about like, you know, abortion rights or, um, LGBTQ issues or, or just, you know, things that are, you know, sort of on the fringe in American society, people who donate to those causes might be some of the ones who feel the most need to be protected from, you know, people finding out who they are and then coming after them.
So I think it protects those people. And also it could, you know, if they have to be disclosed, people might be less likely to give a lot of money to some of these organizations that work on very controversial issues or, you know, sex work, decriminalization, that's another big one. You know, I think people, there are maybe some people who wouldn't want necessarily their name or their company's name associated with that, but who would be willing to give to these causes quietly.
So I just think. It would actually be really bad for, for across the board, but also especially for progressive causes. You know, it's very interesting, Elizabeth. I think, uh, maybe this shows my bias, but I seldom think through the downsides of a law as much as I think you do, and basically saying you have good intentions.
I get what you're trying to do with the disclose act, but there's a whole bunch of bad things that can happen too, and it's not clear that you're gonna. The good things that you wanted. Anyways, it's a very thoughtful look at laws and where I think now, like you said, the left and the right have both drifted to where they want regulation for their pet rock.
You're sort of, yeah, in the middle saying whatever your pet rock regulation is. Probably not the answer. We're always trying to say recently, I guess. You know, like imagine what the next guy's gonna do with your pet rock. Pretty much like always think about how the next president, always think about how you know a friend.
Lets always think about how Donald Trump would use this regulation. Or you know, if you're on the right, always think about how the next democratic president could use this. Any regularization you think is gonna be used just to help your. It's, unless your side's gonna, you know, become a table dictatorship that, you know, house power forever, that's not gonna be the case.
Arjun: It's fascinating. Well, thank you very much Elizabeth. It's such an enlightening conversation. And just, you know, as an aside, I actually really like editing our podcast because I listen to it the second time and actually a lot more is like, Oh my God, that's such a good point. And then I make little clips and notes and stuff.
So I'm really actually looking forward to re-listening to this because, There's a lot in there, and I hope a lot of our listeners get a lot out of this and see that. Uh, it's what Dan and I have been trying to say. There's a lot more moderation when it comes to policies and positions that you might not be aware exists in the US because the side's so polarized.
So I hope that your commentary or insights the day that you're bringing. Helps them feel a little less alone and feel a little bit more sane, I hope.