Nearly everyone agrees that the American system is, in some sense, rigged. If it is, then how did it get that way. Mike Konczal, Director of Progressive Thought at the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning think tank, argues that America has come to rely too heavily on markets. In his new book, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand, Konczal pushes back against the idea that "neo-liberal" market dependency is natural, inevitable, or even especially American. Drawing on the history of American policy from the founding up to now, he argues that markets are inseparable from politics -- that they are, effectively, government programs. But markets don't necessarily give people what they need, can't provide essential goods to people who can't pay, and can leave us subject to domination from the economically powerful. In a wide-ranging conversation, we touch on the appeal and implications of the republican conception of freedom as non-domination, World War II-era government daycares, the function that Medicare played in desegregating hospitals, the nature of so-called neoliberalism, and a lot more. When Mike sent me his book, he included a note expressing his intention to turn me into a social democrat. I'm not sure that he succeeded, but one thing our chat made clear to me is that once you're willing to accept that markets are essentially political and that market structure is a policy choice, it's possible to have a constructive conversation free of dogmatic ideological table-pounding.  

Readings

Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand by Mike Konczal

From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century  by Alex Gourevitch

Land-grab universities by Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone, High Country News

Social Insurance: With Special Reference to American Conditions by I.M. Rubinow (1918)

The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? by Gerald Rosenberg

Kludgeocracy in America by Steven Teles, American Affairs

“Neoliberalism” isn’t an empty epithet. It’s a real, powerful set of ideas by Mike Konczal, Vox

The Submerged State: How Invisible Policies Undermine American Democracy by Suzanne Mettler

Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism by Melinda Cooper

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© Model Citizen Media, LLC 2021

This episode marks the beginning of a new chapter for Model Citizen. With the power of a single mighty tweet, I've broken off the shackles of formal institutional affiliation. So we're on our own. Let's just say it's been a hell of a week. In that time, I've launched a daily newsletter, also called Model Citizen, which I've integrated with this podcast. If you'd like to support me, and the burgeoning Model Citizen media empire, please consider subscribing at modelcitizen.substack.com. It's just $5.99 a month. In addition to thought-provoking writing delivered straight to your inbox, subscribers get audio versions of articles, special episodes of the Model Citizen podcast and more. But on with the show!

This week's guest, Richard Florida, is one of our leading authorities on cities and urban life. Richard is author of a shelf of books, including the Rise of the Creative Class and, most recently, the New Urban Crisis. In this episode, we talk about the extent to which work-from-home arrangements will or won't stick after the pandemic, whether San Francisco faces the fate of urban powerhouses of yesteryear, like Pittsburgh and Detroit, how self-reinforcing selection effects have made academia stifling, and more. Richard Florida is University Professor at the University of Toronto's School of Cities and Rotman School of Management, as well as a Distinguished Fellow at NYU's Schack School of Real Estate. And, as you'll see, he's also a hell of a nice guy.

Readings

The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida

Who’s Your City by Richard Florida

Jason Rentfrow’s Google Scholar page

Triumph of the City by Ed Glaeser

Jonathan Miller on Real Estate after the Pandemic, Bloomberg Masters in Business podcast

Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci

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Credits

Host: Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson)

Music: Dig Deep by RW Smith

I never thought I'd see a seditious mob of Americans sack the Capitol building as Congress counted electoral votes. But, then again, I never thought the president of the United States would turn out to be a malignant narcissist who lies about everything all the time. The insurrectionists who sacked the capitol were fueled by lies. One thing that struck me when Trump became president was how other Republican officials didn't seem to care all the much that he lied all the time. By the end of his presidency, practically the entire GOP was willing to enthusiastically embrace Trump's biggest lie yet: that he'd won an election he obviously lost. And, of course, right wing media was there the entire time, amplifying and spreading Trump's lies, whether they were petty vanities or outright seditious. Partisan bias is one thing. Blaring propaganda like a foghorn, completely indifferent to the truth, is different animal altogether. That's why I wanted to talk to my old friend Matthew Sheffield. Matthew was one of the founders of Newsbusters, one of the first conservative sites to devote itself entirely to the exposing liberal media bias and left-wing "fake news." At a certain point, the scales fell from Matthew's eyes and he realized that the mainstream media was at least trying to tell truth, but the right-wing media wasn't trying to do anything at all but stick it to left. I think the inside perspective is critical here. One of the biggest biases of the mainstream media is ignorance of the way the conservative media and messaging machine actually works. Matthew really knows what he's talking about. In addition to founding Newsbuster, he was the founding online managing editor of the Washington Examiner. More recently, he's covered the right and rightwing media for Salon, hosts a podcast called Theory of Change and has written a series of penetrating Twitter threads about the conservative media ecosystem that have earned him interviews on a bunch of radio shows as well as the New York Times. 

Readings

NYT interview with Matthew Sheffield 

Twitter thread on right-wing media

Twitter thread on meaning, loss and Christian supremacism  in modern conservatism

How Right-Wing Media Fuels the Political Divide, On Point, WBUR - Boston

Matthew Sheffield's Theory of Change Podcast

Credits

Host: Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson)

Audio engineer: Ray Ingegneri

Music: Dig Deep by RW Smith

Model Citizen is a production of the Niskanen Center  (@niskanencenter)

To support this podcast or any of the Niskanen Center's programs, visit: https://niskanencenter.org/donate