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

Subscribe to the Model Citizen newsletter

http://modelcitizen.substack.com/subscribe

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

This week's guest, Christopher Federico, is co-author (along with Christopher Johnston and Howard Lavine) of one of the most illuminating books I've ever read in the field of political psychology, "Open Versus Closed: Personality, Identity, and the Politics of Redistribution." The American electorate is divided by geography, but also personality. "Open Versus Closed" explores the ways in which personality differences do and don't predict our political views. Christopher and I talk about all that good stuff an more, including a discussion that I found really interesting about the extent to which rising prosperity is inherently polarizing because it reveals and amplifies our natural differences simply by making it easier for us to realize our capacities and select into professions and communities filled with people like us. We also explore whether its easier to extend respect and empathy across ideological and partisan lines when you believe that people generally aren't personally responsible for their personalities or political opinions. 

Christopher Federico is Professor of Political Science and Psychology at the University of Minnesota. He's the Director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for the Study of Political Psychology and Vice President of the International Society of Political Psychology.    

Readings

Open Versus Closed: Personality, Identity, and the Politics of Redistribution by Christopher Federico, Christopher Johnston and Howard Lavine

"The Personality Basis of Political Preferences" by Christopher Federico

"The contingent, contextual nature of the relationship between needs for security and certainty and political preferences: Evidence and implications" by Christopher Federico and Ariel Malka

Christopher M. Federico at Google Scholar

Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity by Lilliana Mason

"How racially resentful working-class whites fled the Democratic Party — before Donald Trump" by Michael Tesler

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

In my most philosophical moods (and I'm usually in a pretty philosophical mood) I tend to see pretty much anything as a window onto the cosmos. But I'd never considered my cotton slacks as a window onto the forward march of human progress. That is, until I read Virginia Postrel's new book, "The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World." 

Did you know that the microbial theory of disease starts with silkworm farming? That the origins of computing have something to do with the algorithmic nature of weaving? That double-entry bookkeeping and modern finance are creatures of the textile trade? Well, I do now, thanks to Virginia's fascinating new book. We talk about all that, as well as the nature of the human desires for protection, comfort, pleasure, novelty and status that drive the whole story forward. Could whatever you're listening to this on now even exist if we didn't care about so much about pants? I don't know, but "The Fabric of Civilization" got me wondering. 

In addition to this book, Virginia Postrel is author of The Future and Its Enemies, the Substance of Style, and the Power of Glamour. Reason magazine under her editorship in the late '90s and early Oughts was a big formative influence on me and I count myself lucky to have her as a friend. She is also, I should mention, a member of the Niskanen Center's board of advisors.  

Readings

The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel

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

The presidential election once again made clear that there is a striking and surprising relationship between population density and party vote share. The salience of the American electorate's polarization on density  renewed interest in my 2019 paper, The Density Divide: Urbanization, Polarization, and Populist Backlash, which explores how the logic of long-term urbanization explains the density divide by spatially segregating the national population along the lines of ethnicity, personality, and education.  A few listeners mentioned that they'd like to hear me talk about the paper on the podcast, and discuss whether there are new insights to be gleaned from Biden's win in the 2020 election, so here it is: an improvised two-hour monologue on the Density Divide.  

Readings

The Density Divide: Urbanization, Polarization, and Populist Backlash by Will Wilkinson

Audio Version of the Density Divide by Will Wilkinson

Who's Your City by Richard Florida

Jason Rentfrow on Google Scholar

Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide by Jonathan Rodden

The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti

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

American democracy has gone more than a little awry. Nearly 300,000 Americans are dead in no small measure due to the failure of Congress to implement a nationwide testing and tracing regime. But this failure hasn't much hurt the incumbent Republican Party. The GOP gained ground in the House. They may hold their Senate Majority. Trump wasn't repudiated nearly as decisively as many of us wish, and he's still out there spreading outrageous lies about the credibility of the election he lost. 

I think there's a connection between the brokenness of our democracy and the deadliness of the pandemic. That's what I talk about in this episode with Danielle Allen -- though I never quite managed to put it that way. I got to know Danielle by working on pandemic response policy with a group she was leading. This is how I discovered that Danielle Allen is no mere mortal. She's a distinguished classicist, political philosopher, and theorist of democracy. I knew that already. What I didn't know is that she's also an exemplary practitioner of the art of collective self-government. Within weeks of the pandemic's onset, Danielle had assembled a working group of epidemiologists, economists, computer scientists, entrepreneurs, and policy experts through the auspices of Harvard's Safra Center for Ethics, which she runs. Danielle seemed to immediately assimilate everything everyone else had spent a lifetime learning. She was able to get everybody to happily work together in complementary roles. And she motivated us to turn out a set of impressive practical pandemic response plans at an incredible pace. Her effortless intelligence, openness to others' views, easygoing but authoritative leadership, and inspiring level of energy and drive made me feel a little like I was in a pick-up game with LeBron James. I guess that's how you get to be the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard, which is what she is. 

In this episode we touch on why we couldn't get the Senate to take up legislation funding the sort of testing regime that works,  what we can do to make our democracy more responsive and less dysfunctional, and why Danielle loves the U.S. Constitution, despite the concessions to slave states that continue to plague our political system. I regret that we didn't have time to go longer and deeper, but we should all be grateful that Danielle is working overtime trying to save our lives and democracy ... which means that she always has another meeting.     

Readings

Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience by Danielle Allen, et al.  

Pandemic Resilience: Getting It Done by Danielle Allen, et al. 

The best way out of this pandemic is to massively scale up testing. Here’s how to do it by Danielle Allen, Washington Post

The Brutal Clarity of the Trump-McConnell Plan to Protect Businesses by Will Wilkinson, New York Times

We Know How to Beat the Virus. This Is How Republicans Can Do It. by Puja Ohlhaver and Will Wilkinson, New York Times

Our Common Purpose: Reinventing Democracy in the 21st Century by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission for the Practice of Democratic Citizenship 

The Flawed Genius of the Constitution by Danielle Allen, The Atlantic 

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

Donald Trump may be going away, but the coalition, movement, and intellectual tendencies that grew up around him aren't. For many, Trump seemed to herald a new dawn for reactionary conservative nationalism political thought aligned against pluralism, social justice and even liberal democracy itself. In a fascinating series of essays for Niskanen and the Bulwark, political theorist Laura Field has been probing to the philosophical underpinnings of the emerging illiberal right more insightfully than just about anyone. 

In this episode, we discuss the underlying assumptions animating thinkers like Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Ahmari, Adrian Vermuele, Yoram Hazony and Attorney General Bill Barr, among others. Why do they think liberal democracy is self-undermining? Why are they hostile to multicultural liberal pluralism. How do they think they know that liberalism leaves us empty, alienated and estranged from a profound human need for deep social connection? Are these guys like Captain Ahab on a deranged and futile hunt to destroy meaninglessness? We talk about all that and lots more, including whether left-wing postmodern thought is destroying liberal education. (Hint: It isn't.)

Laura field is a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center and has taught political theory and the history of political thought as faculty at Rhodes College, Georgetown and American University, where she is currently a scholar in residence.

Readings

Meet the Reocons by Laura Field

What the Reactionary Right Gets Dead Wrong about Liberal Democracy by Laura Field

Love and Loyalty in the "Liberalocracy" by Laura Field

Dear Republicans: Welcome to the New Establishment by Laura Field

Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen

Moby-Dick; or, the Whale by Herman Melville

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