David D. Friedman is an economist, legal scholar, and author of The Machinery of Freedom, a foundational book in anarcho-capitalist thought. Son of Milton Friedman, he has written widely on legal systems, decentralized order, and political philosophy.
We talk about how societies can function without a state, how history informs libertarian models, and how theory meets practice in real-world alternatives to government. Topics are outlined in the timestamps below.
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Timestamps
00:00 – Intro
02:48 – Enforcing law without government
05:36 – Parkinson’s Law and institutional critique
08:24 – Real-world examples of anarchic projects
11:12 – Estonia, e-residency, and economic leverage
14:00 – Private schools and the state’s declining necessity
16:48 – Two fronts for decentralizing education
19:36 – Iceland and China: decentralized historical models
22:24 – Trust systems and behavior on platforms like eBay
25:12 – Rationality, family influence, and agreement
28:01 – The economist and the hungry bear story
30:49 – Speech norms and informal censorship
33:37 – Social labels, reputation, and polarization
36:25 – Government boundaries and philosophical grounding
39:13 – Historical fiction and building imagined systems
42:01 – Being raised by two economists
44:49 – AI as a transformative, uncertain technology
47:37 – Why foundational questions matter
50:25 – Thinking practically about building a freer society
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