This tells me more about the show than the odd trailer did. Thanks!

Missive no.14 was a mostly uncritical look at Hayek, which challenged the reader to decide where their political preferences lie – and challenged me to do the same! It is available on audio and in text. Find them both at linktr.ee/themissives
[14/14]

The second is the “slippery slope”.
A government which intervenes in the marketplace or society (even just a little) in order to serve their vision of justice will create problems. It will try to fix those problems by expanding its power until eventually it becomes totalitarian.
[13/14]

This presses on 2 key thoughts underlying Hayek’s system.

The first is epistemological. Even if there were a right/wrong way to administer a marketplace or society, no individual or supra-individual organisation can know what it is. What government could distribute cars fairly?
[12/14]

So Hayek’s system is egalitarian – but only to a point.
Not everyone has access to a vehicle: they must buy them in a market -- if they can.
Hayek can see no other way but the market. If everyone were given a car, what government could confidently and competently ensure that this happened?
[11/14]

Everyone has an equal right to enter and participate in Hayek’s market / society, as consumers, producers and participants – no matter their gender, creed, colour, etc.
Every vehicle has equal access to the road, no matter its size, speed, age, etc.
[10/14]

(“Nudging” is not a Hayekian idea. It was formalised by Thaler & Sunstein, 2008. It seems to broadly allow for justice to exist without coercion – but it also seems to rely on manipulating people subconsciously.)
[9/14]

A responsible Hayekian government also regulates itself: it understands where it can(‘t) and should(n’t) intervene.
On the roads, the government nudges us through road signs and markings. Nudges don’t tell us what to do, but they do help us to do the right thing.
[8/14]

Drivers and Hayekian citizens tend to regulate themselves out of self-interest. To act recklessly is to cause damage mostly to oneself (one’s car and one’s insurance policy).
Ethics do not come into it: with freedom comes responsibility, and a free society relies on responsible citizens.
[7/14]

The free society is just because it is self-regulating.
It is self-regulating because its citizens and its government regulate themselves.
Likewise, our roads are mostly self-regulating when all (or most) drivers exercise care.
[6/14]

The Missive rests mostly on Hayek’s two books, “The Road to Serfdom” and “The Constitution of Liberty”. Here, Hayek lays out his “free society”: a market-driven entity which is free, and therefore just (so his logic goes), but not equal.
[5/15]

This is the first of 4 parallels that the Missive draws between driving and Friedrich Hayek’s free society. That positive freedom of the individual is paramount for Hayek.

Expressed as a negative freedom, it is the freedom *from* coercion by an individual or a supra-individual entity.
[4/14]

Driving is a liberating experience. (Even in my old Renault Clio I feel like Ryan Gosling in “Drive” or Steve McQueen in “Bullit”. Comedic but true.)
Driving encapsulates the idea of positive freedom: you are (usually) free *to* drive wherever you want, and to decide what route to take.
[3/14]

“Driving Home for Christmas” might be a terrible pop song but it still connects me to two loves: Christmas & driving.
The former is the only conceit remaining from my childhood. The latter is newer: I learned to drive recently and have all the zeal of a new convert. Here’s what I’ve learned.
[2/14]

Great questions! May they lead to many interesting podcast conversations.

Thank you for teaching about the existence of this profoundly intelligent woman.
(Infuriatingly, her Wikipedia page describes her first as a man's daughter, and then as a philosopher.)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabe...

I think a broader point is being made here about parallels between neoloberal thinking (specifically efficient market theory) and AI, rather than the admittedly adjacent issue of large corporations (which admittedly are a product of neoliberal thinking).

Not the point I know but why does Kier Starmer look perpetually perplexed in every single photo I see of him?