Lynne Kiesling
In one of the most incredible pieces of fortuitous timing, after I recommended Richard Epstein’s Simple Rules for a Complex World in my post on our regulatory thickets, here’s a new video of Richard discussing this exact topic!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUr-MbPUl5M]
A clear 22-minute discussion, well worth your time (and the time of any Congressional staffers you might happen to know …).
This video and others (some from the vault that are great!) are available at the libertarianism.org website. Libertarianism.org is a project of the Cato Institute, and provides a lot of informative and thought-provoking content on the intellectual foundations of libertarian thought and classical liberalism.
I highly recommend “Simple Rules for a Complex World”. As I remember, Epstein does an outstaanding job at discussing the tradeoffs made in setting rules, as well as describing first principles. His arguments are pragmatic and utilitarian, but grounded in moral ideals.