As the Trump administration pursues its federal downsizing project, we're joined by Nick Gillespie, Editor at Large of “Reason” magazine and Host of “The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie” podcast, to examine what's at stake. We explore where libertarian principles align with and diverge from Trump's approach, debate if government serves as essential check on free markets, and consider what role government should play in a society that values both liberty and the public good. PLUS+, find out what Donald Trump, Bob Dylan & George Constanza have in common! Follow The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart on social media for more: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@weeklyshowpodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weeklyshowpodcast TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@weeklyshowpodcast X: https://x.com/weeklyshowpod BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/theweeklyshowpodcast.com Host/Executive Producer – Jon Stewart Executive Producer – James Dixon Executive Producer – Chris McShane Executive Producer – Caity Gray Lead Producer – Lauren Walker Producer – Brittany Mehmedovic Video Editor & Engineer – Rob Vitolo Audio Editor & Engineer – Nicole Boyce Researcher & Associate Producer – Gillian Spear Music by Hansdle Hsu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: How does Jon Stewart introduce the episode?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the weekly show podcast. My name is Jon Stewart. I come to you today broken, but not bound. For I had an owie on my finger. I'm going to show it now. You probably, I wrapped it up. I heard it on the show doing my classic brand of physical slapstick comedy that never works and always gets me hurt.
It's the second time on The Daily Show that I have broken a drinking vessel. The first one was glass. The second was ceramic for those who thought I should have had a breakaway mug. Yeah, now you tell me. Ceramic is one of my least favorite materials to have embedded in my skin. But I bled out. It really, for a comedian, is humiliating. And I say that
Because the greats, the Buster Keatons, the Charlie Chaplains, Buster Keaton would stand, you know, in front of a house with a little window cut out. It would fall on his head. Harold Lloyd would hang off of a clock with no net. I nearly died. being vociferous with a coffee mug.
It does not speak well of the legends of my business, but I don't imagine they ever had to have their sets childproofed. Can I tell you what's not smart to do when you have a cut? Hold it below your heart for 20 minutes. Because it really does, it just makes your whole arm a straw. And it just all just flows out. And it makes it look way worse than when I picked it back up to look at it.
Even I, for a second, was like, what the, was I shot? I glued it that night. And then it's pretty gnarly looking, but it's all good. So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say, so it goes. We have a ton to get to today. We're taping on Wednesday. So God knows if we'll even still be live. in the alliances that we were in the day before, but I'm excited to talk to you today.
You know, there's so much that's going on, and we talk about Democrats and liberals and Republicans and conservatives and Doge and MAGA. I wanted to get kind of the libertarian view, and I know that's not monolithic in any way, but I thought there's no better person to get that from than our guest today. So let's get to that right now.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are very pleased in this moment to have with us Nick Gillespie, editor at large of Reason Magazine, host of the Reason interview with Nick Gillespie podcast. Nick, the OG in my mind of kind of grounded libertarian thought is in my mind, I think of Nick Gillespie and I'm very pleased. that you could be here and join us today.
Oh, well, thank you, John. It's a real treat. And it's always nice to be called grounded because normally I'm talked about as something less than grounded. So thank you.
Is that really true? Because it's so interesting to me. Libertarian is, you think of political movements sometimes and you have a tendency to group them as a monolith. And the libertarian movement is anything but a monolith. It has, there's this sort of the side of it that's getting maybe the most attention in this day and age is maybe the kind of more edgelord side of it, that kind of young male.
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Chapter 2: What is the libertarian perspective on government regulation?
Yeah, I get that. Reason is a small, it's not a multinational. I'm talking writ large about multinational corporations. And I'll make the case, I think, because- If you look at wealth in systems that are poorly regulated in terms of capitalism, right?
There is, in the same way that political power is accrued through a kind of contrived incumbency, I think wealth also accumulates through a contrived incumbency by those that are wealthy. And what you find is, so let's go back to times when capitalism was less fettered, and that would be sort of Gilded age. It's one thing to say, oh, competition, you know, iron tempers iron.
It makes everybody stronger and it gets stronger. But what happens is, as we've seen with monopolistic tendencies in capitalism, once wealth is accrued. it becomes much easier to then keep tilting the table more in their favor. And it almost inexorably, it's a law of nature. It's a kind of Newton's law.
I hear you, but we will disagree with this to a large degree on this. Oh, okay. I don't think it changed. And I'm not saying that there weren't times where capitalism was red in tooth and claw and exploitative. When was it not? I guess that would be the easier question.
Well, the reason what I'm getting at is saying that when you, you know, if you go back and this is something there's a type of school of economic thought called public choice economics, which talks about how, you know, the story that progressives tell, capital P progressives in particular tell about capitalism is that it was awful
Not awful, but it's not awful. But it's a system that requires exploitation and extraction. I mean, it generates more wealth than any other system, no question. But that wealth accumulates unusually. You brought up earlier the 50s. which I thought was a great time. And you're right. But tax rates then were 80% or 90%.
And the GI Bill, which was a giant government expense, is what helped build that stable middle class that you're talking about.
First off, nobody paid those tax rates because those were the printed rates. No, seriously. But that's why people, that's why things like expense accounts and all sorts of things were invented for upper level people. Sure.
And they cut all kinds of deductions and rich people always find a way out of it. True.
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