Feasts of Reason
Money, Power & Freedom with Author James Keena
How do we find truth without simply trading one ideology for another? Author and former business executive James Keena joins me for a wide-ranging conversation about capitalism, socialism, free markets, institutional power, and the systems humans have built to cooperate on an enormous scale. James argues that political and economic “isms” can become self-reinforcing dogmas, and that increasingly powerful institutions have weakened individual freedom and concentrated control in the hands of what he calls “the elites.” We explore what he means by socialism, why he sees free markets as one of humanity's most powerful systems of cooperation, and whether science, democracy, and markets succeed because they contain mechanisms for finding and correcting their own mistakes. Things get particularly lively when we turn to banking and the Federal Reserve. James argues that private banks have been given extraordinary power to create money and questions whether we need the Federal Reserve, or even banking in its current form, at all. I push back, and we find an interesting fork between his preference for replacing the existing system and my inclination to reform it. We finish where Feasts of Reason so often ends up: How do we recognize when our own beliefs might be wrong—and what does it take to change our minds? For more information about Jim, his blog and his books go to: https://jameskeena.com/
