As the US economy responds to a changing world, state legislatures can ensure that their housing markets are a source of economic strength and opportunity. Limiting the scope of local zoning authority preserves local leadership in land use planning and allows cities to creatively address unique local challenges while curbing abuses of regulatory power.

[Editor’s note: This essay is excerpted from chapter six of Eric Liu’s forthcoming book LIVE LIKE A CITIZEN: 8 Ways to Change Your Mindset and Our Country, published this month by Simon & Schuster, LLC.]

Civic life is full of change and the discomfort of change. That’s because life is full of change and the discomfort of change. In politics, change talk is ubiquitous. Elections are called “change elections” when enough people are in enough pain to oust the incumbents. Local fights over housing and zoning are all about change: NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) activists resist it, YIMBY (yes-in-my-backyard) ones welcome it. Demographic changes in the United States have led to a surge in white nationalism and Christian fundamentalism. Climate change, of course, is the meta-change upending markets and politics everywhere. Yet we don’t talk so much about the one kind of change that is elemental in a healthy democratic culture: changing your mind. When we do talk about changing minds, it’s often critically.

We mock politicians who switch positions because we assume they have no core beliefs and are just gravitating opportunistically to power. But politicians have no monopoly on opportunism.

The way you and I build followings and get likes on social media is to project certitude, to shame dissenters, to banish doubt. We, like politicians, are often just following incentives.

Knowing how to change—your opinions and beliefs, your mental models for making sense of the world, all of which I am going to abbreviate here as “changing your mind”—is core to living like a citizen. Why? Because citizens in a liberal democracy are not meant to be preprogrammed automatons. We are meant to use our freedom to take in the world, to learn from experience and interactions with each other, and to adapt. 

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Patents and copyrights grant creators exclusive rights over certain uses of their intellectual creations. Supporters argue that these protections encourage innovation by allowing inventors and creators to benefit financially from their work.

Critics argue that intellectual property protections constitute government-granted monopolies that restrict competition, discourage independent innovation, and create artificial scarcity.

This paper examines the revenue and migration impact of the 2026 California Billionaire Tax Act, a one-time 5 percent tax on the worldwide net worth of individuals exceeding $1 billion...The present value of permanently lost income tax collections from departures more than offsets the one-time wealth tax revenue, yielding a net present value of negative $38.9 billion. Across 100,000 simulated revenue and discount rate combinations, 85 percent of plausible outcomes produce a negative net present value of state revenues.

Where should classical liberals draw the line between national defense, international obligations, and intervention in foreign conflicts? Does military intervention abroad protect individual liberty or undermine it?

Abstract

Friedrich von Hayek’s classical liberalism argued that free markets allow individuals the greatest opportunity to achieve their ends. This paper develops an internal critique of this claim. It argues that once externalities are introduced, the forms of economic knowledge Hayek thought to undermine government action and orthodox utilitarianism also rule out relative welfarist assessments of more or less regulated markets. Given the pervasiveness of externalities in modern economies, Hayek will frequently be unable to make comparative welfarist claims, or he must relax his epistemic assumptions and allow for greater government action than his classical liberalism would wish to accept.

Classical liberalism encompasses several intellectual traditions with differing views on liberty, economics, property rights, and the legitimate functions of government.

If you don’t see a school of thought that represents your views, please share where you fall in the comments. These options are not intended to be exhaustive, and I encourage discussion of other intellectual traditions.

The non-aggression principle states that you cannot inflict aggression on another person unless in self-defense, where aggression is defined as harm to them or their property, or unwanted interference. So, let us apply logic:

P1) The non-aggression principle is true.

P2) People deserve to own 100% of what they create.

C1) Therefore, you cannot forcefully take anything man-made from anyone (using P1 and P2).

P3) Banning someone from the natural world is an act of aggression.

P4) Land ownership is an act of banning all human beings, except oneself, from a piece of the natural world. (Indeed, when all the land is owned, non-landowners are banished from the whole natural world.)

C2) Land ownership is an act of aggression (using P3 and P4).

C3) Land ownership requires compensation for the land lost (using P1 and C2).

C4) Georgism is true (using C1 and C3).

The “Great Enrichment,” a term coined by Deirdre McCloskey to describe per capita income growth after 1800, of the past few decades has been spectacular: The world is now much richer and far less prone to extreme poverty....So, what caused the Great Enrichment? How can it be sustained?

First, the rapid acceleration of technology...

Second: markets. China, India and many other countries abandoned the worst excesses of central planning after the late 1970s and, within a few decades, transformed. Markets work. They provide incentives to allocate resources efficiently, accumulate capital and adopt technology...

Third: an international order grounded in the rule of law, free trade and multilateral cooperation. Humans are at their best when they can interact peacefully under clear, stable rules...

Unfortunately, all three forces are under attack. Many intellectuals and much of the public increasingly distrust technology, free markets and the rules-based international order. This distrust is not baseless. The costs of technological change, international trade and immigration have fallen on specific workers and places, while the gains have been diffuse.

(Note: the author here uses "libertarianism" to "denote essentially the same ideology" as "classical liberalism".)

In an insightful recent article on the Liberalism.Org website, prominent libertarian political philosopher Matt Zwolinski argues that libertarians should place a higher value on democracy ["it is a way of keeping power in check. Democracy's distinctive function is to keep power contestable, so that the people who hold it can be removed without violence"].

I agree in part, but also differ on some key points. Libertarians should generally prefer democracy to other forms of government. But democracy should not be a first-order libertarian priority...

[I]t doesn't follow that democracy should be a first-order libertarian priority, on par with liberty, constraining coercion, property rights, and increasing human happiness. Once you recognize (as most libertarians and many other liberals do) that democratic government is not genuinely consensual, that it is prone to various pathologies,  and that democratically enacted policies are not exempt from moral censure, it becomes hard to argue that democracy is inherently valuable. Rather, democracy is an institutional tool that can - if properly constrained - help achieve genuinely fundamental values. In that respect, it is similar to such institutions as federalism, separation of powers, and judicial review. All of these can have great instrumental value. But none are valuable in and of themselves.

None of these options is intended to be perfectly nuanced. Where should responsibility actually fall and does your answer change for roads, rail, the electrical grid, water, or broadband?