This is the Libertarian Podcast.

This is the Libertarian Podcast from the Hoover Institution.

I'm your host Tom Church and the Libertarian is Professor

Richard Epstein. Richard is the Peter and Kirsten Bedford senior fellow here at the

Hoover Institution. He's the Lawrence A Tish Professor of Law NYU, and is a senior lecture at the University of Chicago.

And today we're talking about a few trillion dollars in spending and possibly defaulting on our country's debt.

Richard, there are so many spending bills to keep track of right now,

and you've addressed some of them in your column.

And just before we started recording this, Congress did actually pass a continuing resolution

so that we won't have a government shutdown starting tomorrow.

Now next to be voted on will be the $1 trillion infrastructure bill.

Richard you took issue with a lot of what is called infrastructure in the bill. Why is that?

Well, when you talk about infrastructure, there's a traditional definition and it's more or less

respected at least in part in the one trillion part but it's utterly

unrespected in the 3.5 remainder. The definition of

infrastructure is not whether it's something that's

important, something which is worthy of investment. It's the sort of thing that private

individuals on their own behalf cannot create because infrastructure is

always designed to create a collective good. So one goes right back to what

the famous article or book by Manancor also on the logic of collective

action and what he says if you try to get collective goods by voluntary contributions

except in very small communities everybody will also say well I can

...