Welcome to this throwback edition of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast, where

we remember the past and choose to repeat it.

Today's episode was originally published on December 15, 2017, and we wanted to play it

now because news continues to come out, including new disclosures today about Supreme Court

Justice's Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito receiving lavish gifts from wealthy, politically

connected donors.

You know, just because they're good friends.

Today's episode looks at how the oligarchs and big business consciously seek to undermine

democracy to bring about their vision of market fundamentalism and ruled by the rich.

Sources include the majority report on the media, backstory, the young Turks, and be labored.

Let's talk a little bit about what public choice economics is.

This is where you can sort of, I guess, start it and realize like, hey, I'm going to

get fundamentally more anti-democratic in some respects, it seems to me, but start

with that.

Explain that to us.

Okay.

So public choice economics is actually a broader current of political economy, and there

are some liberals who see value in public choice ideas.

For example, Cass Sunstein, Obama's, you know, he was called the Regulatory's R, wrote a

book called Nudge, you know, about how you could use knowledge of incentives to shape

good public policy.

So I do want to make clear that it's not just a project of the right, but Buchanan's

...