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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Rumble in the State of Nature Jungle

Episode length: 1h 6m

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We were finally able to schedule a taping with enough lead time to get a special guest we've been wanting to have on for a long time—the great Hadley Arkes, emertus professor of jurisprudence from Amherst College and founder of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding, and co-host of his own very fine podcast, the Natural Law Moment. We've abused Hadley in absentia in some of our podcasts over the last few months, so now he got his chance especially to attempt to sort out the very stubborn John Yoo.

John was delayed a bit joining us, so since this podcast is partly anchored not only in the truths of natural law, but also in libations of a scotch variety, we decided to take advantage of Hadley's advanced expertise in gin martinis. Plus some "origin story" of how he came to political philosophy and in particular natural law as the primary focus of his mature work. And once John showed up, it was ON!

We rounded off this episode with an AI-generated parody of Hadley, which begins as follows:

“On the Ontological Status of the Ham Sandwich: A Moral Inquiry into the Lunchtime Crisis”

By Gladly Harkness, Edward Whiskers Professor of Ontological Jurisprudence

It is a curious feature of our current jurisprudence that the simple act of consuming a ham sandwich has not yet been subject to rigorous philosophical analysis. . .

For the whole thing, you'll need to head over to Steve's "Political Questions" Substack.

Meanwhile, for those who like to take in the video of the episode, here's the YouTube (where we finally managed to livestream!):

Hosts:
John Yoo'Lucretia'Steve Hayward

Discussion (3)

  • Macho Grande'@ChrisCampion

    Regarding the data centers discussion, with additional generation being required and who pays for what, most utilities are entering partnerships with Amazon and Google for the establishment of these data centers, where the risk for infrastructure buildout and generation costs are transferred to those entities, and aren't broadly borne by the average ratepayer. There's a commercial and a residential rate consideration, too.

    Considering where some of these data centers are sited or planned to be sited, lots of ratepayers would welcome their addition to their communities (which are often rural). Some data centers are siting near decommissioned coal-fired generation plants, so some available infrastructure already exists to reduce establishment costs.

    Quite a bit more here, obviously, but some of the conversation and comments I found....interesting.