Podcast Summary: The Realignment

Episode 590 | Brink Lindsey: How the 21st Century Mugged a Libertarian

Date: January 22, 2026
Host: Marshall Kosloff
Guest: Brink Lindsey, Senior VP at the Niskanen Center, Author of The Permanent Problem: The Uncertain Transition from Mass Plenty to Mass Flourishing

Episode Overview

In this wide-ranging conversation, Marshall Kosloff speaks with Brink Lindsey about the failings of liberal democratic capitalism in the 21st century, the challenges facing Western societies, and the evolving meaning and future of “abundance” politics and policy. Brink explains his journey from doctrinaire libertarianism to what he calls a “brokenist liberal”—a worldview mugged by the realities of our era. The discussion delves into legitimacy crises, structural change, the role of the welfare state, and why both the left and right have yielded to performative politics. The episode navigates contemporary debates about what “abundance” means, the limitations of technocratic fixations, and how deeper cultural and philosophical questions must shape any genuine renewal.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Brink Lindsey’s Ideological Journey: From Libertarian to “Brokenist Liberal”

• 21st Century Mugged a Libertarian: Brink describes himself as a “libertarian who got mugged by the 21st century,” noting his roots in the Cato Institute and a gradual disillusionment with libertarianism as a sufficient explanatory or prescriptive worldview.
  • “I think of myself as a libertarian who got mugged by the 21st century to, to put an actual label on myself, one pithy way to put it would be I'm a brokenist liberal.” (02:09)
• Partial Truths of Libertarianism: While still valuing the suspicion of centralized power and faith in spontaneous order, Lindsey recognizes the limits of these ideas in an era beset by class division, climate change, and slowed technological progress.
• Social Insurance & Market Economies as Complements: A significant shift for Brink has been seeing a well-designed welfare state not as an enemy of markets but as necessary for their political sustainability and dynamism:
  • “A robust system of social insurance, well designed, well executed and a go go, entrepreneurial, competitive, free market are complements, not antagonists...” (07:57)
  • “…a well functioning social insurance system … makes political acceptance of that creative destruction politically sustainable…” (08:36)

Legitimacy Crisis & Political Realignment

• Legitimacy Crisis in Liberal Democratic Capitalism: Lindsey and Kosloff discuss the dangers of complacency among centrists who minimize populist grievances rather than confront structural failings.
  • “Telling people you ought to be happy, you don't know how good you have it … all that does is further exacerbate what I see as the current legitimacy crisis…” (12:28)
  • “There is absolutely no political force more impotent these days than status quo is.” (13:44)
• Performative Politics: Modern politics, in Lindsey’s view, is less about solving real problems and more about “performative theater” that valorizes group identity and relative status.
  • “…the action is in a kind of performative theater where different groups strut on the stage and talk smack about the other side and puff up themselves…” (30:00)

Liberalism: Competing Definitions and Global Meaning

• Classical vs. American Liberalism: Kosloff and Lindsey dissect the growing confusion in American left-of-center politics over the label “liberal,” contrasting the global, Enlightenment-rooted meaning with its U.S. 20th-century evolution.
  • “I'm a liberal, not in that distinctively American sense, but in the broad global sense of liberalism as a broad political movement, roots in John Locke and the Enlightenment…” (17:10)
  • “America is a country that was… a deeply liberal country… Declaration of Independence is an Enlightenment document of just 200 proof liberalism.” (20:33)
• Left’s Return to ‘Liberal’: The resurgence of “liberal” among Democrats is viewed by Lindsey as a healthy reaction to the illiberal elements that have influenced both left and right coalitions.

From The Captured Economy to The Permanent Problem

• Critique of Elite Capture: Lindsey and Steve Teles’s The Captured Economy exposed how policy has been manipulated by elites to benefit insiders, restrict competition, and drive inequality:
  • “Elites tend to dominate policymaking these days… [eliminating] new entrants into the marketplace and thereby redistributing wealth and income up the socioeconomic scale.” (26:30)
• The Permanent Problem: The new book expands this critique, identifying not just elite capture but a broader crisis of dynamism, inclusion, and a breakdown in the link between growth, well-being, and genuine societal progress.
  • “…capitalism seriously misfiring in that it's disconnect. Its, its performance is disconnecting from the things that matter most in people's lives, their overall quality of life…” (29:13)
• Three Interlocking Crises: Slowed growth (“dynamism”), rising inequality (“inclusion”), and performative, gridlocked politics.

The Abundance Debate: Movement, Storytelling, and Contestation

• Genesis and Ambiguity: The “abundance” movement arose as a technocratic supply-side reform agenda but has become a catchall, adopted by both centrist-left and some right-of-center thinkers.
  • “The theory of what's gone wrong, I think among in the abundance movement is pretty shallow. … But I think you can go much deeper and look at more profound social forces that are producing those bad policies.” (33:49)
• Definitional Splits: Kosloff underscores that within the “abundance” conversation, different books and thinkers deploy the term for divergent purposes: as a Democratic policy plank (Ezra Klein), a technocratic reform, or a nonpartisan paradigm.
  • “…there are actually different understandings of this project … If you just treat it as a whole … you're going to sort of be kind of confused.” (37:04)
• Need for Narrative & Broader Appeal: Both agree the movement must grow beyond policy wonks and address bigger philosophical questions about what abundance is for—not just how to deliver it.
  • “An abundance movement has at least the potential to connect with broader themes … not only to get the policies right, but to get a culture aimed towards prioritizing the physical and the real again.” (59:57)

The Role—and Ambivalence—of AI

• Promise & Peril: Lindsey reflects on AI’s transformative potential for productivity and innovation but warns about “WALL-E” outcomes—cultural atrophy and passive consumerism.
  • “…if kids use it as a substitute for learning and a substitute for thinking … it's not an iron man suit for the mind. It's a hover chair from Wally, you know.” (51:33)
  • “I see real risk in, in how AI is being used today. It goes along with a broader trend towards sort of post literacy…” (53:02)
• Lessons from the Internet: The story of the Internet’s promise versus social media’s toxic effects serves as a cautionary tale for AI optimism.

Reclaiming the “Physical and the Real”

• Beyond Bits to Atoms: Lindsey highlights abundance as the project of revitalizing physical infrastructure and shared reality—countering decades of digital overemphasis.
  • “…abundance is about revitalizing progress in the world of atoms as opposed to the world of bits.” (58:36)
• Danger of Escapism: Referencing dystopias like Ready Player One, Lindsey warns that without a renewed focus on the tangible world, societies risk collapse into escapism and social decay.

Politics as Values, Not Just Policy

• Technocracy’s Limitations: Kosloff criticizes a center-left culture obsessed with policy expertise and “how” over “what for,” noting the need for politics to recover a sense of values, meaning, and purpose.
  • “…there is a over obsession with wonkery that is a huge, huge problem… It's values, it's asking questions … what does it mean to live a good life…?” (61:09)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I'm a liberal, not in that distinctively American sense, but in the broad global sense of liberalism as a, as a broad political movement, roots in John Locke and the Enlightenment…”
  — Brink Lindsey (17:10)

• “A robust system of social insurance … and a go go, entrepreneurial, competitive, free market are complements, not antagonists…”
  — Brink Lindsey (07:57)

• “Telling people you ought to be happy, you don't know how good you have it … all that does is further exacerbate what I see as the current legitimacy crisis…”
  — Brink Lindsey (12:28)

• “There is absolutely no political force more impotent these days than status quo is.”
  — Marshall Kosloff (13:44)

• “If you don't focus on what really matters, then you realize that you fritter away so much time doing that that you've deprioritized other people.”
  — Brink Lindsey (56:40)

• “The promise of material growth is freedom from. Freedom from drudgery and inconvenience and wasted time. But if you don't think about freedom to what are we going to use that freedom for? Then you end up in … some combination of Brave New World and WALL-E.”
  — Brink Lindsey (56:48)

Key Timestamps

• 02:09 — Lindsey’s “mugging by the 21st century” and shift from libertarianism
• 07:57 — Markets and social insurance as complementary
• 12:28 — Legitimacy crisis, populism, and the dead status quo
• 17:10 — Competing definitions of “liberal”
• 24:50 — The Captured Economy—elite capture and its consequences
• 29:13 — Diagnosis of interconnected crises in The Permanent Problem
• 33:49 — Abundance movement criticized as shallow; deeper causes needed
• 51:33 — AI as potential “hover chair from WALL-E”
• 58:36 — Renewing progress in the world of atoms, not just bits
• 61:09 — The call for a politics of values, not just technical fixes

Conclusion: Where Might Abundance Go Next?

Lindsey sees the abundance movement not as a narrow technocratic agenda but as an opening for a broader social movement—one that consciously rebalances progress in the physical world with the hard questions of meaning, flourishing, and the good life. Doing so requires new voices and a willingness to address deep sociocultural wounds, not just institutional bottlenecks. As the lines between left and right, liberal and illiberal, blur and shift, the need for clarity about what abundance is for—and who it serves—will only intensify.

[End of summary]