Author David Brin on Dogmatic Libertarians, Transparency, and Uplifting Dolphins

"The issue should not be government. It should not be unlimited and unalloyed idolatry of personal property, which is the path that the libertarian movement has gone down," says David Brin, a science fiction writer and self-identified "heretical libertarian."

Brin sat down with Reason.tv's Tim Cavanaugh to discuss his recent critiques of the libertarian movement, which he believes is being pushed in the wrong direction by dogmatic followers of Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard.

"Libertarians need to be reminded that, across 6,000 years, the greatest enemy of free enterprise, of market enterprise, innovation, creative competition... have always been oligarch," says Brin.

Brin also discussed the themes of his prescient book, The Transparent Society, which, among other things, predicted a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center before it happened. The interview wraps up with a discussion of the ethics of Brin's Uplift series, which imagines a future in which humans have enhanced the minds and bodies of dolphins and made them equal citizens of society.

About 10 minutes. Interview by Tim Cavanaugh. Shot by Zach Weissmueller, Paul Detrick, and Sharif Matar. Edited by Weissmueller.

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