The Independent Institute

Today, I'm very pleased to welcome Dr.

Mark Thornton, a senior fellow with the Mises Institute and a research fellow with the Independent Institute.

Mark writes extensively on monetary policy, fiscal policy, inflation, debt, and the business cycle.

Mark, welcome.

In fact, you talk about the, uh, speech by Thiel in the nineties, I think, is, is what you note, and i- in which he kind of l- leads us down the strategic path of, uh, where he feels digital currency should be and how government is really something that these guys wanna get rid of.

In nineteen ninety-nine, Peter Thiel gave a speech to something called the Independent Institute, a kind of libertarian think tank.

And he said that in the twenty-first century, there would be this new digital technology, a form of digital currency that would completely undermine government authority and lead to a complete sort of revolution in which basically government lost its power and individuals were able to use this new digital currency to free themselves from the constraints of law regulation and democracy.

And he said that Washington would be totally unable to respond.

But with FDA Commissioner Marty Makary gone following a clash with the White House over flavored vapes, is the agency finally being forced to retreat? Joining us today to help answer that question is health economist Dr.

Raymond March, director of FDAReview.org and research fellow at the Independent Institute.

The FDAReview.org is an educational research and communications project sponsored by the Independent Institute.

It critically examines the scope of FDA authority, the incentives shaping agency decisions, and whether its regulatory actions are justified by their results.

Dr.

So tell us about your work examining FDA through FDAreview.org.

Sure, fdareview.org is a research and education website.

It's a project of the Independent Institute in Oakland, California.

This is Founded Forum 482.

I'm talking to Phil Magnus, who is with the Independent Institute.

He's been doing some research into many conservative influencers who were originally promoting or fear-mongering about the big bad virus in early 2020, and we're going to talk about those.

Because a lot of those people are now trying to pretend that they were never in favor of this.

Okay, well,

where can we find you out there, Phil?

Yeah, so independent.org at the Independent Institute.

And then I'm also active on X, Phil W. Magnus.