Brink Lindsey is a writer and policy thinker who spent decades inside Washington's free-market establishment - vice president for research at the Cato Institute, a leading free-trade voice - before publicly reinventing himself as a 'recovering libertarian.' Now senior vice president at the Niskanen Center, he argues that capable government and robust social insurance are not enemies of markets but their necessary complement. His writing, including The Captured Economy (with Steven Teles) and The Permanent Problem, wrestles with a single paradox: rich countries have never had more material plenty, and people have never felt less satisfied. He explores it weekly from a base in northeastern Thailand on his Substack, The Permanent Problem.
Will Wilkinson is a political analyst, essayist, and policy intellectual who spent two decades navigating the intellectual terrain between libertarianism and liberalism before landing somewhere more interesting than either. A former research fellow at the Cato Institute and vice president at the Niskanen Center, he has written for The New York Times, The Economist, The Atlantic, and dozens of other outlets. Currently working in government affairs at Persona, a digital identity company, he continues to publish the 'Model Citizen' newsletter on Substack, where his blend of philosophy, political science, and sharp commentary finds its most faithful audience.