vox--2020-12-10--The appointments Biden needs to prioritize to revitalize the economy

Joe Biden is still more than a month away from taking office , but already the basic tasks of his first year in office seem quite clear : He has to end the Covid-19 pandemic , and he has to end the recession and economic fallout from the pandemic .
Most attention on the latter has focused , understandably , on what relief package Biden will be able to pass through Congress .
There ’ s a chance that a bipartisan effort to expand unemployment insurance benefits and state/local government aid will succeed under Trump , but if not Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with either a Republican Senate or a 50-50 one with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking ties .
That ’ s economic job No .
1 .
But there ’ s another key aspect of Biden ’ s relief strategy that hasn ’ t gotten the attention it deserves : his Federal Reserve appointments .
It might not get as much attention as an administration ’ s legislative priorities , but the Fed is extremely consequential , and past Democratic presidents like Barack Obama have ignored it to their detriment ( and Trump , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
While coverage of it is mostly limited to the business press , the Fed ’ s work has enormous consequences for everyday workers and consumers .
One of its central jobs is setting the interest rate at which banks lend to each other overnight , and deciding the interest it pays on funds ( “ reserves ” ) that those banks keep at the Fed itself .
When the Fed raises interest rates , that ripples out through the whole economy .
Because banks are paying more interest to borrow money they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rates they charge on everything from mortgages to auto loans to credit cards go up .
Business loans becoming more expensive makes businesses less likely to expand or hire .
That slows down the economy — and , conversely , lowering rates heats the economy up .
So a Fed committed to rock-bottom rates is incredibly important for making sure the 2021 recovery is fast .
Biden will get at least one pick for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors upon taking office in January , and soon thereafter will have to decide @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
These are likely to be among the most important domestic policy decisions he makes in his presidency , and he ought to prioritize getting dovish nominees — nominees who will keep interest rates low and prioritize employment over inflation— on the Board .
Why Biden should prioritize the Fed To simplify drastically , the Fed has two major roles : regulating banks and related financial institutions , and conducting monetary policy ( that is , adjusting the money supply to maintain stable inflation and low unemployment ) .
Both of these are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its potential to prevent financial crises — but the latter makes the Fed the single most important economic agency in the United States .
By pushing economic activity closer to its potential , the Fed generates , on an ongoing basis , hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars ’ worth of economic output that would otherwise be lost , with massive positive humanitarian consequences both in the US and abroad .
In recent decades , this has been achieved through “ loose ” policy of low interest rates and aggressive Fed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” ) .
When the Fed fails , usually by being too “ tight ” in its policies , the consequences are equivalently dire .
And good monetary policy is especially important during recessions and recoveries like the one the US finds itself in right now .
This is an odd recession , precipitated by a pandemic incapacitating or killing millions of workers and consumers , as well as preventing certain kinds of economic activity ( indoor dining , gyms , etc . )
from taking place .
Fixing the overall pandemic has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get it under control , ramping economic activity back up is going to be crucial .
The Fed ’ s monetary policy is decided by the Federal Open Market Committee ( FOMC ) .
At full capacity , the FOMC has 12 members : seven members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors , who are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate , plus the head of the New York regional Fed and a rotating group of four of the other 11 regional banks ( Minneapolis , Dallas , Cleveland @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) .
The regional bank presidents are selected by members of their boards of directors , subject to the approval of the nationwide board of governors ; the board of governors also has some say in who the directors of the regional banks are .
The upshot is the president has limited control over the selection of five of the 12 important decision-makers , and a high level of control over the other seven .
And with one of those seven seats currently vacant , Biden will have the ability to shift the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ play on the Fed The Obama administration , despite taking office amid a massive economic collapse , did not prioritize Fed appointees early on , and when it did make picks , more often than not they leaned against measures to speed up the recovery , rather than pushing for them .
Jeremy Stein , the Harvard economics professor whom Obama appointed to the Board and served from 2012 to 2014 , suggested that the Fed should consider raising interest rates and slowing down the economy for “ macroprudential ” reasons : inflicting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ developing and causing pain later .
That theory is quite controversial within macroeconomics , whereas it ’ s clear that raising interest rates costs people jobs .
In other cases , the administration picked solid nominees who initially seemed committed to promoting employment growth with low interest rates , only for them to turn surprisingly hawkish .
Former Chair Janet Yellen and Vice Chair Stanley Fischer , who had reputations as dovish when their terms began in 2014 , instead pushed forward with an interest rate hike in 2015 that harmed the economic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that an alternative regime ( say under Fed Chair Larry Summers ) would have been worse , but better still would have been for the Fed to simply not raise rates and allow the economy to continue to recover .
Trump has been much more attentive to the Fed , much to his chair Jay Powell ’ s chagrin ; after appointing Powell in part because he reportedly thought Yellen was too short to be chair , Trump spent the rest of his presidency verbally abusing him in an effort to lower interest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rampant speculation that Powell ’ s subsequent low interest rate policies were the result of Trump ’ s pressure .
It seems likelier , as Josh Barro noted in a recent profile of Powell , that he is simply listening to stakeholders , like labor and businesses , who have urged the Fed to deemphasize worries about accelerating inflation and reemphasize the Fed ’ s mandate to maximize employment .
Trump has most recently made a lame-duck push to get more appointees confirmed .
In mid-November , the Senate narrowly voted against Judy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump has put forward .
In theory , the Senate could vote on her nomination again , but with a few Republicans opposing her and Arizona special election winner Sen. Mark Kelly ( D ) having since taken office and reduced the party ’ s majority , her nomination looks dead in the water .
Meanwhile , Christopher Waller , a career economist at the St. Louis regional Fed bank with a much more pro-employment record than Shelton , was narrowly confirmed on December 3 .
Despite unanimous Democratic opposition to Waller , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Biden ’ s perspective .
He and his former boss and ally , St. Louis Fed president James Bullard , are outspoken “ doves ” who want the Fed to aggressively try to reduce unemployment and not worry too much about sparking inflation .
With Waller confirmed and Shelton all but rejected , Biden will have one vacancy to fill as soon as he takes office .
But the Fed has a lot of turnover , and Republican members retiring is likely .
Moreover , Powell ’ s term is up in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ months Biden will need to decide whether to reappoint Powell or pick a replacement .
There ’ s a good case for reappointing Powell .
He mistakenly raised interest rates in 2018 but corrected his error by cutting them a year later , and has been extremely aggressive in using the Fed ’ s powers to expand businesses ’ access to funds during the Covid-19 crisis .
Most importantly , Powell announced a new “ monetary policy framework ” in August 2020 that commits the bank to keeping interest rates near zero even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent per year , given that inflation has been lower than that level for much of the past decade .
The framework also indicates that the Fed will not raise interest rates simply because it thinks unemployment has gotten sufficiently low , to what economists sometimes call its “ natural rate.
” That kind of reasoning motivated the 2015 and 2018 rate hikes , and Powell ’ s announcement suggested the Fed as an institution is foreswearing that reasoning in the near to medium term .
But Biden might want to put his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yellen , currently nominated to serve as treasury secretary , would make some sense ; the 2015 hike was a blunder , but Yellen is an enthusiastic backer of the Fed ’ s new approach and seems like she ’ d be more dovish in a second term .
Powell learned from his mistaken rate hike , and Yellen might learn from hers .
Two other names I ’ ve heard floated most frequently by Fed watchers as potential chairs are Lael Brainard , who has served on the Board of Governors since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leads the Atlanta Fed bank .
Brainard was widely considered a possible treasury secretary until Yellen was picked , but she might be more effective as chair .
She ’ s arguably the most dovish member of the Board currently , arguing in a late 2019 speech that rate hikes in recent years had been errors and that the urge to increase rates just to “ normalize ” was dangerous .
She has also repeatedly dissented from Trump-era initiatives to weaken financial regulations , suggesting she ’ d be tougher on Wall Street @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be appointed as a governor first ; going straight from a regional bank to chair would be a big leap .
But he would make history as the first Black and first openly gay Fed chair .
That said , some advocates of full employment are skeptical of Bostic , arguing that his approach to monetary policy is more reminiscent of the school of thought that led to the job-costing 2015 and 2018 rate hikes than Powell ’ s new , more dovish approach .
He has suggested , echoing Stein , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can lead to bubbles and excessive risk-taking .
Elsewhere he ’ s written that the view that the Fed should force unemployment as low as possible is a “ short-sighted perspective that doesn ’ t ultimately serve the economy and American workers well.
” That would be an unfortunate view to have in the chair ’ s seat , but it ’ s possible Bostic ’ s views have evolved .
Setting aside the chair job , there are many options for filling the open governor seat , including some Republicans who could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spending and taxes are issues that are very polarized along party lines , there are Fed hawks and doves on both sides of the aisle , which means Biden could pick some right-leaning economists and still get the policies he wants .
George Mason ’ s David Beckworth and Bloomberg ’ s Karl Smith both come to mind as libertarian-leaning figures who ’ d fit the bill .
Some other names ( of various ideological backgrounds ) I ’ ve heard touted from advocates for high-employment monetary policy are Julia Coronado , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ veteran Ernie Tedeschi ; Paul McCulley , a former chief economist at the investment manager PIMCO ; Fed veteran Claudia Sahm ; former Minneapolis bank president Narayana Kocherlakota ; and , the most cited name I ’ ve heard , Bill Spriggs , an economist at Howard University and chief economist for the AFL-CIO .
Spriggs would only be the fourth Black member of the Board of Governors , a testament to how terribly the institution has done on racial diversity over its 107-year history .
Luckily , there are a lot of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ University ’ s Lisa Cook ( an adviser to the Biden transition ) to the Economic Policy Institute ’ s Valerie Wilson .
Spriggs would also be the only governor in history with a background in organized labor , which would be an important step for an institution that has had tight ties to capital ( and specifically the financial sector ) but has occasionally failed to advance the interests of workers .
I don ’ t want to exaggerate the Fed ’ s importance ; in some ways , the most important @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it stays the course and maintains hyper-low interest rates throughout his term , barring a sudden shocking rise in inflation .
The Fed could experiment with other ways to aid the recovery , like ramping up its purchases of government debt , or using debt purchases as a way to fund the federal government through printing money , or explicitly trying to keep the interest rate on government debt at or near zero so Congress is more inclined to enact a stimulus package .
But those would be very aggressive , last-resort moves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ important if Biden wants this recovery to stick .
And doing no harm begins with taking the Fed seriously and thinking hard about whom to pick , starting right now .

Joe Biden is still more than a month away from taking office, but already the basic tasks of his first year in office seem quite clear: He has to end the Covid-19 pandemic, and he has to end the recession and economic fallout from the pandemic.
Most attention on the latter has focused, understandably, on what relief package Biden will be able to pass through Congress. There’s a chance that a bipartisan effort to expand unemployment insurance benefits and state/local government aid will succeed under Trump, but if not Biden will be forced to negotiate a deal with either a Republican Senate or a 50-50 one with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking ties.
That’s economic job No. 1. But there’s another key aspect of Biden’s relief strategy that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves: his Federal Reserve appointments. It might not get as much attention as an administration’s legislative priorities, but the Fed is extremely consequential, and past Democratic presidents like Barack Obama have ignored it to their detriment (and Trump, to his credit, has not).
While coverage of it is mostly limited to the business press, the Fed’s work has enormous consequences for everyday workers and consumers. One of its central jobs is setting the interest rate at which banks lend to each other overnight, and deciding the interest it pays on funds (“reserves”) that those banks keep at the Fed itself.
When the Fed raises interest rates, that ripples out through the whole economy. Because banks are paying more interest to borrow money they will then lend out, the interest rates they charge on everything from mortgages to auto loans to credit cards go up. Business loans becoming more expensive makes businesses less likely to expand or hire. That slows down the economy — and, conversely, lowering rates heats the economy up. So a Fed committed to rock-bottom rates is incredibly important for making sure the 2021 recovery is fast.
Biden will get at least one pick for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors upon taking office in January, and soon thereafter will have to decide on a pick to chair the Fed. These are likely to be among the most important domestic policy decisions he makes in his presidency, and he ought to prioritize getting dovish nominees — nominees who will keep interest rates low and prioritize employment over inflation— on the Board.
Why Biden should prioritize the Fed
To simplify drastically, the Fed has two major roles: regulating banks and related financial institutions, and conducting monetary policy (that is, adjusting the money supply to maintain stable inflation and low unemployment). Both of these are crucially important — the former especially for its potential to prevent financial crises — but the latter makes the Fed the single most important economic agency in the United States.
By pushing economic activity closer to its potential, the Fed generates, on an ongoing basis, hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars’ worth of economic output that would otherwise be lost, with massive positive humanitarian consequences both in the US and abroad.
In recent decades, this has been achieved through “loose” policy of low interest rates and aggressive Fed purchases of bonds (“quantitative easing”). When the Fed fails, usually by being too “tight” in its policies, the consequences are equivalently dire. And good monetary policy is especially important during recessions and recoveries like the one the US finds itself in right now.
This is an odd recession, precipitated by a pandemic incapacitating or killing millions of workers and consumers, as well as preventing certain kinds of economic activity (indoor dining, gyms, etc.) from taking place. Fixing the overall pandemic has to come first. But as we get it under control, ramping economic activity back up is going to be crucial.
The Fed’s monetary policy is decided by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). At full capacity, the FOMC has 12 members: seven members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, who are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, plus the head of the New York regional Fed and a rotating group of four of the other 11 regional banks (Minneapolis, Dallas, Cleveland, and Philadelphia are in right now). The regional bank presidents are selected by members of their boards of directors, subject to the approval of the nationwide board of governors; the board of governors also has some say in who the directors of the regional banks are.
The upshot is the president has limited control over the selection of five of the 12 important decision-makers, and a high level of control over the other seven. And with one of those seven seats currently vacant, Biden will have the ability to shift the FOMC immediately.
The current state of play on the Fed
The Obama administration, despite taking office amid a massive economic collapse, did not prioritize Fed appointees early on, and when it did make picks, more often than not they leaned against measures to speed up the recovery, rather than pushing for them.
Jeremy Stein, the Harvard economics professor whom Obama appointed to the Board and served from 2012 to 2014, suggested that the Fed should consider raising interest rates and slowing down the economy for “macroprudential” reasons: inflicting pain early might prevent a bubble from developing and causing pain later. That theory is quite controversial within macroeconomics, whereas it’s clear that raising interest rates costs people jobs.
In other cases, the administration picked solid nominees who initially seemed committed to promoting employment growth with low interest rates, only for them to turn surprisingly hawkish. Former Chair Janet Yellen and Vice Chair Stanley Fischer, who had reputations as dovish when their terms began in 2014, instead pushed forward with an interest rate hike in 2015 that harmed the economic recovery. It’s certainly possible that an alternative regime (say under Fed Chair Larry Summers) would have been worse, but better still would have been for the Fed to simply not raise rates and allow the economy to continue to recover.
Trump has been much more attentive to the Fed, much to his chair Jay Powell’s chagrin; after appointing Powell in part because he reportedly thought Yellen was too short to be chair, Trump spent the rest of his presidency verbally abusing him in an effort to lower interest rates. That’s led to rampant speculation that Powell’s subsequent low interest rate policies were the result of Trump’s pressure. It seems likelier, as Josh Barro noted in a recent profile of Powell, that he is simply listening to stakeholders, like labor and businesses, who have urged the Fed to deemphasize worries about accelerating inflation and reemphasize the Fed’s mandate to maximize employment.
Trump has most recently made a lame-duck push to get more appointees confirmed. In mid-November, the Senate narrowly voted against Judy Shelton, a gold-standard-backing, crankish nominee Trump has put forward. In theory, the Senate could vote on her nomination again, but with a few Republicans opposing her and Arizona special election winner Sen. Mark Kelly (D) having since taken office and reduced the party’s majority, her nomination looks dead in the water.
Meanwhile, Christopher Waller, a career economist at the St. Louis regional Fed bank with a much more pro-employment record than Shelton, was narrowly confirmed on December 3. Despite unanimous Democratic opposition to Waller, he’s a pretty great addition from Biden’s perspective. He and his former boss and ally, St. Louis Fed president James Bullard, are outspoken “doves” who want the Fed to aggressively try to reduce unemployment and not worry too much about sparking inflation.
With Waller confirmed and Shelton all but rejected, Biden will have one vacancy to fill as soon as he takes office. But the Fed has a lot of turnover, and Republican members retiring is likely. Moreover, Powell’s term is up in February 2022, so in a few months Biden will need to decide whether to reappoint Powell or pick a replacement.
The candidates for a Biden Fed
There’s a good case for reappointing Powell. He mistakenly raised interest rates in 2018 but corrected his error by cutting them a year later, and has been extremely aggressive in using the Fed’s powers to expand businesses’ access to funds during the Covid-19 crisis.
Most importantly, Powell announced a new “monetary policy framework” in August 2020 that commits the bank to keeping interest rates near zero even if inflation exceeds its target of 2 percent per year, given that inflation has been lower than that level for much of the past decade. The framework also indicates that the Fed will not raise interest rates simply because it thinks unemployment has gotten sufficiently low, to what economists sometimes call its “natural rate.” That kind of reasoning motivated the 2015 and 2018 rate hikes, and Powell’s announcement suggested the Fed as an institution is foreswearing that reasoning in the near to medium term.
But Biden might want to put his own stamp on the institution. Reappointing Yellen, currently nominated to serve as treasury secretary, would make some sense; the 2015 hike was a blunder, but Yellen is an enthusiastic backer of the Fed’s new approach and seems like she’d be more dovish in a second term. Powell learned from his mistaken rate hike, and Yellen might learn from hers.
Two other names I’ve heard floated most frequently by Fed watchers as potential chairs are Lael Brainard, who has served on the Board of Governors since 2014, and Raphael Bostic, who leads the Atlanta Fed bank. Brainard was widely considered a possible treasury secretary until Yellen was picked, but she might be more effective as chair. She’s arguably the most dovish member of the Board currently, arguing in a late 2019 speech that rate hikes in recent years had been errors and that the urge to increase rates just to “normalize” was dangerous. She has also repeatedly dissented from Trump-era initiatives to weaken financial regulations, suggesting she’d be tougher on Wall Street than Powell.
Bostic would likely need to be appointed as a governor first; going straight from a regional bank to chair would be a big leap. But he would make history as the first Black and first openly gay Fed chair. That said, some advocates of full employment are skeptical of Bostic, arguing that his approach to monetary policy is more reminiscent of the school of thought that led to the job-costing 2015 and 2018 rate hikes than Powell’s new, more dovish approach. He has suggested, echoing Stein, that getting unemployment “too low” can lead to bubbles and excessive risk-taking. Elsewhere he’s written that the view that the Fed should force unemployment as low as possible is a “short-sighted perspective that doesn’t ultimately serve the economy and American workers well.” That would be an unfortunate view to have in the chair’s seat, but it’s possible Bostic’s views have evolved.
Setting aside the chair job, there are many options for filling the open governor seat, including some Republicans who could be easy Senate confirmations. Whereas government spending and taxes are issues that are very polarized along party lines, there are Fed hawks and doves on both sides of the aisle, which means Biden could pick some right-leaning economists and still get the policies he wants. George Mason’s David Beckworth and Bloomberg’s Karl Smith both come to mind as libertarian-leaning figures who’d fit the bill.
Some other names (of various ideological backgrounds) I’ve heard touted from advocates for high-employment monetary policy are Julia Coronado, a veteran Fed economist; Obama Treasury Department veteran Ernie Tedeschi; Paul McCulley, a former chief economist at the investment manager PIMCO; Fed veteran Claudia Sahm; former Minneapolis bank president Narayana Kocherlakota; and, the most cited name I’ve heard, Bill Spriggs, an economist at Howard University and chief economist for the AFL-CIO.
Spriggs would only be the fourth Black member of the Board of Governors, a testament to how terribly the institution has done on racial diversity over its 107-year history. Luckily, there are a lot of strong Black candidates, from Michigan State University’s Lisa Cook (an adviser to the Biden transition) to the Economic Policy Institute’s Valerie Wilson. Spriggs would also be the only governor in history with a background in organized labor, which would be an important step for an institution that has had tight ties to capital (and specifically the financial sector) but has occasionally failed to advance the interests of workers.
I don’t want to exaggerate the Fed’s importance; in some ways, the most important thing Biden can do is make sure it stays the course and maintains hyper-low interest rates throughout his term, barring a sudden shocking rise in inflation. The Fed could experiment with other ways to aid the recovery, like ramping up its purchases of government debt, or using debt purchases as a way to fund the federal government through printing money, or explicitly trying to keep the interest rate on government debt at or near zero so Congress is more inclined to enact a stimulus package. But those would be very aggressive, last-resort moves.
Still, doing no harm is important if Biden wants this recovery to stick. And doing no harm begins with taking the Fed seriously and thinking hard about whom to pick, starting right now.


vox--2020-12-10--How a New Hampshire libertarian utopia was foiled by bears

Every ideology produces its own brand of fanatics , but there ’ s something special about libertarianism .
I don ’ t mean that as an insult , either .
I love libertarians !
For the most part , they ’ re fun and interesting people .
But they also tend to be cocksure about core principles in a way most people aren ’ t .
If you ’ ve ever encountered a freshly minted Ayn Rand enthusiast , you know what I mean .
And yet one of the things that makes political philosophy so amusing is that it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t really prove anything — it ’ s just a never-ending argument about values .
Every now and again , though , reality intervenes in a way that illustrates the absurdity of particular ideas .
Something like this happened in the mid-2000s in a small New Hampshire town called Grafton .
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling , author of a new book titled A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear , says it ’ s the “ boldest social experiment in modern American history.
” I don ’ t know if it ’ s the “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ definitely one of the strangest .
The experiment was called the “ Free Town Project ” ( it later became the “ Free State Project ” ) , and the goal was simple : take over Grafton ’ s local government and turn it into a libertarian utopia .
The movement was cooked up by a small group of ragtag libertarian activists who saw in Grafton a unique opportunity to realize their dreams of a perfectly logical and perfectly market-based community .
Needless to say , utopia never arrived , but the bears @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ll explain below . )
I reached out to Hongoltz-Hetling to talk about his book .
I wanted to know what happened in New Hampshire , why the experiment failed , and what the whole saga can teach us not just about libertarianism but about the dangers of loving theory more than reality .
A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows .
How would you describe the “ Free Town Project ” to someone who doesn ’ t know anything about it ?
I ’ d put it like this : There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that has developed over the last 40 or 50 years , and they ’ ve never really had a place to call their own .
They ’ ve never been in charge of a nation , or a state , or even a city .
And they ’ ve always really wanted to create a community that would showcase what would happen if they implemented their principles on a broad scale .
So in 2004 , a group of them decided that they wanted to take some action on this deficiency , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Free Town Project .
They sent out a call to a bunch of loosely affiliated national libertarians and told everyone to move to this one spot and found this utopian community that would then serve as a shining jewel for the world to see that libertarian philosophies worked not only in theory but in practice .
And they chose a town in rural New Hampshire called Grafton that already had fewer than 1,000 people in it .
And they just showed up and started working to take over the town government and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and tax expense that they could .
Of all the towns in all the world , why Grafton ?
They didn ’ t choose it in a vacuum .
They actually conducted a very careful and thorough search .
They zeroed in on the state of New Hampshire fairly quickly because that ’ s the “ Live Free or Die ” state .
They knew that it would align well with their philosophy of individualism and personal responsibility .
But once they decided on New Hampshire , they actually visited dozens of small @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of factors that would enable them to take over .
What they needed was a town that was small enough that they could come up and elbow the existing citizenry , someplace where land was cheap , where they could come in and buy up a bunch of land and kind of host their incoming colonists .
And they wanted a place that had no zoning , because they wanted to be able to live in nontraditional housing situations and not have to go through the rigamarole of building or buying expensive homes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do you mean by “ nontraditional housing ” ?
As the people of Grafton soon found out , a nontraditional housing situation meant a camp in the woods or a bunch of shipping containers or whatever .
They brought in yurts and mobile homes and formed little clusters of cabins and tents .
There was one location called “ Tent City , ” where a bunch of people just lived in tents from day to day .
They all united under this broad umbrella principle of “ personal freedom , ” but as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a lot of variation in how they exercised it .
What did the demographics of the group look like ?
Are we talking mostly about white guys or Ayn Rand bros who found each other on the internet ?
Well , we ’ re talking about hundreds of people , though the numbers aren ’ t all that clear .
They definitely skewed male .
They definitely skewed white .
Some of them had a lot of money , which gave them the freedom to be able to pick up roots and move @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A lot of them had very little money and nothing keeping them in their places .
So they were able to pick up and come in .
But most of them just didn ’ t have those family situations or those 9-to-5 jobs , and that was really what characterized them more than anything else .
And how did they take over the local government ?
Did they meet much resistance ?
When they first showed up , they hadn ’ t told anyone that they were doing this , with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ within the community .
And so all of a sudden the people in Grafton woke up to the fact that their town was in the process of being invaded by a bunch of idealistic libertarians .
And they were pissed .
They had a big town meeting .
It was a very shouty , very angry town meeting , during which they told the Free Towners who dared to come that they didn ’ t want them there and they didn ’ t appreciate being treated as if their community was an experimental @ @ @ @ @ @ @ try to prove something .
But the libertarians , even though they never outnumbered the existing Grafton residents , what they found was that they could come in , and they could find like-minded people , traditional conservatives or just very liberty-oriented individuals , who agreed with them on enough issues that , despite that angry opposition , they were able to start to work their will on the levers of government .
They couldn ’ t pass some of the initiatives they wanted .
They tried unsuccessfully to withdraw from the school @ @ @ @ @ @ @ road repairs , or to declare Grafton a United Nations free zone , some of the outlandish things like that .
But they did find that a lot of existing Grafton residents would be happy to cut town services to the bone .
And so they successfully put a stranglehold on things like police services , things like road services and fire services and even the public library .
All of these things were cut to the bone .
Then what happened over the next few years or so ?
By pretty much @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gauge a town ’ s success , Grafton got worse .
Recycling rates went down .
Neighbor complaints went up .
The town ’ s legal costs went up because they were constantly defending themselves from lawsuits from Free Towners .
The number of sex offenders living in the town went up .
The number of recorded crimes went up .
The town had never had a murder in living memory , and it had its first two , a double homicide , over a roommate dispute .
So there were all sorts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up .
And meanwhile , the town that would ordinarily want to address these things , say with a robust police force , instead found that it was hamstrung .
So the town only had one full-time police officer , a single police chief , and he had to stand up at town meeting and tell people that he couldn ’ t put his cruiser on the road for a period of weeks because he didn ’ t have money to repair it and make it a safe vehicle .
When did the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that if you have a bunch of people living in the woods in nontraditional living situations , each of which is managing food in their own way and their waste streams in their own way , then you ’ re essentially teaching the bears in the region that every human habitation is like a puzzle that has to be solved in order to unlock its caloric payload .
And so the bears in the area started to take notice of the fact that there were calories available in houses .
One thing that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bears was unintentional , in that they just threw their waste out how they wanted .
They didn ’ t want the government to tell them how to manage their potential bear attractants .
The other way was intentional , in that some people just started feeding the bears just for the joy and pleasure of watching them eat .
As you can imagine , things got messy and there was no way for the town to deal with it .
Some people were shooting the bears .
Some people were feeding the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ traps on their properties in an effort to deter the bears through pain .
Others were throwing firecrackers at them .
Others were putting cayenne pepper on their garbage so that when the bears sniffed their garbage , they would get a snout full of pepper .
It was an absolute mess .
We ’ re talking about black bears specifically .
For the non-bear experts out there , black bears are not known to be aggressive toward humans .
But the bears in Grafton were ... different .
Bears are very smart @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their way through problems .
And that was what made them aggressive in Grafton .
In this case , a reasonable bear would understand that there was food to be had , that it was going to be rewarded for being bolder .
So they started aggressively raiding food and became less likely to run away when a human showed up .
There are lots of great examples in the book of bears acting in bold , unusually aggressive manners , but it culminated in 2012 , when there was a black bear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That might not seem that unusual , but , in fact , New Hampshire had not had a black bear attack for at least 100 years leading up to that .
So the whole state had never seen a single bear attack , and now here in Grafton , a woman was attacked in her home by a black bear .
And then , a few years after that , a second woman was attacked , not in Grafton but in a neighboring town .
And since the book was written and published @ @ @ @ @ @ @ third bear attack , also in the same little cluster and the same little region of New Hampshire .
And I think it ’ s very clear that , unless something changes , more bear attacks will come .
Luckily , no one ’ s been killed , but people have been pretty badly injured .
“ It ’ s very easy to fall into this trap of believing that if only everybody followed this or that principle , then society would become this perfect system ” You ’ re fair , even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in this book , but I do wonder if you came to see them increasingly as fanatics .
You know , “ libertarian ” is such a weird umbrella term for a very diverse group of people .
Some libertarians are built around the idea of white supremacy and racism .
That was not the case with these libertarians .
Most of the libertarians that I met were kind , decent people who would be generous with a neighbor in any given moment .
But in the abstract , when they ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vote to hurt that neighbor by cutting off , say , support for road plowing .
So I guess what I noticed is a strange disconnect between their personalities or their day-to-day interactions and the broader implications of their philosophies and their political movement .
Not sure I ’ d use the word “ fanatic , ” but definitely a weird disconnect .
There ’ s a lesson in this for anyone interested in seeing it , which is that if you try to make the world fit neatly into an ideological box @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or ignore reality to do it — usually with terrible consequences .
Yeah , I think that ’ s true for libertarianism and really all philosophies of life .
It ’ s very easy to fall into this trap of believing that if only everybody followed this or that principle , then society would become this perfect system .
Did any of the characters in this story come to doubt their libertarianism as a result of what happened in Grafton ?
Or was it mostly a belief that libertarianism can ’ t fail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ One of the central characters in the book is a firefighter named John Babiarz .
And John had the distinction of running for the governor of New Hampshire on the libertarian platform , and did better than any other gubernatorial libertarian candidate has ever done in America .
And he invited the libertarians to come in and begin the Free Town Project .
He was their local connection .
But by the end of the project [ sometime in 2016 ] , he had really drawn some distinctions between himself and many of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He still considers himself to be a libertarian , and a very devout one at that , but by the end of the project he was at odds with most of the other libertarians .
And it shows that until you actually have a libertarian-run community , it ’ s very hard to say what it is or what it will look like .
In the end , do you think these people bumped up against the limits of libertarianism , or is this more about the particular follies of a particular @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
I think they bumped up against the follies of libertarianism .
I really do think that there is a hard wall of reality that exists that ’ s going to foil any effort to implement libertarianism on a broad scale .
And I think if you gave a libertarian the magic wand and allowed them to transform society the way that they wanted to , it wouldn ’ t work the way they imagined , and I think it would break down just as Grafton did .

Every ideology produces its own brand of fanatics, but there’s something special about libertarianism.
I don’t mean that as an insult, either. I love libertarians! For the most part, they’re fun and interesting people. But they also tend to be cocksure about core principles in a way most people aren’t. If you’ve ever encountered a freshly minted Ayn Rand enthusiast, you know what I mean.
And yet one of the things that makes political philosophy so amusing is that it’s mostly abstract. You can’t really prove anything — it’s just a never-ending argument about values. Every now and again, though, reality intervenes in a way that illustrates the absurdity of particular ideas.
Something like this happened in the mid-2000s in a small New Hampshire town called Grafton. Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, author of a new book titled A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear, says it’s the “boldest social experiment in modern American history.” I don’t know if it’s the “boldest,” but it’s definitely one of the strangest.
The experiment was called the “Free Town Project” (it later became the “Free State Project”), and the goal was simple: take over Grafton’s local government and turn it into a libertarian utopia. The movement was cooked up by a small group of ragtag libertarian activists who saw in Grafton a unique opportunity to realize their dreams of a perfectly logical and perfectly market-based community. Needless to say, utopia never arrived, but the bears did! (I promise I’ll explain below.)
I reached out to Hongoltz-Hetling to talk about his book. I wanted to know what happened in New Hampshire, why the experiment failed, and what the whole saga can teach us not just about libertarianism but about the dangers of loving theory more than reality.
A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
Sean Illing
How would you describe the “Free Town Project” to someone who doesn’t know anything about it?
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
I’d put it like this: There’s a national community of libertarians that has developed over the last 40 or 50 years, and they’ve never really had a place to call their own. They’ve never been in charge of a nation, or a state, or even a city. And they’ve always really wanted to create a community that would showcase what would happen if they implemented their principles on a broad scale.
So in 2004, a group of them decided that they wanted to take some action on this deficiency, and they decided to launch what they called the Free Town Project. They sent out a call to a bunch of loosely affiliated national libertarians and told everyone to move to this one spot and found this utopian community that would then serve as a shining jewel for the world to see that libertarian philosophies worked not only in theory but in practice. And they chose a town in rural New Hampshire called Grafton that already had fewer than 1,000 people in it. And they just showed up and started working to take over the town government and get rid of every rule and regulation and tax expense that they could.
Sean Illing
Of all the towns in all the world, why Grafton?
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
They didn’t choose it in a vacuum. They actually conducted a very careful and thorough search. They zeroed in on the state of New Hampshire fairly quickly because that’s the “Live Free or Die” state. They knew that it would align well with their philosophy of individualism and personal responsibility. But once they decided on New Hampshire, they actually visited dozens of small towns, looking for that perfect mix of factors that would enable them to take over.
What they needed was a town that was small enough that they could come up and elbow the existing citizenry, someplace where land was cheap, where they could come in and buy up a bunch of land and kind of host their incoming colonists. And they wanted a place that had no zoning, because they wanted to be able to live in nontraditional housing situations and not have to go through the rigamarole of building or buying expensive homes or preexisting homes.
Sean Illing
Wait, what do you mean by “nontraditional housing”?
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
As the people of Grafton soon found out, a nontraditional housing situation meant a camp in the woods or a bunch of shipping containers or whatever. They brought in yurts and mobile homes and formed little clusters of cabins and tents. There was one location called “Tent City,” where a bunch of people just lived in tents from day to day. They all united under this broad umbrella principle of “personal freedom,” but as you’d expect, there was a lot of variation in how they exercised it.
Sean Illing
What did the demographics of the group look like? Are we talking mostly about white guys or Ayn Rand bros who found each other on the internet?
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
Well, we’re talking about hundreds of people, though the numbers aren’t all that clear. They definitely skewed male. They definitely skewed white. Some of them had a lot of money, which gave them the freedom to be able to pick up roots and move to a small town in New Hampshire. A lot of them had very little money and nothing keeping them in their places. So they were able to pick up and come in. But most of them just didn’t have those family situations or those 9-to-5 jobs, and that was really what characterized them more than anything else.
Sean Illing
And how did they take over the local government? Did they meet much resistance?
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
When they first showed up, they hadn’t told anyone that they were doing this, with the exception of a couple of sympathetic libertarians within the community. And so all of a sudden the people in Grafton woke up to the fact that their town was in the process of being invaded by a bunch of idealistic libertarians. And they were pissed. They had a big town meeting. It was a very shouty, very angry town meeting, during which they told the Free Towners who dared to come that they didn’t want them there and they didn’t appreciate being treated as if their community was an experimental playpen for libertarians to come in and try to prove something.
But the libertarians, even though they never outnumbered the existing Grafton residents, what they found was that they could come in, and they could find like-minded people, traditional conservatives or just very liberty-oriented individuals, who agreed with them on enough issues that, despite that angry opposition, they were able to start to work their will on the levers of government.
They couldn’t pass some of the initiatives they wanted. They tried unsuccessfully to withdraw from the school district and to completely discontinue paying for road repairs, or to declare Grafton a United Nations free zone, some of the outlandish things like that. But they did find that a lot of existing Grafton residents would be happy to cut town services to the bone. And so they successfully put a stranglehold on things like police services, things like road services and fire services and even the public library. All of these things were cut to the bone.
Sean Illing
Then what happened over the next few years or so?
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
By pretty much any measure you can look at to gauge a town’s success, Grafton got worse. Recycling rates went down. Neighbor complaints went up. The town’s legal costs went up because they were constantly defending themselves from lawsuits from Free Towners. The number of sex offenders living in the town went up. The number of recorded crimes went up. The town had never had a murder in living memory, and it had its first two, a double homicide, over a roommate dispute.
So there were all sorts of negative consequences that started to crop up. And meanwhile, the town that would ordinarily want to address these things, say with a robust police force, instead found that it was hamstrung. So the town only had one full-time police officer, a single police chief, and he had to stand up at town meeting and tell people that he couldn’t put his cruiser on the road for a period of weeks because he didn’t have money to repair it and make it a safe vehicle.
Basically, Grafton became a Wild West, frontier-type town.
Sean Illing
When did the bears show up?
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
It turns out that if you have a bunch of people living in the woods in nontraditional living situations, each of which is managing food in their own way and their waste streams in their own way, then you’re essentially teaching the bears in the region that every human habitation is like a puzzle that has to be solved in order to unlock its caloric payload. And so the bears in the area started to take notice of the fact that there were calories available in houses.
One thing that the Free Towners did that encouraged the bears was unintentional, in that they just threw their waste out how they wanted. They didn’t want the government to tell them how to manage their potential bear attractants. The other way was intentional, in that some people just started feeding the bears just for the joy and pleasure of watching them eat.
As you can imagine, things got messy and there was no way for the town to deal with it. Some people were shooting the bears. Some people were feeding the bears. Some people were setting booby traps on their properties in an effort to deter the bears through pain. Others were throwing firecrackers at them. Others were putting cayenne pepper on their garbage so that when the bears sniffed their garbage, they would get a snout full of pepper.
It was an absolute mess.
Sean Illing
We’re talking about black bears specifically. For the non-bear experts out there, black bears are not known to be aggressive toward humans. But the bears in Grafton were ... different.
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
Bears are very smart problem-solving animals. They can really think their way through problems. And that was what made them aggressive in Grafton. In this case, a reasonable bear would understand that there was food to be had, that it was going to be rewarded for being bolder. So they started aggressively raiding food and became less likely to run away when a human showed up.
There are lots of great examples in the book of bears acting in bold, unusually aggressive manners, but it culminated in 2012, when there was a black bear attack in the town of Grafton. That might not seem that unusual, but, in fact, New Hampshire had not had a black bear attack for at least 100 years leading up to that. So the whole state had never seen a single bear attack, and now here in Grafton, a woman was attacked in her home by a black bear.
And then, a few years after that, a second woman was attacked, not in Grafton but in a neighboring town. And since the book was written and published, there’s actually been a third bear attack, also in the same little cluster and the same little region of New Hampshire. And I think it’s very clear that, unless something changes, more bear attacks will come.
Luckily, no one’s been killed, but people have been pretty badly injured.
“It’s very easy to fall into this trap of believing that if only everybody followed this or that principle, then society would become this perfect system”
Sean Illing
You’re fair, even sympathetic, to the libertarians you profile in this book, but I do wonder if you came to see them increasingly as fanatics.
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
You know, “libertarian” is such a weird umbrella term for a very diverse group of people. Some libertarians are built around the idea of white supremacy and racism. That was not the case with these libertarians. Most of the libertarians that I met were kind, decent people who would be generous with a neighbor in any given moment. But in the abstract, when they’re at a town meeting, they will vote to hurt that neighbor by cutting off, say, support for road plowing.
So I guess what I noticed is a strange disconnect between their personalities or their day-to-day interactions and the broader implications of their philosophies and their political movement. Not sure I’d use the word “fanatic,” but definitely a weird disconnect.
Sean Illing
There’s a lesson in this for anyone interested in seeing it, which is that if you try to make the world fit neatly into an ideological box, you’ll have to distort or ignore reality to do it — usually with terrible consequences.
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
Yeah, I think that’s true for libertarianism and really all philosophies of life. It’s very easy to fall into this trap of believing that if only everybody followed this or that principle, then society would become this perfect system.
Sean Illing
Did any of the characters in this story come to doubt their libertarianism as a result of what happened in Grafton? Or was it mostly a belief that libertarianism can’t fail, it can only be failed?
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
One of the central characters in the book is a firefighter named John Babiarz. And John had the distinction of running for the governor of New Hampshire on the libertarian platform, and did better than any other gubernatorial libertarian candidate has ever done in America. And he invited the libertarians to come in and begin the Free Town Project. He was their local connection.
But by the end of the project [sometime in 2016], he had really drawn some distinctions between himself and many of the extremist libertarians who came to town. He still considers himself to be a libertarian, and a very devout one at that, but by the end of the project he was at odds with most of the other libertarians. And it shows that until you actually have a libertarian-run community, it’s very hard to say what it is or what it will look like.
Sean Illing
In the end, do you think these people bumped up against the limits of libertarianism, or is this more about the particular follies of a particular group of people in a particular place?
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
I think they bumped up against the follies of libertarianism. I really do think that there is a hard wall of reality that exists that’s going to foil any effort to implement libertarianism on a broad scale. And I think if you gave a libertarian the magic wand and allowed them to transform society the way that they wanted to, it wouldn’t work the way they imagined, and I think it would break down just as Grafton did.
Maybe that’s the lesson.


vox--2020-12-10--Disney thinks you’ll be ready to see Black Widow in theaters by May

Last week WarnerMedia announced it was trying to blow up the movie business , with a plan to stream big movies to your home on the same day they appear in theaters .
Disney has a very different message : The company will stream big movies to your home , too .
But it will bring its biggest movies — like Black Widow , its latest Marvel installment — to movie theaters first .
In other words : Status quo , for now .
Disney unveiled its non-change at a marathon , shock-and-awe presentation for investors on Thursday .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ message — what Disney really wanted to communicate is that it has an enormous amount of movies and TV shows coming over the next year , many of which will appear on its Disney+ streaming service .
Disney ’ s strategy also isn ’ t a surprise .
While other Hollywood studios have talked about changing the traditional theatrical movie release schedule , Disney has always defended it , with good reason : Disney hopes that all of its Marvel , Star Wars , and Pixar movies will be huge events that will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ theaters .
Still , the fact that there had been speculation — fueled in part by a dubious “ leaked ” video that surfaced last month — that Disney might make a change to its strategy shows you how tumultuous 2020 has been for the movie business .
The pandemic shut down theaters in March , prompting studios to make all sorts of streaming experiments they had never tried before .
That includes Disney , which offered one big budget movie , Mulan , as a $ 30 rental , and moved another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It will repeat that strategy for some other films in the future — Raya and the Last Dragon will be another “ premium rental ; ” a live action Pinocchio with Tom Hanks will go straight to Disney+ .
But Disney expects theaters to open next year , and audiences to show up — even before the pandemic goes away .
The company announced that Black Widow is set to come to theaters on May 7 ; a complicated Covid vaccine rollout might still underway by then .
Will you be ready @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a lot of strangers for a couple hours at that point ?
If Disney wanted to hedge its bets , it could have pushed the release date further back , or simply not assigned one at all .
Instead , it wants to reaffirm its commitment to movies in theaters .
But Disney wants it both ways : It also wants to convince investors that it ’ s committed to its pivot to a Netflix-style streaming business , which has been off to a roaring start .
Disney+ now has nearly 87 million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a year after its launch , and now the company thinks all of its various streaming services can get to 230 million subscribers by 2024 .
Netflix , by contrast , is at 200 million subscribers — but has been in the streaming business since 2007 .
So Disney ’ s job during its presentation was show off all the stuff you could see without leaving your home — primarily a ton of spinoffs from existing movies and shows , like two new Star Wars shows and multiple Marvel shows .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ took its time showing all of it off with a presentation that ran four hours on Thursday night .
Investors loved the pitch .
Disney ’ s stock shot up 4 percent on Thursday evening .
And meanwhile , back in Hollywood , actors , directors , producers and their agents took their turns screaming at WarnerMedia about its plans , vowing to do ... something about it .
It ’ s possible that over time , WarnerMedia ’ s plan will seem less radical , and more like an inevitability — and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most valuable assets to your screen , instead of making you watch them on a theater ’ s screen first .
But that won ’ t happen anytime soon .

Last week, WarnerMedia announced it was trying to blow up the movie business, with a plan to stream big movies to your home on the same day they appear in theaters.
Disney has a very different message: The company will stream big movies to your home, too. But it will bring its biggest movies — like Black Widow, its latest Marvel installment — to theaters first.
In other words: status quo, for now.
Disney unveiled its non-change at a marathon, shock-and-awe presentation for investors on Thursday. The stay-the-course message wasn’t its main message. What Disney really wanted to communicate is that it has an enormous amount of movies and TV shows coming over the next year, many of which will appear on its Disney+ streaming service.
Disney’s strategy also isn’t a surprise. While other Hollywood studios have talked about changing the traditional theatrical movie release schedule, Disney has always defended it, with good reason: Disney hopes that all of its Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar movies will be huge events that will draw people off their couches and into theaters.
Still, the fact that there had been speculation — fueled in part by a dubious “leaked” video that surfaced last month — that Disney might make a change to its strategy shows you how tumultuous 2020 has been for the movie business. The Covid-19 pandemic shut down theaters in March, prompting studios to make all sorts of streaming experiments they had never tried before.
That includes Disney, which offered one big-budget movie, Mulan, as a $30 rental, and moved another one, Soul, directly onto Disney+. It will repeat that strategy for some other films in the future — Raya and the Last Dragon will be another “premium rental”; a live-action Pinocchio with Tom Hanks will go straight to Disney+.
But Disney expects theaters to open next year, and audiences to show up — even before the pandemic goes away. The company announced that Black Widow is set to come to theaters on May 7; a complicated Covid-19 vaccine rollout might still be underway by then. Will you be ready to hang out indoors with a lot of strangers for a couple hours at that point?
If Disney wanted to hedge its bets, it could have pushed the release date further back or simply not assigned one at all. Instead, it wants to reaffirm its commitment to movies in theaters.
But Disney wants it both ways: It also wants to convince investors that it’s committed to its pivot to a Netflix-style streaming business, which has been off to a roaring start. Disney+ now has nearly 87 million subscribers worldwide, a little more than a year after its launch, and now the company thinks all of its various streaming services can get to 230 million subscribers by 2024. Netflix, by contrast, is at 200 million subscribers — but has been in the streaming business since 2007.
So Disney’s job during its presentation was to show off all the stuff you could see without leaving your home — primarily a ton of spinoffs from existing movies and shows, like two new Star Wars shows and multiple Marvel shows. It’s an enormous list, and Disney took its time showing all of it off with a presentation that ran four hours on Thursday night.
New adventures. New Originals. Endless possibilities. All of these and more are coming exclusively to #DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/NGiqVGmH0G — Disney (@Disney) December 11, 2020
Investors loved the pitch. Disney’s stock shot up 4 percent on Thursday evening. And meanwhile, back in Hollywood, actors, directors, producers, and their agents took their turns screaming at WarnerMedia about its plans, vowing to do ... something about it.
It’s possible that, over time, WarnerMedia’s plan will seem less radical, and more like an inevitability — and even Disney will move more of its most valuable assets to your screen instead of making you watch them on a theater’s screen first. But that won’t happen anytime soon.


vox--2020-12-10--Disney+ is planning more reboots, Star Wars, and Marvel galore

The Disney+ streaming service has only been around for a little more than a year , if you can believe it .
Since it debuted to heavy fanfare in November 2019 , its subscriber base has grown exponentially ; more than 86 million people have signed up , according to the studio .
That ’ s an astounding number , one that has only been bolstered by a year when movie theaters shuttered and tentpole releases were delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic .
Disney owes much of its growth to buzz-worthy shows like The Mandalorian , which earned more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2020 ; the film adaptation of Hamilton , first slated for an October 2021 theatrical debut before Disney bumped it way up to a July 4 , 2020 , premiere on Disney+ ; and a steady stream of exclusive content , whether it ’ s Beyoncé ’ s visual album Black Is King or Taylor Swift ’ s Folklore live performance film .
Still to come is the premiere of Pixar ’ s new , already well-reviewed film Soul , which will be made available to subscribers on Christmas Day for no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still noteworthy : September ’ s “ premier access ” release of Mulan , first slated to hit theaters at the end of March until Disney shifted it to streaming for an added $ 30 viewing fee . )
In year two of Disney+ , Disney says it is looking to leverage even more of its huge collection of franchises and cinematic universes to keep growing .
In a lengthy presentation held for investors on December 10 , the studio announced a wide range of plans for Disney+ in 2021 .
Expect the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ set in the Marvel universe , additional Star Wars content , and more noteworthy movie releases made exclusive to the platform .
Below , we ’ ve collected the five things that Disney+ subscribers ( and streaming industry observers ) should watch out for over the next 12-plus months — from new content to a price change .
Disney will beef up its original content library with reboots and spinoffs Disney+ ’ s exclusive content library has been branded as Disney+ Originals , and the company announced plans to premiere 10 Marvel series @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 15 live-action , Disney Animation Studios , and Pixar series under the Originals umbrella over the next several years .
It will also release at least 15 live-action and animated original movies .
The goal is to offer new content to subscribers on a weekly basis , à la Netflix , which is constantly inundating its users with new stuff .
We ’ ll get to some of the Marvel and Star Wars shows in a bit .
Among the non-Marvel and non-Star Wars series slated for 2021 , however , there ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , starring Lauren Graham and Emilio Estevez ( reprising his role from the movies ) ; the Josh Peck-led , modern-day version of Turner and Hooch ; and a comedy from David E. Kelley called Big Shot , featuring John Stamos as a high school girls ’ basketball coach .
Pixar has several shows arriving in 2021 and later , including one based on Monsters Inc.
It ’ s called Monsters at Work and was first announced in April 2019 .
Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter also showed a first look at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which looks painfully cute .
( The teaser showed a bunch of yapping puppies chewing up good boy Dug ’ s ears and tail . )
Pixar has an original TV series coming to Disney+ in fall 2023 too , called Win or Lose .
Oh , and , unsurprisingly , there is a Cars show coming in 2022 .
The Princess and the Frog and Moana will also receive animated spinoff series on Disney+ , although those are planned for 2023 and beyond .
( I ’ m most excited for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Zootopia , coming in 2022 : Baymax !
and Zootopia+ . )
All of these TV series are expected to receive large budgets and feature high production values , akin to Disney ’ s movie fare .
“ Truly the only difference between these [ series ] and our feature films is the length , ” Disney executive chair Bob Iger said of the Disney+ Originals slate during the presentation .
On the movie side of Disney+ Originals , Disney is leaning hard into its deep catalog for new content .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an adaptation of the cartoon Chip ’ n ’ Dale Rescue Rangers ; animated movies based on Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Night at the Museum ; a new Ice Age movie ; and reboots of Cheaper by the Dozen and Three Men and a Baby — all familiar names , and all slated to debut as Disney+ exclusives .
The inclusion of movies might be the most intriguing element here : Disney ’ s 2021-and-beyond streaming releases includes some movies that , like Soul , were originally slated for theaters but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could set a new precedent for the studio going forward .
Disney will keep bringing movies to theaters — and to your home for $ 30 Disney isn ’ t following in the exact footsteps of its competitor Warner Bros. , which recently announced that it will make the majority of its 2021 theatrical film releases available at no extra cost to HBO Max subscribers at the same time the movies hit theaters .
Marvel ’ s upcoming prequel film Black Widow , starring Scarlett Johansson and due out next May after a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ theatrical-only release , as will many other blockbusters in the pipeline ( including the next Star Wars film , Rogue Squadron , which will be directed by Patty Jenkins and hit theaters at Christmas in 2023 ) .
But Disney plans to experiment further with the $ 30 “ premier access ” home viewing option it used for Mulan by applying the same approach to several other films .
The next of these will be Raya and the Lost Dragon , which Disney will release both in theaters and on Disney+ ( for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The animated film stars Kelly Marie Tran and Awkwafina in a world full of fantasy creatures and magical swords — and if you ’ d love to see it the day it ’ s out but would rather do so from your living room , all Disney asks of you is $ 30 .
Disney+ will launch a whole bunch more Star Wars material over the next few years , which should come as no surprise after The Mandalorian ’ s success .
Disney has plans to expand upon the popular show @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shows by Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau and co-writer/director Dave Filoni : Rangers of the New Republic and Ahsoka .
Both are set during the same timeline as The Mandalorian and will feature some of the same characters ; those include the fan-favorite Ahsoka Tano , who recently made her live-action debut on The Mandalorian .
( She ’ s played by Rosario Dawson . )
Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy noted during the December 10 investor presentation that the three shows “ will culminate in a cinematic story event.
” The Mandalorian ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and presumably the launch of these two spinoffs — will arrive around Christmas 2021 .
There ’ s also a TV series in the works that is spun off from the Star Wars standalone film Rogue One .
Andor will star Diego Luna in the title role of Cassian Andor , whom he first played in Rogue One ; it ’ s a thriller directed by Tony Gilroy , the co-writer of that film .
Andor is due out in 2022 .
Other Star Wars projects in development include more animated series @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by Justin Simien of Dear White People fame ; a mystery-thriller series called The Acolyte , helmed by Russian Doll creator Leslye Headland ; and A Droid Story , starring our best boys C-3PO and R2-D2 .
And finally , there ’ s Obi-Wan Kenobi , arguably the most exciting of the lot .
Termed an “ event series , ” Obi-Wan Kenobi will bring back Ewan McGregor as a weathered Obi-Wan , 10 years after his apprentice Anakin Skywalker turns to the Dark Side in 2006 ’ s Star Wars : Episode @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We already knew the Kenobi series was happening ; what we did not know was that Hayden Christensen , a.k.a .
Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader himself , will also appear on the show .
( Kennedy said to expect “ the rematch of the century , ” which , yes , please . )
The series will enter production in March 2021 .
The Marvel Cinematic Universe took an unplanned break in 2020 after a stellar 2019 that was buoyed by the history-making success of Avengers : Endgame .
Although Black Widow was slated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , both movies received new release dates because of the pandemic .
The result was that Disney had no Marvel movies on the calendar for 2020 , placing its next Phase of films in limbo .
Filling in the scheduling gaps created by both release delays and tweaked production schedules that must account for Covid-19 safety protocols is Marvel ’ s first wave of Disney+ programming .
Unlike most previous Marvel TV series ( like those on ABC , Hulu , and Netflix ) , the new Disney+ series will star some of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some of the Avengers .
Disney+ ’ s first Marvel show , WandaVision , stars Scarlet Witch ( a.k.a .
Wanda , played by Elizabeth Olsen ) and Vision ( Paul Bettany ) , and will kick off its six-episode season on January 15 .
Next up is The Falcon and the Winter Soldier , about Captain America ’ s two closest friends who team up at Cap ’ s insistence following Endgame .
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige announced that the show will premiere this March ; he then premiered its first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ action vibe with a smattering of buddy comedy .
Loki , a show that follows the fan-favorite villain ( and Thor ’ s brother ) , will also air on Disney+ in May 2021 .
It ’ s a crime thriller that picks up where Loki left off in Endgame — escaping to a far-off corner of the galaxy with the stolen Tesseract .
Owen Wilson teams up with Loki for reasons still unknown , and the accompanying trailer suggests this will be easy catnip for Loki diehards .
Farther ahead in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If ?
, reuniting a bunch of Avengers characters on the small-screen in non-canonical stories , and Hawkeye , which is currently filming in New York and airs in late-2021 .
Feige also showed off a bit of 2022 ’ s Ms. Marvel , a superhero coming-of-age show starring the teenage Kamala Khan in her first screen appearance .
( Ms. Marvel will later make an appearance in the movie Captain Marvel 2 as well . )
And farther down the pipeline are She-Hulk , featuring the Hulk himself ; Moon Knight , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heroes ; Secret Invasion , based on a Marvel Comics crossover series and starring Nick Fury ; Ironheart ( think female-fronted Iron Man ) ; and Armor Wars , focused on Iron Man ’ s buddy War Machine .
And now for the less-fun part : Disney+ ’ s monthly subscription cost is going up .
In the U.S. , Disney+ currently costs $ 6.99 per month .
In 2021 , Disney will increase the monthly subscription cost by $ 1 , up to $ 7.99 per month .
Adjust your financial planning @ @

The Disney+ streaming service has only been around for a little more than a year, if you can believe it. Since it debuted to heavy fanfare in November 2019, its subscriber base has grown exponentially; more than 86 million people have signed up, according to the studio. That’s an astounding number, one that has only been bolstered by a year when movie theaters shuttered and tentpole releases were delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Disney owes much of its growth to buzz-worthy shows like The Mandalorian, which earned more Emmy nominations than any other TV series in 2020; the film adaptation of Hamilton, first slated for an October 2021 theatrical debut before Disney bumped it way up to a July 4, 2020, premiere on Disney+; and a steady stream of exclusive content, whether it’s Beyoncé’s visual album Black Is King or Taylor Swift’s Folklore live performance film. Still to come is the premiere of Pixar’s new, already well-reviewed film Soul, which will be made available to subscribers on Christmas Day for no extra cost. (Less successful but still noteworthy: September’s “premier access” release of Mulan, first slated to hit theaters at the end of March until Disney shifted it to streaming for an added $30 viewing fee.)
In year two of Disney+, Disney says it is looking to leverage even more of its huge collection of franchises and cinematic universes to keep growing. In a lengthy presentation held for investors on December 10, the studio announced a wide range of plans for Disney+ in 2021. Expect the following: long-awaited premieres of TV series set in the Marvel universe, additional Star Wars content, and more noteworthy movie releases made exclusive to the platform. Below, we’ve collected the five things that Disney+ subscribers (and streaming industry observers) should watch out for over the next 12-plus months — from new content to a price change.
Disney will beef up its original content library with reboots and spinoffs
Disney+’s exclusive content library has been branded as Disney+ Originals, and the company announced plans to premiere 10 Marvel series; 10 Star Wars series; and 15 live-action, Disney Animation Studios, and Pixar series under the Originals umbrella over the next several years. It will also release at least 15 live-action and animated original movies. The goal is to offer new content to subscribers on a weekly basis, à la Netflix, which is constantly inundating its users with new stuff.
We’ll get to some of the Marvel and Star Wars shows in a bit. Among the non-Marvel and non-Star Wars series slated for 2021, however, there’s The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, starring Lauren Graham and Emilio Estevez (reprising his role from the movies); the Josh Peck-led, modern-day version of Turner and Hooch; and a comedy from David E. Kelley called Big Shot, featuring John Stamos as a high school girls’ basketball coach.
Pixar has several shows arriving in 2021 and later, including one based on Monsters Inc. It’s called Monsters at Work and was first announced in April 2019. Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter also showed a first look at the Up spinoff series Dug Days, which looks painfully cute. (The teaser showed a bunch of yapping puppies chewing up good boy Dug’s ears and tail.) Pixar has an original TV series coming to Disney+ in fall 2023 too, called Win or Lose.
Oh, and, unsurprisingly, there is a Cars show coming in 2022.
The Princess and the Frog and Moana will also receive animated spinoff series on Disney+, although those are planned for 2023 and beyond. (I’m most excited for the animated shows based on Big Hero 6 and Zootopia, coming in 2022: Baymax! and Zootopia+.)
All of these TV series are expected to receive large budgets and feature high production values, akin to Disney’s movie fare. “Truly the only difference between these [series] and our feature films is the length,” Disney executive chair Bob Iger said of the Disney+ Originals slate during the presentation.
On the movie side of Disney+ Originals, Disney is leaning hard into its deep catalog for new content. In the works are Hocus Pocus 2; an adaptation of the cartoon Chip ’n’ Dale Rescue Rangers; animated movies based on Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Night at the Museum; a new Ice Age movie; and reboots of Cheaper by the Dozen and Three Men and a Baby — all familiar names, and all slated to debut as Disney+ exclusives.
The inclusion of movies might be the most intriguing element here: Disney’s 2021-and-beyond streaming releases includes some movies that, like Soul, were originally slated for theaters but will land on Disney+ instead. This could set a new precedent for the studio going forward.
Disney will keep bringing movies to theaters — and to your home for $30
Disney isn’t following in the exact footsteps of its competitor Warner Bros., which recently announced that it will make the majority of its 2021 theatrical film releases available at no extra cost to HBO Max subscribers at the same time the movies hit theaters. Marvel’s upcoming prequel film Black Widow, starring Scarlett Johansson and due out next May after a year-long delay, will still be a theatrical-only release, as will many other blockbusters in the pipeline (including the next Star Wars film, Rogue Squadron, which will be directed by Patty Jenkins and hit theaters at Christmas in 2023).
But Disney plans to experiment further with the $30 “premier access” home viewing option it used for Mulan by applying the same approach to several other films. The next of these will be Raya and the Lost Dragon, which Disney will release both in theaters and on Disney+ (for an additional fee) starting March 5. The animated film stars Kelly Marie Tran and Awkwafina in a world full of fantasy creatures and magical swords — and if you’d love to see it the day it’s out but would rather do so from your living room, all Disney asks of you is $30.
Disney+’s Star Wars library will keep growing
Disney+ will launch a whole bunch more Star Wars material over the next few years, which should come as no surprise after The Mandalorian’s success. Disney has plans to expand upon the popular show’s story with two new companion shows by Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau and co-writer/director Dave Filoni: Rangers of the New Republic and Ahsoka. Both are set during the same timeline as The Mandalorian and will feature some of the same characters; those include the fan-favorite Ahsoka Tano, who recently made her live-action debut on The Mandalorian. (She’s played by Rosario Dawson.)
Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy noted during the December 10 investor presentation that the three shows “will culminate in a cinematic story event.” The Mandalorian’s “next chapter” — season three, and presumably the launch of these two spinoffs — will arrive around Christmas 2021.
There’s also a TV series in the works that is spun off from the Star Wars standalone film Rogue One. Andor will star Diego Luna in the title role of Cassian Andor, whom he first played in Rogue One; it’s a thriller directed by Tony Gilroy, the co-writer of that film. Andor is due out in 2022.
Other Star Wars projects in development include more animated series; a miniseries about Lando Calrissian created by Justin Simien of Dear White People fame; a mystery-thriller series called The Acolyte, helmed by Russian Doll creator Leslye Headland; and A Droid Story, starring our best boys C-3PO and R2-D2.
And finally, there’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, arguably the most exciting of the lot. Termed an “event series,” Obi-Wan Kenobi will bring back Ewan McGregor as a weathered Obi-Wan, 10 years after his apprentice Anakin Skywalker turns to the Dark Side in 2006’s Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith. We already knew the Kenobi series was happening; what we did not know was that Hayden Christensen, a.k.a. Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader himself, will also appear on the show. (Kennedy said to expect “the rematch of the century,” which, yes, please.) The series will enter production in March 2021.
Marvel will begin its Disney+ TV takeover
The Marvel Cinematic Universe took an unplanned break in 2020 after a stellar 2019 that was buoyed by the history-making success of Avengers: Endgame. Although Black Widow was slated for May and The Eternals for November, both movies received new release dates because of the pandemic. The result was that Disney had no Marvel movies on the calendar for 2020, placing its next Phase of films in limbo.
Filling in the scheduling gaps created by both release delays and tweaked production schedules that must account for Covid-19 safety protocols is Marvel’s first wave of Disney+ programming. Unlike most previous Marvel TV series (like those on ABC, Hulu, and Netflix), the new Disney+ series will star some of the biggest MCU cast members, including some of the Avengers. Disney+’s first Marvel show, WandaVision, stars Scarlet Witch (a.k.a. Wanda, played by Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany), and will kick off its six-episode season on January 15.
Next up is The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, about Captain America’s two closest friends who team up at Cap’s insistence following Endgame. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige announced that the show will premiere this March; he then premiered its first trailer, which gave off a heavy-duty action vibe with a smattering of buddy comedy.
Loki, a show that follows the fan-favorite villain (and Thor’s brother), will also air on Disney+ in May 2021. It’s a crime thriller that picks up where Loki left off in Endgame — escaping to a far-off corner of the galaxy with the stolen Tesseract. Owen Wilson teams up with Loki for reasons still unknown, and the accompanying trailer suggests this will be easy catnip for Loki diehards.
Farther ahead in the future is the animated anthology series What If?, reuniting a bunch of Avengers characters on the small-screen in non-canonical stories, and Hawkeye, which is currently filming in New York and airs in late-2021. Feige also showed off a bit of 2022’s Ms. Marvel, a superhero coming-of-age show starring the teenage Kamala Khan in her first screen appearance. (Ms. Marvel will later make an appearance in the movie Captain Marvel 2 as well.)
And farther down the pipeline are She-Hulk, featuring the Hulk himself; Moon Knight, one of Marvel’s more obscure heroes;Secret Invasion, based on a Marvel Comics crossover series and starring Nick Fury; Ironheart (think female-fronted Iron Man); and Armor Wars, focused on Iron Man’s buddy War Machine.
Disney+ is getting pricier
And now for the less-fun part: Disney+’s monthly subscription cost is going up.
In the U.S., Disney+ currently costs $6.99 per month. In 2021, Disney will increase the monthly subscription cost by $1, up to $7.99 per month. Adjust your financial planning accordingly.