Americans who are functionally illiterate earn about the same as the average Briton. And you are more than 2 times more likely to die from extreme heat in Europe than from gun homicides in America. No wonder young people are fleeing Britain in droves. Today, we’re speaking to one of them. Welcome to Episode 12 of From Ideas to Innovation. Reem Ibrahim is a writer and commentator at Reason Magazine — a classically liberal voice covering economic freedom, regulation, and the lessons Europe’s stagnation holds for America. She moved from London to Washington DC eight months ago, not because she stopped loving Britain, but because Britain stopped working for people like her. Our conversation touches on economic history, her personal story, and includes a serious warning. If you care about what America’s future could look like, keep listening. About This Episode’s Guest Reem Ibrahim didn’t always hold libertarian views. As a teenager in London, she felt sad watching homeless people on the street and concluded, as most 16-year-olds do, that the government should do something about it. But she hadn’t yet connected that instinct to her own family’s story which is a case study in what happens when governments do too much. Her father’s side came from Egypt, where her great-uncle, a man who had built a construction business from nothing, had his assets seized by Nasser’s socialist government despite personal connections to the regime. The family eventually emigrated to the UK. And then, in a similar flight from stagnation, Reem moved to the US. She first stumbled across classical liberalism in high school. It was the first time she noticed that you could believe in limited government intervention and social liberalism, and that the two ideas did not clash. That discovery sent her on an intellectual journey that introduced her to Hayek and Mises, Hannah Arendt and the concept of natural rights, and Murray Rothbard’s Anatomy of the State — which she says she threw across the room in rage — through a brief stint as an anarcho-capitalist, and eventually to the classical liberalism she practices today. She explored these ideas publicly through social media. At 18, when she couldn’t sleep, she went live on TikTok to read excerpts from Anatomy of the State to strangers. She built a UK libertarian following. While she loved her job at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, she realized that if she wanted to become a better communicator of economic freedom, she needed to learn from the best. So she made the move to the US. Now a research fellow at Reason, she turns public policy into sharp journalism and video. She mainly writes on regulation, trade, and economic freedom. What You’ll Take Away * How much richer and freer Americans are than our friends across the pond — and what that tells us about the cost of big government * The real Brexit: why young, ambitious Brits are leaving the UK and where they’re going * Why Europe doesn’t have a Tesla, and what labor market regulations have to do with it * What “free” healthcare actually looks like in practice, including the story of Reem’s father who nearly went blind waiting for NHS surgery * Why 12,000 people a year are arrested in the UK for online speech crimes, and what that means for freedom of expression * The Falkland Islands dispute, France’s nicotine pouch ban, and what both tell us about governments that can’t stop themselves * The countries Reem predicts are most likely to turn the clock back on bad policy — and the least likely This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fromideastoinnovation.substack.com
