Libertarian & Republican, Big Tech, Big Gov, Big Pharma & COVID | Liberty Lockdown's Clint | OAP #12
Chase Geiser Is Joined By Clint From Liberty Lockdown
Clint describes himself as Joe Rogan meets Ron Paul in podcast form, check out this video and the Liberty Lockdown podcast, you'll love it.
In this episode of One American Podcast, Clint and Chase cover everything from what exactly it means to be Libertarian, how that's different from being a Republican, and what a Libertarian society would look like.
This episode touches on Government corruption, the dangers of fiat, and how Crony Capitalism may have made COVID much more dangerous than it needed to be.
EPISODE LINKS:
Liberty Lockdown's Twitter: https://twitter.com/LibertyLockPod
Chase's Twitter: https://twitter.com/realchasegeiser
Liberty Lockdown's YouTube: https://t.co/oi5zpoIA5c?amp=1
PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://www.patreon.com/IAmOneAmerican
Social media companies which are suppressing one way of thinking and uplifting another.
That's where it gets really dirty because that's not that's not just an opinion.
I mean, you are you are editorializing.
You are you are shifting the entire conversation across the globe as to how to survive a pandemic.
We choose to go to the moon and this decay and do the other thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall.
A date which will live in infamy.
I still have a dream.
Good night and good luck.
I heard about you from a certain libertarian candidate Uh posted about you on uh Twitter.
And um uh he posted like a list of podcasts to follow or libertarian influencers to follow, and I sort of followed them all.
And you're the one of the ones that I wanted to reach out to um just to kind of learn more about you and and libertarianism.
Um just to give you a sense of my background.
I was a big Ron Paul guy in 2012, and um I've read like all the Ayn Rand books.
So I do have sort of an understanding like about the basic principles of liberty.
I read John Locke and and all that, but um uh I've never actually spoken to someone who is um a self-avowed uh uh like libertarian, except for you know, in high school like Stoner friends that were like, hey, why why is this why is this illegal?
You know, so um right.
Yeah, I thought it would be um, I'm just gonna turn this camera off and back on, but I thought it would be really interesting to sort of hear um from you, like how you why you became libertarian, how you became libertarian, and um uh maybe talk about some of the um like common objections to libertarianism to see like a rational response because none of my center friends in high school had good responses.
Yeah, yeah, I can I can do all that, no problem.
So uh what you what's your story, man?
Uh well, I am I am a rarity in that I am a second gen libertarian.
So uh I don't even know if I've ever met another one, which is strange.
Um, so my my dad was even though I wasn't raised by him, I was raised by my mom and my stepdad, but my my biological dad uh he was an entrepreneur and I spent one weekend a month with him, and he would his uh he he ran this nightclub that was like five hours away,
and we would have these super lengthy car rides, and he would tell me about the founding of the country and and about economics and business and all of these ideas that just kind of you know stuck with me, and I implemented them very early on in my life.
I found that I was also an entrepreneur, um, went out and started my own company eight years ago, killed it, and then during the lockdowns, I basically retired slash was forced out of business and uh and shifted into my my second passion, or maybe my first, I don't know, which is screaming into a microphone about how fucked up the world is.
I totally understand.
I'm in a kind of a similar boat.
Um I started my business in 2016 and I actually did really well last year because I do digital advertising, so there are a lot of e-commerce clients, but but it burned me out, you know, and so now I'm I'm trying to kind of um be a little bit more loyal to myself and um do this sort of thing, and I don't really have a goal.
Um obviously as many subscribers and followers as possible is always a goal, like in the back of your mind.
But I was thinking about this uh before we got on the call.
Um really, I just want to continue to have better and better conversations.
And you know, if I don't ever make a dime out of this, it it's still awesome that I get to you know talk to guys like you.
So well, that's that's the path to be on, brother, because that's how I started off, and I've already monetized.
So it's it's amazing when you're when you're speaking hard truths that aren't allowed in this environment.
Uh you will find an audience quite quite rapidly.
Um, and if you convey it with a passion and and a uh a belief that that is compelling, people will just glob on to it.
So um, yeah, it's it's it's great to see that more people are are you know branching out and and trying to To get their their own beliefs out, because I think open discussion is really what we need.
What kind of um business were you in before the uh pandemic?
I had a private money mortgage brokerage.
Okay.
So basically I take uh, you know, semi-wealthy or retired people's capital.
I uh I pair it with uh the acquisition of real estate.
So they are the lender.
So essentially it's like a private bank.
That makes sense.
Are you still doing that or are you just focused full-time on the podcast now?
Uh because of the uh the macro environment and because of the precarious nature of the real estate investing environment in particular, I've essentially closed shop.
I I I'm not technically closed, but you know, I I might as well be.
Yeah.
Well, I'm sorry, there's a rough patch, man.
That's that's how it goes.
But I found I found in from my experience, anytime something disappointing happens, it ends up being a good thing.
It's just kind of weird how that works out.
Yeah.
Well, uh, I think that if you're if you are I'm not a religious person, but if you are like moving with the uh the zeitgeist of the moment, or if you are just following your path, so to speak, as Vinarmani might say, um, you will find greater and greater success if you are just true in what you're doing.
So I I don't look at it as a negative at all.
I I am I am probably being more true to myself than I have ever been in my life.
So I think that uh regardless of the circumstances that brought me here, I I have no choice but to be somewhat grateful.
Yeah, I know the feeling.
I um um I'm not particularly religious either.
I would say that I'm religious in the Jordan Peterson sense of the term religious.
And that I don't really uh abide by any of the superstition, but I I do think there are a lot of lessons that um can be learned from some of the uh um ancient wisdom of course of people, right?
So I I am I consider myself religious in that sense, but um not in the sense of the most religious people would consider religion to be of course, yeah.
Well, if there weren't value in those those lessons, they wouldn't have stuck for thousands of years.
I mean, it's it's yeah, completely bizarre that that the atheists out there, you know, are able to throw out the entire baby with the bathwater.
It's like, guys, the this is stuck with humanity for thousands of years, and it's not an accident.
Like whether or not you're religious, and I'm not, um, to not be able to evaluate it in a critical fashion and see where there's value and where there's problems, I think is a huge mistake.
Well, I think people got really turned off by the overwhelming dogma of religion.
Um particular, I think it's you know, it's kind of gone away in the 20th to 21st century, particularly in the last 20 or 30 years.
Um the millennial generation seems to be a little bit more apathetic regarding what happens when you die.
And um, you know, a little bit more scientific minded, so skeptical, I guess would be the word.
I don't I don't like to I don't like to use language like that because I don't think that religious people are stupid.
And sometimes when when I talk about spiritual people, it sounds like I'm uh talking down on them or not.
Um I just think it's just part of the the culture, and you know, Nietzsche said it best.
He said God is dead, and uh and um he was right that there was gonna be a lot of turmoil in the 20th century as a result of uh what I perceive to be people shifting from away from Christianity but still valuing truth and trying to fill the void of the truth that they just sort of took for granted in Christianity, right?
That when when they had to when the foundation of the church sort of fell out from under them uh because of enlightenment or whatever, um, the things that they replaced it with, like uh tyranny and cults of personality and the state um seem to be even worse than the church.
Exactly right.
Yep.
That's that's exactly why I have come around on religion is because I have basically I I had been evaluating society and culture based off of myself, and I am not the type of person that needs a leader really.
Um I'm a massive self-starter, completely driven from within.
I don't need an inspiring leader to get me going.
It's just that's just not who I am.
But the truth is that the masses clearly need leaders.
And and it's a huge mistake to just say, okay, yeah, we don't need religion.
We don't need people to believe in God or believe in heaven and hell or believe in morality, uh that's that's you know written on high, and they'll they'll just become good people because I am a good person.
I think that's a huge mistake that atheists make is that they they just assume that since they don't need religion to to live a decent life, that there's nobody out there that does.
And um, you know, in that void, in that vacuum, you're absolutely right that that you know, cults of personality and statism is the one that I'm most concerned with is that the new religion is both scientism and statism, and that is the fucking worst possible replacement for religion.
Um, so that's where we're headed, I think, or that's where we're at.
You know, I um I've been thinking a lot.
Um, and I I'm happy to hash this out with you and have any sort of like a disagreement or friendly disagreement or conversation about this.
Because actually, I I I think that I have more to learn from you than you have to learn from me.
Um I was uh um I was a big Trump supporter.
Um not because I agreed with really anything that he did or said, but just because um I find populism very appealing.
Um not like third right populism, but just like a sense of patriotism, right?
So um I was thinking about the movie Braveheart the other day, uh, one of my favorites, and you know, William Wallace was obviously an incredible leader, right?
Informal authority, um, just make shit happen, self-starter.
But there's that awesome scene where he's talking to Robert the Bruce, and he says, if you would lead, I would follow.
And like I'm the same way as you, like, I don't need a leader to tell me what to do with my life as an individual, but I find myself just and I'm not a Republican, though I always vote for Republicans, but I find myself yearning for a strong leader or strong leader is plural.
And I feel like the Republican Party particularly is um uh really weak in in that sense because I think they're good at making better, not great arguments, but better arguments than the left, but they're really bad at branding heroes out of candidates.
And and um if we don't if the well, I don't want to say we, if the Republican Party doesn't figure out how to win the emotional debate, then it's it's it's gonna be a bad century for for everybody, I think.
I think so too.
And I I mean, I don't think populism is a bad word at all.
Uh in fact, I would probably be classified as a libertarian populist.
Um so uh I agree with you, and uh, I think that you're absolutely right that we have to win the emotional debate because the the reason libertarianism fails is because we are so enchanted with our capacity for rationale.
We yeah, we we can beat anybody in a debate if you if you stick to the facts and to rational um you know talking points and logic, you know, that's that's the big thing that we I used to always say when I was a kid, I was like, no one can outlogic me.
Like I they just can't do it.
Like I I this the from my core, the way I build my entire being is rational progression and logical progression.
And and so when someone encounters me and they try and debate me on a topic, you're not gonna beat me because I'm I'm not a hypocrite on any level.
I like everything is developed from the ground up.
So like good luck beating this this um you know political philosophy.
However, because of that that condescension that we we speak with, because we we stick to rational and logical arguments, we oftentimes will fail miserably when it comes to emotionally compelling arguments.
And and I think that that's actually kind of the void that I am filling within the Libertarian Party, is that I I speak with a passion that I can reach people, and Dave's Dave Smith is very similar.
I speak with a passion that can reach people that don't have the same foundation we do, that can actually speak to their heart and their soul and and get them to feel what we feel when we talk about this, because that's where that's where we have failed time and time again is that we are just like you know, the the stoner um you know stereotype of libertarianism, it doesn't it doesn't sell shit.
I mean, it's like, yeah, man, like we should end the wars, man, and drugs should be legal, man.
Like that's not gonna do it.
Like you gotta you have to really speak to the beauty of it.
And and that's that's what I've been focusing on lately is trying to really demonstrate the beauty of the uh ideas.
Yeah.
And for me, um I was always raised that freedom was something to be cherished, perhaps like the most precious thing that a person can have.
And um I feel like I took it for granted.
I I grew up and I just sort of thought everybody felt that way.
And it seems it seems to me today that um everybody thought we were wrong.
Yeah, everybody's going for safety instead of freedom.
And which is of course ironic, because if you trade freedom for safety, you end up with neither.
But um can you talk to me a little bit about um what your definition of libertarianism is?
Because there's people throw that word around.
Some people are anarchists and they say they're libertarian or libertarian, they're actually anarchy.
Yeah, and let's just like just to be specific, what what is libertarianism to you?
Well, I mean, for me, it's just about liberty, and that's the the ability to do what you want with your life and and to not have uh actually I saw you talking to Patriot J, and and I thought actually his answer was very similar to mine.
Um so I think that's why in general I get along better with conservatives than I do liberals or leftists is simply because they have that same foundation.
Now I think they get very misguided uh because they oftentimes will still support big government principles if it if it is meant or sold on the concept that it's going to enforce um conservative cultural principles, whereas I view the state as the enemy always.
And and that is the difference between the Libertarian Party and the conservative party, in my view.
Um, but you're absolutely right.
There is a division within the libertarian party that is the anarchist wing, which I'm closer to, and then there's the the more classical libertarian, which is the minarchist version, which just believes that kind of the conservative idea of having the smallest government necessary to maintain your rights.
Um do you believe that government's necessary in order to protect your rights in the Lockean sense?
Do you need a third party?
I do not.
I don't think you that you need government.
Um you you probably need governance, where it's uh an informal or or a voluntary agreement amongst communities to have, say, shared defense or policing, things like that.
Uh, but I think that when you get into a formal government that has a monopoly on violence, you're fucked.
Uh you will eventually end up where we are today.
Um, so that my goal is to get as close to that as possible.
I don't I try not to bash minarchists or even conservatives for that matter, if they are truly principled ones, um, just because I'm an ANCAP, which is means that I'm I believe that we don't need government, and I believe that that would be the ideal world is if we were to get as far away from government as possible and then to just focus on property rights and peace and capitalism.
That's that's my belief system.
Um, but at the same time, I I have no interest in bashing people that think that we still need a state for defense or for um you know local protection and things like that.
I think it's it's pointless.
We're so far away from that destination.
Why would I shit on those people, you know?
So this is where I struggle, and um I'd love for you to walk me through it if possible.
So intuitively, when I think through how sort of like an anarchist and anarchy libertarian type uh system would play out.
It seems to me that if you establish a state of anarcho-capitalism that there would become a power void and that um uh certain people would group together, like like the mob did in the 20s, right?
And sort of just take control.
Um and it and it the other thing I struggle with about that, and you I'm sure you've already thought through this stuff.
So I'd love to hear your thoughts.
But the other thing I struggle with is it occurs to me that the initial state of human beings was sort of a state of anarchy, right?
I mean, in terms of evolutionarily speaking, and it it doesn't seem to me that there's really any anarchy left in the world, except for you know, like war-torn countries and stuff uh in that sense.
And those aren't really anarchy because there are informal governments that sort of enslave people.
So I understand.
But it seems to me that anarchy would require a central government in order to maintain the system of anarchy here.
Yeah, so so what what's sort of your what are your thoughts on that?
What's your response to that?
Sure.
Uh my belief is that you're not going to have um an anarchist utopia uh on a scale of America.
You know, it's going to have to be, and it would require like-minded individuals to come together in a relatively small geographic area for it to function because the truth is you need people that believe in what you're doing.
I mean, you can't you can't expect to just go like, okay, the government's gone and now America is anarchist, and we'll see what happens.
Like I that's the you have hundreds of years of indoctrination to work through.
Like it's not possible.
Well, and there's no there's no cultural consensus anymore in the United States.
You're absolutely right.
Yeah.
And I mean, not that there necessarily ever was, but it would we had much closer to homogenous uh or you know, a singular view of what our principles were back in the heyday.
So um yeah, I agree with you.
It's it's and and the power vacuum that you discussed, um, you know, the key for the anarchist answer to that would be that you would still personal defense is obviously vital.
So like you're going there, there would be no there would be no laws.
I mean, there'd be no laws really, there'd just be agreements amongst people.
So you would have the capacity for self-defense.
Um as conservatives like to say, uh a well-armed society is a polite society, like the odds of people becoming dictatorial in that environment, um, I think are overstated.
I I think that you would have, especially if if it's a small enclave, say you get all of the anarchist believers like myself to move into a single state, um, say Idaho or something, and and we are all there, and we all have this same vision that we just want to be fucking left alone and we want to defend ourselves and we will band together to defend each other.
I think that that you can have volatility interaction that doesn't amount to warlordism, but rather um kind of a mutualist society where you come to each other's aid as opposed to dominating over one another.
Um now that's not to dismiss the fact that you could have occasions where someone becomes so richer powerful that that they you know they buy up all of the defense and you end up in some sort of dystopic nightmare.
I like I get I get the critique.
Um I would just argue that we live in that dystopic nightmare now.
So I am I am open to trying um my vision as opposed to the current nightmare that I exist in, where I could be black bagged and thrown a gitmo for the rest of my life without a trial.
It's like, well, is that any better than what I'm proposing?
I would say certainly not.
So um, but yes, I do I do agree though that you would you would need people to come together that actually have these same principles because uh you could not transplant it onto this existing society.
I don't believe that's correct.
So in a in a in a true libertarian society, what happens if someone breaks into your house, steals something from you, and you weren't home, so there's no violence, right?
But you were you you were able to find out who it was.
How does how do you get justice in that situation?
You just go over there and shoot the guy?
Or I mean, because now we have a system where there's a third party rest, you know, call the cops, you press charges and then justice is done.
So you know, in in the best case scenario, right?
And it's it's it's very clumsy, but it seems to work enough that people live long lives without expecting to be robbed all the time, right?
So it's just house justice, yeah.
Tell me about that.
Yeah, it's just it's actually the same structure.
It's just that it's voluntarily entered into.
So you would have community basically agreements where there is a third-party arbiter or there's arbitration.
Um, but I'm not I'm not the anarchist that believes that you would never have the the need for a private prison.
Like there, uh there are some anarchists that that believe that no, it's basically wild west, you deal with uh crime based off of like someone rapes your kid, you go kill him.
Like that's that's that's their vision of it.
Um I I would rather have a some sort of structure where there is mutually agreed to rules, there's obviously property rights, we all appreciate and value property.
So even if I'm not physically damaged, if you take my property, you are still you know aggressing upon me and you need to pay a price.
Now, whether or not the community comes to a conclusion that that there should be a price paid that result results in um imprisonment for property rights infringements, or it's it's arbitrated where the guy then you know, under agreement of the community has to reimburse me.
There has to be compensation for for that loss, yeah, restitution.
Um and and if he can't do that, he basically you know has to pay some other price or or be excommunicated from the community.
And I think that that is that is really the idea is that you're gonna have kind of like uh I don't want to say social credit score because then we get into you know dystopic Chinese shit, but um that's kind of what it would be, you know.
If you're if you're a bad actor in a community, there's only going to be so long before the community says, get this guy the fuck out of here.
Um so I think that's kind of how it would work.
But just to be the devil's advocate, isn't that kind of what we have now?
I mean on a hyper local level, right?
I'm not talking about federal, you know, prosecution and all that bullshit that goes on.
But I mean, now we have a community that elects judges and um district attorneys, or I mean, there's sort of like a community consensus in terms of elections in terms of you know who's going to be responsible for making judgments, who's gonna be who's gonna be the police chief in your local community, who's gonna be the district attorney that presses the charges.
So in that sense, we sort of do have a community consensus as to what is and is not acceptable on a local level.
Yeah.
The the issue is that we don't have we do not have consent.
We do not have people that have actually consented to the system that they exist in.
And that is what Lysander Spooner, who uh in his great work of art called No Treason, um, demonstrates in excruciating detail is that even the constitution itself, it it was only consented to by the signers, you know, that all of the people operating underneath it had no choice and they were just thrown into it.
So while they were throwing off the shackles of tyranny, they were actually putting people back into it right away.
That's true, but the constitution does have mechanisms by which it can be changed.
I mean, it hasn't happened in a long time, but I mean if you have a lot of consensus in your society, you can make you can amend it.
Well, that's the issue is that you you didn't have consent at inception.
If you had had that, yeah.
I never agreed to be born into this capitalist utopia or this is this mixed economy, or I never agreed uh to have fiat currency.
Like, what if I want to only use gold and silver, right?
Right, right.
Yeah.
So that's that would be the ideal would be that you would have tons of different options within this landmass so that you could go and find your people, find your community.
So that like if if you are a you know standard conservative person that that doesn't mind having formal law enforcement and formal um you know, district attorneys and and things like that that that prosecute that would be your prerogative.
But then there should be the option for anarcho-capitalism, which is what I would prefer.
And then that you could even have anarcho-communism where people work in in communes and they want to share resources and it's all about you know the community coming together for every single thing.
And you know, I think that if you were to allow it's it's actually very similar to the federalist idea of having 50 different um areas of innovation or whatever they they described it as, where they wanted to have the 50 states be the this mechanism where people got to try out different ideas, but then our federal government got so fucking overbearing that you can't really do that anymore because the federal taxation rate is so crazy.
Um so it's basically just going back to that concept, but on a micro level where you actually get to have community by community decision making.
And and if I if I move into this community, I am forced essentially to decide do I agree to these to these principles that these people live by or don't I?
And if I don't, then I need to go elsewhere.
And and vice versa.
Well, and it's kind of like what I did.
I moved from California to Texas because I don't agree to live in this shit, you know.
So I want to be in Texas, right?
So I'm in the same boat.
I'm I'm born and raised California and I'm about to move myself, and it's devastating because I have to do that.
But I I'm practicing what I preach, is that you have to go to your people and to be to be with people that have similar principles to you.
And all I'm asking for is the capacity to do that without the yoke of the federal government on top of it, because it's not fair that I I don't want to participate in this system.
I don't want to have any federal protection whatsoever, but I have no choice to opt out.
And there is no constitutional convention that I'm gonna be able to fucking get to happen to make that a reality.
So my my choice is basically you know to become an expat and leave The country, in which case I have to pay an exit tax.
I mean, I'm genuinely a slave.
Like I there is no free path to to um you know voluntarily disassociate myself from this system.
And and as long as they are are you know over there killing untold millions of people in my name?
I am I am bothered by that morally and principally.
And it's it's it sucks that we don't if we had just had the capacity to enter into this agreement or voluntarily exit it, it would be okay, but it's not that way.
And that's that's kind of the anarchist answer to this stuff.
And there's not really anywhere else to go.
There isn't.
I've been looking.
Yeah, looking hard.
Yeah, I've got a um a close friend who is in um cyber intelligence, and uh he's top secret clearance guy, really, really bright.
And um, because of the nature of his work, he is perpetually terrified because all he does is go to government meetings and talk about worst case scenarios all day.
Oh my god.
And so he's like just paranoid all the time.
I mean he bought a boat, and you know, he's like ready to flee the country if he needs to, like that whole thing.
He's got his bug out bag ready.
Well, he sounds he sounds like his he's in route to libertarianism.
Yeah, he might be.
I don't know.
I I think that he'd probably say that he's close to an uh a libertarian.
But um, you know, he's he was looking at New Zealand, and uh I know that there's some good things about New Zealand, but then it's like they've got they got problems too.
It's like you see these videos of people in New Zealand getting arrested for leaving their house during COVID.
It's like, come on, like there's just nowhere else to go.
That's not a win in my book.
Uh that's that's my main criteria.
That's the reason I I looked globally and then I looked, uh, you know, uh, within the nation, and and I concluded that you know, Florida is probably the freest place in the world right now.
And and that's and that's not high praise of Florida.
It's actually uh, you know, uh just demonstrating my level of disgust for the rest of the planet, because I did not expect or anticipate this level of tyranny to be accepted opening openly, much less globally.
I mean, it is horrifying what we've witnessed over the past year.
Um I have always been pessimistic about the government and the state of things and the direction things are going, but I never ever would have guessed 18 months ago that the government would be able to keep you from going to church.
I know.
And and if they did, what did you expect would happen?
Well, I I don't that's I know where you're getting at, but I don't have I don't have a whole lot of uh faith in the vast majority of people to stand up for themselves.
18 18 months ago you didn't either.
Um no, I'm more optimistic than you, I guess.
No, no, no, no, no, you're not, you're not, you're not stupider, and you're not um it's not an optimism thing.
I think that certain communities wouldn't tolerate it.
Um, but I think the the the areas that it happened in were the areas that the leadership knew that they would be tolerated by the people, right?
I mean, you don't really see people getting banned from church in Texas, you know, that's not gonna fly here, but you saw it in Minnesota or New York, you know.
So I think it's I mean, I think it just depends on the governor and the the nate the culture and the state.
But I just that was the disappointment is the culture.
I I thought that we had a really violent willingness to defend our liberty in certain states, and we don't.
I think it's gonna have to come down to I think the only time violence is gonna occur is when the government comes to seize weapons.
I think you'll see violence then.
I think people I think yeah, I think people will tolerate a lot.
I mean, look what happened to the Jews, man, in in Germany.
Like the the shit that they put up with before it was too late.
I mean, it was always too late, but like I can't, I can't believe that.
But I think when people get scared and you don't know who's an informant or who isn't because the nature of the the way that the tyranny take takes hold, you see it happen all the time.
I mean, if you look at studies from Russia, it was something like one in seven people were informants or more than that.
I can't remember the exact number, but it's an alarming number of people were just informing on on each other all the time because they were just in a perpetual state of terror.
Yep.
I I think that's I mean, this is the eternal frog in the pot metaphor that you know, you just don't know how hot this water is getting.
And we saw the temperature increase rapidly, exponentially over the past 12 months.
And and that's you're absolutely right, though.
That that's that's how it works is that the government uses the people to enforce the the mechanisms that they otherwise could not.
So like if you can actually have unity in in that we love each other and we hate the government, then you would never have the capacity to control people because we outnumber them a million to one.
I mean, they're close to it.
So it's just it's just devastating that we didn't see that that brotherhood come together, that we didn't, that we didn't have each other's back to say, you know, regardless of how afraid I am of this virus, I value your freedom as much as I do my own because I know it is my own.
Because if if I allow the government to take yours, I'm next.
And people didn't do that at all, almost.
I mean, and that that was what was so devastating to me.
Even the Libertarian Party didn't do it.
And that's when I got involved because I was like, okay, these are the people that that use my label and they are unwilling to stand up for my fucking rights.
We have a problem, you know, because I know I don't expect the Republicans to do it.
I it's nice when they do, it's rare, but um, I don't expect them to.
I did expect the Libertarian Party to do it, and they did not.
They did not message against the lockdowns hardly at all.
And they created a void for people like me and Dave Smith to to start to take over.
And good, because we needed to.
Well, and I think part of what may have happened there is um the libertarians just did whatever the fuck they wanted anyway.
And so they like they didn't they yeah, they didn't fight for the liberty, but they also didn't just follow the rules, you know, like what libertarian was like staying in their house because the government told them to.
True.
There wasn't any of that.
I mean, there were some people though.
I mean, like in Orange County, California, there were those big protests, and I think Newport Beach were um, yeah, that was that was kind of a MAGA rally, but it was still.
Yeah, I know, I know it was a MAGA rally, but it was still in the name of freedom, right?
And and sure, and yeah, well, it see the the issue is is that you know, I'm in I'm in San Diego, and while I certainly live my life at yeah, it's good, it's amazing.
I I I was I lived my life as as freely as I could, but I still had to wear a mask to go into any businesses, you know.
It's like there was no option to be to just peacefully protest this thing.
Like I if you wanted to live here, every single restaurant, every single store, and I'm not exaggerating, you had to wear a mask or you would be asked to leave.
So you essentially were, you know, forced into participating, and everyone did.
There was no choice.
Do you think that was because of the the mandates the government made, or do you think that was just because there was a consensus among business owners that owned um it was definitely the government, 100% because because in my little community in Carlsbad, uh like for six months, all of the restaurants were just closed.
You weren't even allowed to go in.
So these restaurants banded together and they told the government to fuck off and they reopened in unison and they said, fine us, do whatever you have to, we're not closing.
So they didn't want to be closed, and and they didn't want to have mask mandates.
And in most of the businesses, like the the really small businesses, as soon as they reopened, they were like, they'd have a sign up about mask use, but if you didn't do it, they weren't saying anything.
Um, so that was that was when you got to see people's true colors.
When they when there was, but the the key there was that they banded together that you had to you had to stand up in unison and say, no more, we are free people and are I mean, the truth is the only reason they did is because their financial well-being was on the line.
I mean, these people were probably on the verge of bankruptcy and they had no choice.
But that's that's the sad reality of it is that oftentimes that's the only people time the the only time people will band together is when it's the the last resort.
And I'm trying to get people to do that now so that we don't have to do it when it's so dire that we can't, you know, meaningfully defend ourselves.
And and we are nearing that point.
I mean, the next the next global recession is going to be so catastrophic because we have pumped so many trillions of dollars into this everything bubble that if we if we don't come together before that, I see very little hope of us coming together in a way that that results in a better outcome for liberty post-collapse.
So, you know, it's it's all hands on deck right now.
What's particularly alarming to me about it, the COVID thing, and I do want to talk to you about fiat because I think I'm on the same exact page as you.
Sure.
Um what's particularly alarming to me about the whole COVID thing was frankly, how big of a pussy everybody was.
I mean, this was nothing compared to the Spanish flu.
Nothing.
And I never heard my uh my grandparents were were quite a bit older because my parents were old when they had me.
I never heard them talk about it or talk about their parents being afraid of the Spanish flu.
I mean, obviously, millions upon millions of people died, but and there were, you know, you can find you can dig up newspaper articles of St. Louis, you know, cancels a parade and stuff like that, but it was by no means this massive lockdown where everybody was supposed to stay home, where businesses had to close.
There were some public services that were shut down, like parades and public events.
But right, I mean, I and I think it was because a couple of things.
I think it was because everybody's just survived World War One.
So they're like, nothing's gonna kill me.
I mean, if I've survived World War One.
And I just think the other thing was a hundred years ago, um, I don't think any American would fathom that the government would have the audacity or the power to enforce anything like that.
Nope.
I think you're absolutely right.
I think that that's that's the difference between that society and this one is that they were they were the the revolution and the civil war were too fresh in their minds, and and this more importantly, it was fresh in the state's mind that these people are fucking violent and they're well armed and they will not allow for this.
Um the difference this go around is that I think they knew, I think that they knew that we were fucking soft, that we wouldn't do anything about it.
I think that's really the truth, is that they knew if they if they just scared us a little bit that the that it would be enough to get away with anything that they fucking dictated from from on high, and they were right, we accepted it.
Um so I'm trying to, especially now that we have the evidence of how unbelievably mild this pandemic was that this is the moment that you have to wake people up, that you have to convince them that you were lied to and your fucking freedoms were taken away for no reason and they're gonna do it again, you know.
Like that's the that's the big point that I'm trying to get across to people is like if you're paying attention to the cryptocurrency space and how they're trying to um bring up the fact that it uses electricity, oh my God.
Um, so we have to ban it.
It's fucking it's it's nuts.
But this is what they're going to do.
They're going to use global warming to lock us down again.
I have no doubt in my mind, if we do not kill the entire premise of lockdowns being an allowable thing in this country, we will see them again in our lifetimes.
And I will not see it again in my lifetime.
Like I will, I will fight and die to prevent that.
Like that's the truth.
That's where I'm at on this.
And I know many many people don't feel that way.
I do.
I'm one of them.
I'm not, I will not be locked down again.
And I'm gonna go to a state where I hope I don't have to do that.
Um, but if it gets to that point, I'll fight there too.
Like this is this is fucking life and death, man.
Like, this is we fought how many eons to get this smidgen of liberty and to get uh a small enough government that we could actually enjoy our lives and have financial success.
And and in in my lifetime, we've essentially allowed it all to go away.
And well, founding fathers risk their lives over a tea tax, man.
Yes, because it was on principle.
Like, fuck you, you know, right?
Exactly.
And and that that spirit still is within me, and it's within a lot of people that live in this country, me too.
And and we need to fucking like harness that spirit and and you know, take those embers and fucking blow air onto it and get people pumped, man.
Cause like this is this is like, do you do you want to be the generation that allows freedom to die in your lifetime?
Like, I'm serious.
I'm really serious about this.
We we are on the cusp of entering a global totalitarianism, like global too in nature.
Yeah, yeah.
They were trying to fix they're trying to fix corporate income tax in internationally so they can crank it here.
That's fucked up.
A global minimum tax.
They want to do a global minimum tax, which by the way, it's illegal for different business leaders in the same industry to get together and fix prices, which is exactly what they're doing.
It's so fucked up, it pisses me off so bad.
That's a great point.
Yeah, yeah.
It's it's the definition of collusion.
Yeah, they're literally colluding.
So I do want to ask you, because I haven't quite figured it out myself.
What do you think actually happened on January 6th?
Uh man, I I I go both directions on this.
I think for the most part, it was peaceful.
Uh, I don't if if the reports are are accurate, no one was killed other than Ashley Babbitt on that day uh via violence.
So I think that it's obviously being used as a political cudgel to try and create more laws to put down people like me.
And and that's what that's how I view those people.
Like I'm not a Trump supporter.
I I wouldn't have been there on January 6th because Joe Jorgensen.
Uh yes, I think I did.
Yeah.
Um, begrudgingly.
Uh she she was she failed terribly on the Messaging about lockdowns, but I still wanted to just have a protest vote vote.
I'm in California, so it didn't make a fucking difference anyway.
Right, right.
Um, but uh the way I view those people is those are my people, like the people that are willing to fight against the government and tyranny, even if it's perceived, like I'm not sure that the election was stolen.
I think that it's a decent chance that it was, but I don't I didn't care enough about Donald Trump for that to be the hill I was willing to die on.
If if that if that protest had been about lockdowns and about the bill of rights being fucking destroyed over the past year, I would have been there.
See, I don't I don't think that January 6th was about the election.
I think the election was just the straw that broke the camel's back for those people.
I think that's a fair argument.
I think I think um uh in my opinion, the reason that there was so much anger among Trump's Trump supporters was not because Trump incited violence or encouraged or inflamed, though he he did inflame, but I wouldn't say he incited violence by any means, but he certainly stoked the flames, of course.
Um but I I think the real reason they were so pissed off is because uh I might have to reset my camera as well.
It looks like I froze, but I think the real reason they were pissed off is because um the media lied about everything for four years, and so how how are you supposed to believe them if they're telling the truth about the um uh if they're telling the truth about the election results, and so this whole doubt that we have around um uh election integrity, in my opinion, is because um nobody has faith in in the propaganda that is the corporate media.
Uh, I think you're exactly right.
And I think that that's probably the healthiest thing that came from Trump's presidency is that 70 plus million people woke up to the reality that I've been in for decades, is that we are lied to en masse constantly.
So like I think that's a huge white pill.
Um, well, it it came via a red pill, but it ended up being a white pill that now we have probably half this country, at least in my opinion, that do not trust the media at all.
And I think that's huge progress.
We need to have alternative avenues for information and news because they are lying to us on both sides.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think more on one, obviously.
I think the future of news is um guys like you and me and influencers that are bigger than us, right?
Like the Tim Pools and the Joe Rogans, 100%.
As long as they don't get deplatformed, man.
Well, that's true.
But um, I think that as this evolves, I mean, it's gonna take time, but there will be platforms that truly come out with ironclad, no deplatforming for wrong think type principles.
I I believe it in my soul.
Like there, there's such a huge market demand for it, it's impossible that it doesn't uh eventually arise.
So um in the interim, though, you're absolutely right.
Like we have to continue to kind of stay under the radar and hope that once you launch above that threshold where you start to get their attention of like, okay, this guy is an influencer.
Once you get as big as Joe Rogan and Tim Pool, it's kind of hard to get rid of them, uh, because they make so much money.
I mean, that's that's that's the only reason that they're not deplatformed entirely, is because they're fucking cash cows and money and they found a way to be uh platform, they found a way to be platform independent as well.
Like um, even like most part even like Ben Shapiro, I obviously he relies a lot on YouTube and Apple.
Um, but he's got the Daily Wire's its own thing.
People subscribe to the daily.
I think I even I subscribe to it because I like to listen to second hour sometimes.
Um he does have an income that is not reliant on um kickback from you know YouTube ads, right?
So you know, I feel bad for Alex Jones, and I I am a huge fan of Alex Jones, though I realize that he's um he's obnoxious and ridiculous.
Uh but my that's what makes him so great.
Yeah, my theory on Alex Jones is that he's right about every single conspira conspiracy theory, and he's wrong about all the all of them too.
Yeah, he never he never misses a true one.
That's true.
You just have to siphon through and figure out what real what's real, you know.
Yeah, but that I think that's the beauty of when you're allowed to talk uh freely is that you're gonna get some shit right and you're gonna get some shit wrong.
But it's it's important that we're we're allowed to do that exploration because then you can avoid being ruled by a fucking little tyrant dictator bitch like Fauci for a year, because had you know, I think I think had sucks.
He's so he's awful.
I mean, and and I think that had we had open discourse, we could have remedied remedied this months in as opposed to a full year in.
But the the tech giants suppressing and banning people that were talking about the truth, and I knew it was the truth because I was researching this very early on Aggressively, because I wanted to know if my life was in danger or not.
And I came to the conclusion that it wasn't.
And basically, any young person that was healthy was also not in danger, and that this was madness and that there was uh a thousand different things we should have been doing to try and alleviate and decrease the amount of fatalities that came from it.
But instead, because we did not have the capacity to discuss things openly, we were dictated to and we were lied to.
And do you think that they knew they were lying, or do you think that they were just so self-righteous that they thought they were covering up the lies?
Oh no, I think Fauci was lying.
Yeah, I know Fauci was, but in terms of like Facebook suppressing, you know, like lab league type stuff and Hunter Biden story.
Like I and maybe I'm just being naive, but I tend to think that though ridiculous and narcissistic and self-righteous, I tend to think a lot of those people on those fact check fact check panels actually think they're the real fact checkers.
God, uh it's possible.
Uh, I mean, I think it's probably a mixed bag.
I think there are true partisan actors within that that are like, okay, this news story about Hunter Biden's laptop is devastating to the Biden campaign.
We're going to fucking suppress this thing because it basically they they look at it very similarly to how they did um Hillary's emails and how the FBI investigated her right before the election against Trump.
And they're like, we're not gonna have this mistake again, where we report anything that that sinks her and puts Trump in office, we're not doing that again with Biden and Trump.
So I think that that one was more nefarious.
I think that their willingness to suppress quote unquote disinformation when it came to COVID information.
Um, I think that may be genuine, but I think that the the truth is is that you just you can't principally you cannot allow for uh an investigation that's ongoing to be suppressed on conclusions or or hypotheses as to what we are evaluating, like well, you can't be able to talk about it.
If you're selective about what you report, you're you're giving in kind to a campaign.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like if CNN is only going to report on the negative things about Trump and they're not going to report on any of the controversies around the around Biden and his family, then how is that not campaign finance violation?
Like that's fair question.
The press is valuable.
You want to buy ads on CNN, you have to pay cash, right?
And if you got talking heads totally pumping your campaign for a whole entire 18 months, then that is bullshit.
I think that's a fair argument.
I I would actually push back a little bit in that I I think that that's inevitable.
Like you like, yeah, the same the same same could be argued that Fox News is is giving you know free campaign contributions to to Trump.
But yeah, uh, from my view, the more egregious thing is when you have social media companies which are suppressing one way of thinking and uplifting another.
That's where it gets really dirty because that's not that's not just an opinion.
I mean, you are you are editorializing, you are you are shifting the entire conversation across the globe as to how to survive a pandemic.
I mean, like, really let that sink in.
Like, we're trying to figure out how to fucking live.
And they're like, you can't know about vitamin D because you can't know about hydroxychloroquine, you can't know about ivermectin.
This is fucking this is mass murder, what they did.
And I want criminal charges, and I want criminal charges against Fauci.
Like, I I am really pissed off about how they handled this stuff.
And well, then that excludes the fact that they were telling people not to go to the hospital or see a doctor until they had to go to the hospital.
When we know that we know that these therapeutics have a 200% increased survivability if caught early enough, and so people started to get sick and they stayed home because they didn't want to infect anybody else, and that's what they were directed to do, but they needed to get treatment right away.
You have to catch this shit early.
Well, I agree with you.
I think that we could have we really could have solved all these problems, but there's all sorts of conflicts of interest involved.
Like if there are if there are working therapeutics, it's hard to get emergency use cases for vaccines, right?
And so that's exactly why it happened.
Yeah, and it's it's a nightmare.
And I also think uh, and maybe this is a stretch, but the conspiratorial side of me thinks that they really wanted to hype the um uh the fear around COVID as a way to um uh circumvent election laws in some of these states.
So, like I don't I don't necessarily think that the Democrats cheated and that they filled out fraudulent or fake ballots.
They may have, but I don't I'm not I don't I haven't seen enough evidence to be confident to make that claim, right?
But they definitely changed election Rules mailed out ballots that they don't usually mail out and selectively harvested those ballots, right?
And so I don't think they cheated, but I think it was cheap the way they won.
And I think it was very unethical if they intentionally hyped COVID in order to do it.
Yeah.
Well, and I think that's the best case scenario.
Yeah.
Honestly.
Like, yeah, is that they just played to the letter of the law and maybe into the gray area, but they didn't go into the black.
I think they went probably deeper than that, but they're like you said, I don't have evidence to prove it.
Um, but I just wanted to mention ivermectin.
Ivermectin is a prophylactic and it's basically free.
I mean, we could have saved probably a million lives.
Had the reason another reason I didn't want to push it is because of the patent on it's expired.
Can't make any money.
That's exactly right.
But but I'm telling you, that is criminal.
Like you, you should be put in prison forever if you are withholding information so that you can get a vaccine to you know give uh billions of dollars to your campaign contra contributors, whereas you could be saving lives in that moment with almost free uh medication, which is ever present.
It's it's produced in like a thousand or uh a hundred countries across the globe because it's it's out of patent, as you said.
So and if you take it as a prophylactic, you basically are impervious.
It's they I've uh the the doctor that did the research on this, he he did a study on it, and he's like, This is as good as the vaccine.
Think about think about how crazy uh doctor from Houston.
Uh yeah, I think that's him.
I forget his name, but he's gray hair, kind of handsome guy older.
Yeah, yeah.
He's kind of thick.
He was on uh one of the Weinstein brothers' shows, and it was just amazing.
But he's like, he's like, Yeah, if you if you are on if you've had COVID or if you're on ivermectin, or if you've had the vaccine, you are comparably immune to COVID.
And I was like, that is that is such an unbelievably damning statement to Anthony Fauci because he he very specifically pushed against that as well as hydro hydro hydroxychloroquine.
And I'm like, you gotta go to prison.
Like that you have to go to prison, even in my anarchist society, I'd still be like, You killed a million people, you go to jail forever, you know.
Yeah, I agree with you.
Well, and this isn't the first time that big pharma has done this.
So I don't know if you're familiar with what happened to hemophiliacs in the 80s.
Are you familiar with the Ryan White story?
I don't think so.
Okay, so the only reason I know about this is because I have hemophilia.
Are you do you know what hemophilia is?
Like the Russian you don't blood clot, right?
Yeah, so internal bleeding is a problem.
Um primarily like joints and then arthritis from that, and then um the average life expectancy of somebody with hemophilia if untreated is like 11 years, right?
And so what happened was um in the 80s, there was this synthetic basically hemophiliacs don't make um if you have type A hemophilia, you don't make a factor eight protein, it's just a certain protein in your blood that makes it clot.
And so they were able to make a synthetic one that you could inject basically, like on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
You you know, you take your shot intravenously at home, and um you'll your blood will clot, not perfectly, but much better to the point where you can have a fairly normal life experience.
And what happened was they were making the medicine with blood donors, and the medicine was infected with hepatitis and HIV.
Jesus Christ.
And they knew about it and they didn't tell anyone about it because they determined they're A, they were making a lot of money, and B, there's only 10,000 hemophiliacs in the night in the United States at the time or 20,000, something like that.
Uh half of which died.
Yeah.
And B, they they just thought, you know what, they're gonna die from AIDS, or they're gonna die from hemophilia.
So might as well give them AIDS, make money.
That's astonishing.
So did Fauci have any involvement in that?
I think that was I don't know if he was involved specifically in that.
I think it was mostly the pharmaceutical companies, the drug makers were kind of covering it up.
And I don't think anybody went to jail, man.
Yeah, it's either they got they settled, but um uh and that's always the way.
I mean, that that is the problem is that these guys, if you have deep deep enough pockets, it like they made the calculation.
They said, How much money are we gonna make from this?
Now, how much money will it cost to settle?
Okay, well, you then you then you do this cost benefit analysis where you decide to kill people because it's cheaper than doing the right thing.
And mothers are injecting their 11-year-old sons with AIDS, not knowing it.
Come on.
It's the I mean, it's the deepest, darkest level of evil you can imagine.
Yeah, so I don't put it past him at all to let people die for political or financial gain in the last 18 months.
I don't put it past one bit.
Of course.
Why the hell is it?
I was asking my dad about this.
My dad was born in 49.
Why do you think it is that healthcare has gotten so much more expensive?
I asked my dad, I was like, was everybody bitching about healthcare costs in the 60s?
He's like, no, it's pretty cheap.
Yeah.
What happened?
Is just because the it's all subsidized.
I think that's what it is.
Is that um first off, you have to have uh basically permits to build additional hospitals.
So and there's like a what's the term like uh need need of use or some there's some term like that where you have to actually get um the existing hospitals to approve new hospitals.
I mean, it's it's monopoly 101 where like basically they they prevent any competitors from coming in unless they can prove definitively that you need additional hospital space.
So what does that do?
It creates you know, uh maybe not a monopoly, but an oligopoly where you have very few options, limited options, and then yeah, lowering supply, so prices are gonna crank.
Exactly.
So that's that's one that's one layer of it.
Second layer being um obviously, like there's massive patent protections that that increase the the cost of medication.
You can argue whether or not that's a benefit to society.
Um many libertarians think that there shouldn't be.
Um, I am on the fence on that one.
Um, and then third, I think that it's just the fact that the government and insurance cover up so much of the cost, and and it makes it so that people um they don't know.
They don't even they don't even have a concept of how outrageously overpriced stuff is so they don't price shop.
And if you're not price shopping because you're not you're not actually paying, because if you have insurance, you don't give a fuck.
You end up having prices that rise out of control.
Um, you you have to have the price mechanism has to be known to the consumers so that they can actually fight against being gouged at as it stands today.
No one has a clue what they're paying.
Like, I I remember I I broke my arm in New York in 2013, and I ended up paying like a thousand buck copay.
I got the bills later on, it was like a 65,000 bill.
I mean, it was crazy.
And and you know, whether or not in that catastrophic moment, I would have made a different decision than to go to a different hospital if I was actually paying that amount out of pocket.
I can't say I would have, but 65 grand for a broken arm?
Yeah, that's such horse shit.
My wife and I had a baby in January, and she was born six weeks early.
Yeah, and that was a six-figure bill, too.
It's just like all right.
I mean, this this is madness, and and I mean, there's that.
Then there's also the issues with um, you know, tort reform and having too many lawsuits for for bullshit.
There's the the layers upon layers of reasons that healthcare is is overpriced.
Uh, you know, you can uh there have been books written about it.
It's it's ridiculous.
So it's super counterintuitive.
How do we convince people that freedom is cheaper?
Right.
So the in and I kind of understand this just because of my background and study of it.
I read Wealth of Nations, I've read Milton Friedman, I've read Ayn Rand, I get it.
Okay, but to a layman, when they hear cancel student debt, they think that that's great.
When I hear that, I think, oh my god, they're gonna sell bonds to the Fed, the Fed's gonna print money and buy the bonds, and then the value of the dollar is gonna go down, and everybody's gonna be poor even though they don't have debt, like right up too.
Yeah, and your taxes are gonna go up too.
So, but that took who knows how many countless hours of reading and study for me to figure that out.
So, how do we how do we um sort of do what the democrats do and just in 10 seconds make people feel the way we do?
Oh my god, that's a I mean that this is the problem is like that's the challenge for libertarians though, and in conservatives too, right?
And yes, uh like how do we change minds quickly and emotionally because we suck at that?
I know.
Oh, well, I think that you know, you as we talked about earlier on, is that you have to make a compelling emotional argument to try and get them to feel where your heart is and to understand that you're not some like greedy piece of shit.
I mean, even if you are, um, but just because like we want the best outcome and cheaper, cheaper goods creates a better society, ultimately.
Like you want you want that to happen.
You want competition because you want them to have to compete, because if they don't have to compete, prices get outrageous.
And and any any industry that you see where there's limited competition, you see price gouging.
It's just inevitable.
It's gonna It's going to happen and it's it's natural.
Um, so as to how to convince it, uh convince people that don't understand economics.
I mean, obviously it'd be great if you could get all of them to read Murray Rothbard or something.
That's not gonna happen.
I think that the best way to to do it is to just prove it to have um industries that are free and or or agorist in the sense that they operate outside of the the governmental system so that you can provide a good that outcompetes the overly regulated uh side of the market, and and over time, hopefully people actually you know, they they sense it.
They could be like, okay, well, this they they look at this product and they go, Oh, well, flat screen TVs are down, you know, 30,000 percent over the past 20 years, whereas health insurance in college, where government funds go are up hundreds of percent over the past couple decades, and then just be like, Okay, do you see the differences here?
Like, like, but it's it's weird, man.
So that sometimes even when it's so obvious, you just can't get people to understand it.
Do you think that our politicians realize it?
Like, do you think Elizabeth Warren understands that all these government programs that she advocates for actually make poor people poorer?
Uh she just says it anyway.
Again, a mixed bag, but I think in Elizabeth Warren's case, she is an absolute lying bloodthirsty piece of shit.
And I think that she will she will lie through her teeth for political power.
I mean she lied about a race, man.
Yeah, exactly.
So uh yeah, but the thing is the Democrats have built their whole entire party on winning emotional arguments, not logical arguments.
So it doesn't matter when somebody with very fair skin and blue eyes tells you they're a Native American.
Well, she's got she's got a lot of beads to offer, man.
So, you know, I don't I don't know.
It yes, I think in her case, she is one of the more evil actors within politics.
Like, she will absolutely lie.
Her she was the one that came out uh two days ago, or maybe it was even yesterday, about how Bitcoin uses too much electricity and that we have to regulate it.
I mean, these people are fucking transparently evil, some of them.
Why do you think they're really trying to regulate it?
It's obviously it's not the environment.
Um is it is it because they're they're worried about the collapse of fiat.
Absolutely.
Yes.
Well, not just that.
Not just you think Elizabeth Warren understands that.
Whether or not she does, she works for people that do.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, yeah, the people the people that really run this country are not the politicians, it's the people that fund them.
So those are the people that understand very deeply how what a what a meaningful threat, not just Bitcoin, but cryptocurrency more broadly, are to the state and to uh the Federal Reserve and to central banking.
Um but also But the the beautiful thing about it though is if we switch to if we switch to a blockchain currency, a cryptocurrency.
The government will no longer be able to just perpetuate debt, like it will force them to only spend at or below annual revenue.
Well, that's that's you can't be in debt with crypto.
That's why that's why this governments and the ancaps love it.
Um, but then there's a second reason that they oppose this, is because it is possible, it's not easy, but it's possible to transact in Bitcoin and avoid taxes.
And that is that is another layer that they can't allow.
So those are the two, those are the two factors.
It has fucking nothing to do with global warming, trust me, as to why they want to go after it.
Yeah, yeah.
I I it I I could see I could see there being an argument for taxes.
Um however, people are already avoiding taxes like crazy with fiat.
I mean, there's all sorts of ways to avoid taxes.
And honestly, our government doesn't have a revenue problem, they have a spending problem.
Oh, for sure.
But but they they still have to have the mechanism um to be able to enforce tax lanes and things like that, because you have you still have to have some inflow, or else the bond vigilantes will come after you and say, okay, the they are just printing and spending and borrowing, and they aren't bringing in anywhere near the tax receipts that they used to.
If they if you see tax receipts actually declining for any period of time, uh you will you will eventually see the the bond vigilantes come in and and destroy the dollar.
So they know they know that they still have to play this game to some extent.
Like they're not full MMT, they're not completely nuts that they think that you don't have to have um taxes and you can just print and borrow forever and there'll be no problem.
Like they they get it.
I think they get it.
It's interesting though, because um so many big players, major banks have bought into blockchain technology that there's some political difficulty in um uh being antagonistic toward it.
That well, that's our hope.
I mean, that's our hope is that that there are enough moneyed interests that find value in this technology that they say, okay, we're going to now lobby on behalf of free decentralized currency.
Like that's that's the dream right there.
Uh whether or not it plays out that way, I don't know.
This was a great conversation.
I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me.
I could talk to you forever, man.
I know for sure.
I feel the same way.
Um, if anybody likes this, uh check me out.
Liberty Lockdown is the podcast.
It's on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes everywhere, and uh at Liberty Lock Pod on Twitter.
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
