James Smith critiques Democratic infighting during Trump's impeachment, highlighting feuds between Sanders and Warren, Biden corruption allegations, and AOC's misinterpretation of Richmond protests. He rejects Andrew Kern's call for market governance in libertarianism, insisting on a strict non-aggression principle based solely on private property rights. A subsequent debate explores whether state intervention for public safety or immigration control violates this core tenet, concluding that while open borders may seem ideal, the lack of private alternatives forces difficult compromises regarding state power and social disruption. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Bernie Sanders Endorsement00:15:20
Fill her up!
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
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You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
What's up?
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
Thank you guys for tuning in.
I'm going solo this episode.
No guest.
And Rob Bernstein's aides are acting up again, so he will not be in as well.
I do have next week, a week from today, next Wednesday, we got Brett from the school show, from the School Sucks podcast coming on.
I just recorded an episode of that yesterday, and it was great.
So I was happy to link up with him.
I've been a fan of his for a long time.
So I'm excited to have him on the show next week.
And then, of course, you know, we got some road dates coming up.
On February 7th, me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein will be doing a live stand-up show at the Comedy Hideout.
And then February 21st, we're doing a live podcast and a live comedy show in Philly.
So I'll tweet out the links for both of those after the show.
Go check that out.
If you want to come see Part of the Problem Live or come see me and Rob doing some live stand-up in either Boston or Philly, I will tell you the Boston show is nearly sold out.
So if you want to come to the Comedy Hideout, make sure you go buy those tickets immediately because we're going to sell that bitch out.
All right.
So the thing that I wanted to talk about the most today was what the hell is going on in the Democratic Party.
You know, it's the impeachment of Donald Trump.
The Senate hearings are underway.
So they've had the first two days of the Senate hearings of Donald Trump's impeachment.
And you would think that this would be the story.
You know, it's only the third president in American history who's been impeached.
He's the sitting president.
It's the year of an election.
And this is, you know, the Democrats have gotten what they wanted.
I saw it today.
It's weird.
You see these things come out.
But so the day, I think just yesterday or the day before, marked the official three-year anniversary of Donald Trump being sworn in.
And they said the day he was sworn in, there was a Washington Post article that said that was about the case for impeaching Donald Trump.
So impeaching Donald Trump is also, the idea is also about three years old.
And now they've got it, and it's sent over to the Senate.
And okay, so this is the moment that Democrats have gotten what they want.
But that doesn't seem to be the main story.
I mean, I watched some of the Senate hearings.
God, was it boring?
And a lot of just political grandstanding.
Really, no new information about the case to impeach Donald Trump has been presented.
It's just kind of the same old thing.
But it's kind of weird that in this moment, the Democrats seem to be in a state of collapse.
I mean, I'm not exaggerating.
There is, so we've had today, I guess I'll talk about all of these individually, but after last week where Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were going to war over this, you know, this alleged conversation that happened a couple years ago, and Elizabeth Warren's refusing to shake Bernie Sanders' hands.
So you have like the number two and number three Democrat going at it.
Now, Biden, you had a staffer from Biden's campaign criticizing Joe Biden for being corrupt.
Biden apologized, Bernie Sanders apologizing to Joe Biden, saying he's not corrupt.
Biden not really accepting the apology.
You had Hillary Clinton coming out and saying that nobody likes Bernie Sanders.
And you have Tulsi Gabbard suing Hillary Clinton for, I believe, $40 or $50 million for defamation.
So all of this, I mean, it's just like a state of total, you know, feuding and collapse.
The whole idea that we're all just arguing over who's the best to beat Donald Trump, but we're not really getting into the mud, that's completely gone.
And it leads one to wonder what the hell is going on here.
And I think my best guess at it is that the reality of the situation is starting to hit Democrats, which is that this impeachment, the entire House hearing, did nothing but strengthen support for Donald Trump and lowered support for impeachment and removal.
They realized that they basically fired their last gun, their last bullet, and it missed.
And now they're staring reality in the face.
And that reality is that probably nobody on the Democratic side can beat Donald Trump in a general election except for Bernie Sanders.
And Bernie Sanders is not an option, according to them, as Hillary Clinton made very clear.
So let's go, I guess let's go through these one by one because each one of them is somewhat interesting to me.
So Bernie Sanders, a member of his campaign, was criticizing Joe Biden for being corrupt.
And of course, he is.
I mean, he went into, you know, he was going into details about Joe Biden's family.
And it's not, you know, there was stuff about Hunter Biden, his son, who obviously everybody knows at this point about the Ukraine, you know, story.
And even before that, he was getting all these different shitty deals.
He also had a shitty deal with his company in China, just getting paid extraordinary amounts of money when he has absolutely no business getting that, no industry experience.
He's also just a, you know, a fucked up guy with like drug problems and, you know, knocked up some chick and denied that the kid was his.
And then a DNA test proved it was.
They also went into Joe Biden's brother and who was working for these credit card companies.
And Joe Biden was fighting to help the credit card companies when he was in the Senate.
This is stuff that predates the Obama administration even.
But just like any, you know, like I don't think there's anything especially unique about Joe Biden.
It's just like any, you know, multi-decade, you know, career politician.
He's he's corrupt and they called him out for that.
And then Joe Biden got very upset and Bernie Sanders ultimately apologized, which of course shows you the weakness in Bernie Sanders.
That he's just, you know, like I've been talking about this for a year now, but he's just not willing to actually fight.
You know, he wants a revolution, but he doesn't want to have to insult anybody on the way there.
So Bernie Sanders refuses to call Joe Biden corrupt.
You know, he'll say, Joe Biden will say this whole system is corrupt all the time, but he's got Hillary Clinton in 2016 and now Joe Biden next to him on the debate stage.
And he's not willing to call them corrupt.
Like what?
It's just the system, but you can't point to Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, two of the most corrupt senators and then members of Obama's cabinet that you could think of.
So anyway, it was just a weak moment, weak moment for Joe Biden to see him just refuse to actually fight.
And of course, if you're not going to fight, you're probably not going to end up winning.
The other thing that seems to be helping Bernie Sanders the most is the media attacks and the establishment attacks against him.
And that, of course, he got ironically a big gift handed to him when Hillary Clinton just came out in an interview recently.
I think they were promoting her upcoming documentary on Hulu that we talked about last show.
And Hillary Clinton said that nobody likes Bernie Sanders and nobody wants to work with him.
And it's a real shame that all these people have gotten suckered in.
Which was, you know, it did.
It struck me as a bit odd.
And it kind of made me almost kind of conclude that I was wrong last week when I was speculating that maybe she'd get back into the race.
Because if she was going to get back into the race, you would think the last thing she'd want to do is alienate Bernie Sanders supporters.
Although I guess she did a good job in 2016 of doing that.
Really showed how petty and stupid Hillary Clinton is.
I mean, like, not that Hillary Clinton's a stupid person, not that she's a person, but she's, I think, so blinded by her own anger that anybody would have challenged her or damaged her in any way.
And so she just came out and said this.
And, you know, it's like so tone deaf to the moment we live in.
So she says, Bernie Sanders, she says nobody likes him.
Well, she followed that up immediately with saying nobody wants to work with him.
So when you say nobody likes him, are you referring to people in the Senate, lobbyists, the mainstream media?
Like, who are you talking about here?
Now, I have my problems with Bernie just about as much as anybody, but to say nobody likes him, I mean, the guy got 100,000 people to donate to his campaign in one night.
He is the most popular senator in America.
He's got the most enthusiasm of any Democrat running for president by far.
So, right, it doesn't seem like nobody likes him.
So to make the statement, nobody likes him and nobody wants to work with him.
Well, basically what you're saying is that nobody who matters likes him.
Nobody who's not a fucking senator likes him.
But, you know, like, how tone deaf can you be?
That's a fucking compliment in the year 2020 that nobody in the establishment wants to work with you.
Who the fuck wants somebody who's beloved by the powerful?
His whole campaign message is he wants a revolution and he wants to take on the powerful.
So yeah, it's just a compliment.
But it does, there, you know, there's so many crazy things about like the state of politics in America that it's easy to not appreciate another little crazy thing when you see it.
But it is pretty wild to be in a situation where, I mean, look, if Bernie Sanders wasn't Bernie Sanders, if he was Pete Buttigieg or Elizabeth Warren or, you know, anyone else, Kamala Harris or any of the people who dropped out, anything like that, and they were where he is in the polls.
He was just in the latest national poll.
He was in first.
He's basically in a statistical tie for first in Iowa and New Hampshire.
He has the most passionate support.
If it was anybody else, they'd be saying this race is between Biden and Sanders right now.
That's not what's being reported, but that's the reality of the situation.
That's who the race is between right now.
And to have last election cycles nominee come out and just blast one of them is very unusual.
It's very unusual.
Like, if, you know, you wouldn't have seen George W. Bush come out and just say, like, you know, nobody likes Mitt Romney.
That guy sucks.
It would have been a weird thing to see.
And, or, you know, whoever, Rex Antorum or someone like that.
Like, it would have been very strange.
You just, you don't usually see things like this.
Usually they either endorse somebody or they stay quiet until it's the general election and then they campaign for that person.
The other thing that is kind of strange is that it's not as if Hillary's endorsed Joe Biden.
I mean, Joe Biden was vice president when she was Secretary of State.
They were in the Senate together.
They've, you know, they had a relationship when she was first lady and Joe Biden was defending her rapist husband.
They've known each other for a long time.
And it's not as if she's coming out and endorsing Joe Biden and criticizing Bernie Sanders.
She's just criticizing Bernie Sanders.
So take from that what you will.
I don't know.
Maybe the door still is open in her mind.
But it's very clear that she will never forgive Joe Biden, excuse me, Bernie Sanders for, you know, running against her.
There was not, that was her nomination in her mind, and nobody was allowed to challenge her.
It also just shows you what a bitch Bernie Sanders is.
I mean, the fact that Bernie Sanders bent the knee to this woman, went around, endorsed her, went around campaigning for her, and then this is what he gets in return.
You know, there is a lesson, or there's a couple lessons.
Number one, don't be a bitch.
Number two, don't suck up to the establishment.
You'll get nothing in return for it.
I'm surprised people haven't learned these lessons before.
I remember, you know, when Rand Paul in 2012 was like endorsing Mitt Romney, and he was saying all these nice things about Mitch McConnell.
And I know that he had this idea that if he just endorsed Mitt Romney and chummed up, you know, got chummy with Mitch McConnell, then they'd all endorse him in 2016.
And none of them did.
He got no support from any of them.
It doesn't matter how much Bernie Sanders goes along with the party.
The party's never going to go along with him.
Anyway, they asked Bernie Sanders about this, and he just dodged the question.
He was just like, you know, they asked him.
I mean, he said something that was like remotely funny.
They asked him about Hillary saying nobody likes you.
And he said something like, well, I should hope my wife likes me or something.
But again, it just really goes, it just shows the weakness of Bernie Sanders.
And I know for a fact, because I've talked to a lot of people and I know some people who actually work for the campaign and stuff, there's a lot of people around Bernie Sanders who get really frustrated with this part of him.
First off, they were frustrated that he endorsed Hillary Clinton, that he, you know, like campaigned for her.
That, you know, there was that whole like grassroots Bernie or bust movement, and they wanted, that's what they wanted, Bernie or bust.
And, you know, he, he, uh, he basically told them no, we're supporting Hillary Clinton.
And I know that there's a lot of them who are just fucking very frustrated that he won't fight.
He like refuses to fight.
Think about this, right?
Let's say Bernie Sanders is telling the truth, which I tend to believe he is because Elizabeth Warren is, you know, a known liar.
So let's say he was telling the truth that like this conversation never happened and he never said that a woman couldn't be president.
Just assuming that's the case, as I'm sure most Bernie supporters would believe.
So Elizabeth Warren lied about him a couple weeks before Iowa in front of tens of millions of people, lies about him, basically calling him a sexist, stabbing her friend in the back for political purposes.
And then at the end of the debate, he goes to shake her hand like a fucking chump and she refuses to shake his hand and attacks him and says, you called me a liar on national television.
Character Matters Most00:03:08
And what is Bernie Sanders' instinctual response to that?
What does he say?
Let's not do this here.
That's Bernie Sanders in a nutshell.
Let's not do this here.
Oh, okay.
Let's go.
That's it.
No fight, nothing.
You know, I mean, like, I'm sorry, but if you're saying I want to overthrow the entire establishment, I want to lead a revolution, don't you have to be a little bit more of a fighter than that?
Now, I'm not saying that Bernie Sanders is talking about leading a violent revolution.
Like, okay, you don't need to be a killer, but you have to be willing to stand up for yourself.
And if Hillary Clinton, you know, it's like, oh my God, the argument is right there in front of you.
It doesn't even take that much.
How would you respond to Hillary Clinton?
I mean, it's just right there.
Well, I don't know.
I mean, the DNC rigged the system for you and you still lost in the general to a cartoon character.
I don't know.
You could just say that.
You could just say, it's like, well, I don't know.
I campaigned and supported Hillary Clinton and she seemed quite fine with me when I was throwing my support behind her.
Now all of a sudden, nobody likes me.
She seemed to like me just fine when she was asking me to go speak on her campaign trail.
That's it.
I mean, just there's like 50 more.
Just something.
You got to give something.
But he just, he can't muster it up.
Bernie Sanders just doesn't.
He doesn't have that in him.
I don't know.
I've been speculating for a long time.
I don't know if he just doesn't really care to win.
He's already got his next book in mind.
Or maybe it's just a character thing.
Maybe it's just a character thing where it's just he's just a non-confrontational guy who just doesn't have the courage to get into these scrums.
But it's it, to me at least, it just looks weak and pathetic when these people are attacking you and then you're apologizing.
And he did the same thing with Joe Biden.
He ended up apologizing that the guy called him corrupt.
I'm so sorry he would call you corrupt.
I don't think you're corrupt.
You know, sure.
You're part of this corrupt system where the corporate, you know, he'll say things like the corporations own the senators.
So, okay.
So the corporations are paying his fucking family members while he's writing laws on their behalf.
But that's not enough to be labeled corrupt.
I don't know.
I think it's going to take a little bit more than that to get the socialist revolution that some of these people are looking for, which is good.
Capitalism can breathe easy.
I don't think Bernie Sanders is the guy.
I mean, the funny, the irony of all of this is that Bernie Sanders would be the toughest matchup for Donald Trump in a national election.
Because Bernie Sanders would take all of that, you know, outsider energy away from Donald Trump.
He would have all of this like populist pro-worker energy.
But I just don't know.
I don't think he's got the fight in him to get there.
We'll see.
It's not like he doesn't have a shot at this thing still.
We'll see.
A big part of that's because Joe Biden is the frontrunner.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show.
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Impeachment Hearing Weakness00:04:47
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
So the other story that I that I mentioned was the that Tulsi Gabbard has filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton for defamation, which is pretty amazing.
And I should preface this by saying that I don't think defamation laws are exactly right.
I don't really believe in that idea.
I don't think your reputation is something that you own.
I think it's something that other people kind of own and people should be allowed.
You know, I'm kind of a free speech absolutist or pretty damn close.
So I don't really believe in the idea of defamation lawsuits.
And she almost certainly will lose this lawsuit.
It's very, very hard to win a defamation lawsuit.
You have to actually show intent and damages.
And it's very difficult to prove either of those things.
That being said, it's pretty goddamn glorious.
Pretty goddamn glorious just to see an actual lawsuit being filed against Hillary Clinton for calling, you know, outrageously calling Tulsi Gabbard a Russian agent.
Again, a very strange thing for the former, the nominee of the last election cycle to come out and do.
So I don't know.
I mean, maybe it gets Tulsi's name out there a little bit more.
Maybe it maybe it brings up the issue of war and peace and stuff like that.
Who the fuck knows?
But it's pretty funny.
Anything that gives Hillary Clinton a headache, we can always root for a little bit.
You know, if Bernie Sanders really did have balls, if he won the nomination, he would pick Tulsi to be his VP.
But of course he won't.
And we all know that, right?
If Bernie Sanders were to be the Democratic nominee, who would he pick?
He'd pick Elizabeth Warren or someone like that.
He wouldn't pick Tulsi Gabbard.
He just doesn't, you know, or at least I doubt it.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I highly doubt it.
Anyway, I wish Tulsi all the best.
It is pretty funny, though, that as the Senate impeachment hearings are going, and you would think if the Democrats wanted anything, it would be like stay on message and everybody talk about how the president's getting impeached.
Well, look how corrupt this president is.
He's a liar and he's this and look what he did.
But there's just not enough there there to really get anybody worked up.
And they're all, you know, at each other's throats at the moment.
And it really does, it shows something about the weakness of their position.
They're all, it's like Van Jones even said the other day after the last debate.
Van Jones said he was like, man, this was a depressing night because I realized none of us can beat Donald Trump.
And I think he's really on to something.
That reality is slowly starting to settle in.
And I'll tell you, you're going to see some crazy shit in this country.
Like, if you think things got crazy when Donald Trump got elected and they did, you know, but if you think this was like, you know, you see those video compilations of the meltdowns of people, you know, left-leaning people when Donald Trump got elected, wait till it slowly starts to become obvious that he's not going to be removed from these Senate impeachment hearings and that the Democrats are probably not going to win this election.
That's when, you know, when that reality starts staring people in the face, that's when shit's going to start getting start getting a lot more crazy.
All right.
So speaking of Democratic craziness, our favorite resident psychopath, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, did a town hall thing on Martin Luther King Day just the day before yesterday.
Billion Dollar Wages00:13:11
And I saw today online, people were posting some of the clips of him.
And holy shit, was this interesting and kind, I don't know, interesting and infuriating and kind of terrifying all at once.
This chick, AOC, who I believe either just turned 30 or is just shy of 30, who has made herself one of the most famous people in America, certainly the most famous congresswoman.
She has, to get a little bit of a glimpse into how her mind works and her understanding of politics and particularly economics was really something.
So let's go to the first clip that we have of AOC.
I just want to drill down that a little bit more, though.
Why specifically does, you know, I'm Joe Billionaire.
I made widgets.
I sold those widgets.
I made billions of dollars, you know, selling those widgets, making those widgets.
Therefore, those billions of dollars are mine.
Why am I the enemy of health?
Well, you didn't make those widgets, did you?
Because you employ thousands of people and paid them less than a living wage to make those widgets for you.
You didn't make those widgets.
You sat on a couch while thousands of people were paid modern day slave wages and in some cases, real slave, real modern.
Hold on.
Well, you know what?
That's actually not a bad place to pause it.
Let's pause it there.
So this is AOC's understanding of economics.
Is that, well, what did a billionaire do?
Well, you sat on a couch.
That's what billionaires do.
They just sit on a couch.
You know, it does make you wonder, like, you know, there's all these billionaires out there.
So many of them did not come from money.
You know, Jeff Bezos didn't come from money, came from a lower middle class family.
So how did he become a billionaire just sitting on a couch?
Like, why can't we all just sit on that couch?
Why don't we all just become billionaires then?
You know, just sit on a couch and have people work for you.
And then, of course, she says, you got, you became a billionaire by paying people, by not paying people a living wage, which, you know, every inch of this just drives me crazy.
Like, why is the assumption, are there no billionaires who pay decent wages?
Does she think nobody makes good wages in America?
So are all billionaires just paying people below a living wage?
Number two, what the fuck does living wage mean?
I know there's a nice sound to it, but it's like an oxymoron.
If you're not making enough money to live, how are you alive?
Like, obviously, the wage does allow people to live, right?
What does a not living wage mean?
It's just this like made-up term.
And then she says, you're paying modern-day slave wages, and then says, in some cases, literal slave wages, then stops herself and goes, literal, modern-day slave wages.
Like, okay.
Well, what's literal?
What does that even mean?
What does slave wages mean?
I mean, the term slave wages, I mean, the term slave and wages probably shouldn't go together because that was kind of one of the big parts of slavery that they weren't, in fact, paid.
There is also a pretty big aspect that they didn't, you know, choose to be there, unlike all of the people you're talking about now.
Isn't that, could you think of anything that more trivializes the idea of slavery than just comparing anybody who works to slaves?
It's basically the same thing.
That's the same thing.
You know, you're a slave.
You're getting brought over in slave ships and whipped and beaten and forced to stay on a plantation.
Or you just, you know, you work a job and you'd like to make more money.
It's all under the umbrella of slavery.
So this is just a little glimpse into her mindset.
Let's keep playing.
Depending on where you are in terms of food production, you made that money off the backs of undocumented people.
You made that money off of the backs of black and brown people being paid off a living wage, under a living wage.
You made that money off of the backs of single mothers and all of these people who are literally dying because they can't afford to live.
And so no one ever makes a billion dollars.
Okay, these people.
By the way, if you don't remember, the question he asked was, what about Joe Billionaire?
Which isn't exactly a phrase I'm familiar with, but she's just saying, like, what about the average billionaire who argues, I made my money, I made my wage outside, deserve to keep my money.
That was like more or less the question.
And now it's, you've made that money off the back of undocumented workers, of people of color, of single mothers.
Like, it's just liberal left-wing buzzwords.
Like, what?
Are just straight white men not like they're fine, whatever.
We don't care about a billionaire who hires them.
So billionaires only become billionaires by what?
Working off the backs of single moms and illegal aliens?
Like, that's it?
That's all that enters into this equation.
So this is, all right, let's play the end of the video.
You take a billion dollars.
Pull it back a little bit, just in case we kind of missed this last point.
Yeah, right here.
And so no one ever makes a billion dollars.
You take a billion dollars.
And it's not, and all of that to say is that it's, and I'm not here to villainize and to say billionaires are inherently morally corrupt, but they are.
Some disagree with me, clearly.
I mean, I think there is a case, but it's not to say that.
It's to say that this system that we live in, life in capitalism always ends in billionaires.
If you don't do it, someone else will.
It's who decides to make that choice is kind of just up to, you know, circumstance.
All right.
So, man, there's so much ignorance.
Just so much ignorance.
No understanding of how economics work.
If you don't choose to be a billionaire, someone else will.
It's just, you know, I think most people would choose to be billionaires, but that's her take.
Life under capitalism always ends in billionaires.
I mean, I'll tell you, that's not completely untrue.
Yes, life in capitalism does seem to end in billionaires.
Life in socialism seems to end in mass starvation.
So I'll probably go with billionaires.
But there is some truth to that.
I mean, if people are free, one of the things about people is that some of them, a very, very, very tiny percentage, very, very, very tiny percentage of people are badass motherfuckers who fucking kill it at the game of life.
That's pretty much who billionaires are.
Now, the idea that billionaires are just sitting on the couch is just, I mean, you just, I don't know what to say.
I don't know if she actually believes that or she's just, you know, spewing out this propaganda bullshit.
I actually watched like a few months back, I think it was on Netflix, maybe Amazon, they had a documentary on Bill Gates.
I mean, the guy to this day, even though he's worth, you know, ungodly amounts of money, he's got his entire day regimented from like 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.
They say he's never late for a fucking meeting.
He works his ass off all day long, and there's no need to do it.
I mean, he's got all the money.
Even after having all the money, he doesn't want to fucking sit on a couch.
Feel however you feel about Bill Gates.
I've got, you know, some criticisms of him, but the guy works his fucking ass off.
Steve Jobs worked his fucking ass off.
Now, you could still, after that, make some type of left-wing argument that nobody should have this much while others have so little.
I mean, I think it's a stupid argument, but you could go ahead and make it.
You can make an argument for a progressive tax code or whatever.
But to say that billionaires just sit on a couch, now you're just not existing in reality.
Maybe you can find one out there, but come on.
Joe Billionaire is what he did was he fucking figured out how to play this fucking game.
He saw things that nobody else saw.
He was able to make his shareholders and his companies enormous amounts of money.
That's that's just reality.
That's how this works.
And it's just, you know, it's crazy that somebody who wants to come into the United States of America in 2020 and says, I want to remake the entire system.
Like her issue is economics.
That's her main driving, you know, like thing that she talks about.
I mean, she's got some cultural shit too, but it's mostly an economic message that AOC has.
This is a congresswoman who's driven by economics and she wants to completely remake the entire system and doesn't even understand the first, like most basic element of the way an economy works.
You don't make a billion dollars, you take a billion dollars.
I mean, just think that through.
So where did the billion dollars come from then?
I mean, if you're saying capitalism always leads to billionaires, all right, well, how did the if no one makes a billion dollars, they just take it?
How did the first ones rise up?
Where was that billion that they took it from?
This is all just such nonsense.
You know, and more just kind of like fixed pie fallacy, bullshit.
The idea that if anybody's making money, that means they must be taking it from someone else.
Well, let me just ask you, like, why, why would that stop at billionaires?
If you're saying no one makes a million dollars, they take a billion dollars.
Well, how about a hundred million dollars?
Does anyone make that?
I mean, a hundred million dollars.
Does anyone make a hundred million dollars?
Or do you just take a hundred million dollars?
How about ten million dollars?
How about five?
How about one?
How about a hundred thousand?
How about fifty thousand?
Like, why, why wouldn't this principle go all the way down?
Are you saying that nobody makes any money?
Everybody just takes stuff.
Where are we taking it from?
Who had it before that?
This is like such basic economic stuff.
But like, if you, you know, everybody working, right?
Every job that anyone has is doing something to create more wealth.
That's the whole point of working.
That's why people work.
That's why people get paid to work.
You could just work, right?
Like I could, I could just run, which is, you know, physical work.
I could just lift weights or something like that, which I probably could use to do a little more, but hey, whatever.
Something like that.
And no one's paying me to do it because it's not making anybody wealthier.
It's just work, right?
But if you do anything like that is actual work, theoretically, you're creating wealth.
Like just again, just like I like to do, like real basic abstract, like fucking island, desert island economics.
You know, if you like, if there's like five of us on a desert island and we're like, okay, we all got to figure this out.
And I say, okay, I'm going to go try to hunt or you know what I mean?
Like, I'm going to go try to fish.
And I work to go fish.
I like build a net and go out into the water and spend hours like fucking fishing.
And I come back and it's like, well, I caught 10 fish.
Okay.
That's what my work is.
And then we go to fucking eat.
Like we now have food that we didn't have before.
I didn't take anything from anybody.
I worked.
And now we're in the same situation plus a fish dinner.
You create new wealth.
This is how it's done.
It's not a fixed pie.
It's not like the economy exists and now it's a matter of how we divvy it up.
We make the economy bigger.
That's the idea.
And this is what billionaires do.
They create new companies, new products, new services.
Okay.
But this type of like morphed propaganda-based worldview where it's kind of like, well, they're just sitting on a fucking couch turning everybody else into slaves.
Well, you can see where it justifies.
Like, well, then let's go get these motherfuckers.
Let's get the fucking pitchforks out.
And of course, you really are just playing on people's envy.
Militarized Police Defense00:04:36
It's like, yeah, fuck those guys.
They have so much.
So just tell me a narrative about how evil they are.
Well, I'll tell you what happened.
They're sitting on a couch making everyone else slaves.
And you know, they're doing it off of single moms.
Like, that's just, just get an emotional feeling out of somebody.
And then let's go get these motherfuckers.
And of course, there's no real non-arbitrary reason why we should stop at billionaires, you know, and not someone worth 100 million or worth 10 million.
I mean, they got a lot of money too.
Maybe they own a company.
I mean, maybe they didn't do it on a Jeff Bezos level, but aren't they basically doing the same thing?
You know, someone who's worth 10 million and owns a company.
Isn't he basically doing the same thing to his fucking employees?
Just, you know, he's got less slaves, but he's still doing it off slavery or whatever.
Well, let's go get him too.
Why not?
Like, where exactly does this lead to?
And then if you want to look in actuality, in reality, what it leads to is somebody who, you know, makes $200,000 a year or something like that.
You're like, well, take fucking, take, you know, half his shit.
Take, you know, somebody makes $70,000 a year.
They're still probably taking 30% of your shit.
This is where it all goes.
And you can see that there's no real limiting principle.
Like, once you say this about billionaires, I mean, you just chose billionaire.
Bernie Sanders used to say millionaires and billionaires all the time until he became a millionaire.
And I'm sure when AOC becomes a millionaire, she'll fucking focus exclusively on the billionaires as well.
I'm sure that's not too far off.
All right, here's another clip from AOC.
Including racism, but also including the protection of capital over human beings.
And, you know, another thing that I've been really thinking and sitting with today is that there's this gun rights protest that's happening down in Richmond.
On MLK Day.
On MLK Day.
But here's the image that has struck with me the most about that is that when we go out and march for the dignity and the recognition of the lives of people like Freddie Gray and Eric Garner, the whole place is surrounded by police in riot gear without a gun in sight.
And here are all of these people flying Confederate flags with semi-automatic weapons.
And there's almost no police officers at that protest.
So who are our in who or what are our institutions protecting from who?
And that image conveys it all.
Conveys it all.
I'm going to take you back to your point.
Okay, pause it for a second.
So yeah, I mean, it conveys something for sure.
But isn't AOC kind of making the point that I made on the last podcast and just not realizing it?
It's like, yeah, look at that.
It's almost like these militarized police aren't fucking with people when they've got guns.
I don't know.
But of course, the message, the only message that she's capable of taking away from them is like racism.
And these are a bunch of racist white guys.
And that's why the cops are there to protect them.
Don't you see, though?
I mean, if you just start to like.
Just think about it for more than five seconds and question whether your worldview could be flawed or not, right?
So your belief system is that our institutions are designed to protect the racist white guys, but not the decent, you know, black people who are just protesting against police brutality or something like that.
It's like, right.
I guess the problem with that is that this entire gun rally in Virginia was billed as a racist rally and that alleged members of neo-Nazi organizations were rounded up and arrested and that Virginia declared a state of emergency and wouldn't allow the legal open carry like right around the state building and like had basically these guys gated off and shit like that doesn't really seem to fly with your narrative.
Also the government, by the way, the fucking Virginia Senate, they went ahead with this gun proposal.
It looks like there's a good chance it's going to go through.
So none of this really seems to comport with your whole theory that this is just an institution to protect the racists.
Maybe it's just the fact that they had the means to defend themselves.
And that's why these fucking, you know, militarized police are a little bit more hesitant to engage with them.
Just a guess.
Libertarian Property Rights00:18:03
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Anyway, let's keep playing.
Oh, that's the end of that clip.
All right.
There we go.
Well, there you go.
There's the clip.
Okay.
So, and then, oh, there's a, I guess we could go right to our fun.
And then just, of course, on top of this, since the theme so far has been Democratic craziness, you know, there's Joe Biden wanted to get into the mix as well.
And that brings us to this week's crazy bitch watch.
I'm not even going to give you any context for that.
That's just the frontrunner for the Democratic nominee for President of the United States of America.
So I guess in conclusion of the beginning of this podcast, it's not been such a great couple days for the Democrats.
This is the state of the Democratic Party in America in 2020.
Not saying Republicans are looking so great, but holy shit, these are the Democrats.
All right, so I wanted to today also touch on there was an article that was written about me or in response to a podcast that we did last week, I believe.
And I thought maybe I'd read it and respond to it.
It was from theprincipledlibertarian.com.
Or I'm sorry, just principledlibertarian.com.
And the piece is written by Andrew Kern.
And it's titled A Reply to Dave Smith on Immigration.
And this was from, you know, I spent a good portion of an episode last week talking about immigration.
And as I said, when I talked about it, this is always like one of those divisive topics, even amongst libertarians.
And so this guy wrote a response to me, and I thought I would respond back and see if maybe this doesn't help us get more to the bottom of this, you know, what I think is a difficult issue for libertarians to grapple with.
So once again, this is at principledlibertarian.com, and the author is Andrew Kern, and it's titled A Reply to Dave Smith on Immigration.
So let's read the article.
Okay, from the article.
Listening to a recent episode of Part of the Problem with Dave Smith, I found myself responding to him out loud.
So I decided I needed to organize and lay down my thoughts.
In the episode, Dave expands upon and clarifies his views on immigration and on what the libertarian position ought to be.
I truly appreciate the nuance with which Dave approaches the issue, something which tends to be missing by, quote, both sides of the subject.
Despite that, I still had my disagreements, and I think it comes down to something fundamental about libertarianism.
Ultimately, although it is not as clear as some other issues, open borders, or at least movement in that direction, is the libertarian position.
All right, so I appreciate you listening to the show, and I'm glad that you thought I was at least somewhat fair and nuanced about it, and I'm glad you were responding out loud.
That's the goal of this show.
I want to get you talking back to me.
Usually I prefer not to hear it, but now you've written it down, and so now I've heard it through my own voice in my head, but still.
But anyway, so there's him laying out.
He's going to make a case for why open borders is the more libertarian position.
And let's see what we think.
All right.
Is libertarianism about property rights?
Dave maintains that libertarianism is about property rights.
And because of this, the question of immigration, while there is a state exercising ownership of public property, is not clear-cut.
I completely agree that if libertarianism is solely about recognizing and enforcing private property rights, then it's not obvious what our view on immigration should be.
If streets and parks were privately owned, then libertarians would say the owners can create rules for people who use them and expel people who are not welcome.
But while there remains public property, we would have no answer.
However, I do not think libertarians need limit themselves to being solely for private property.
It can be an important value we have, but there are other things libertarians tend to value.
I think many libertarians already incorporate these values into their libertarianism, and Dave probably does too.
All right, so right away, I'm just going to say that I disagree with that, and there's not other values that I incorporate into my libertarianism.
Now, that's not to say that I don't have other values and that I don't think that there are different, you know, say like cultural preferences that I think are more likely to be compatible with libertarianism.
But libertarianism is a moral legal order.
That's what it is.
It's about what rights human beings have.
Now, that is, you know, all based around private property.
And understand that what libertarians really care about is the non-aggression principle.
That's really what it's all about.
But all of that comes from an understanding of property rights in the most basic sense, right?
And I love talking about this kind of like abstract libertarian stuff.
This is like what I started the podcast doing.
And I talk a lot more about current events these days, but I still, this is still my favorite stuff to talk about.
Because everything about my commenting on current events is all because I see things this way.
But even if you think about non-aggression in any basic sense, right?
Like if somebody, if I were to punch somebody in the face, we all would agree that that should be illegal because it's an act of aggression, because it's violent and aggressive and wrong.
But if I punch myself in the face, I think we'd all be a little hesitant to say that should be illegal.
Now, why is that?
Well, because it's my face, and the other person's face is not my face.
That belongs to him or her.
Let's hope it was a him.
Let's stick with him for if I'm punching somebody in this analogy.
But so everything, all rights are property rights.
And once you view things that way, it becomes everything becomes a lot clearer, I believe.
So, no, I mean, to me, that is what libertarianism is about.
So I think I'm going to already have trouble with this argument, but let's continue reading.
Do not misunderstand me.
I'm not arguing for a thick libertarianism per se.
I believe libertarianism belongs squarely in the political legal realm.
What I am saying is that besides property rights, libertarians ought to, and often do, incorporate things such as market governance and freedom from the state into their libertarianism.
Often these other values are merely the result of upholding property rights.
But in some cases, property rights do not give us the answers, and thus we should turn to these other values.
Okay, so my, I do also think market governance and freedom from the state are part of libertarianism.
But again, as you even seem to indicate there, that does not, that, that's not separate from believing in property rights and the non-aggression principle.
It's because I believe in property rights and the non-aggression principle that I'm against the state, because every inch of the state is funded and based upon violating private property rights and aggressing against people.
And that's what you don't want because it's immoral.
Libertarianism, I've talked about this stuff on the show many, many times, but libertarianism is a moral philosophy, but it's a limited moral philosophy.
It's limited to a legal philosophy.
So it's the philosophy of a moral legal system.
So in the same sense that if you were an abolitionist, this was like a philosophy that was anti-slavery.
You're saying there shouldn't be slavery.
Okay.
Now, you could say, well, what does abolitionism have to say about what jobs people should have or what age people should start to date or what type of music people should listen to?
And it has abolitionism has nothing to say about any of that because it's a limited philosophy, but it's also a moral philosophy.
The claim is that it's immoral to enslave people.
Now, an abolitionist might have focused all of their energy on the legal institution of slavery, which would have made sense.
But most abolitionists would also have a problem if some individual just happened to grab someone and enslave them, right?
Like you, so in America, in say the year, you know, whatever, 1805 or something like that, slavery is legal, but you're, you know, it's like limited to basically black people and maybe a few exceptions, but and it's limited to certain states.
But if someone in a state where slavery wasn't legal decided to just grab someone and enslave them on their plantation, most abolitionists would also oppose that.
So anyway, it's the state is funded by theft, by taxation.
So of course, to be against the state doesn't take anything more than a belief in private property and the non-aggression principle.
Okay.
Often these other values are merely the result of upholding property rights.
But in some cases, property rights do not give us the answer.
And thus we should turn to these other values.
In particular, while we have a state, libertarianism cannot be merely pro-property rights.
Numerous questions about government policy cannot be answered that way.
While it may be true, the ideal answer is privatize it, we should also be aware and discuss answers that are better or more libertarian than others.
All right.
So that I do tend to agree with.
And you could think of lots of examples like that.
So what should the libertarian position be in a government policy where private property isn't being respected because it's run by the government?
And I think that generally speaking, it's better to have a more libertarian answer.
So definitely you want something where you would want to support a system where there is less initiation of violence against peaceful people than a different policy.
Or you'd want to support something that is closer to how it might work in a private property-based system.
So those, I think, are more or less the guiding principles.
But again, those still all come from property rights and the non-aggression principle.
We're just saying, like, all right, well, this is already bad.
So in other words, we might support, you know, say that charter schools are better than public schools or something like that.
You know, you might say that, I don't know.
I'm kind of struggling for another example.
But you're right.
It's certainly not as clear-cut, but I don't know where there's even another value that's come in.
All right, market governance.
A market for governance or law slash rules is particularly helpful when the nuances of property rights come into play.
For instance, how high into the sky does a property right extend?
If I fly my drone over my neighbor's house, is that aggressive?
At what height does it become aggressive and a violation of his right to property in his house?
I contend that there is probably not one single correct answer to these questions.
Just respect my property rights is not enough here.
Instead, we should favor a market in dispute arbitration to the extent possible in order to resolve honest disputes that neighbors have.
Moreover, we should be content in different communities arrive at if different communities arrive at different norms or even if different norms arise between different people within communities.
Right.
So, you know, there's nothing really there that I disagree with.
I think that, as Murray Rothbard wrote, that private property rights are not absolute in that sense.
And usually, if you look at, you know, thousands of years of common law practices and how these things are usually handled, what it almost always comes down to in those type of situations are damages.
And this is true just throughout life.
In both common law, private arbitration, and in state law situations like this.
Usually that's what it comes down to is damages.
Now, I agree with you that different groups or different communities will probably pick different exact rules.
I don't know if you can fly a drone fucking 20 yards or 50 yards or 100 yards over somebody's house.
I don't know exactly where that is.
But usually it has something to do with are there any damages?
Much like in the same sense that if you are walking down the street and your finger brushes up against somebody's shoulder, most people wouldn't say, you just assaulted me because there's really no damages.
Now, if you punch somebody in the shoulder, that's a little bit different.
You've now caused them some pain and maybe some fear or something like that.
So that's, you know, this is none of this is, I don't know, none of this negates property rights in any sense.
It's just that, well, this is how you have to actually apply property rights and it has to be applied within reason, just like everything.
Okay, back to the article.
The preference for a market in governance can extend to states.
In particular, when states are smaller and when policy is decided more locally, there is more competition between them.
While certainly not the same as non-state governance, some of the benefits of market governance can be achieved by promoting competition between states if people are allowed to travel between them.
And the smaller the state, the easier it is geographically speaking, to do so.
Yeah, so the idea that there is more competition between states if people can travel between them is true to some degree.
The problem that you're going to have with that is that in that situation, right, if one state was, let's just say, outperforming all of the other states, the odds that they're going to allow everybody to move to that state or that that would be good for that one state that's doing well to now be burdened with everybody else is dubious.
Let's say not so sure that's going to be in the state that's doing well's interest.
All right, freedom from the state.
Libertarianism is something thought of as simply anti-state, but this leaves out that we also value property rights, as well as developing order and rules via the market.
Still, we should not forget that there are good reasons to be anti-state, and they are not all property related.
I don't know if I agree with that.
All right, a pure property rights-centric libertarianism might suggest that libertarians can have no view on how government agents should police government roads.
But libertarians often do have views on how police should regulate roads.
Government Monopoly Power00:15:06
And almost always, it's that they should do less.
From advocating abolishing drunk driving laws to opposing governmental licensure for driving, the usual libertarian answer to should the government is hell no.
Okay, so let me just think about this for a second.
So it's also, it's not really an argument to say that libertarians tend to do this or the libertarians often say this.
I mean, that's just not, that doesn't mean that, you know, that's not a philosophical argument.
That's just telling me what people tend to do or that people tend to have these views.
If you're saying that libertarians tend to believe that the state shouldn't have like crazy, excessive rules on private roads, well, that is definitely true.
But a lot of that is because the state is an agency rooted in aggression and violating property rights.
So if you have a rule against drunk driving and, you know, it's enforced in anywhere near, you know, the way that it is today.
So what's going to happen is that if you've literally, in many states, I think almost all of them now, if you've had one drink, if you've been out and had one cocktail at dinner and you blow anything positive, so first, so now you're going to have some agent of the state who's armed.
They're going to fucking pull you over right away.
They're going to say, pull over.
And if you don't pull over, they are going to come at you, guns drawn, ready to throw you into a cage.
If you blow the positive and there's that one drink on your system, they will put you in chains and throw you in a fucking cage, take your property, that car, more importantly, take the property in yourself, your self-ownership, and throw you in a cage before you then have to argue to a state agent or a judge in order to be released to go back to your own property or to go back to where you're invited, you know, on some, you know,
you rent or something like that on someone's private property.
So you can see where libertarians would be against that as the solution.
That is not the same thing as the ability that somebody who owned a private road would be able to do, which is basically they could just ask you to leave.
And if you refused, they could theoretically force you to leave, but they can't throw you in chains and throw you into a cage.
So it's not as if the so there's an obvious reason why libertarians would be against that.
And I'd agree with that.
Now, if you're saying libertarians' answer is that the government should, should the government do so-and-so, hell no.
Well, let me just push you on that.
Like, I don't think, I don't know that that's actually true.
I know libertarians, we all like to think of it this way, but I don't know that that's actually true.
If you ask the government, should the government question mark, the answer is usually hell no.
Well, there's actually a lot of things that the government does that libertarians probably aren't that, you know, against.
I mean, like if somebody kills somebody on a government road, if somebody, you know, like, I don't know, let's just say somebody's driving crazy recklessly.
Forget the fact that they're, whether they're drunk or not.
They're literally swerving around on a government road and they're shooting a gun off into the air.
And there's, now, technically, they haven't violated anybody else's property rights and they haven't aggressed against anybody.
But most libertarians would kind of be like, yeah, I think maybe the government should do something there because the government already has a monopoly on this situation.
There's no private, you know, road owner who has any right to do anything.
And just for the sake of like, you know, like obviously you wouldn't be allowed to do this on anyone else's property and society won't function very well if you're not allowed to do that.
So yeah, I think there's actually some things that even libertarians would be like, yeah, well, that's pretty much bordering right on an act of aggression.
You know, we wouldn't be against someone doing something there.
Look, the example, which does not get responded to in this, but like I said before, like borders around public schools.
Libertarians, I've never heard a libertarian argue, even when that John Hudak guy was on here.
He didn't argue against that.
No libertarian saying the government shouldn't do that.
The government shouldn't keep the doors closed on private schools.
They should just on public schools.
They should just let everybody in.
So it's not always as simple as that.
And the reason why, from the perspective I think of most libertarians, even though a lot of them don't even think about these things, the reason is that, like taking the public school example, why is the reason that we don't just let whatever 40-year-old man wants to come into a public school come on in?
Come on in.
You want to go hang out?
There's a third grade class going down.
Do you want to come in?
You want to do drugs?
You want to hang out?
You want to do all of this?
Well, why is it that we're against that?
Why is it that we would not agree with that?
I think what John Hudak ended up saying was that it would be disruptive.
Maybe that's part of it.
I mean, yeah, it certainly does seem like that would be disruptive.
It seems like it would not function.
There would be a risk of future aggression against children.
And it just seems like it's just kind of not good for the people who are using the school.
That more or less is the principle because you're not going to get a strict private property or non-aggression principle, you know, answer out of this situation.
So I agree with you there.
It's kind of murky once the government owns this area, but it's not as simple as should the government, hell no.
There are lots of examples where even libertarians would say, oh, yeah, the government should do that.
Now, obviously, if there's anybody, you know, actually aggressing against other people's property or initiating violence, I think all libertarians would basically say under current situations, the government should do something.
I mean, I've never met an anarchist.
There's probably some out there because they're crazy, but I've never met like an anarcho-capitalist who, if you're like, under current situations, even though we all want the state abolished, under current situations, should the state not arrest a murderer and say, yeah, we should just let that murderer go.
Because, you know, I really would rather there be some private court system.
It's like, well, that private court system doesn't exist right now.
And this guy just murdered three people.
So let's fucking let the government do this, even though they're not great at it.
Let's, you know, it's so it's not as simple as the government shouldn't do this.
It's it's just not.
Okay, to reiterate, this libertarian tendency is not based on property rights.
Well, that I kind of agree with you on.
The property, the property rights response is privatize the road, let the owner decide.
In the meantime, libertarians generally support as little government regulation as possible.
Okay, but that term as possible is a little bit of a cop-out.
As little as possible.
Well, what makes it possible?
I mean, it's possible to have none.
It's possible to let people do whatever the fuck they want to do on the road.
It's possible to let people do 100 in reverse.
I don't know if cars can go 100 in reverse, but, you know, some probably can.
So it's possible to let people shoot guns off into the air while doing 100 in reverse, right?
Like, what are you saying?
What's really the limiting principle there?
I think it's more within reason, you know?
Like within something that doesn't, you know, like end up being very bad for the society around them.
But I agree, you can't strictly deduce it from private property because it's the private property has been stolen.
Now, the Hoppyan or like Lou Rockwell kind of, I think, more or less answer to this is, is that libertarians don't really view public property as being strictly public property.
I mean, if we think that taxation is theft, then that doesn't mean that the stolen money now belongs to the mugger, right?
So like if we, if like just to limit this, like to use like an example, and this is kind of like the Hoppy and Rockwell, Rockwellian position, is like if you were to, if somebody were to mug Brian and then, you know, goes down the block and they've got Brian's wallet.
And then they're like, okay, this is now, you know, he calls it public property or whatever.
And then they go, well, okay, what is the libertarian position here?
If there's five people voting and four of them vote, you know, that we want to split the money up and Brian votes, I want that money to come back to me.
The libertarian position is that that's Brian's.
He owns it.
It doesn't matter who's holding it right now.
It was stolen from him.
So it doesn't matter what these other people are voting for or what their wishes are or anything.
It's like, no, this is, so more or less the Hoppyan argument is that public property is really, you know, rightful owners are the taxpayers.
Those are the people who the money to build it was stolen from.
Now, it's kind of impossible to dice up who exactly owns what percentage of the public property, but it's fairly reasonable if it's public property within one community to say that this community kind of owns it more than some outside community coming in who was never taxed by the government.
So the domestic population has more of a claim on public property than some foreign population, which, you know, seems pretty reasonable to me and straight from libertarian principles.
In the meantime, while we don't have the private, libertarians generally support as little government regulation as possible.
That's the line I just read.
This is because being anti-state is an important part of what it means to be libertarian.
Okay, but again, these are, it's like, you're saying as little as possible.
Well, why?
What's possible?
Because like I said, everything's possible.
You could have absolutely no rules on government property.
We could let heroin addicts into public schools.
There's no law of physics that says you can't do that.
It is possible.
So what's the reason?
Like, what's the limiting principle there?
And in terms of libertarians being as anti-state or anti-state being an important part of being libertarian, well, why is that?
It's not just because like that's cool or because we kind of like saying fuck the government or something like that.
The reason is because the state is an evil immoral institution.
The state is responsible for more murder, theft, enslavement, you know, than any other organization by a magnitude of order.
Okay, open borders and closed borders are not equal.
Dave is correct that open borders, state-controlled property where migration is permitted, is still a state policy.
And appealing to libertarian property rights does little to give us an answer.
He is incorrect, however, that therefore open borders and closed borders are both equally libertarian or un-libertarian.
Imagine deciding what rules police should enforce on government roads.
Are we really going to say that it's not any less libertarian if they require absurd amounts of safety equipment on vehicles, a full eight hours of sleep before a drive, and two hands on the wheel at all times?
No, I think there are more libertarian and less libertarian policies a state can adopt.
And we should appeal to the principles of market governance and market governance and freedom from state regulation when deciding.
Okay, so yeah, I'm not arguing that there aren't more libertarian or less libertarian solutions.
And this is why I said actually on the episode with John Hudak that I said that in many ways a wall or a closed border, so to say, would be a more libertarian solution than a catch and release program where you're taking people and locking them in cages.
It certainly would be more of a libertarian solution than the fucking immigration detention centers.
So I agree with you on that.
But how would you determine something is more or less libertarian unless you're looking back to the non-aggression principle and private property rights.
Something that more closely imitates what a private property society would look like to me would be more libertarian.
And in the same way with the reason why I really don't have any problem with a public school not letting strangers in is because you go, look, if this was private, you can be damn sure that they wouldn't be letting fucking random 40-year-old men in.
So what's the real problem with the government kind of mimicking the way obviously the private owners of this property would want that to be decided?
That's that to me is that straightforward.
Now to say open borders or closed borders wouldn't be more or less libertarian, it's like, well, the only thing about that is that if we're not talking about the state actually aggressing against somebody in that sense, in a way that would like, like, here's a different form.
You can say in some sense, not letting somebody through state borders is, you know, is some form of aggression.
And fair enough, maybe, you know, but at least in this example, the government is doing something that we would allow a private property owner to do.
If the government is pulling you over, throwing you in a cage for the night, putting something on your permanent record that now every employer is forced to see, this is something we wouldn't allow any private actor to do anyway.
So that seems something that would be more of an outrage to libertarians than simply either you can't come in or you can come in.
That's a different situation to me.
All right.
With these principles in mind, picking an immigration policy becomes a little easier, though it may still not be 100% clear.
First, a preference for market governance means we should favor encouraging competition between states.
This can be done by decentralizing power to state and localities, to states and localities.
At the same time, we should voice the importance of those localities in keeping immigration relatively free, since that is how competition is fostered.
Finally, by supporting free immigration as a national policy, we allow more competition between foreign states with the U.S., as well as competition amongst U.S. states.
Dave ultimately mentioned that decentralization was a good idea, though presumably he arrives there via different reasoning.
Necessary Border Restrictions00:15:14
Yes, I arrived there for very, very different reasoning.
Okay.
I'm arriving to the idea of decentralization from the respect for private property rights and the non-aggression principle.
So the reason why you would want more and more local control is because the more local it gets, the more the will of the people is actually heard in some meaningful sense.
The idea of any libertarian wanting a policy for the sake of competition, I just think has nothing to do with libertarianism.
Absolutely nothing to do with libertarianism.
Competition isn't just in itself a good thing.
I mean, this could justify, if you just wanted competition, you could justify the government going around and breaking up every Fortune 500 company, splitting them up into a thousand different companies.
Every big company you could think of, let's break up Amazon into a thousand Amazons, Apple into a thousand Apple.
There's more competition now.
Now they all have to compete with each other.
But libertarianism isn't inherently about competition any more than it's inherently about cooperation.
It's about your right to compete or cooperate.
Now, in a libertarian society, I mean, my guess in a libertarian society, I would imagine that commercial areas would be pretty open borders and residential areas, not so much.
That's my guess.
And you see a lot of evidence of that in the market around you.
Like, Walmart isn't really asking, you know, or some shopping mall isn't really checking people's info at the door.
They're like, come on in.
You're a potential customer.
Come on in.
We welcome you onto our private property.
But apartment buildings, you know, they ask for a lot of information before you get in there.
If you want to buy a house, you're going to have to give them a lot of information about you before you get in there.
And that's my guess how private property society would be.
But I don't want to localize things just for the sake of competition.
Secondly, an aversion to state regulation implies our default should be to support little or no restrictions on public property.
Okay, but no restrictions.
Just understand what you're saying.
If you're saying we support no restrictions on public property, then you're saying this heroin addict can go shoot heroin up in your local fourth grade public school.
Because otherwise you're supporting a restriction on public property.
Some homeless guy can just go take a shit in the library.
They're not allowed to kick him out.
They're not allowed to kick him out.
Is that reasonable to anybody?
Do either of those things seem like good ideas?
What's more libertarian about that?
So no, I don't know that the starting point should be little to no restrictions on private property, on public property, excuse me.
I'm fully ready to admit that some regulations are necessary for the time being, but libertarians ought to favor less as opposed to more.
Well, what, again, this is if you actually want to argue with me on this or you want to convince me, because by the way, I'm not like I'm open, no pun intended, to being convinced on this argument.
But the problem is you can't just say, I admit that some regulations are necessary, but we ought to favor less as opposed to more.
Well, what would make one necessary?
What's your criteria for deciding they're necessary?
Because again, like I said, they're not necessary by the laws of physics.
So you must be saying they're necessary for some other reason.
I mean, I can guess what, like, just because things would be really bad if they weren't there, it would be a fucking disaster.
Is that the criteria?
Is it fair to say that?
I'll assume maybe that's what you're saying, but you're not making it clear.
You're just saying some are necessary.
Why?
What makes them necessary?
What is the principle that you're working around here?
How do you judge something to be necessary?
Because tell me, and then we'll see if open borders meets that or not.
I'm fully ready to admit that some regulations are necessary for the time being, but libertarians ought to favor less as opposed to more.
Another way to say this, if you think immigration ought to be curtailed or certain restrictions should be in place, then the burden is on you to show that those regulations are necessary.
Again, there's that word necessary.
So I'll come back to that in a second.
It might be the case that restrictions are required to prevent catastrophic consequences.
Okay.
I have written before about how common complaints of immigration are overblown.
So I don't think this is true, but still, it is possible for a terrible consequence to outweigh the hostility toward government regulation.
So it's not that it's not a matter of outweighing a hostility of government regulation.
It's like the idea is this.
You're saying, what is worse?
What is the worst of the two options that we have here?
And if we're comparing closed borders versus open borders, what is worse?
Now, of course, and this is the libertarian position that is not so sold on the open borders ideas.
It's something like this.
Well, here's the situation we're in.
And there's a lot of things that libertarians like, it's like these uncomfortable areas that I know a lot of libertarians don't like to go down.
But, you know, just because something's uncomfortable doesn't mean it's, you know, libertarians shouldn't be willing to talk about it.
And it goes something like this, okay?
All cultures are not equal.
This is a leftist egalitarian idea, this cultural relativism that all cultures are equal.
Not all cultures are equal.
Not all cultures have the same, you know, understanding or appreciation for liberty at all.
All right.
There is a reason why, you know, Central Africa looks like Central Africa and Sweden looks like Sweden.
Or I guess Sweden's looking less and less like Sweden, but you know, but regardless, still pretty stark difference between there.
Now, I'm not saying it's some racialist biological genetic reason.
Maybe it is, maybe it's not.
I'm not really taking a position one way or the other.
But no matter what position you have, you have to acknowledge it's something.
There's some reason.
Maybe you can make an argument that it has nothing to do with biology and genetics.
Maybe you can say this is like strictly cultural.
And if all of those people who grew up in Central Africa had grown up with Swede parents, they would be acting just like the Swedes.
Like maybe, all right, fine.
My guess, it's a mix of both, but I don't know.
So, okay, even if that's true, they weren't.
They were born in this culture, all right?
So if you're going to say that we're just opening the borders and we will allow anybody from a third world country that has no sense of liberty to flood into America, now they're going to be able that there are these anti-discrimination laws.
So all of these residential areas that would wish to be closed off can't be closed off.
They're going to vote 70% for the Democrats.
They're going to, you know what I mean?
It's like, okay, the argument is basically that this is going, out of these two situations that we have, saying we're going to take libertarian values and apply them to something where there's no obvious libertarian answer.
The idea is that that ultimate growth of the state, initiation of aggression, that is going to be worse than just closing the border.
That's the argument.
Now, again, I'm not even completely sold.
My point of view, as I said on that podcast, is like, I'd like to see solutions that require the least amount of state intervention, the least amount of aggression that would reasonably handle the situation.
And I think things like this would be like voter ID laws, you know, like more kind of stringent welfare restrictions, maybe some type of sponsorship program, things like this.
But if we're talking about it, honestly, there's no reason, even from your own libertarian reasoning here, I could see where someone would say, I think it's more likely to simulate a libertarian scenario to have the borders closed than to have them open.
Usually, by the way, it's not one of the two.
It's somewhere in the middle.
And that's where we exist right now, somewhere in the middle, where we certainly have state agents harassing a whole bunch of people crossing the border, but then there's also a whole bunch of others who just flood in.
Okay, and this is the end of the article.
Too subjective, question mark.
Is all of this just too subjective?
Perhaps you think defining libertarianism as the non-aggression principle or upholding property rights makes it a much more straightforward and objective political philosophy.
I think Dave does.
However, property rights, here comes the cries of blasphemy, are not objective, or at least they are not always objective.
Like in the above example, with a drone, the answer is going to depend on local norms and the result of arbitration or cooperation.
There are many other examples I could have cited, a few more discussed here with a link there.
The reality is the world isn't simple.
Political questions require nuance and deep thought.
We shouldn't expect property rights to answer every question.
And libertarianism should have some answers for what we do when we can't privatize all things.
I agree.
I mean, that like, yeah, we should think about these things.
A lot of what we should think about is what type of system, right, if we can't get to true libertarianism, what's our best bet to try to get there?
What's the best policy that might lead in that direction?
And I understand where a lot of people think open borders are not it.
I think that's more or less going to be my response.
If you wanted to convince me about this, you would have to say something like, well, if you're going to say we always support, you know, lack of government regulation on public property unless it's necessary, as you said a few times in the article, just tell me what you mean by necessary.
What's it necessary for?
To prevent what?
Like, I guess more or less my issue with this is that in the same sense as if you go, why is it not okay?
Why is it okay for libertarians to support the government not allowing a heroin addict to go do heroin in a fourth grade classroom?
And I think that really the common sense answer is just because it will be a fucking disaster in every way that you can imagine.
It will be a disaster.
Think about it this way.
What do you think if there was a private property society that had the right to exclude people or invite people?
And of course, this would obviously solve the problem in the most beautiful way possible, in the way that all of us could be united.
You know, it's funny because even from some of these like real kind of like, you know, open borders ANCAPs to all the way to like, you know, the closed borders AND caps, where I think I find myself somewhere in the middle, they'd all kind of agree on this.
This solves the problem perfectly.
Those who want people on their property can invite them in, and those who wish to exclude them can exclude them.
And kind of everybody wins to the largest extent possible.
I mean, not everybody wins in the sense that you can't go onto property you weren't invited on, but that's a pretty reasonable, the ultimate libertarian compromise, you know, pretty reasonable solution.
Okay.
So let's say everything was private.
How many people do you think would be immigrating every year?
I mean, we don't really know.
We don't know.
But whatever that number is, right?
Whatever the number is that would be immigrating to America if everything was privatized, that would be, of all possible solutions, probably the best answer because nobody was being forced to associate and nobody was being forced to not associate with anybody they wanted, right?
Is it possible to say that I think a system where a million a year come in legally and then hundreds of thousands more, and we have no idea how many more come in illegally, might be tipped in the direction of this, this is probably not going to end up well.
So in the same sense as with the public school, why can't the heroin addict go do heroin in the fourth grade?
Because it's going to be a fucking disaster.
It's going to be a fucking disaster.
So here's what I think.
I think that millions of people flooding into the country from third world cultures who do not have the same culture as first world cultures, do not have the same sense of individual property rights and liberty and the non-aggression principle, which largely even, you know, even lefties kind of have in our society outside the realm of the state.
I think all of these people flooding in, all of the fucking tribalism that gets stoked up on both sides, okay?
Even just say the possibility of real like, you know, like anger on the anti-immigration side being worked up.
I think all of that, I think burdening the welfare state, I think public schools being flooded with people who don't speak the language, don't come from the culture.
I think a 70% voting block that is going to be the biggest voting block in America being locked in for the Democratic Party.
I think all of those things are going to be a fucking disaster.
That's my comparison between the heroin addict going into the fourth grade school.
So are we okay with the government excluding someone from private property if we think it's going to be a disaster?
I think we've already established we are, at least I think.
It wasn't very clear in the article.
So that's my argument.
Now, of course, it's not an apples to apples example.
I mean, people coming in are, you know, you're not just excluding them from government property.
You're also not letting them into the country where there's lots of private property.
Fair enough.
Somebody who wants to invite them onto private property should be allowed to.
That's why Hoppe even suggested the sponsorship idea.
I think that's a reasonable compromise.
I think there are reasonable compromises.
I actually think voter ID is a reasonable compromise.
Murky Truth Positions00:00:48
But the truth is, voter ID is fucking, you know, you're denounced as a Nazi if you fucking support it.
So this is the difficult position we're in.
And yes, it is a murky, difficult area for libertarians to figure out.
Anyway, I do very much appreciate you writing the article.
Maybe we'll do more of a, maybe if you want to respond to this, we can do more of a back and forth in the future or not.
Either is fine.
But guys, go check out principal of the libertarian.com.
All right, that's our show for today.
Don't forget, February 7th, I'm going to be in Boston, February 21st.
I will be in Philadelphia both with the great Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
In Philly, we're doing a live podcast analyb stand-up show.
So come check that out.
And we will be back on Monday with a brand new episode.