Tom Woods critiques pandemic statism, exposing Andrew Cuomo's hypocrisy and Michael Bloomberg's wealth redistribution delusions while citing Milton Friedman to warn that indefinite shutdowns destroy economic interdependence. He argues government failures like FDA testing delays exacerbated the crisis, predicting a future "libertarian moment" as bailouts fuel authoritarian overreach. Defending Lou Rockwell against false Nazi accusations, Woods concludes that while systems create poverty traps, personal responsibility remains vital for survival amidst state-induced chaos. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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America's Next Enemy00:11:12
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to yet another bonus episode of Part of the Problem.
That's right.
All it took was a global pandemic, and the bonus episodes start rolling in.
It just took the entire world coming to a standstill.
But I have with me right now, as some of you watching can already see, I have the great Tom Woods, a person who has probably influenced me more than anybody else and helped me shape and craft my understanding of the crazy world that we live in.
And also, not surprisingly, is somebody who I thought had some of the best takes on his social media posts and his podcasts about the whole crazy coronavirus situation.
And so I wanted to get Tom on to speak with him about this stuff.
Tom, of course, if you don't know, is the author of 12 amazing books.
I highly recommend all of them.
Go check them all out.
He's also written, I think, 97,000 e-books, which you can get for free, which is a record, I believe.
And all of them are free.
You can get all of those.
A lot of them deal with important issues that are basically that Tom's been right about for years, but that our government hasn't listened to them on.
So they're still as relevant today as they've ever been.
And of course, he is the host of my favorite podcast in the world, The Tom Woods Show.
So Tom, thank you for coming back on Part of the Problem.
Good to see you.
Dave, I love Part of the Problem, and I'm so glad to be with you.
And of course, if anyone didn't hear me and Tom just recorded an episode for his show the other day, so that's also up.
If you haven't listened to that one yet, go get yourself some more content.
It turns out that as society collapses, it's actually not so bad for podcasters.
This is everybody's home.
They got nothing to do, and we can work from home.
So there's a silver lining for us.
It does work.
And it also gives us plenty to talk about, to be honest with you.
I just did an episode with Jack Spirko, who has more episodes than I think you and I put together, Dave.
He's got 2,600 episodes of the survival podcast.
And I had him on my 31st episode.
I'm now on episode 1619.
So it's been almost seven years since I've had him on last.
And I thought global pandemic, pretty good time to get the prepper back on.
So there's plenty to talk about, that's for sure.
Yeah, no, no question about that.
Yeah, those preppers aren't being laughed at so much these days.
They're seemingly not.
I know, I know.
It's one of these things where, all right, Jack, I know I should have been doing what you told me.
But he was very gracious.
None of the told-you know, stuff.
Well, I can imagine what it must be like to be like anybody who's a serious prepper just watching like on YouTube or on the news, like people fighting over toilet paper and stuff like that and be like, oh yeah, you thought I was the crazy one all these years.
Yeah, exactly.
So you've, there's, there's been a lot of craziness from all sides, people's perspectives of this whole pandemic and what's going on.
And there's a lot of people when you take a fairly nuanced, mature approach as you have, you end up kind of making everybody angry at you.
Everybody's angry.
Yeah.
So the people who are like, what are you talking about?
This virus is a hoax.
I can't believe you're giving into the fear.
I've been getting a little bit of that myself.
Then people on the other side are like, you have to lock everything down and you can't even ask questions about, you know, destroying the economy or government overreach or things like that.
Those are the people on the other side.
And it seems like I've only seen like a few people.
And of course, you're one of the handful of reasonable people who are like, hey, this virus is very concerning.
This is very real and something that should be taken seriously.
Also, ensuring another Great Depression and instituting, you know, martial law or something approaching that is also not so great.
So, I mean, that's, from what I understand, the framework that you're coming from, why don't you tell me what do you think of this whole pandemic?
One of my favorite people on Twitter said, you're trying to look at the evidence as dispassionately as possible and trying to wrap your head around exactly what's going on just honestly and with the facts in front of you.
And Twitter has no idea how to respond to this.
Because then honestly, it has been the way I've been looking at this.
I began my writing on this saying to people, I think some libertarians are just making us look ridiculous on this, not taking it seriously at all.
Or say, oh, they warned us about Ebola or they warned us about whatever it was in the 1980s, LR on the apples and acid rain or whatever it was.
And we always seem to come through all these things unscathed.
That's true, but that is a really bad argument.
And I was hearing that everywhere.
Oh, it's another scare thing.
Okay, but remember the story of the boy who cried wolf?
There is a wolf in the story.
You know, it ends with there being a wolf.
It's not that he just keeps making stuff up.
Eventually, there really is a wolf.
And so I am concerned that this damn virus is the wolf.
So I was saying, look, we have to take it seriously.
Let's talk about it.
And so then, of course, I got all the people who, because I think there are some people who are libertarians, Dave, for different reasons than I'm a libertarian.
I am a libertarian specifically because I believe in non-aggression and I think the state has been a scourge on mankind and it systematically violates rights.
And so that's my position.
And that means that I take, I adopt views that are very much at odds with the conventional wisdom.
I think other people are libertarians because they're just against the conventional wisdom, period, just as a way of looking at things.
That's not who I am.
Now, that's not to say that I think the medical profession is 100% on the up and up and they've never made mistakes and they're not blowing smoke at me half the time.
You know, we've all struggled with that.
But it's like there are some people who they've got a crazy theory about everything.
And if I don't adopt their crazy theory, I must be in the pay of George Soros.
And I just finally just said, I'm sick of you crazy people.
I love my folks.
I love them.
But apparently I got a sliver of them who are going to attack me like this if I, you know, if I take the standard view on anything, anything at all.
So, but then the problem was, Dave, as time went on, I found that the coverage of it was so ridiculous and one-sided that now those people are making me crazy.
Like, for instance, all of a sudden it was like, I hate to put it this way because I know a memo did not literally go out, but it was like a memo went out saying, tell everybody that young people can get this too.
Because all of a sudden it was stories about, hey, you whippersnappers, you can also get this.
Yeah, you can.
And it usually is not that big a deal for you is the part that they leave out.
So then there was a story from Beaumont Hospital in Florida of a doctor saying, My hospital is filled with 20-somethings fighting for their lives on ventilators.
People said, Aha, you see?
We told you young people.
And then, like, a few days later, the hospital issued a release where he said, Yeah, I pretty much made that up.
Our hospital is not in any way filled with 20-somethings on ventilators, right?
So, so that was annoying.
Then we get this article in the New York Post.
The headline is something like, 20-year-old told to go home and not worry about it, dies from the coronavirus.
It's not until paragraph 10 that they tell us, oh, by the way, he had leukemia.
Now, again, I'm not saying it's impossible for a young person to die from this.
We know that they can, but you know, it's not impossible to get struck and killed with a Kentucky Derby either.
I mean, there are a lot of ways somebody could die.
It's just exceedingly unlikely that you're going to die that way.
But they're obviously trying to spread.
I mean, maybe, maybe with good intentions.
Maybe they're trying to get people to wake up and be alert to what's going on.
But I, for one, don't want to be treated like I'm seven.
So I started to blow the whistle on this.
This is clearly an overstatement.
And then I get hit from the other side.
Oh, wait a minute.
Now look at Woods being a crazy conspiracy guy.
So, you know, my refuge basically is you and the part of the problem podcast.
Well, it does.
It just seems to me like it's so weird that this is a problem at all for people to be like, well, obviously there's a more likely common ground here where it's like, yes, okay, there is.
I'm sorry.
I don't believe that all of these scientists are lying to me and there's no such thing as this virus.
This is a ridiculous view.
On the other hand, like you said, I don't even care if they do have the best of intentions.
Your job, which is this is only theoretical, not in the real world, but the job of a reporter is to report information, not to treat me like a child and to say, like, well, I think this misinformation will create a better outcome, like this Machiavellian approach of like, we'll scare everybody or scare the young kids out of this.
No, it's outrageous.
This clickbaity title type thing where they tell a 20-year-old dies and then they let you know in paragraph 10 that he has leukemia.
This is insane.
This is such manipulation.
Give it to people straight because there's actually adults out there who are trying to get this information.
And the truth is, it's really very hard, you know, and part of it is just the nature of how horrible the system we live under is.
Like, this is, it's a great example of statism in a lot of different areas.
But of course, everybody, you know, so Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, he came out one day and I felt like he had a genuine moment where he was just trying to be a leader.
And he said, and one day he goes, you know, everyone's reporting that New York is the epicenter of the coronavirus.
The truth is we've just done way more testing than any other state in New York.
Like they had something like twice as many tests done as California did.
So when people show there's a few more cases, it's like, yeah, it's actually not that clear that this is the epicenter of it.
And then he dropped that.
And every time since he's come out since then, he's like, this is the center of the coronavirus.
And it's clear someone got in his ear and goes, there's no federal funds in being nuanced and telling people we're not actually the center of this.
Untapped Magical Resources00:07:56
So shut up about that.
And now he's just out being like, Trump's not sending us enough, you know, ventilators and all this.
And it's just everybody between the corporate press and political leaders.
Everybody's got their own little angle.
And it's so frustrating because no one, it's like, we actually need leadership in a time like this and we're not getting it.
The rhetoric he's using is ridiculous when he actually says, if everything I'm doing saves one life, I'll be happy.
Are you kidding me?
I mean, if you don't mean it, then don't say that.
But if that were the truth, no one could do anything.
I mean, everything carries risks.
Driving a car carries risks.
And I know every time I get in that car, I could get killed in it.
But I'm not going to give up the car because there are worse things that could happen if I give up the car.
But the idea that if there were one, I mean, we could get rid of all the pollution in the world.
We could.
We get rid of every single bit of pollution and we'd also get rid of 4 billion people.
But yeah, it's true.
I could probably save a few people from lung cancer every year.
That's true.
So in other words, we do have to think about, I mean, all the time government makes decisions about balancing different factors.
It's not like, oh, it's just these right-wingers who think you should die for Wall Street.
They're always trying to decide if we have this regulation, we save, you know, one person in a million at a cost of $58,000.
Is that worth doing?
Maybe.
If not, then we do this other thing.
They make these decisions all the time.
And you have to, because you live in a world of trade-offs.
And not only that, I mean, like even private actors make decisions about trade-offs all the time.
And I'll give you a different example, even to make it a more clear or just like a different type of example where it's not even, look, we could ban swimming pools.
Now, people die in swimming pools every year.
Actually, a lot of people, more than you would think.
And swimming pools are not necessary.
You can do that.
Nothing.
Right.
It doesn't.
There's no trade-off in terms of life that swimming pools produce.
It's just something fun.
That's an activity that people like to do when it's warm outside.
But we all kind of go, instinctively, we go, no, we're not going to let the government tell us we're not allowed to have swimming pools because you got to kind of live your life.
And in that sense, the trade-off is just that I get to go for a refreshing dip in the pool and we'll accept that some people are going to die from this.
That's we, everybody, I've never heard even any left-wing, you know, crazy authoritarian arguing we should ban swimming pools.
The truth is we do.
If you believe at all in freedom, not even necessarily me, you know, our conception of freedom, but if you believe at all in the vague idea of freedom, it's like, no, we don't just allow the government to ban willy-nilly whatever they want because it could potentially save one life.
That's craziness.
Now, another example, you know, back to your point is, and this is something that always like really bothered me about the climate change hysteria, where people will say, like, even if you, if you accepted three key factors about climate change, which I'm not even sure that I accept these three, but if you were to just grant that number one, climate change is real, you know, the climate is changing, which I think we all grant that.
Number two, it is caused by man.
Number two, it's caused by man.
And number three, it's going to have catastrophic effects.
Even if you grant all three of those, number four, the fourth thing you'd have to deal with would still be, are the trade-offs worth it of enacting whatever policy you're proposing?
Because again, like you said, we could cut down on carbon emissions next year.
We could say no carbon emissions by next year.
However, now that solves the problem of climate change, but it would also kill millions and millions of people.
So you have to sit there and go, well, actually, what's a reasonable cost compared to what you think the cost of climate change is going to be?
And I have never once heard any climate change activists even address that.
Like they just, it's just like you either deny this or you sign on to the Green New Deal.
No, no in between.
And the same thing is, you know, either you're completely on board with locking everything down for, frankly, an indeterminate amount of time, or you want us to die for Wall Street or you want people in your family to die.
It's impossible to have a conversation with these people.
So, and you know, you remember that, that, that time, I forget what the name of the MSNBC reporter was or anchor who repeated this on air, but it was a thing where Michael Bloomberg had spent so much money in his presidential campaign that he could have given every American a million dollars.
Remember that?
And it turns out that if they'd done the math correctly, he could have given them like a buck fifty.
Yeah.
And so that's relevant here because the fact that that did not jump out at them as wildly implausible says something.
People say, oh, it was just a math error.
It was not a math error.
Fundamentally, it revealed something very important about the progressive, so-called progressive mindset, which is they really think that there's a person out there who could, if he wanted to, make everybody a millionaire.
But he's just a jerk and he refuses to do this.
So they think that there is some untapped pool of magical resources we can draw on that, you know, that guy has and that guy has and that guy has, and we could just live off them.
That one guy could have made us all millionaires.
There are people whose brains are in that place.
And so of course they look at a situation like this and they think, sure, we can stay not producing things indefinitely.
And if you think there's anything crazy about that, you probably just want people dead.
Yeah, that's not true.
Because it was on one level a math error and a really big math error.
So that was enough to be like, you know, it is a little bit crazy.
It's not like someone just rattled off a number and got it wrong.
They had a graphic up.
This was in Brian Williams' studio.
Brian Williams.
They asked a question about this.
They planned on talking.
You know, I've done several of these cable news shows.
If you have a topic planned and a graphic up, minimum 10 people, absolute minimum 10 people have seen this.
And nobody realized that your math was off by a million.
Like it wasn't just off.
It was a million times off the number.
So that, just the math error alone is enough to fairly ridicule these people.
But you are asking.
The fact that there was no voice in their heads talking is what matters.
And there is something about this, the progressive social democrat or even democratic socialist point of view that it's the same flaw that they make is the same reason why you could look at that as you were indicating and not immediately have alarm bells go off.
Because, you know, really, if that was the state of the world, you could see where you'd want to be a Bernie Sanders supporter too.
I mean, you're telling me there's one guy out there?
So five billionaires could get together, make everybody a millionaire, and they could still be billionaires, and they just won't give up this money.
I mean, this is just outrageous.
And it's, of course, this is the fact that they sit there and say, and then Elizabeth Warren will say this stuff all the time, you know, for two pennies, everybody gets a free education and free medicine for two.
And nobody really gives any pushback.
And they don't even understand that if you confiscated all of the billionaires' wealth, if you took all of the billionaires in America, confiscated all of their wealth, I'm not saying their income, their entire wealth.
Billionaires Refuse to Give Up00:09:40
You took all of it.
It couldn't pay for two years of Elizabeth Warren's government.
It's gone.
And then the billionaires are gone too, and you have no more capital investment from rich people.
You've destroyed the economy.
And a lot of their money is in the form of capital, capital goods that are used to produce the stuff we need.
So if you really want them to liquidate all that and sell it off for cash, then you're also destroying the structures that keep you alive.
So then we have, I just, on my show, I'm going to have coming out this weekend, episode 1620.
I've got two economists on talking about the economics of a massive shutdown.
Because other than wartime, I can't think of anything like this.
And in wartime, it's not a shutdown as much as it is a diversion of resources into war production.
But from the consumer point of view, it has the same effect.
There are certain things that are not being produced anymore.
And of course, during World War II, there were a variety of consumer goods nobody could pay at any price.
They just, they were not available.
So in peacetime, though, I think this really is, in the modern world, has to be without precedent.
So I thought, let's talk about the economics of this.
And so just one point I want to make here was the first thing I asked them was when they say we're going to shut down non-essential businesses.
I think right away there's a central planning mentality at work there.
Because how do they know what are non-essential businesses?
Obviously, when they mean essential, they mean like absolutely essential to maintaining order.
So the people need to be fed and there need to be police to crack their skulls if they get out of line, that sort of thing.
But if you were to say, well, you're going to interfere then with the scientific research that would have to go on to find a cure for this thing, they'll say, oh, no, no, no, we're going to exempt that because that would be an essential service.
But you have to think back.
Remember the Leonard Reed essay popularized by Milton Friedman, iPencil?
If you were to just sit and superficially look at a pencil and say, all right, we just want the industries necessary to make this pencil to stay running, you'd say, all right, I guess we need wood, graphite, rubber, and some steel.
Okay, we'll keep those running.
But then you've got to remember, yeah, but the guy who goes to chop the wood needs to use a saw.
And the saw is made out of something, you know, and he needs to drive there.
So he needs gasoline.
So he needs that to be refined.
So he needs rubber made.
He needs rubber in his tires.
He needs an air pump.
He needs all the stuff that goes in the tournament.
I mean, you realize it's so integrated and interrelated that as soon as you start saying, well, this one's not essential and that one's not essential, you don't realize how much you're breaking down this interlocking lattice work that is the capital structure that is the economy.
You need, I mean, you need air conditioning repair if you don't want the rooms in the hospital to be 150 degrees.
You need replacement parts you can barely even conceive of today.
So as soon as you start doing this, you're causing other problems.
So it's not just, well, we'll just sit here and we'll consume magical resources and then we'll just pick back up again.
Well, and then you pick back up again.
And meanwhile, people's retirement funds are completely decimated.
But if you are worried about that, it means you want your grandfather to die.
How can you have a conversation with somebody like that?
Yeah, no, and also another thing that, you know, I understand it was a politician who said this, and I'm not trying to defend him at all.
I'm not.
And people have given me a little bit of pushback for, because I mentioned this the other day, but there was this guy, I think it was a Texas politician who was on Tucker Carlson's show.
And he said, he was like, we got a balance, you know, between destroying the economy for young people and worrying about the people who are at higher risk who are mostly old people.
And okay, he took it in a different direction that was bad.
But I got to say there is something to that that I go like, you know, I feel if I were in any way, like the most important priority to me is that my daughter has like a good future.
And I know that's the most important priority to you times five because you've got five of them.
But there's, you know, the idea of like how much damage is this going to cause to the future of the economy, that probably should be most people's main concern.
And don't get me wrong, there's old people who I very much love too, who I don't want to lose, but nothing is more of a priority to me than my daughter.
And then like the net, and I've seen this thing that really kind of bugs me.
And you kind of touched on it earlier with that article about the 20-year-old and lecture, where there's this kind of demonizing of the young generation.
Like it's like, oh, these darn millennials and Zoomers and all this, and they're still out there and they're going to spring break.
And oh my God, don't you know you're putting grandma at risk?
I'm kind of like, okay.
I mean, I get the point, but I don't like this idea that it's like, well, we have to protect the precious boomers.
And, you know, where did this young generation get their poor values from?
And you're like, well, really, they were raised by boomers.
So maybe that's where they got their poor values from.
I don't know.
There's something about that that's just bothered me.
Well, and not to mention, of course, you know, doctors have to make decisions.
And so some people will have their health considerations displaced by, I've already heard of people who needed to go in and see the doctor, but the doctors are saying we're only seeing coronavirus people.
And so already there are decisions being made in favor of one and against the other.
But what they'll come back with is, oh, it's exponential and that's what makes this important.
Because obviously, if you, again, if all you cared about was, I want to save one life and I'll shut everything down if that's necessary, then you would stop producing automobiles.
But the answer, because, you know, 40,000 deaths a year, you could stop those cold tomorrow by getting rid of automobiles.
But the answer is, well, this is going to be exponential and you have to, you know, you have to take this approach.
And anybody who doesn't take that approach is some kind of a crank.
Well, I was, I have to say, Dave, I was pleasantly surprised by two recent pieces.
I saw actually three, but the two that stand out in my mind in the New York Times of all places.
One by Thomas Friedman, but that one was really derivative of one by David L. Katz.
Now, he is the founding director of the Yale Griffin Prevention Research Center, which is funded by the CDC.
So it's not Joe's medical research facility.
You know, it's a real thing.
And I have a friend who is very well placed in the healthcare industry, extremely well respected, brilliant, who disagrees with my take on this and disagrees with him, but nevertheless says he has to be respected because of who he is and how smart he is and where his heart is and everything.
And he wrote this piece, and I don't know if you saw it in the New York Times, is our fight against coronavirus worse than the disease?
And this article shows this note, it's not like some people want to save the old and other people just want to save the economy.
That division is not necessary.
He's arguing that there are a number of reasons to think that our current approach is actually not helping as much as it ought to, as if we had have a more focused approach on the most vulnerable people.
He said, for example, why would you think, let's send all the college kids whose infectious status we don't know home to huddle with their older parents and grandparents now?
You're telling me that's the best way to prevent people from being, maybe it would be better to keep them the hell away from their damn grandparents for a few more months.
But it's just obvious to people, shut them down and send them all home.
Maybe, I don't know, but I mean, I could see an argument on both sides.
So he's saying we would be much less likely to overwhelm our medical system if we preferentially favor the medically frail and those over age 60, and particularly those over age 70 and 80.
And now you may say, oh, that can't work, whatever.
He thinks it can.
The point is what we know can't work is indefinitely closing.
Eventually, you need resources.
And yes, you will have suicides.
There's no question about that.
You're going to tell me that people who suffer from depression are going to really, in the long run, be able to sustain a regimen of social distancing?
That is the opposite of what they need.
I mean, that sends them into dark places we can't imagine.
But that's not exponential.
So we shouldn't worry about it.
Well, Katz says that the approach we should, instead of trying to somehow stop the spread everywhere, he says, look, that horse has left the stable.
We can't stop it from spreading here, there, and everywhere.
What we can do for the time being is protect the most vulnerable people.
He says, right now, the plan we have, if we can call it a plan, he says it can't be sustained because it can't answer certain questions.
So he says, for example, how would we ever know when we could go back?
You know, he says, when will it be safe for children and teachers to go back to school?
And what about older teachers going back to school?
When's it going to be safe for people to go back to the workplace?
Some of those people are going to be in the at-risk group.
Is it going to be safe when we have only 300 cases a day?
Do we have to wait till it's zero?
And, you know, and then he says, what if we could just focus our resources on testing and protecting the people that we know are most vulnerable?
When Will It Be Safe00:02:45
And there are ways that we can do this.
So we gradually reopen, but not just because, you know, oh, all you people care about is the GDP going up by 0.2% extra.
It's everybody, the older included, need production.
We need products.
We need goods.
We need our retirement funds.
We could have that while at the same time, making special provision for people who are especially vulnerable.
Now, maybe that works.
Maybe it doesn't work, but we should at least have the conversation.
But instead, it's just like with the bailouts.
We didn't have time then either.
You know, it's interesting.
We never have time to talk about these big decisions.
We didn't have time.
It was too urgent.
And then after it was over, even one of the CEOs of AIG later said, you know, it probably would have been better to just let us go into bankruptcy.
Right.
Yeah.
That's what we said at the time.
Yeah, no one listened because there's no time to talk.
We never have time to talk during an emergency.
And somehow in every emergency, bankers have to get filthy, stinking rich.
Yeah.
But there's never time to talk about it.
And the bankers are always getting enriched by all of this.
That's just a weird coincidence that that's always how it works.
It just shakes out that way.
It just happens every time.
That's just the way it works.
You know, one of the things you touched on there that really is, this is like what made me a libertarian.
And it's what keeps me a libertarian.
It's why I have the views that I do is that there are so many people out there, right, who think of the economy.
I mean, they don't really know anything about economics, but they think of the economy as that.
Well, that's the stock market.
That's profits.
That's kind of this thing that's separate, but that's not caring about humans.
That's what, you know, people over profits, all that stuff.
Like, oh, we're talking about people over here.
Not humans, but the brand of libertarianism that you espouse, that Ron Paul always talked about, was always driven by caring about people.
That's what the whole thing is about.
It's that the economy is not removed from people.
And I think, you know, look, what you touched on before about people who are depressed, absolutely.
The worst thing for them is going to be self-isolating.
For people who have anxiety, this whole thing is going to be very trying for them.
Anybody who has paranoid tendencies, this is going to be a very difficult time for them.
And then, you know, to go a little like butterfly effect here, what are the ramifications down the road going to be of how many people lose their jobs over this?
I mean, people lose their jobs.
This has effects on their marriage, on their children, on their families.
People were just starting to recover from the 2008 bubble bursting.
People were just starting to put their lives back together.
And now we're going to be right back into another downturn.
Leftover Ideological Remnants00:15:06
And, you know, this is something that you have to think about.
And it seems like nobody really makes that connection.
That this is the economy is us.
It's us.
That's all it is.
Yeah.
People hear the economy and they think about the guy on the monopoly board with the monocle, a sack of money with a dollar sign on it.
So they can't think straight.
All you care about is the economy, like it's some separate thing.
The economy, yeah, it's this interrelated latticework of cooperation between people all over the world.
That's what the economy is.
And it's an amazing thing.
That's why people become economists, because they observe that and they say this is an extraordinary and amazing thing that does bring people together in amazing ways.
Let me, if you wouldn't mind, read you just three paragraphs from this Katz article, the New York Times, because it's interesting to note that he's emphasizing that it's from a medical point of view also that he takes this position.
It's not just that society can't withstand this long enough.
He says the medical system is being overwhelmed by those in the lower risk group seeking its resources.
So that's why he's saying we have to focus on the higher risk.
If we just try to have a blanket policy for everybody, are we sure that's the best approach?
We're going to be wasting resources on people, the vast majority of whom won't need it.
Meanwhile, the most vulnerable people will go without.
So this medical system, he says, is being overwhelmed by those in the lower risk group seeking its resources, limiting its capacity to direct them to those at greatest need.
Second, health professionals are burdened not just with work demands, but also with family demands as schools, colleges, and businesses are shuttered.
Third, sending everyone home to huddle together increases mingling across generations that will expose the most vulnerable.
As the virus is already circulating widely in the United States, with many cases going undetected, this is like sending innumerable lit matches into small patches of Tinder.
Right now, it is harder, not easier, to keep the especially vulnerable isolated from all others, including members of their own families who may have been exposed to the virus than the last paragraph.
If we were to focus on the especially vulnerable, there would be resources to keep them at home, provide them with needed services and coronavirus testing, and direct our medical system to their early care.
I would favor proactive rather than reactive testing in this group and early use of the most promising antiviral drugs.
This cannot be done under current policies as we spread our relatively few test kits across the expanse of a whole population, made all the more anxious because society has shut down.
And then he says, this focus on a much smaller portion of the population would allow most of society to return to life as usual and perhaps prevent vast segments of the economy from collapsing.
Now, that seems like a balanced and humane approach to the situation to me.
Yeah, no, I agree with you.
And that it just seems to be more reasonable than what we're pursuing right now.
And of course, the thing that you touched on earlier was that, well, if your logic is that we have to shut down right now, that we have no other choice than to shut down right now.
Well, why would we be able to go back in a week?
We're going to have the same problems in a week, in two weeks, in a month.
I mean, how long can this go on before the costs that we're talking about just become apparent to everybody?
And it does seem like then the, you know, the counter that is like, well, we'll just send people checks.
Nobody will produce anything and we'll just send people checks.
And so we can keep everybody at home this whole time.
But of course, just common sense would have to, even just for ignoramuses out there, common sense would have to start telling you, you can't just send people checks and nobody's working, right?
Yeah.
Like that can't be.
Well, why wouldn't we do this all the time?
Why wouldn't we do that all the time?
Like, why would we ever allow anyone to go out of business?
Why would we ever make anyone work?
Working kind of sucks.
We could just send everybody checks.
Send a check, yeah.
Just go to some poor country and start printing money.
Well, anyway, no, that does, that seems a lot more reasonable to me.
And at the very least, these things should be discussed more.
But of course, what happens with all of these things, just like 9-11, just like the financial crisis in 2008, is that we have a society that is ruled by these crazy sociopathic power brokers, and these things are opportunities for them.
And so they jump on them to increase their power.
And I am, don't get me wrong, I'm very concerned about the virus, but I am also very, very concerned with where the economy is going and where the level of authoritarianism in this country is going.
And at some point, we're going to come out of this and we'll see what we're in.
What do you think, like, you know, I mean, obviously it depends on how long they shut the economy down, but guys like you and people at the Mises Institute and Ron Paul and a lot of these great libertarian leaders have been talking about for a long time now that this economy is basically all a house of cards that's propped up by easy money and that this thing is going to fall apart.
It's kind of inevitable.
And now we have this situation.
Now they're just trying their best to reinflate the bubble yet again.
It seems like every time throughout my lifetime, every time they try to reinflate the bubble, they've got to put way more air in and it produces a smaller and smaller bubble and a worse crash every time.
What do you think is going to happen with the economy going forward?
Yeah.
Well, maybe I'm a little bit more optimistic than some other Austrians.
I mean, there was a lot of disruption of production during World War II.
And once that ended, the economy actually did quite well.
But it did quite well because people were convinced that the federal government's days of experimenting wildly were probably over.
Who can really feel that way now?
What I'm worried about, maybe even more than the policies, is the ideological, the leftover ideological remnants of this particular period in history, that people will walk away from it saying, when push comes to shove, we can just print checks.
You know, when push comes to shove, we can just shut this sector down.
We can just do this and that.
It becomes normal.
And I think that's the thing that frightens me is this type of stuff becoming normal.
And yeah, I mean, look, if we're not producing things, or let's say a lot of production is decreased, but everybody's being given checks.
Well, the way they handled that in World War II was they had price controls.
That was how they handled it.
Because if you just let people go out and spend that money, but there's nothing to spend it on, the prices of goods have to rise in that case.
So there's no question of, well, inflation can be delayed because if the banks don't lend the money and then it doesn't, no, this is a classic case of plain old, flat out, just garden variety, old school inflation.
If the number of goods vastly increases, then your money stretches farther.
And we see that in technology and stuff.
But if the amount of goods goes way down, then your money doesn't stretch as far as before.
So it's not like sending people checks magically puts goods on the shelves.
It just means that we're fighting with each other all the more, bidding up those goods, as in an art auction.
The more people, you give a lot of people money in an art auction, they're going to bid higher.
And you give them an infusion of cash, the bids are going to be even higher, but there's still only that one painting up for bid.
Right.
Yeah, no, that's a great, that's a great analogy.
Now, the other thing that I wanted to, because one of your older videos has been like going viral on Facebook I saw the other day about you talking about interest rates.
I think this was, it must have been back from around 2008, like around because you were talking or maybe a couple years after talking about that financial crash.
But I thought you did a great job of explaining why 0% interest rates in a recession is actually the worst thing you can do for the economy.
And of course, now we're back again, 0% interest rates, which I, you know, in my lifetime, I mean, I'm not that old.
I know, like, I always say that.
I go, like, I'm really young, but then I remember thinking how old I thought 36 was when I was 18.
So to some of the younger listeners, okay, yeah, I get it.
I am a father pushing 40.
All right.
So I guess I'm not that young, but I'm not old.
And to you guys, I am, but to everyone else, I'm not.
But I remember a time in my life where the idea of 0% interest rates were absurd.
Like, of course, we're not going to have 0% interest rates.
But now, once again, we're right back to that place.
And once again, no end in sight.
They're probably going to keep them here for a while.
So what do you, how would you, you know, just explain it to the layman that why do you not want to have the Fed mark interest rates at 0%, even when there's this bad economy and we need a stimulate or something like that?
All right.
Well, you know, the key thing would be in probably the video you're talking about, I go through something called Austrian business cycle theory.
I might not do that here, just for the, but it's not that hard to follow.
You know, I mean, it's, it's the equivalent of thinking the economy can run, it's the equivalent of thinking that you can run your life entirely powered by energy drinks.
You know, like you know that it can give you a little pick-me-up, but you can't obviously, you need some real nourishment.
And eventually, if all you did was energy drinks, your body would catch up with that and you would just collapse and crash.
And that's not a million miles removed from what happens when they do this.
But I would say that the thing I want to keep my eye on in this particular situation has to do with something I asked Peter Schiff about on my show.
Now, most of your listeners will know Peter Schiff.
You've talked to Peter Schiff on part of the problem.
But he was a guy who was, I mean, it's not just that he predicted the problems with the housing market.
I mean, he predicted them to a T, precisely what was going to happen.
And I had him on and I asked him, I think some of the arguments that people like you and I make about why we shouldn't have bailouts of particular firms or industries, these arguments kind of ring hollow today.
Because normally what we say is we shouldn't bail out these firms because if we let them go bankrupt, this will be good because their resources, it's not like we're going to lose the firm entirely.
If there's any value in what they're doing, their resources will just be bought up in bankruptcy proceedings by better managers, people who will manage those resources better, more in the service of what consumers want.
And so this is on net a good thing.
And this way we'll be able to take resources away from people who have been lousy managers of them.
So this is a good thing.
And I said, but Peter, don't you think in this situation that we're in right now, with a global pandemic like a once-in-our lifetimes event, isn't it a little bit unfair to say, you entrepreneurs have been so irresponsible for not predicting this once-in-a-lifetime event coming along.
And it's good that your resources get pulled away from you.
Don't you think that is a little tone deaf?
And he said, well, the way I look at it is this.
If these companies hadn't allowed themselves to be lured into this Federal Reserve-induced pattern of operating in a debt-based way and borrowing so darn much, and instead, if they had accumulated, you know, some savings to see them through a time like this, they could get through a few months all right.
And the problem is they keep acting like this and we keep bailing them out because we say, oh, how could they have known this was going to happen?
How could they have known these circumstances were going to occur?
Well, they couldn't have known those particular ones.
But darn it, they should know there's the prospect of something going wrong.
And they should have a rainy day fund accumulated.
And if they don't, then that alone means that these resources should be shuffled around.
So anything, whether it's 0% interest rates or anything that encourages them to persist acting like this is socially destructive and should be discouraged.
Yeah, I think that's a really great point.
And I got to say, I think a lot of that also applies to the individual level or the family level as well.
I mean, I saw people who were like, you know, it was like day two of schools being shut down.
And they're like, how am I going to feed my kid?
How am I going to do this?
And I'm like, are you telling me you don't have two days worth of like, you know, emergency funds?
And I know people, listen, I know and I agree with a lot of people who say, listen, the whole system, the whole crony capitalist system that we live under, it screws people over.
And the price of housing is artificially boosted up and it makes it harder for people to afford mortgages and rents and the cost of school and the cost of all the healthcare and all these other things.
And I know, I know that we have a million different ways that this system just is really unfair to ordinary working class people.
But I also know how much better we have it than my grandfather had it.
How much, much, much better we have it than his grandfather had it.
I mean, it's just the amount of luxury that we live in.
And the truth is everybody has like, you know, they have plasma TVs, they have nice cars, they have all of this stuff.
And if you have all of these nice good, like luxury goods, but you don't have like a couple thousand dollars in the bank, like you're a, you're a parent and you don't have a little bit put away just in case of an emergency, there's got to be part of that that's on you.
Now, I understand that's a little bit trickier of an area because once they're out, there are kids involved and it's like you don't want to see bad things happen to children.
I understand, but there's got to at least be some, at some point, it has to be addressed that you have, there has to be a little bit of personal responsibility, man.
Like I know things are bad, but they've been worse before.
And if you can't go a week, I mean, you don't have an emergency fund for a week.
You got to take a little bit of a look in the mirror.
Like you could be doing better than this, or at least the vast majority of those people could be doing better.
At least that's how I feel.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And look, I'm sure, Dave, you and I both, probably everybody listening to this, at least at one time or another in their lives, we know what it's like to be barely getting by.
Personal Responsibility Matters00:03:53
Like we absolutely know that.
But in a pinch, especially in the gig economy, you can make it work.
You can figure it out.
You can find ways to earn extra dough.
And for crying out loud, geez, you realize what people in the Great Depression would have done if they had had at their fingertips the ability to learn skills, you know, online.
I mean, I think you and I both promote skill share.
I mean, that thing is an MFing miracle.
That is unbelievable.
From your home, you can learn to do something that strangers all around the world will be willing to pay you for.
I mean, yeah, it's going to take some work like anything.
But if you really want to provide for people who are counting on you, you will make that work.
You will.
So yeah, on some level, it can't all be the state, the state, the state, and the incentives created by the state.
And they trap people in poverty and they do that.
That is all true.
I get that.
But on some level, you got to take responsibility for your own life at some point.
Somewhere.
3% of it has to be.
No, I agree with you on that.
And I everything wholeheartedly agree.
And of course, like, I also do, I don't mean to, you know, sometimes I've heard people accuse libertarians.
Like, I was arguing with this guy who was like a Rawlsian.
Once and and he was saying that, like the, the big flaw that libertarians make is they feel like everything you have you've earned it, like if you have anything, you earned it.
But you know, the truth is you really didn't earn a lot of the things that you have, and i've i've actually never heard a libertarian actually say that, not to say maybe one of them has.
But that's not like I don't know that Lebron James earned his natural athletic ability.
I'm just saying it would be immoral for you to try to cut off one of his legs so like he doesn't have.
It's a.
It's not me saying that it's.
It's necessarily justified that he has this.
It's just that it's not justified for you to take it by force.
Exactly, exactly so.
Yeah so, whether or not he does, you know, let's say, a champion tennis player deserves the tennis talent.
Uh, even if we somehow, if we, if we wanted to concede that for the sake of argument, it does not follow from that that therefore, you're entitled to take the proceeds.
Yeah, it's really, it's really unfair that some people are better looking than other people.
But that doesn't like legitimize rape.
That's still evil, right.
And, by the way, some people on our side want to say well yeah, that person who has the has the tennis talent.
They had to work to build up that talent and they think that'll answer the Brawlsian.
But the Rawlsian point of view on that is the fact that you have a work ethic is also unearned, right.
Right, that's also part of you that's unearned, so you can't even take credit for that.
So I mean, I don't know how you can't be in the same room with these people.
Well, now that I think that part, I think, is just complete like bogus.
That's just insanity.
But there is a fair point to the fact that even if I had worked as hard as Lebron James at basketball, I wouldn't be as good as him because he's got this natural ability and there is something to that.
I mean, listen anyway what I was saying.
I am, I am grateful.
I don't just take it as like, oh, i'm in this position because i'm so great and such a hard worker.
I'm very grateful, i'm lucky to be in the situation where I can make a living this way and that I can.
You know, I still well, my stand-up gigs have all been canceled for you know who knows how long.
Uh, while I can still put out podcasts, and so I understand, and I understand there are other people who can't work from home.
They they that, at least right now, that have lost.
So I i'm not.
I just want to say I get that some people are in real tough times, but there does need to be some, you know, amount of personal responsibility that can't just be thrown out the window um, okay.
So I wanted to ask you this because I feel like I have you here and you're like the best guy to to ask this question to, because what a lot of people in the uh, the general, you know uh um, public who are not in our specific, you know, libertarian world.
Government Ownership Confusion00:08:43
What i've heard a lot of people saying and i'm sure you've heard this too is that this is like libertarianism is dead or this proves libertarianism wrong.
Because, look and I do, I will grant that I understand On a very surface-level understanding, where you would say, so what's, I mean, what's the libertarian position here that if, you know, if you want to go take a walk in the park and, you know, you want to go hang out somewhere, the government can't tell you not to do it, you have the liberty to go spread this virus around as much as you want.
Well, that can't possibly work.
I mean, this is where we need rules and quarantines and things like that.
And, you know, well, people need help, obviously, and only the government can help.
So I understand on some level on the surface where people would be like, oh, well, how would a libertarian address this?
So what would your response be to somebody who said, well, this is proof that libertarianism can't work?
Yeah, well, you know, let me say at the beginning, that's a tricky question that eventually I want to work out a full-fledged response to.
And I haven't yet, just because I don't know all the details of the particular situation.
But first of all, one part of the answer does have to involve the health care system and the fact that the first people to actually be able to do testing for this virus were in Seattle.
And they just did it against the wishes of the FDA.
They just gave up waiting for the FDA, which was requiring the most ridiculous hoops for them to jump through.
And this is stupid.
We're just going to go ahead and do it.
And so this whole thing about the lack of testing and this and that, this is entirely squarely at the feet of the government.
So there's definitely that.
Then, secondly, why aren't there as many hospital beds as there should be?
Now, first of all, neither you nor I happen to know how many hospital beds there should be, right?
How would we know that?
Obviously, if there were 300 million hospital beds, that's too many, and 1,000 would be too few.
But we have no way of knowing that.
But the marketplace is not able to answer that because of these certificate of need regulations all over the country, where the local hospitals get to decide whether they think there's a need for another hospital in the area.
Now, if Walmart and Target were allowed to decide whether we need any other large stores in an area, everyone would immediately see through it, right?
They would know that something shady is going on here.
But if it's hospitals, everybody's brain is switched on to public service.
These are public service people.
How could they be thinking about anything other than what's best for us?
And the thing is, it's not even necessarily that those people are actively thinking, how could we screw the public?
I think a lot of times, I think, if we're being honest with ourselves, we implicitly in our own minds make what's good for us into what's good for everyone, you know, without even necessarily thinking about it explicitly.
And so that's gone on.
But in terms of how do you deal with people who may have some communicable disease for which there is no known treatment and which some people die of, that's a hard question for anybody to deal with.
I mean, look at how the state is dealing with it.
They're saying, we're going to lose trillions of dollars in wealth, and we're not sure if this is going to work, but we're going to try that.
I mean, that's the best they can come up with.
The trouble is, if we had a purely libertarian society, so there's no state whatsoever, everything's voluntary, well, it seems pretty darn likely that people, you know, whatever community association administers the park is going to say, we don't want grandma dropping dead, wheezing while she's with her grandkids.
You know, so we're going to say, we're going to do the kinds of things that the private sector has already started to do, which would be, we'll have senior hour at the grocery store.
Again, so that when people come into our store, they don't die instantly.
You know, because that's what people want.
But the problem becomes when not everything is private and there are publicly accessible areas.
And then what do you do?
What does a libertarian do in that situation?
And there, well, I don't know in that case, because if the government owns the sidewalks, well, I mean, I don't know, the government doesn't legitimately own the sidewalks from a libertarian point of view.
Really, the sidewalks are owned by the taxpayers who pay into them.
But how do we exercise our ownership?
I have no idea.
But I have a pretty good feeling that in a pandemic, there would be some limitations on egress or something in these areas.
But I don't know what that would be.
So I personally, now I'm going to think this through, but I personally think that in this type of situation, my first instinct is not, how do I be the world's greatest libertarian?
That's not, that's just not my first thought.
My first thought is there is the potential for this thing to be extremely deadly.
So my first thought is, what can we do with the least intrusion to save lives, given that we're in an imperfect libertarian situation?
I think that's the best way I can approach it, honestly.
Yeah, no, so I completely agree with all of that.
And I think that I think being a father, having a kid really kind of changed the way I view things on that level.
And it's like, I think maybe before I would have been more inclined to say, like, let me be the perfect libertarian here.
Whereas nowadays, it's like I've kind of got a little bit more of a priority, which is priority number one, I want to keep my wife and daughter alive and safe.
That's priority number one.
That comes before anything else that I've read in a Murray Rothbard book.
As much as I love those Murray Rothbard books, they're really great.
But priority number one is keeping my wife and daughter alive.
And I agree with you.
I think a lot of the issue that you addressed there with the government ownership, this is some of the stuff I've been discussing and trying to work out on immigration.
It's very tough when the government already owns things and is making the decision to say one government decision is libertarian and the other one is not libertarian.
They're equally all anti-libertarian because it should be a private property owner who's making this decision, not the government.
I agree with you on that.
The only thing I would add is just that I think going forward, not only is libertarianism not dead, I think there is the real possibility for the next libertarian moment to be coming up.
Because like it or not, even if you were to grant that government crackdowns on people's freedom of movement and freedom to open their business and things like that were necessary, it's like, okay, well, going forward, at some point, this will end.
And what you'll be dealing with is the age of bailouts, the age of 0% interest rates again, the age of government authoritarianism that they never exercised before.
That's now going to become normal, which is going to be harder and harder to roll back as every government program is.
And you're going to really need a libertarian voice in this country.
You're going to need some people saying like, hey, wait a minute.
This is, look, the government's response to this crisis was to rob the American people blind to go give a huge handout to the big bankers.
That was their initial response to it right away.
It was, let me expend $1.5 trillion.
Oh, that's not enough.
Another trillion dollars.
Okay, now let's give them free money for as much as they want to then lend out to us at interest.
This is all a big racket.
As Murray Rothbard used to say, you're all being screwed.
And that's just the reality of what's going on.
And I think libertarians are going to have some important things to say going forward.
That would be my question.
Also, wouldn't you say that the major problem with containing this thing involved the suppression of information about it by the state?
Oh, absolutely.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Well, there was a Chinese doctor who blew the whistle on this thing at the very beginning.
They could have contained this thing completely, and the Chinese government suppressed them and shut them up.
So it was the Chinese government, then it was our government over here mismanaging the whole situation.
Listen, imagine if Walmart had been in charge over there and Walmart had mismanaged it or told everybody to shut up about it.
We'd never hear the end of it.
I mean, now, yeah, people are upset at China.
Some people are upset at China in the abstract, but they don't realize it's the state more than China.
Did you read Lou Rockwell had a great piece on this that he put out last week where he was defending the Chinese people.
Suppressed Whistleblower Stories00:06:08
Yeah, he was saying they're not your enemy.
The Chinese people are not your enemy.
In the same way that you, listener of mine who's in America, are not the CIA and you're not the Senate and you're not the House of Representatives.
The Chinese people are not their government.
And by the way, they're a much more brutal authoritarian government that they don't even get the sham elections that we get.
They're not represented by their government.
No, the Chinese people, a lot of them, did the right thing and tried to help.
They're not your enemy.
The Chinese government is, you know, everybody's enemy, but so are governments all around the world.
I've been well for long enough for me to know that I don't have it.
But I will say the last time I was in New York, I went to Chinatown for the first time.
I've never been there before.
I've been to Chinatown in London, but I've never been to Chinatown in New York before.
And I did that on purpose because I wanted to have a meal there.
And I know that Chinatowns around the world are genuinely suffering because of this.
I mean, now everybody's suffering because of it, but they really were.
And I wanted to go there.
And so I'm glad I had a chance to do that.
And of course, I'm glad I had a chance to before the city shut down.
I will say the New York Chinatown is vastly different from the one in London.
The one in London, for what I could see, was all restaurants.
The one in New York, it's like banks and dry cleaners and jewelers and shops.
It's like a community within a community.
It was very interesting to see.
But the other thing was, have you been there before?
Oh, yeah, many times.
You cannot walk one block in some parts of it without being offered a watch, a necklace.
I've never seen anything like it.
Yes, down around Canal Street.
And none of that stuff is real.
I hate to burst your bubble.
I know you got a new Rolex watch and a new, but that's not a real Rolex.
I hate to tell you, Tom, you didn't get a Rolex for $5, by the way, on Canal Street.
But so you just saw that there were people and you wanted to help them out a little bit.
I got to say, Tom, you're not being a very good Neo-Confederate.
You're just not.
You're disappointing me.
I'm not.
I'm the world's worst neo-Confederate.
You are the world's worst secret bigot that I've ever met.
And I've always been disappointed in you for that.
I'm disappointed in the Mises Institute for being the world's worst secret Nazi organization.
I really thought it was, I'm so glad you pointed it out that Lou wrote that piece reminding people that in any way, even indirectly drumming up dislike of a particular people because of the policies of its state or because of something they obviously have no control over is that's the kind of thing the state does.
I've never seen that.
And especially when it's a beautiful city, these are beautiful people.
Yes, I've never seen a bigger disconnect in my life between how a human being is demonized and who they actually are as a person more than Lou Rockwell.
I've never seen anything.
He's such a wonderful human being.
The nicest guy in the world.
Everyone who's met him says this.
He was so unbelievably kind to me and my wife.
He's been so kind and supportive to me.
People deem it, it's like, no, trust me, he's this secret, like horrible person deep down.
He's like, And he hates every, and then you go to the Mises Institute and like you come up and like Lou Rockwell's like feeding a bottle to like a baby goat or something.
And he's like, hello, friend.
Come on in.
And you're like, weren't you supposed to be a demon of some sort?
And he's like, would you like some food?
This is not the best story in the world, but I do remember.
This is Lou Rockwell, founder of the Mises Institute.
There was a student there for the Mises University summer program, and he didn't know who Lou was and went up to him and was saying, hey, how come I don't have any pillows in my room?
And Lou, instead of saying, hey, you little snotball, how dare you address me that way?
You know, Lou went out of his way to make sure the kid got pillows.
Yeah.
He's just the sweetest human being.
He doesn't have a hateful bone in his body.
These people who make him out to be this guy.
And then, of course, like if you read, I love if you read his book, like, because there'd be these people who'd say, no, I'm telling you, Lou Rockwell is like a secret racist.
I know there'd be, you know, people, idiots online, you know, the ninnies.
And so, and I would go, have you read his book against the state, an anarcho-capitalist manifesto?
And they'd be like, well, no, I've never read the book.
I was like, of course.
I've never read anything.
Of course.
Of course, you have.
I've read three things that he is supposed to have written over the past 50 years that were forwarded to me by some guy.
He writes an anarcho-capitalist manifesto.
Okay.
This is his manifesto of why you should be an anarcho-capitalist.
Chapter one is about the wars and how many Muslim people have died and how horrible it is because of the human toll.
Chapter two, the war on drugs and what it's done to minority communities and how it's created these black markets for crimes and locked people.
Like when he was writing his manifesto, he was like, these are the most important things that I want to talk about.
Like, it's just, anyway, the disconnect is ridiculous.
But if you ever do get the chance to meet him, really great person.
Well, let me add one other thing.
He is so attacked, as you say, and yet, have you ever once seen Lou defend himself?
No.
In an article, in a speech, not he has never once bothered to address these people.
And Dave, I have to say there's part of me that considers that to be so badass, like I can't believe somebody who's that badass.
Yes, but I. Ron Toppe generally ignores him.
Not always, generally.
Lou always ignores.
And so I finally asked him, why?
Why don't you say anything?
He says, I don't have time.
I don't care.
So I defend him against these people.
He does not defend himself.
It actually is to a level that it infuriates me because there are things that he's accused of that he absolutely did not do.
Yeah, he did the opposite of.
He won't just set the record straight because he's like, well, no, I'm not even going to address that.
And then you'll kind of be like, well, can we all go set the record straight?
And he's like, no, I don't want to.
Defending Against False Accusations00:01:39
And you're like, please, please, can we do it?
But that's him.
He's like, he is.
I remember he described Ludwig von Mises this way.
And I've described Ron Paul and Lou Rockwell this way from the way I've met them.
And I'm just stealing what Lou said about Mises, but it's the same way I feel.
He goes, they're just two men who are from an older, better generation that you're just like, they just have this kind of dignity about them that you're like, oh, they just don't make men that way anymore.
They didn't make me that way.
That's for damn sure.
All right, Tom.
Well, listen, I very much appreciate it.
It's always such a pleasure to talk to you.
And I really appreciate you sharing your insights with me and my audience.
Of course, the Tom Woods show, which you can get everywhere.
It's on iTunes and all that stuff.
And if people want to get all your free e-books, what's the website for that again?
Well, the best way to get it is just get the most recent one, which is AOCIswrong.
And that's at AOCiswrong.com.
And that one, you think, oh, I kind of know the arguments against AOC.
Well, suddenly everybody supports the AOC look at the world, you know, the way they've responded to this thing.
So it's a very, very helpful book.
And I might add, Dave, I forgot that we do video for your show.
I probably, you probably can't see it, but I wouldn't have worn a slam death metal shirt during this because it probably would scandalize people.
You knew.
You knew what you were doing.
No, I don't think we can even see that part of it, but on some level, on some level, you knew what you were doing, Tom.
That's what I want to say.
All right.
Well, Tom, it's great to talk to you as always.
Let's do it again sometime soon.
And thanks, everybody, for listening.
That's what you call a heck of a bonus episode right there.