Jacob Hornberger critiques the welfare, healthcare, and Federal Reserve systems as "planned chaos," arguing that free markets would resolve pandemic shortages without FDA approval. He rejects reformist candidates like Justin Amash and Lincoln Chafee as insufficient standard-bearers who fail to dismantle the National Security State or Welfare State. Hornberger warns against the "Bill Weld effect" where opportunists hijack the party, insisting libertarians must run on pure principles to educate Americans toward a society of liberty, peace, and prosperity rather than compromising with Republican-lite figures. [Automatically generated summary]
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Heshy Socks and Virtual Campaigning00:09:19
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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.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
We have back with us the great Jacob Hornberger, who's out there on the well, I guess nobody's really out there at the moment, but has been out there campaigning and winning.
He's the clear frontrunner right now to be the LP nominee for president of the United States of America.
And I'm so happy that you took some time to join us again.
How are you, sir?
Oh, doing fine.
It's an honor and a pleasure to be here.
And I'm on the virtual campaign trail.
And it really is not a frontrunner.
I appreciate you saying that.
But since the delegates are all up for grabs and anybody can change his mind at any time, I just still see this as a dogfight all the way to the convention.
Well, that's probably a good mindset to have.
But just for people who haven't been keeping up since last you were on our show, you've been going around to a lot of these state conventions and they're doing straw polls and stuff.
And you've been doing very, very well.
Pre-Corona shutdown.
What was the campaign experience like for you?
It's been fantastic, Dave.
I mean, you know, you helped launch this campaign in the early days.
And so you kind of deserve a lot of the credit for our wins here, but it's been so darn exciting.
When I got into this race, you know, I made it very clear at the South Carolina Libertarian Party Convention.
This was November 2nd, that I wanted to run a campaign of principle for the party of principle, a campaign that relies totally 100% on libertarian principles to show the American people that we've got a way out of all these crises that Democrats and Republicans have foisted upon our land.
And I didn't know how that was going to be received because I know that the party has been composed in large part by people that want to reform the welfare warfare state way of life, leave it intact, but make it better, make it more palatable.
And so since then, it's just been the most rewarding, gratifying, and exciting experience.
We've won primaries on Super Tuesday in North Carolina and California.
We came in second in Massachusetts.
We've won caucuses in Iowa, Minnesota.
No, yeah, Minnesota.
Then we have won straw polls in California, Florida, Arkansas.
We just won a caucus in Ohio.
There's others that I'm not thinking of right now.
I mean, we're doing very well.
And it shows me that this message is really resonating among libertarians of, hey, let's go into this fight and fight as libertarians rather than as Republican lights or Democrat lights.
Yeah, I think particularly as we discussed last time you were on the show that there were a lot of people in the party and outside of the party who joined specifically for your campaign that were really tired of seeing libertarianism represented by, hey, we're basically just, you know, Republican lights who are, you know, like, we just think we should spend a little bit less money and there's no problem with smoking weed.
And that's libertarianism.
And you're like, no, actually, we kind of have a whole, you know, philosophy that's been thought out and is morally consistent.
And it's nice to see somebody representing that and doing quite well.
So obviously the big thing in the middle, you know, you're in the middle of this campaign.
Things are going very well.
And all of the sudden, something that none of us saw coming, including our great leaders, you know, Fauci and Trump and Nancy Pelosi and all of them were all telling us this was no big deal until they had to shut down the whole economy.
But of course, the COVID-19 pandemic happens.
And so first, I just was curious before just getting into the actual, you know, legit, what's going on in the country, what effect did this have on the campaign?
So everybody basically just had to stop in the middle.
And you said now you're doing like virtual campaigning and stuff.
What's that been like?
Yeah, it's been real surreal because I had been to 18 state conventions.
I had participated in eight presidential debates.
And it was just a super high for me.
I mean, you know, nothing like speaking to a libertarian audience.
People sometimes say, oh, Jacob, you just preached to the choir.
And my response is, yeah, isn't that great?
Because you get your energy from the crowd.
And I was telling people, I've never seen the high level of excitement in this party as I've seen in the past five months or so.
And so right before the big shutdown, I'd gone to the Illinois convention and participated in a debate there.
And that was on a Friday night.
And then I drove to Chicago two and a half hours that night, arrived about one o'clock, checked into a hotel, checked out at 4 a.m., caught a flight to Virginia, did the Virginia LP convention where I won that straw poll.
And then the next day, the Maryland LP convention.
So, and then the shutdown comes immediately right after that.
And of course, I'm thinking, if I don't have this virus after mingling with all these people, it'll be a miracle.
So I was there counting the 14-day period for the next 14 days.
But everything shuts down at that point.
And so we immediately started reorienting toward the internet.
And so we've been doing podcasts and video presentations.
And I'm writing articles on our website, jacobforliberty.com.
We're doing live streaming every Tuesday night where people can ask me anything they want.
And so everything has shifted over to the online stuff, which is great.
But I mean, it doesn't pack that energy of a live audience.
That's the big difference here.
Yeah, there's something about that kind of jolt of really seeing the people who are supporting you, you know, face to face that you can't recreate online, even though we try to, but it's not exactly the same.
So it's got to be a crazy thing.
I mean, I know for me, it's been kind of surreal and really just a crazy moment in history, particularly when you're a libertarian and you've been talking for a while about government overreach and crony capitalism and bailouts and monetary policy and all of these things to have this one event where they're all on full display.
I mean, I've seen people getting videos of people getting arrested for having a catch in a park.
I've seen people being pulled off of buses by cops for not wearing masks.
I'm watching the Federal Reserve getting, you know, just, man, if we thought we were living in the age of bailouts and easy money, that seems like nothing compared to what we're going through now.
And of course, these just obviously unconstitutional shutdowns.
What do you, what's been your take on the whole nationwide, you know, situation?
Absolutely fascinated.
Let me go back to the conventions just for a moment.
Sure.
I want to pay credit where credit is due that every time I went to these conventions, there would be a core group of people that would come up to me.
Dysfunctional Corporations and Bailouts00:14:33
And one of them was the Mises caucus people.
I mean, they endorsed me, which was a big honor.
I think they're the most prestigious and fastest growing caucus.
And they're named after Ludwig von Mises, who's just a real hero for me, along with like Ron Paul and so forth, because Mises was just so pure and principled in terms of how he would describe economics.
So at each convention, there'd be a little nucleus of Mises caucus people that would come up to me, mostly young people saying, Mr. Hornberger, Mises Caucus.
We're here to support you.
Tell us what you want us to do.
It was just fantastic.
And then there's always a group of people that were there for the triumvirate of Dave Smith, Tom Woods, and Scott Horton.
They would say, we're here because we heard you on the show, on Dave Smith's show, and we're here to support you.
And we've joined the party because of you.
So I'm very grateful for what you've done to help launch this thing.
I mean, it was great.
All right.
So, you know, I'm fascinated by this whole thing because as you point out, you've got a confluence of systems that are dysfunctional and inherently defective that we've been talking about for years.
And they're all coming together in this crisis in a perfect storm.
You've got a dysfunctional economic system that's based on massive confiscation of wealth, the war on poverty, what we call the welfare state that has left, as we can tell now, a lot of people impoverished.
People who live paycheck to paycheck.
They don't have any savings to get them through two or three months of unemployment.
They're really struggling at this point.
And so that's been exposed for everybody to see what this whole dysfunctional economic system has done.
You've got a massive dysfunctional healthcare system that's based on the socialist concept of central planning, where the entire healthcare industry is effectively just paralyzed by all these bureaucracies, the FDA, President Trump, and all his experts and the Centers for Disease Control, shortages of testing kits, of masks, of ventilators, what Ludwig von Mises called planned chaos, which always comes about from any centrally planned system.
And you see it all coming to a climax in this system where healthcare providers are frustrated, they're angry, they're sick because every time they try to do something, a bureaucrat they have to check with a bureaucrat first.
And the bureaucrat oftentimes says, no, you can't do that.
No, you can't do that.
As compared to what we've been calling for for years, which is a free market healthcare system, which would eliminate all these dysfunctionalities.
The death toll would be significantly lower if you had a free market health care system.
And then we'd be looking to the healthcare industry for guidance and so forth.
And then you've got the third dysfunctional system coming to a climax here.
And that's the Federal Reserve, the monetary system, where they're just printing money like, I mean, they've got the printing presses going 24 hours a day here now.
I mean, it's incredible.
President Trump, the big spender, I mean, remember, he was calling Hillary Clinton a big spender.
I'm not sure Hillary Clinton would have spent this much money.
He was spending a trillion dollars more than what the government was bringing in before the coronavirus crisis.
Now, on top of that trillion dollars, which now makes the national debt at some 24 trillion, they're adding another 2 trillion right now, but they're clearly adding another 2 trillion on top of that, 4 trillion.
And I got a feeling it's not going to stop there.
I mean, we're looking at massive devaluation of the money around the corner, all to bail out these huge corporations and big businesses.
So you've got these three dysfunctional, defective systems coming together.
And man, they're doing a number of the American people.
Look what they've done.
Oh, and watch what happens when their system starts to collapse.
They start to tyranny.
The lockdowns, the arrests, the shutdowns.
I mean, we might even see Roundups.
I mean, you just never know what these people are going to resort to.
I wouldn't be surprised to see them confiscating 401ks when they desperately need the money.
That's what the Argentine government did.
And that's what Roosevelt did with gold in the 1930s.
Well, retirement funds are like a great big right tomato for these people.
That's why it's so amazing to me, Dave, that anybody still sticks with these Democrats and Republicans.
It's incredible.
Yeah, it really is something.
And of all of the things, I mean, they're all outrageous.
The crackdown on civil liberties to me is probably the most terrifying.
But the bailing out of big corporations when they're the only ones who are poised to be able to come out of this shutdown.
I mean, it's just by its very nature, if you're going to shut down the economy for, let's say, a month or two months, assuming it doesn't go on forever, who are the ones who are really not going to be able to afford that?
Well, it's going to be the small and mid-sized companies who are going to have a tough time bringing in no revenue or very limited revenue for a couple months.
The big corporations will probably be able to get through that.
So you were already going to have a disproportionate effect on the mid-size and small-sized companies.
But now the government comes in and starts bailing out the big corporations.
Of course, by the nature of government, it's always a lot harder for the little guy to get their hands on that money.
That's the way the system always works, right?
Like it always ends up being like the big banks get trillions, the big corporations get billions.
And then by the time it gets down to people, you're lucky if you get your crummy 1200 bucks or whatever that's supposed to get you through the month somehow.
So this is just going to have a really disproportionate effect.
Then the leftists will have their answer about inequality and things like that.
But really, obviously, this is at least the silver lining of this crisis is that it's so clearly government made.
It's because the government told people to stop going to work after the government gave all the wrong recommendations about wearing masks and the government, the FDA still isn't allowing tests to be mass produced for cheap.
And of course, it was the government of China who started the whole thing.
It's just, it's a failure of governments on a global level that really is unlike anything I've ever seen.
Well, yeah, and it's a failure of their systems.
I mean, that's the important thing to keep in mind here: is that, okay, President Trump has turned out to be one of the worst central planners in history.
I mean, the guy ignored all the warnings.
All he kept focus on was the stock market and the unemployment rate.
That was everything to him.
As long as those were going in the right direction, man, he deserved reelection.
And so he ignores everything else.
And so, and then he's totally botched how to handle this.
But this is what comes with central planning.
I'm not suggesting to people that you put me in office and I'm going to be able to run their systems any better because somebody's inherently defective.
When they're out bailing out these big corporations and big businesses, it's what we would expect.
You know, when the left brought this whole idea of a welfare state into existence, it was the idea of taking from the rich and giving it to the poor.
Well, now, I guess what's happening?
I mean, the system's turned upside down where they're taking from the poor and the middle class to fund these big corporations.
I mean, bad things happen in life, but you have to confront them and deal with them.
You don't start stealing money from people through the political process to feather your own nest.
Let's just imagine, as an imaginary construct, how a free market society would have handled this.
Let's assume 20 years ago we had adopted a libertarian philosophy.
Everybody keeps everything he earns under libertarianism.
And by the way, that's our heritage as Americans.
Americans live without income taxation for more than 100 years.
Everybody would have some savings in their bank account.
They wouldn't be living paycheck to paycheck.
You could get through this crisis.
A free market health care system.
You wouldn't have all these bureaucracies to deal with.
There would be the masks and the testing kits would be plentiful because that's what a free market produces.
We'd be looking to the healthcare industry for guidance, for leadership here.
You'd have Amazon hitting every home with 50 testing kits for two bucks each, where everybody could be testing on a regular basis, maybe every three days.
So the people that are testing positive, they're the ones who isolate.
Everybody who's still testing that they're well, they continue working.
So you don't have a cratering, a breakdown, a shutdown of the entire economy that's sending this people into downward spirals of poverty.
And then you've got a sound monetary system that isn't being used to plunder and loot the poor and the middle class for the sake of the wealthy.
You'd have a much better system.
Okay, that's water under the bridge, but it's not water under the bridge now, Dave.
This is a life or death choice now, people have in this coming election.
You like where this country is and the direction it's heading in?
Vote for Biden or Trump.
It doesn't matter.
Biden just came up with his plan for his when he's the central planner.
It's no different.
You want to get out of this crisis.
There's only one way, and that's joining up with us libertarians and going into a free market direction.
So you choose.
You want to go with them?
Stick with them.
But don't be surprised when November comes around and this thing comes back again with that you're going to get the same results that you're getting now.
You went out of this crisis.
There's only one way out.
And that's a free market philosophy.
Yeah, amen.
I couldn't agree with you more.
I mean, that's, and it's, it's sad that because there were some people, obviously Ron Paul is the one that comes to mind most, but there were people 20 years ago that were arguing this is the way we should go.
And, you know, they were either shut down or, you know, enough people didn't hear them or enough people didn't listen.
But there's no question we would have way, way less death and sickness and destruction of our entire economy if we had embraced libertarianism and freedom well before this.
The one I've been, in addition to what you were saying that I've been harping on a lot, is because basically, at least at the time, the justification for all of these shutdowns were to flatten the curve.
And the whole point of that was that we don't want to overwhelm our healthcare system.
We don't want to overwhelm our hospitals.
And it would lead one to wonder why it is that our hospitals are normally operating at 90 to 95 percent capacity.
Why is it that we're not prepared for an emergency?
And then when you start looking into it, you realize like, oh, there's this certificate of need legislation that's all throughout the country.
And basically, it's a huge racket.
You have to be approved by the other hospitals to come in and start competing with the hospitals by government law.
You have to do that.
It would be as if there was a law that said before a new libertarian challenger could run for president, you had to approve that they could run for president.
You know what I mean?
Like there's obviously a clear conflict of interest between letting your competitors choose.
So in a libertarian society, I can't say I know exactly how many hospital beds we would have, but we would certainly have more than we have when the number is restricted by government laws.
So probably if we did have an emergency situation, we would be much more prepared to deal with it.
However, actually right now, it's starting to look like a lot of these models that suggested that we were going to have our healthcare system was going to be overrun have just been completely wrong.
And it's actually coming in way under that.
Even in New York City, our hospitals haven't been overrun.
And so it's quite that's the other thing that is the real problem when you have this kind of iron fist central control based on force is that if you have one projection or one model, then they start using the entire system because of that.
And then you realize that model's wrong.
And it's like, oops, well, now we shut down the whole economy and we've put tens of millions of people out of work.
And, you know, whereas if this was done on a more local, more voluntary level, it's much easier to adjust to those things.
The people who are in states where they haven't been impacted very much can go their own way and do what they want to do.
And it doesn't, not everyone has to, you know, have the exact same response because it comes from the state.
So it's, you know, anyway, this whole thing is going to be, it's going to be interesting to see how it shakes out.
There's going to be a lot of bad that comes out of this and already has, but maybe it does help wake some people up to the government failure that's just all around them.
At least we can hope so.
But I guess we'll say.
Yeah, I couldn't express it any better than you just did.
I mean, Literary von Mises called the results of central planning planned chaos.
I mean, what better term to describe what's going on here?
It's just total chaos.
You've got shortages of this, shortages of that.
I mean, if anything, we've learned from the South Korea experience that the solution to keeping down your infection rate is massive testing.
And yet, okay, there are better central planners over there than Trump is.
But in a free market, you have the spontaneity of the free market that doesn't have to deal with bureaucrats.
So if somebody starts rushing into the market with testing kits, they don't have to go to the FDA and get permission.
Or if they want to start testing people, they don't get shut down like the healthcare providers were shut down in the state of Washington by bureaucrats.
And let me give you an example of this.
I mean, we see examples of the free market like in other areas, like grocery stores and stuff.
Nobody plans how many fruits and vegetables are going to be in grocery stores every day.
There's no government planner.
It's the spontaneity of the market that produces these things.
It's called a miracle of the market.
There's a brewering company called Dogfish Head Brewing Company.
And the head of Dogfish Head had a fascinating video op-ed on the New York Times last week.
I highly recommend it.
It's only like four minutes long, where he said that they noticed that there was hand sanitizer shortages in hospitals all across the country.
Dogfish Head Sanitizer Innovation00:05:17
And then the light bulb goes off in his head.
He says, well, we have alcohol.
You're brewing our beer.
We'll just convert that to hand sanitizer.
So they start producing dogfish head hand sanitizer and they start flooding hospitals with it.
And all the healthcare providers are so grateful.
And he says, we're not doing it for free because I got payroll to meet.
I got expenses to meet.
But the profits that they made off it, he says, I'm going to donate it to a fund that is for hospitality workers that are out of work.
Well, do you think a central planner would have ever come up with something like this?
Hey, let's get a brewing company to do hand sanitizer.
This shows you the beauty, the spontaneity of a market process.
This country would be so much better off just getting the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control, President Trump, Biden out of the healthcare business and leave healthcare to healthcare providers.
Yeah.
And I've heard so many stories about things like this.
I mean, it's going on all over the place.
Even with the government getting in the way and mucking everything up, the market is responding.
And I mean, you know, it's funny that Trump invoked that the Defense Production Act.
And then it turns out the Democrats were like giving him a hard time because he's not using it more.
But the reason why he wasn't using it more is because the car companies already voluntarily just started making ventilators.
They were like, oh, yeah, we'll make ventilators.
Now, why are they doing that?
That's partly because they'll be seen as good people and it's good PR.
But I mean, who cares why you're doing the right thing?
I mean, you know, it's like that's, that's like kind of the market incentives working.
And then you'll see these infuriating stories.
Like I just saw one, I'm blanking on the name of the company, but there was this one company that was like, hey, we can produce cheap tests that we can distribute, you know, widely.
And the FDA said, no.
They're like, nope, you got to wait for approval from that.
So now they're sitting on their hands.
They've got these tests that they're ready to give out there, which would be the thing that would help the most right now to actually find out who has this thing, who doesn't, who can go back to work, who has the antibodies for it.
But they can't because we got to sit there and wait for some bureaucrats to decide that we're allowed to start helping people.
So there's stories on both sides of these all over the place where the market is stepping up to solve the problem.
And then, you know, areas where they're being stopped by the government.
And it's just, you know, it's pretty infuriating.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So, oh, go ahead.
Just give you one more example of this phenomenon to follow up on what you're talking about.
In Great Britain, they did a lockdown and all seniors were shut into their homes and were really anxious about getting their groceries because they weren't permitted to go out.
So the government called for volunteers.
They needed, there was one and a half million seniors locked up in their homes and they called for 250,000 volunteers to deliver groceries and their prescription medicines.
Take a wild guess at how many people volunteered.
How many?
750,000.
I mean, it goes to show you that you don't need to force people to do the right thing.
This notion of ordering General Motors to produce something, a market and a free society, people will do it, whether they do it for profit, whether they do it for PR, whether they do it out of their love for their fellow man.
Who cares, as you point out?
This is the beauty of a free society.
Volunteers Delivering Hope00:06:45
And so we catch glimpses of it in the context of all this massive central planning dysfunctionality.
Yeah, and it's, and if the government wasn't stopping some of them from doing it, they, you know, you would see this even clearer.
I mean, I started thinking right away, right?
Like the thing that just didn't add up to me was I was like, how are we having a shortage of masks?
Like, you're telling me there's, I mean, okay, a ventilator, that's a pretty sophisticated piece of machinery.
I could kind of wrap my head around that.
You're telling me masks like America, 2020, the United States of America, this country where I'm having a conversation with you in real time across the country looking into my computer.
You're telling me we're having trouble producing masks.
Like, why would that?
There's such demand for it right now.
Wouldn't some entrepreneur be produced?
And then, of course, you find out, well, why is it?
It's because they're regulated as a medical device.
And to produce a new medical device, you need FDA approval.
And the FDA usually takes years.
So even if they're fast-tracking it, they're like, oh, maybe we'll get in nine months or something like that.
It's just, so you would see, if it wasn't for the FDA and these government regulations, you'd see so many more stories like this.
And I really think it would be so obvious because people would just see the market responding and people helping each other out.
But, you know, that's not, unfortunately, the world we live in yet.
So turning more to politics, because you brought up, you invoked Biden and Trump earlier.
I don't know if you saw, but finally, in the midst of all of this, Barack Obama dusted off his microphone and got out and endorsed Joe Biden.
One might wonder what took so long.
But Obama came out and endorsed Joe Biden and he said something that I found really hilarious.
He said, you can trust that Joe Biden will put all the right people around him.
So that is, there was a real like admission there where they were like, wow, I mean, you know, the people around him won't be senile.
So, you know, there's no problem there.
But the funny thing is, what I was just thinking back on is how Wikileaks exposed that Citigroup sent Barack Obama his cabinet.
Citigroup sent Barack Obama an email saying, This is who we want in your cabinet, down to the detail.
You will keep George W. Bush's defense secretary.
Gates, you will put Geithner at the treasury.
And that's what he did.
So, Barack Obama has, you know, if you hear it through libertarian ears, Barack Obama is promising you that all these same terrible people will be around Joe Biden giving him advice.
Do you, I mean, I don't know.
What do you make of the Biden campaign?
I know a lot of people that I talk to a lot have said they think he's not even going to make it all the way to November, but I don't know.
What do you think?
Well, I found it really interesting that he went into hibernation as soon as the coronavirus hit.
I mean, nobody knew where he was.
He wasn't saying anything and so forth.
And then a couple of days ago, he comes up with this plan.
I've got a plan in the New York Times.
And it's just standard stuff of, you know, more, we need more testing kits here, and I'm going to get more testing kits if I'm the president.
I mean, this is such nonsense.
You know, there was a guy, I forget his first name, but his name is Kuhn, K-U-H-N.
And he brought up the concept of paradigms and the concept of a paradigm shift.
And what he was referring to is that when people have been operating under a certain system or a paradigm, that ultimately you get to a point where the paradigm, you hit a dead end in it.
It just doesn't work anymore.
And you can't make it work.
And that's what brings the paradigm shift that causes people to say, well, we can't stay with a dead end system.
We need a new system.
Biden and Obama are clearly in this dead end system that Trump belongs to.
Notice that his plan is, I'm going to bring my experts in.
I'm going to bring a team of really smart people.
Well, that's the whole point I'm making is that this system of central planning doesn't depend on smart people or getting better people in public office.
Friedrich Hayek, the Nobel Prize-winning libertarian economist, called it the fatal conceit of the planner.
And this is what the Soviet Union collapsed on: this concept of central planning.
So Biden to me is just birds of a feather with Trump.
They both subscribe to the old bankrupt paradigm, the alternative paradigm, the paradigm that will get us out of this crisis and save lives, especially lives of seniors.
Notice that the people who are paying the biggest price for this thing are seniors.
If you were able to keep that infection rate lower, which a free market would have clearly done, because you'd have plenty of testing kits and masks, as you point out, seniors would be benefiting from this.
And then also the poor.
They've noticed that African Americans are bearing a much higher infection and death toll rate.
So a new paradigm is the way out of this thing.
And the people who have a vested interest in this new paradigm are seniors, blacks, and poor people.
Yeah, no question.
And at this point, I guess, if you account for the whole lockdowns, a whole bunch of people who have been put out of work are going through real economic hardship.
And that number is going to be something really that none of us are prepared to deal with by the time this thing's over.
I mean, I know, I think it was something in the ballpark of 16 million people have already applied for unemployment insurance.
And that's just applying for unemployment insurance.
Forget all of the people, you know, the Uber drivers, the taxi drivers, people in these different industries where you're not even eligible for unemployment insurance.
It's going to be tens of millions of people who are out of work by the time this whole thing is done.
Okay, so I want to say not only out of work, they are going broke.
I mean, there are people going broke.
Their businesses are going busted.
They can't survive a couple of months of no businesses and everything.
It just is wiped out.
You're talking about massive bankruptcies here.
People are in debt.
And those creditors maybe will show a little bit of leniency, but I got a feeling you're going to start seeing some foreclosures taking place here and lawsuits on notes and foreclosures of liens.
I mean, they are causing massive permanent suffering among the American people with this shutdown, which is nothing like this would ever happen in a free market society and in a free society.
Libertarian Reform and Bankruptcy00:14:29
And then what do they do?
When people start resisting, they threaten them with arrest.
You stick with your bankrupt business and you suck it up.
And if you try to get out and start opening up your business too soon, we will come and arrest you.
This is what Donald Trump calls making America great again.
Yeah, it's really just, it's a sad state of affairs.
So I wanted to ask you about the politics of the LP race a little bit more.
So it looks like there was yesterday, I saw that Larry Sharp, excuse me, posted a thing that he's jumping in with Jim.
I'm sorry, I'm blinking on his name.
Jim Gray.
With Jim Gray, Judge Jim Gray and Larry Sharp.
So they've entered into the race.
What are your thoughts on competing with those guys?
Oh, I love it.
I mean, this has kind of made the race fun.
I mean, once Lincoln Chafee dropped out, I was a little disappointed because I was hoping Lincoln would go all the way to the end.
But according to Gray, that when Lincoln dropped out, he was commiserating with him over dropping out.
And so Lincoln's staff says, well, would you please run?
And Gray says, well, let me think it over.
And so the Lincoln Chafee staff convinces Gray to run.
And Gray contacts Larry Sharp and says, Would you run with me?
And so now we have essentially a variation of Lincoln Chafee's positions in the form of Judge Gray.
And I think it's fantastic.
I mean, it's what I've said from the beginning of this race, that the party has two choices.
They can go with the reform-oriented candidate, and that's clearly Judge Gray.
He loves the welfare state.
He loves the regulated, managed economy.
He loves the warfare state.
He just wants to reform them.
He wants to rein them in.
He wants to make them more efficient and so forth.
Well, I'm saying, no, a free society depends necessarily on dismantling these infringements on freedom.
If all you do is reform these things, you're not free.
And we libertarians are supposed to be about freedom.
And if there was ever a time for leadership right now, it's now, Dave.
I mean, this is life and death.
We libertarians should be leading the way, explaining to people what a free society is, what a free market really is.
And so now that the choice is really being set forth, the delegates to this convention have a clear-cut choice with Gray over there representing this reformist wing and me representing this pure libertarian way to fight this race against Democrats and Republicans.
And then in the middle, you got all the other candidates that's sort of a variation on both themes.
Yeah, no, I agree.
I think like even if, you know, the thing is that even when you put somebody like when we ran Gary Johnson or when the Libertarian Party ran a bar or when you run like some of these other people, it's like, it's not as if they win and reform the system to be any better.
You know what I'm saying?
Like they still end up going out there and they just, it's like at a certain point, you have to just say, no, listen, this is what we stand for.
This is what we stand for.
We're going to mark a poll in the ground over here at the correct position on these things.
And, you know, like, let's try to convince some more people that this is the way to go.
And to me, I just think it's like this.
The problem with the reform candidates is that they really do like nothing ever gets reformed anyway.
They don't end up winning over hearts and minds.
They end up folding.
And it's like a perfect, I don't know.
I mean, I know Obama and Trump both ran on reforming certain parts of the system, but look at how that's going for us.
So it's about time that somebody just gets in the race and is an unapologetic libertarian.
And that's why all of us have been supporting you because it's nice to have that in the race and hopefully get that message out to as many Americans as possible over the next six months or so.
What do you think about the other rumor is that Justin Amash might be getting in.
He tweeted something to the effect of he is giving it serious thought.
What do you think about Justin Amash jumping in the race?
Well, that's another fascinating phenomenon that's taking place because Amash, like Judge Gray, has succeeded in avoiding all the debates that we've been going to and the conventions we've gone to.
And there's a benefit to going to these conventions and participating in these debates.
Like I said, I've participated in, I think, nine debates now.
One was online and the eight were in person.
But you go to these conventions, you mix with libertarian prospective delegates, real delegates, and then in the debates, I mean, this is a crucible where people can ferret out where you stand, what your philosophy is, what's your position on the war on drugs or social security or whatever.
So people can make an intelligent reasoned decision.
So Judge Gray and Justin Amash have avoided all that so that they don't, people don't really know where they stand.
They've been very successful in avoiding that crucible of debate.
Now, there's still a couple of more at the end of the month here that hopefully if Amash jumps in the race, that he won't be reluctant to jump into these debates as well, because his views need to be tested.
Because again, we're dealing with a variation of Republican light here.
In fact, Amash has a very interesting quandary now with Judge Gray in the race, because essentially their positions are the same.
They both want to run a Republican-like campaign that's oriented toward reforming the NSA, reforming Social Security, healthcare savings accounts, reform, reform, reform, reform the drug war and so forth.
I mean, I don't think there's that much difference between Judge Gray and Justin Amash in terms of overall philosophy, Republican light, and reform.
So how does Amash convince people in the party that they should vote for him over Judge Gray?
I think there's going to be a battle there because, you know, Amash can say, well, I'm a congressman.
Yeah, well, Judge Gray's a former judge.
He's very famous in libertarian circles.
He was the vice presidential candidate.
So if you're interested in reform, I think Amash has a big burden of proof here.
It's like, why should me, as an interloper who's never been in the party, who didn't go to state conventions, which he could have done, he could have gone to conventions all this year, not as a candidate necessarily, but just come and hang out with us, give a speech.
Never did that.
State is an independent.
I think he's going to have an interesting burden here if he jumps in the race.
Why should people who are interested in the reform paradigm go for him instead of Judge Gray?
And two, why should Libertarian Party members accept this Republican-like kind of campaign anyway?
We are libertarians.
I've said this from the beginning.
We need to fight as libertarians.
If we go down, at least we go down fighting for who we are rather than who we're not.
Why should we compromise and water down our position to try to get the support of Democrats or Republicans?
And then the other thing is, I say, you know, all they're going to, their big pitch is, oh, we're going to try to get the 3.8% return.
Big deal, Dave.
This party has been in existence for 49 years and they're celebrating a 3% or 4% return.
I say let's roll the dice.
Let's act boldly because when you play it safe, you're not going to get big results.
That's the way it is when you play it safe.
When you act boldly, you got a chance for the big payoff.
Now, granted, we could fall back to 1% fighting as libertarians, but I say let's take the chance because with big chances, big boldness, you got a chance for the big payoff.
And after 49 years, we've earned the right to a big payoff.
I couldn't agree with you more on that.
And I even think that in some scenarios, 1% might be better than 4%.
Like if it's 1% that people were really inspired and changed their lives and converts people who are going to fight for liberty for the rest of their lives, or if it's 4%, but it's kind of just like a protest vote, like, hey, I don't really like Trump and Hillary, so I'll go with these couple of like Republican governors and blue states just because someone else.
And then literally the next year, they've completely forgotten it.
They've never read anything about libertarianism.
They haven't really thought about what a free society looks like.
I think those votes are worthless if you didn't actually convert people or introduce them to liberty or change their, you know, their way of looking at the world at all.
So, and look, I think that, and this is what I've been saying since I've been in the LP, is that whether we like it or not, okay, the libertarian presidential nominee is the standard bearer for libertarianism in the eyes of a lot of people.
Like, that's what they look at.
There's still a lot of people out there who don't even know the difference between the philosophy and the party.
They're just like, well, that's you guys.
That's the libertarians.
And what libertarians have to think about when they pick the nominee is who you want to represent what libertarians believe in.
Now, it's great.
I think it's great if Justin Amash wants to come be a member of the Libertarian Party.
I thought it was great if Lincoln Chafee wants to come be a member of the Libertarian Party.
But that guy's not the standard bearer of libertarianism.
He couldn't even explain the philosophy to somebody else.
So what you're looking for is somebody to be a true, pure libertarian to represent libertarianism.
And otherwise, if you don't have that, you also open yourself up to the risk of the Bill Weld effect, where it, you know, and I don't want to accuse Justin Amash of this because I don't know for sure.
But with Bill Weld, it certainly seemed like he used the party when it was convenient to him.
And then as soon as it wasn't convenient to him, he bailed and ran as a Republican again.
And it doesn't seem, and I was listening to some of the stuff he said when he was running as a Republican challenging Trump, and he wasn't saying anything libertarian.
It didn't seem like his position had evolved and become more libertarian.
He was knocking Trump because he said Donald Trump went against the foreign policy bipartisan consensus of the last 50 years, which like I hate the foreign policy consensus of the last 50 years.
And the problem with Trump is not that he's gone against it.
It's that he never did.
He ran on going against it and he's been continuing it.
So libertarians got to be real serious about who you put up as the standard bearer.
And I think you'd want it to be someone who's been consistently principled for a long time.
So you know you can trust them.
And that is that's you in this race.
Well, let me emphasize a point you make because it is such an important point.
The notion of getting large vote totals for the sake of getting large vote totals with a bad message is so horrible.
Because as you point out, I mean, suppose you get 5% or whatever.
If it's all because of the wrong message, what are we in this for?
What are we fighting for?
And I think we need to do some soul searching as libertarians.
I mean, when this party got founded 49 years ago in David Nolan's living room, it was the objective of achieving a free society.
And as you point out, if libertarians are not going to talk about what it means to be free, how do we expect non-libertarians to ever think about it?
I mean, you have to plant these seeds.
You have to make the case.
If people say, well, we've studied it, Jacob, and we're well aware of what you're fighting for.
We reject it.
Okay.
I mean, that's just the break sometimes.
Nobody guarantees you success in life.
But the only way we can achieve the free society is by getting out there and making the case for the free society and running a Republican-like campaign of reforming this and reforming that and reforming this.
Imagine if in 1850 America, you had a group of libertarians running for office to reform slavery.
You know, fewer lashings, shorter work hours.
I mean, would you get excited about that?
I don't think so.
You know, I would be there.
No, we need to dismantle slavery.
And I say the same thing with respect to the serfdom society in which we live, the welfare state, the warfare state.
And as you know, I'm not an anarchist.
I believe in a limited government republic.
But notice that these Republican lights, whether you're talking about Chaffee, Judge Gray, Justin Amash, Bill Weld, regardless, they all want to keep this system intact.
You never hear them talk about dismantling the National Security State.
They'll oppose the Patriot Act or they'll oppose mass surveillance.
But boy, when it comes to dismantling the NSA, dismantling the CIA, dismantling the military-industrial complex, leaving a limited government republic with a basic military force, they run for the hills.
Why?
Because they say that will cost us votes.
Well, I say what matters more is that we fight as libertarians.
And the thing about Amash, this is the other thing Amash is going to have to confront if he gets into this race.
When he left the Republican Party, it wasn't out of principle.
It wasn't that he disagreed with the philosophy of the Republican Party.
It was because he got into a food fight with President Trump over the impeachment.
First over obstruction of justice and then over the quid pro quo in Ukraine and all this nonsense.
Never once did he say, hey, we need to impeach him for killing all these people in these illegal wars, diverting money to build his Berlin wall, a unilateral trade war without congressional approval, raising of tariffs, state-sponsored assassinations.
That's what you impeach a president for, not this nonsense of quid pro quo.
But notice that when he leaves the party, he leaves and becomes an independent.
Choosing the Party Nominee00:09:11
What's that all about?
He could have come directly to the Libertarian Party and said, I'm joining the Libertarian Party.
This is the third largest political party.
It shares my philosophy.
I'm joining up with them.
Instead, he stays around as an independent for what, a year now.
And then, you know, apparently his race for Congress might not be doing too well.
So he says, I think I'll come and use the Libertarian Party.
Well, why?
Why doesn't he run for president as independent?
That was what he chose.
Why come to the Libertarian Party?
Oh, because he can use us with our ballot access.
So, I mean, to me, this just has an unsavory feel to it.
Yeah, I agree.
And, you know, I try not to, you know, even like with guys like Lincoln Chafee, like I said, I'll give him some credit.
He was in the Senate.
He was against the war in Iraq.
There's some things I could like about him.
He's just not a libertarian, and he certainly isn't the standard bearer of libertarianism.
I mean, he can come over to the Libertarian Party and get reading, start reading your Rothbard and your Mises and start learning what a libertarian is, but he's not the guy I want representing us.
And as far as Justin Amash goes, look, he's been a decent congressman in some respects.
I don't want to just knock the guy, but look, his big stand that he chose to make was that Donald Trump should be impeached after the Mueller report, which was just so insane.
And you bring up the fact that he is not, you know, a guy who wants to dismantle the national security apparatus.
He's a reformer.
And look, he sided with the CIA and the NSA and the FBI against President Trump in what was obviously, I mean, it's just a matter of actually understanding what's going on here, assuming he's being honest about this.
This was, listen, me and you have not been shy about being critical about Donald Trump, but the idea that the Mueller report was something that he should have been impeached over, particularly when, as you say, there's all of these other horrible violations of the Constitution and just crimes against humanity that he's guilty of.
But the idea, I mean, come on, that whole thing was so obviously a setup from the very beginning.
And it's just, it was a terrible issue for him to choose.
And I think if we're going to be, you know, the Libertarian Party needs to be, if we have a reason for existing, we have to be attacking the crimes of the CIA and the NSA and the FBI.
These are the people who, you know, lie us into wars, start wars, spy on all the American citizens.
This is a whole network that needs to be dismantled, as you say.
And we don't need people who side with them.
Absolutely.
I mean, this was really just a way to oust him from office.
The establishment, the national security establishment, was totally against Trump from the very beginning.
And you and I both agree, we don't have any love for what this guy's done.
I mean, with these trade wars and all the other things that he's done is horrendous.
But the idea of removing a person from office instead of through an election, through impeachment over a ridiculous thing.
And make no mistake about it, if Amash were to win the nomination of this party, the whole general election campaign would be another personal attack, food fight between him and Trump over the impeachment.
They'd be arguing over quid pro quo, an obstruction of justice.
All libertarian principles would be submerged in that food fight.
We would accomplish nothing with respect to what we're all about.
And that's getting this country out of these crises through the application of libertarian principles.
Yeah, no, I couldn't agree with you more.
So let me ask you: what's your guess of how the nomination process is going to play out now?
Because, of course, we were all excited for the convention, but now it looks like that might not happen.
I had a debate with Nicholas Sarwak, the chairman of the LP, a while back.
And we were basically debating over this idea of whether we should run pure principled candidates as the LP president or not.
And he kept saying to me, he said several times that he was like, Look, Dave, I don't choose who the nominee is, which I didn't think was a very good point because I don't choose who the nominee is either.
And we were debating.
So let's have a debate.
But he said this many times and he said, I don't choose who the nominee is, but it's looking more and more like Nick Sarwak might, in fact, choose who the nominee is.
So I'm curious what you think about that because One of my big concerns at this point is that the leadership in the Libertarian Party is just going to end up saying we're choosing who the nominee is.
And too bad if Jacob Hornberger is winning all the straw polls and winning all these contests, we're going to choose who we think.
What do you think?
How is this going to end up being decided now?
Well, it's very complex.
I mean, it's really not an easy deal because they're governed by their bylaws.
I mean, you can't avoid that.
And the bylaws don't provide for an online convention.
So you can't violate your bylaws because then all of a sudden Democrats and Republicans will say, well, keep Hornberger off the ballot because they didn't follow their own bylaws.
And so the bylaws say that if you don't have a convention, the Libertarian National Committee selects the nominee.
But it has to be a two-thirds vote.
And so we feel pretty confident that we've got enough support there that we could block any kind of trying to cram down a candidate down people's throat with a two-thirds vote.
But if they end up with no candidate, well, I think that would be a very horrendous thing for the party.
So another option is to have a poll of the delegates, like they're voting, but it's not binding, and then let the LNC ratify the vote.
Whoever wins, the LNC does it.
Now, they'd still need the two-thirds vote.
But it seems to me that's a fair way.
However, there's complications there because apparently some states say, well, we can't get the nominee on the ballot unless it's done by convention under the state laws.
So the final option is to go down to Austin.
Well, the ideal option if there wasn't a coronavirus is to have your regular convention.
And they're still talking about that possibility.
And they're under contract with the hotel still.
But the other option is you go down to Austin and you have like a little rump convention where Sarwak calls the meeting to order and somebody makes a motion to amend the bylaws to convert into an online convention in a week.
The problem with that is you need two-thirds vote of the people there.
You need a quorum of people there.
And there's always a possibility that somebody could show up with like 50 supporters, reject that, take over the convention and nominate somebody right there at that rump convention.
So these are all the complications and how they're going to work it out, I have no idea, Dave.
Yeah, I guess we got to just try to be flexible and see where this whole thing goes.
Well, I'll end by just thanking you again for everything you've done running for president.
I think you've got a whole lot of people excited and you've been doing great on the campaign trail.
You have my support and I wish you all the best of luck at the end of this crazy shutdown and all this stuff.
And hopefully we kind of get back to normal and hopefully they have a convention.
I mean, let's see how it goes.
But thanks for everything you're doing.
And if people want to support your campaign, where can they go to help you out?
Yeah, well, thank you, Dave.
I'm so grateful for everything you've done for me.
I just am very, very appreciative.
And thank all your listeners that came and joined the party.
In fact, people can still join the party now.
There's a contest as who can bring in more Libertarian Party members.
And I'm losing that bad.
And so if your listeners want to help out, they can go join the party for 25 bucks or they can come and donate to my campaign.
We really need some help.
It's at jacobforliberty.com.
We'd be very, very grateful.
And, you know, I want to be the nominee of this party.
I want to be, as you point out, the standard bureau.
I want to show the American people what we're fighting for, we libertarians, why we do these podcasts, why we come to these conventions, why we do the think tanks and the educational foundations, why we're libertarians.
I think I can do that.
I can make that case and in the process, show Americans you want to get out of this moros that Democrats and Republicans have plunged our nation.
Join up with us libertarians because we will lead you to a society based on liberty, peace, prosperity, health, and harmony with the people of the world.
Amen.
Jacob Hornberger, Jacob Hornberger running for president, and he's had a lot of success so far.