Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - Immigration With Jen Monroe
Aired: 2020-05-01
Duration: 01:07:34


=== Socks That Keep You Warm (01:28) ===

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=== Citizenship and Voting Rights (16:16) ===

[00:01:28]  All right, let's start the show.
[00:01:33]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:01:35]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:01:36]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:01:40]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:01:46]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:01:51]  You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
[00:01:55]  Here's your host, James Smith.
[00:01:58]  Hey guys, welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:02:02]  I'm thrilled to have our guest for the show today, who is Jen Monroe, also known as Jen the Libertarian.
[00:02:09]  She's got a great podcast, which I was just on a few weeks ago, and she's very smart and well-versed in libertarianism.
[00:02:18]  And so I'm happy to have her on.
[00:02:21]  What we're going to do with today's episode is, I think, an informal debate/slash discussion.
[00:02:27]  I'm actually not sure how much we agree or disagree on the topic.
[00:02:32]  The topic is immigration.
[00:02:34]  I had recently tweeted out that I wanted to do some more debates on the show, and several people had suggested that I have Jen on to debate immigration.
[00:02:44]  And so that's what we're doing.
[00:02:45]  So thanks so much for coming on, Jen.
[00:02:48]  Well, thanks for having me, and thanks for saying nice things about me too.
[00:02:52]  Yeah, I really, if you guys haven't listened, as I mentioned, I just recorded an episode of Jen the Libertarian recently, and it was really great.
[00:03:00]  We had a great conversation.
[00:03:01]  So go check that out if you would like to, or don't if you don't want to.
[00:03:05]  I can't force you.
[00:03:06]  We're all libertarians here.
[00:03:07]  Yeah.
[00:03:09]  So let me ask you, because before we, you know, specifically talk about immigration, kind of a broader question, because I think it'll just help me and the listeners understand where you're coming from a little bit more.
[00:03:20]  So like, where would you classify yourself within libertarianism?
[00:03:25]  Like, what kind of libertarian are you?
[00:03:27]  Like, minarchist, anarchist?
[00:03:29]  Are you more pragmatic?
[00:03:30]  Are you more kind of morally driven?
[00:03:33]  You know, like, how would you define your brand of libertarianism?
[00:03:37]  Well, I like to say I'm an anarchist on a good day and a minarchist on a bad day.
[00:03:42]  I do tend to be a bit pragmatic because, I mean, I do understand a lot of the ideological conversations that we have and a lot of the more theoretical stuff, but we do currently live in the place that we live in right now.
[00:03:54]  And so I think that being a little bit pragmatic about things is helpful, not only within the movement, but also talking to people outside the movement.
[00:04:03]  So that's kind of where I'm at.
[00:04:04]  But I'm definitely, definitely small, small, small L2 anarchist.
[00:04:10]  Okay, interesting.
[00:04:11]  So kind of like if there is a role for the state, it would be strictly night watchman and you're not even convinced the night watchman is the way to go.
[00:04:20]  Exactly.
[00:04:20]  Okay, fair enough.
[00:04:22]  All right.
[00:04:22]  So from there, what would you say your, what would you say your position on immigration would be?
[00:04:28]  And what, you know, ideally, at least, what would you like to see immigration policy look like?
[00:04:34]  I definitely tend much more towards the open borders camp.
[00:04:38]  On the topic of ideological conversations, there is a conversation to be had about the state telling people about freedom of movement and freedom of association and whether there is a proper role for the state to be determining between two people or a person and a corporation what their relationship should be.
[00:04:57]  Pragmatically, I understand that not everybody is comfortable with that.
[00:05:02]  So I am willing to listen to ideas kind of centered around either fixing our current immigration system, which is just horrifying for many, many different reasons, or kind of addressing people's sort of concerns as they come up and kind of stealing an idea here from Brian Kaplan,
[00:05:22]  but coming up with keyhole solutions to where like, if you have a specific issue with immigration that you want addressed, kind of taking that issue and saying, okay, what if we did thing X, would that make you more comfortable with the idea of more open immigration?
[00:05:37]  Right.
[00:05:38]  Okay.
[00:05:38]  So thing X might be cutting welfare or restricting voting or something like that.
[00:05:45]  Yeah.
[00:05:45]  Okay, fair enough.
[00:05:46]  Voter ID laws, perhaps?
[00:05:49]  Perhaps.
[00:05:50]  Still not a huge fan of voter ID, but what's your problem with voter ID?
[00:05:57]  I mean, not even just on the immigration standpoint, but on even for native born people.
[00:06:02]  I know this topic just came up.
[00:06:03]  I forget in which state.
[00:06:05]  I think it was Kansas that struck it down, basically based on the fact that you're disenfranchising a lot of poor people who may not necessarily be able to get a hold of the information that they need to prove their ID, to prove that they were born here, prove citizenship, stuff like that.
[00:06:22]  So it's not simply just an immigration issue.
[00:06:25]  But yeah, just, I don't know.
[00:06:28]  So maybe this is just an interesting place to start and we can get more broader into the immigration stuff.
[00:06:33]  But maybe this is where I've become more of a hardliner or what some people might consider a right winger or something like that.
[00:06:39]  But I just, I don't care about democracy and I don't particularly care about people's right to vote over who rules their neighbor.
[00:06:47]  And to me, if you cannot get it together enough to get an ID, I don't particularly care about that person not having a vote.
[00:06:57]  Like I'm just fine with that.
[00:06:59]  And if we're going to say that that's disenfranchising, then shouldn't we be equally outraged at Amtrak, at government buildings, at private buildings that require ID to go into them?
[00:07:11]  I mean, you can't, I mean, I don't know, liquor stores and cigarette bodegas.
[00:07:16]  I mean, shouldn't we be outraged about every area in life where you need an ID?
[00:07:20]  Sure.
[00:07:21]  I mean, there is an argument to be made about that too.
[00:07:24]  I mean, that there's a lot of things that you have to show ID for that really honestly, like why?
[00:07:29]  Like, seriously.
[00:07:31]  Do you think that immigrants should have the right to vote, illegal or legal?
[00:07:37]  No, I do think you should have to be a U.S. citizen to vote.
[00:07:40]  Okay, fair enough.
[00:07:42]  So if you are one that believes in voting.
[00:07:45]  Okay, but if we're not.
[00:07:46]  Right, sure.
[00:07:47]  But I mean, look, in the current situation, voting does exist, whether or not I like it.
[00:07:52]  But so, you know, what measure, if we're gonna have something that looks like open borders, then basically what is an illegal immigrant goes away overnight, right?
[00:08:04]  So there's no such thing as an illegal immigrant if it's legal for everybody to come here.
[00:08:09]  So how does that work with your distinction of illegal immigrants not voting?
[00:08:14]  Wouldn't open borders just turn them into legal immigrants?
[00:08:17]  Not necessarily, because like I said, you would have to be a U.S. citizen to be able to vote, right?
[00:08:22]  You can be in the United States either legally or illegally and not have that status.
[00:08:27]  Like you can be here on a visa, you could be a legal permanent resident, you could be in the citizenship process, and you're still not eligible to vote, but you're here legally.
[00:08:35]  And then obviously, I guess if you don't, you know, inform the right person that you're crossing the magic line, then obviously you're not a citizen, so you don't get to vote.
[00:08:45]  So by what mechanism would we restrict these people who are here legally now, but not citizens, from voting if not some type of ID?
[00:08:58]  Because currently I think the system is they ask you your residence and it varies state by state, but they ask you your residence and they ask you to say that you're here legally or say that you're a citizen.
[00:09:10]  But like by what mechanism do we stop illegals from voting?
[00:09:15]  Or not illegals, I'm sorry, but non-citizens.
[00:09:18]  Non-citizens, yeah.
[00:09:20]  That's actually a good question.
[00:09:21]  I don't know.
[00:09:22]  I mean, there's got to be something.
[00:09:26]  I mean, proof of residency does help, obviously.
[00:09:30]  Obviously, in Osborne, you got to make sure that you're voting in the right spot.
[00:09:33]  You can't be like a citizen of Georgia and then go vote in like New York's local elections.
[00:09:40]  But I don't know.
[00:09:42]  It's just that that is a problem that what would you think would be the solution to it?
[00:09:48]  Well, I mean, look, this is why I would think voter ID maybe would be the best one.
[00:09:52]  And I don't, you know, I believe me, I don't like any of the like show me your papers stuff.
[00:09:57]  I don't, I'm not a big fan of like government issued IDs being, you know, necessary.
[00:10:01]  I'd like to see it all privatized and then I think it would work much better.
[00:10:06]  But within reason, given the current system we have, I think voter ID is probably the best way to determine that somebody is a legal citizen, is who they say they are.
[00:10:19]  But I don't know.
[00:10:20]  Other than that, I mean, I think it's a real issue.
[00:10:23]  What would you like to see be used for identification for voter ID, given that you can have a driver's license without being a U.S. citizen?
[00:10:32]  Yeah, well, I suppose it would be some, and that's not true, I think, in every state, but there are for the majority of states.
[00:10:38]  Yes, that is the case.
[00:10:39]  I'd like to see something that's an ID that demonstrates that you're a citizen.
[00:10:44]  So instead, we've had a push in many states.
[00:10:47]  I know Illinois, where there's been push to give IDs, design specific IDs for illegal immigrants.
[00:10:54]  And I'd rather see a push in the other direction where there was some type of ID that did validate that you were, you know, in fact, a United States citizen.
[00:11:03]  Again, I don't have the exact answer for this either.
[00:11:06]  So it's, you know, I think it's just an interesting thought.
[00:11:09]  However, as I said before, I'm much more comfortable with voter restriction in general.
[00:11:15]  So I'm not opposed to creative ideas on that front.
[00:11:19]  Can I ask you though?
[00:11:20]  Because I just, I want to get in, kind of like understand where you're coming from.
[00:11:24]  Why is it that you don't want non-citizens voting?
[00:11:28]  Like, what's the concern there?
[00:11:31]  I mean, I do think that if you are here in the United States and if you want to participate, then yeah, you should be a U.S. citizen.
[00:11:38]  I know there's people that feel differently about that.
[00:11:41]  But I feel like if you're going to make some kind of cutoff between who votes and who doesn't vote, citizenship is the most obvious one to choose because it's the most easy one to discern, like either you are a citizen or you aren't a citizen.
[00:11:55]  If you want to start getting into things like, well, how long have you lived here?
[00:11:58]  Like what's your legal status?
[00:12:00]  Stuff like that starts getting a lot more murky.
[00:12:02]  So like I said, if you have to have a cutoff somewhere, I think citizenship is just the easiest one to do.
[00:12:08]  Okay, fair enough.
[00:12:10]  I guess, so my position more or less on immigration is that I used to be kind of an open borders advocate, if you will.
[00:12:18]  And I changed my mind on this.
[00:12:20]  And I changed my mind just from thinking through the issue.
[00:12:25]  And look, just to even step back more, I think this is a really important conversation to have, particularly right now amongst libertarians, because obviously immigration has been a huge issue in this country.
[00:12:38]  It's the central issue of Donald Trump's campaign.
[00:12:41]  And it was kind of the central issue of the opposition to Donald Trump, that, you know, kids in cages and he's so horrible on immigration and all this stuff.
[00:12:48]  And particularly in the current situation that we're living through now, I think immigration is going to be, there's going to be even more passion poured into this issue because, of course, with the concerns about viruses traveling from country to country and also with the fact that, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 million people are going to be out of work after this all thing is over.
[00:13:13]  And whether fairly or unfairly, when people are out of work, they tend to blame immigrants and not want more people coming in to compete for labor.
[00:13:22]  I don't completely agree with that view, but it is objectively that is how people feel in these situations.
[00:13:29]  And this is also a topic where there's a big split between libertarians.
[00:13:33]  And there has been for years.
[00:13:34]  There are, I mean, even within the Mises Institute, there's a big split on how people feel about immigration.
[00:13:41]  Like Walter Block and Hans Hermann Hoppe have very, very different takes on this topic.
[00:13:47]  So to me, more or less, I think that as long as government is controlling the borders, immigration is more or less a government program, whether it's open borders or closed borders or what we have now, which is a disastrous combination of the two.
[00:14:05]  And so to me, I think it is no more libertarian or less libertarian to want open borders or closed borders.
[00:14:14]  Now, that doesn't mean I support either.
[00:14:16]  I hate government programs in general.
[00:14:19]  I'd rather see them abolished.
[00:14:20]  But I think it's a little bit more complicated than I initially thought it was.
[00:14:26]  So do you think it's a more libertarian solution to have open borders than theoretically closed?
[00:14:34]  I do, but just because that's where I'm coming from, and I've heard the arguments both ways.
[00:14:39]  Like I know the Hoppe arguments.
[00:14:41]  I know the more closed border arguments.
[00:14:43]  I know the arguments that people make about private property versus public property.
[00:14:47]  And if the government owns this property, then they get to decide who crosses over onto it.
[00:14:53]  I take more of a kind of broader approach of saying, is that really the role of the state to be making that decision?
[00:15:02]  And again, within libertarianism, there's lots of different strains of thought.
[00:15:05]  I personally don't feel like they should, but I know I'm not the majority, which is kind of funny to me, because people kind of from the outside looking into libertarianism think that this is pretty much like a settled debate and it's very much not within libertarianism.
[00:15:22]  They think we're all open borders.
[00:15:23]  And it's like, no, this is kind of one of the third rails of libertarianism.
[00:15:27]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:15:29]  Yeah.
[00:15:30]  But as far as I can see there becoming more of an appetite for restricting immigration, I mean, and it's already happening right now.
[00:15:37]  I mean, Donald Trump just signed that executive order that kind of doesn't do what it has advertised, but it does.
[00:15:45]  And it's just kind of weird and complicated anyway.
[00:15:47]  But even before that, as far as, I mean, due to COVID, we've closed the southern border.
[00:15:52]  We've closed the northern border.
[00:15:54]  Even before that, we've put in incredibly restrictive programs in place as far as being able to get visas, as far as being able to apply for asylum.
[00:16:03]  So that was something that's already kind of been rolling and had something of popular support.
[00:16:09]  I do think it is going to be that way going forward too, because that's just historically how this has always worked out.
[00:16:14]  Whenever things start kind of constricting economically, people start turning towards, oh, the immigrants, we have to get rid of the immigrants.
[00:16:20]  We have to protect the American jobs.
[00:16:23]  We have to get rid of the ones that are here.
[00:16:26]  And there have been occasions, especially during the Great Depression, where we actually did deport people for being here that technically shouldn't have been deported because they were actually Americans.
[00:16:36]  But anyway, but yeah, so I can see that going forward.
[00:16:40]  And I feel like it's a little misplaced, especially on the jobs front, because the jobs that are being shed right now are not the jobs that immigrants would normally take.
[00:16:51]  And the people that are losing their jobs right now are not the people who are going to go and replace the immigrant labor for various reasons that we can get into as far as what labor immigrants do and kind of how not so great that system is and kind of how we trade on the backs of undocumented people while still saying we don't want you here,
[00:17:14]  but we need you here to work in the chicken plant and to go pick the tomatoes and to do all the kinds of things we don't want to do.
[00:17:22]  So I think kind of doing that economic sort of thing doesn't really take into effect the actual reality of, okay, we have all these people out of work.
[00:17:34]  There's these other jobs.
[00:17:35]  Those people are not going to want to do those jobs.
[00:17:37]  And even if you get them to do them, the second that you don't have to do them anymore, they're going to go back to doing whatever it was they were doing in the first place.

=== Libertarian Immigration Predicament (16:42) ===

[00:17:45]  Yeah, I mean, I tend to agree with you for the most part on that stuff.
[00:17:49]  And I've never been somebody who's, you know, like they're taking our jobs or that type of argument just has never appealed to me or resonated with me.
[00:17:59]  All right, let's take a quick moment.
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[00:19:26]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:19:28]  What I do, what I am concerned about, very much concerned about, is Some other effects that the flooding of immigration into this country has had.
[00:19:40]  And it's as I said before, after I kind of came to the realization or the opinion that really with government controls of the borders, there's really no libertarian solution other than the best solution, which we all would advocate for, which is just get the government out of it and privatize borders and let this thing work just like a market works in any other way.
[00:20:01]  That would be ideal.
[00:20:04]  But given that that's not the situation, if you're just saying, you know, if we're playing would you rather with A or B, given the way it is, there are some problems that I think are hard to avoid.
[00:20:19]  And the number one, obvious problem is that is the voting.
[00:20:25]  Number two is the welfare.
[00:20:27]  And these are really big problems for a libertarian or for anybody, but I think it does us no service if we don't thoroughly address them.
[00:20:38]  So this is obviously a big democratic scheme to be for immigration into this country, which are which vote 70 to 80% in favor of them.
[00:20:51]  So they're quite happy about this.
[00:20:53]  There's a reason why they made this the third rail, and you're literally Hitler if you believe in restricting immigration, which is a very new standard for what makes you a Nazi.
[00:21:04]  I mean, restrictive immigration policies exist all around the world.
[00:21:08]  It was far from a fascist invention.
[00:21:12]  But the truth is that this is going to have a major effect on voting patterns on states voting over the next decades, if not less than that.
[00:21:26]  That is going to be very, very good for Democrats on national electoral levels.
[00:21:33]  And I don't really feel so great about that.
[00:21:35]  And it's certainly not that the Republicans are perfect, but overall, probably marginally better than the Democrats are.
[00:21:44]  I mean, there's maybe four good people in Congress.
[00:21:48]  There's, you know, we have Thomas Massey, we have Mike Lee and Rand Paul, and maybe even I'll throw Justin Amash in there.
[00:21:56]  And all of them, with the exception of Justin Amash as of a minute ago, were Republicans.
[00:22:02]  The Democrats' fringes are like the AOCs of the world and the Ilhan Omars.
[00:22:08]  There's almost no silver lining in that party.
[00:22:11]  And so I don't know if I really like the idea of them rigging the system for them.
[00:22:16]  In addition to that, there's the problem that immigrants, because we live in such a giant welfare state, there's really no getting around it that they're going to get taxpayer money in one way or the other.
[00:22:28]  Does seem to me to be pretty unfair to the taxpaying population.
[00:22:34]  And then I guess third, I would say that I do have some cultural concerns about huge numbers of people from very, very different cultures, cultures that I don't prefer to the culture of America, coming in in a time where we already have so much cultural turmoil.
[00:22:54]  And it seems to me that there should be some method of recourse for people if they don't want people from other cultures coming in to their country.
[00:23:05]  So I know I'm rambling on a lot there and I've said a lot, but you can respond to any of that or give me your thoughts.
[00:23:12]  I'll start with the voting one because I feel like there's a reason why immigrants, when they do vote, vote Democratic.
[00:23:19]  And that's because, I mean, if you're looking at it as a binary, if you got Democrat or Republican, Republicans pretty much ceded the field to Democrats when it comes to immigrants because of the way Republicans portray immigration now and immigrants.
[00:23:32]  Like you're not really going to feel very keen to vote for somebody if that group of people thinks you're kind of a piece of shit.
[00:23:40]  So it's kind of a de facto, we're going to vote for Democrats because obviously Republicans don't really want us here.
[00:23:48]  Traditionally speaking, I would think that if Republicans could get over their weird anti-immigrant fixation, they could have a very strong case to make to immigrants because a lot of these immigrants are culturally speaking more conservative than your average Democrat.
[00:24:06]  So you could kind of get back in there and make those sort of cultural arguments to immigrants.
[00:24:11]  And I feel like there is an area for libertarians to pitch themselves to immigrants, especially immigrants who are coming from either just failed states like Cuba or Venezuela, or if you're coming from like Northern Triangle states that have been overrun by cartels and you're having to flee cartels, like these people have a much more intimate knowledge of what it's like to live in a failed state than hopefully we ever will.
[00:24:34]  So I feel like there's an argument that could be made to these people, like, look, we are the people that just want to leave you alone.
[00:24:41]  You come here, you make your life for yourself, work, get married, start a family, buy a house, do whatever, just live your life.
[00:24:49]  And that maybe there is kind of a place for us in this conversation too.
[00:24:53]  But I think just assuming that or that immigrants want to vote for Democrats because they particularly care for Democrats, I mean, I don't imagine anybody coming here from like, I don't know, Nicaragua is super concerned about the Green New Deal.
[00:25:10]  Like they're concerned with, I don't want to die and I would like to make money.
[00:25:15]  So I feel like they might want money, but if the Democrats, if you're someone who's dirt poor, who's coming from, you know, a third world country and somebody's offering you more of a handout, it's hard for me to even blame that person for being attracted to that if they are.
[00:25:36]  And I, you know, it might be the case that they feel like Republicans look at them like they're a piece of shit and that's why they don't want to vote for Republicans.
[00:25:43]  Although with the exception of Donald Trump, in my lifetime, I feel like all the Republicans have kind of bent over backward to try to be as appealing to immigrants as they could.
[00:25:53]  And it never seemed to really get them much.
[00:25:57]  You know, George W. Bush did a little bit better than Mitt Romney did, but still the vast majority were voting for Democrats.
[00:26:03]  And I guess the issue that libertarians have is that a lot of people, including the open borders type libertarians, will say, well, listen, your problem isn't with immigrants.
[00:26:14]  Your problem is with welfare.
[00:26:16]  So cut the welfare state and we can let immigrants in.
[00:26:19]  The issue, however, is that if they're voting overwhelmingly for Democrats, letting immigrants in makes it more and more unlikely that we can cut the welfare state.
[00:26:29]  So there's a little bit of a predicament for libertarians there.
[00:26:34]  And I've seen people make like for the accelerationist argument for letting in as many immigrants as possible to kind of collapse the welfare state that way.
[00:26:42]  I don't think that's going to work.
[00:26:43]  I think our current stimulus packages show that we will just print money until, I don't know, the press breaks.
[00:26:50]  I'm not sure.
[00:26:51]  But as it stands right now, it's already illegal for immigrants to receive federal sort of welfare benefits on a state level.
[00:27:01]  I mean, that's something that I think should be and is now handled on a state-by-state basis as to who they want to let in their programs or not.
[00:27:11]  Right.
[00:27:12]  But as you know, there's, you know, the welfare state and the federal control of funding is so insidious that there's real, it's very hard to separate these things out.
[00:27:23]  So, I mean, if you're driving on roads, there's federal funding attached to that.
[00:27:27]  If you're going to public schools, there's federal funding attached to that.
[00:27:31]  In many cases, if you're going to hospitals, there's federal funding attached to that, at least in the form of this kind of, you know, Obamacare monstrosity where everything is kind of tied together and there are laws that say you can't turn people away from emergency rooms.
[00:27:44]  And then those costs get shifted onto the premiums, which the healthcare that we're forced to buy through this state system.
[00:27:50]  So even if there are some welfare programs that illegals aren't eligible for, of course, by the way, people game that system all the time because it's run by the government and they're completely incompetent.
[00:28:01]  But there's no question that immigrants, especially somebody who just came over from El Salvador or something like that, El Salvador.
[00:28:09]  Did I say El Salvador?
[00:28:10]  Anyway, wherever that place is, down there.
[00:28:14]  Somewhere down there.
[00:28:15]  Someone who just came over from there, if they come here and they got some kids and they're going to school, I mean, just that alone, they're taking out way, way more than they could possibly be expected to put in.
[00:28:27]  You know, that's got to be the reality for the vast majority of impoverished immigrants, which of course is the vast, vast, vast majority of immigrants who come into the country.
[00:28:37]  Well, let me put a question to you this way.
[00:28:41]  If you want to accept the fact that immigrants come here and disproportionately take more of welfare than native-born people, would not the solution be then to take those immigrants, get them into the system to make them pay taxes the same way you and I have to pay taxes, and then therefore you kind of square the circle that way.
[00:29:00]  Well, it's again, this is why it's such a conundrum for libertarians, because that's another very bad solution.
[00:29:06]  I mean, the last thing I want is more money going to the federal government.
[00:29:10]  I'm really not interested in funding a criminal organization.
[00:29:14]  And I'm also not interested in these people having their money stolen.
[00:29:18]  So the problem with that is that, yeah, then you're just kind of expanding the size and scope of the state in a different way.
[00:29:26]  Whereas I think a much better situation, much better solution, as far as libertarians are concerned, is to cut the welfare, right?
[00:29:34]  So we all agree on that.
[00:29:35]  The problem is that you're now importing a lot of people who are going to use the, and when I say welfare, I mean very broadly speaking, I mean schools, roads, hospitals, everything.
[00:29:46]  And plus other welfare programs that illegal immigrants do get.
[00:29:50]  But, you know, so you've just, you've got a little bit of an issue here.
[00:29:55]  And as far as government violation of natural rights goes, you know, violating the non-aggression principle, I mean, this is really the major libertarian problem with government is that they initiate violence against peaceful people all the time.
[00:30:12]  However, seeing as how there really is no, you know, excluding someone from a piece of property is not seen as violence by libertarians.
[00:30:25]  And certainly the state makes this murky.
[00:30:28]  But to just not allow immigrants into the country in many ways seems like given all the choices where there is some violation of the non-aggression principle in every way, seems much better to me than either forcing the taxpayer to subsidize immigration that they don't want to or forcing those immigrants, you know, stealing their money to give to a criminal organization.
[00:30:52]  I think out of those bad solutions, restricting immigration to me seems to be probably the best.
[00:31:02]  See, here's the thing, though.
[00:31:03]  When you restrict immigration, you tell these people that you can't come here.
[00:31:08]  Now, what happens to those people?
[00:31:11]  Like, you get stuck wherever it is, you get stuck.
[00:31:13]  And presumably, you're wanting to come here not solely because you want welfare benefits, but because wherever you live sucks for whatever reason.
[00:31:20]  Some places suck way, way, way more than others.
[00:31:24]  So now you have this situation where you're telling somebody, like, okay, you have to go live in this country that is run by drug hotels, or you have to live in this socialist country, or you have to live in this country where you can't make a living and you're going to be dirt poor and you're going to die.
[00:31:41]  So there is kind of a trade-off to that.
[00:31:44]  Yeah, no, listen, I agree with you on that.
[00:31:46]  And it's really tragic.
[00:31:47]  And I also very, very much agree that they're, for the most part, not coming here for welfare.
[00:31:54]  They're coming here because life is better here than it is where they are.
[00:31:57]  And probably any one of us would do the same thing in their situation.
[00:32:01]  But to use one of my many flawed analogies that I've said before, is that if, you know, if five homeless people show up on my doorstep tomorrow and ask if they can sleep over at my house, the answer is going to be no.
[00:32:19]  And it's like, well, no, I'm sorry, this is for my wife and my daughter, and it's not for you.
[00:32:23]  And in many ways, you could make a similar argument.
[00:32:26]  I mean, am I forcing them to stay in their life that that's horrible?
[00:32:31]  That's not as good as life here.
[00:32:33]  And it's like, yeah, in a sense, I am.
[00:32:36]  And I hope that they get help in their life.
[00:32:39]  But it's not necessarily my responsibility.
[00:32:42]  And I don't know that I can solve all of their problems here, even though, no question, life would be better for them if they could sleep over at my house than to still be out on the street.
[00:32:52]  Now, I understand this is a flawed analogy, but I'm just making the point that I don't know that it's necessarily that there's an obligation, let alone that they should be forced by the government to say, oh, no, you have to open your doors and you have to help all of these people out.
[00:33:09]  I hope that they can make a better situation for themselves in their country.
[00:33:14]  Maybe there's another country that wants to take them in.
[00:33:18]  But I don't know that, you know, certainly when if you look at America and we've been bringing in more or less a million immigrants every year legally for most of my life, it's been around that number.
[00:33:32]  So, you know, give or take, something in the ballpark of 35 million immigrants taken in here legally in my lifetime.
[00:33:42]  The illegals on top of that are who the hell knows?
[00:33:46]  Somewhere from 20 to 50 million, it seems like in that area.
[00:33:51]  I don't think it's completely unreasonable to say, like, you know, we've taken a lot and I don't know if there's an obligation to take more.
[00:34:00]  But going back to your example of your five homeless people.
[00:34:04]  All right.
[00:34:04]  So then what do you do with the five homeless people?
[00:34:07]  Like they're still there.
[00:34:08]  Like, do you tell them, go to the homeless shelter or here's $5 or what do we do with the homeless people?
[00:34:16]  Well, look, I mean, if to extend the analogy, right, it's not just that there's five homeless people, right?
[00:34:23]  Because it's not just that there's like Mexico and El Salvador and whatever.

=== Ending the War on Drugs (04:42) ===

[00:34:27]  There's the entire world.
[00:34:28]  I mean, there's all of Africa.
[00:34:30]  There's all of Central Asia.
[00:34:32]  There's South America.
[00:34:33]  The amount of poverty that is throughout the world is just, it's really hard for us to even wrap our heads around.
[00:34:41]  There's hundreds of millions of people who live in extreme poverty.
[00:34:46]  And that's, by the way, the extreme poverty, that's not the Mexicans.
[00:34:49]  They're actually doing quite a bit better than the people who live in extreme poverty in, say, sub-Saharan Africa or something like that.
[00:34:56]  So, well, obviously, all of this problem cannot be solved by come to America.
[00:35:03]  That's not practical.
[00:35:04]  And I don't think it's ideal.
[00:35:06]  I think what we'd want to do is number one, stop fucking over their countries with our political policies.
[00:35:12]  I mean, I'd be very happy to see that.
[00:35:13]  No more coups, no more war on drugs, no more propping up these cartels.
[00:35:18]  I think that would do a lot.
[00:35:19]  But other than that, unfortunately, I think about the best thing we could do is like, you know, airdrop Murray Rothbard pamphlets on them and just be like, look, this is the way to go.
[00:35:31]  If you want to build wealth, you know, free up markets and hope that they listen.
[00:35:37]  And I know that's not the most satisfactory answer, but I think that's about the best we can do.
[00:35:45]  I think the best that we could do in this country to help people stay in their other countries is to end the war on drugs.
[00:35:52]  Please, dear God, give these people a fighting chance in their own country.
[00:35:57]  But again, absent that, because there's a whole nother thing.
[00:36:00]  It's like trying to get rid of the welfare state.
[00:36:02]  Trying to get rid of the war on drugs has not been super successful.
[00:36:06]  So it still leaves you with this predicament of the pragmatic here and now.
[00:36:11]  Like, what do we do with these people?
[00:36:12]  Like, you have, I mean, at this point, I don't even know if they're still keeping numbers of how many people are in the migrant protection protocol waiting to file for asylum.
[00:36:22]  Like, what now?
[00:36:23]  Like, what do you do?
[00:36:25]  Yeah.
[00:36:25]  Well, there's, and there's no question that the look, if, because I know a lot of people have said to me when I've made this, you know, similar kind of points on immigration before, they say, I, I, you know, I can't believe you, Dave, would, because this is probably of all the issues, the one I get the most heat from from libertarians and from my own audience, which is very divided on this issue.
[00:36:45]  And I managed to piss both of them off, like both sides of them off whenever I talk about immigration.
[00:36:50]  But they'll say, I can't believe you trust the government to enforce immigration policy.
[00:36:55]  And it's like, I don't.
[00:36:56]  I know that they will fuck it up.
[00:36:58]  I am very, very confident, no matter whether it's the current system or any other variation of government controlling the borders, they will fuck it up.
[00:37:07]  And I am not for many of the horrific excesses of the current system.
[00:37:13]  I mean, I think, you know, locking up people in cages and all of that stuff is horrific.
[00:37:18]  And, you know, I, again, it's like even the judicial ruling that led to all the kids in cages thing was that kids can't be in the same facilities as adults.
[00:37:29]  I completely disagree with that.
[00:37:30]  I think separating families is horrible.
[00:37:32]  I mean, no matter how terrible a condition is, I think babies should be with their mothers.
[00:37:36]  I mean, I like 100% support that.
[00:37:42]  But again, if we're just talking about best of bad situations, if there is a public park and we might all, as libertarians, say, this shouldn't be public.
[00:37:56]  It was, you know, it was built off stolen money and whatever other libertarian problem you could have with the public park.
[00:38:02]  But if there's a playground there and there are, you know, people, you know, shooting up heroin in the playground and they're like, the cops are going to remove them because, you know, this is not for them.
[00:38:14]  This is for children to play on.
[00:38:16]  As a libertarian, I find that to be somewhat reasonable.
[00:38:20]  I mean, I don't like that the cops exist.
[00:38:21]  I don't like that the park exists.
[00:38:23]  But given all of this existing, it's like, yeah, okay, I'm okay with the government saying you can't be here.
[00:38:28]  Now, if you were to say that and you're like, yeah, but they fight a whole war on drugs and they throw people in cages for heroin and all this.
[00:38:33]  It's like, well, I can be against that part of it, but also be like, I don't really like them being here on the playground.
[00:38:40]  And that is also a concern.
[00:38:44]  I think that also there is a difference between saying, I don't want you to do heroin right over here.
[00:38:50]  and that be saying, I don't want you to do heroin anywhere at all.
[00:38:54]  Like you can go do heroin in your house.
[00:38:56]  That's fine.
[00:38:56]  And I do think that is the distinction.
[00:38:58]  I mean, you can say, and even Rothbard eventually came around to the position of saying that, okay, if you wanted to do like in Kapistan, you could have various private properties, private states.

=== Cultural Hypocrisy in Advocacy (13:58) ===

[00:39:09]  And some people could be like, yes, we want the immigrants.
[00:39:12]  Some people would be like, no, we don't want the immigrants.
[00:39:14]  And actually, back when they set the new refugee cap, it's at like 16,000 for fiscal year 2020, which is insane given the current world situation.
[00:39:26]  Utah said that, like, well, wait, we still want to take in immigrants because apparently that's a big thing in Utah and in Mormonism.
[00:39:34]  They like to take in refugees, asylum seekers.
[00:39:37]  It's kind of their thing.
[00:39:38]  It's part of their faith.
[00:39:39]  And so they gave a lot of pushback on that by saying like, well, we still want to do this.
[00:39:44]  So why are you telling us that we can't do this?
[00:39:46]  Yeah, no, no question.
[00:39:48]  So you end up having a violation of rights in that sense.
[00:39:53]  If you restrict immigration, there are communities of people who would want them in.
[00:39:56]  And this is, again, a problem with government intervening.
[00:40:00]  However, the other thing is that there's also a violation of rights by having open borders under the current situation, where clearly, I mean, I don't know that it's the majority of Americans, although I think there is some polling to suggest that it is.
[00:40:15]  But 63 million people voted for Donald Trump.
[00:40:18]  I'd have to imagine the vast majority of them were pretty much wanted tighter immigration controls.
[00:40:26]  And many of these people are basically being forced to subsidize immigration.
[00:40:34]  The Democrats, of course, are telling them they should have to subsidize them much more, that immigrants' entire health care should be taken care of, that their education should, all of these things, all the stuff that's going to ensure they have a tough time in the general election that they got Biden to raise his hand on in the Democratic debates.
[00:40:51]  But Biden, side note, might actually be able to plausibly say, I had no idea what I was raising my hand for, and people might buy that.
[00:40:59]  All right, let's take a quick moment.
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[00:41:55]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:41:58]  So they're being told that.
[00:41:59]  And at the same time, we have these other rules where basically communities that don't want immigrants in their communities are completely handcuffed by the state.
[00:42:10]  You can't say, I'm not hiring immigrants.
[00:42:13]  You can't say I'm not renting to immigrants.
[00:42:15]  You can't say we're not going to have immigrants in these communities.
[00:42:18]  I mean, it's all that these would be lawsuits in every one of these areas and people know that.
[00:42:24]  So that's the libertarian problem with the open borders.
[00:42:27]  And so I agree with you.
[00:42:28]  There's a libertarian problem with closed borders.
[00:42:30]  It's just there's also a problem with open borders.
[00:42:33]  And many times, I'm certainly not saying this is you, but certainly many of the critics of Donald Trump's immigration proposals come from elite type people.
[00:42:47]  Uh, you know whether it's, you know, the Nancy Pelosis or the Alyssa Milanos of the world, and they're like this is outrageous that you wouldn't just let all of these people uh, flood into the country.
[00:42:58]  Meanwhile, they're living in areas where this isn't going to affect them.
[00:43:02]  Uh, they have recourse, they have gated communities, they have you know what i'm saying whereas it's like it's the working class people who you know look, I understand they.
[00:43:11]  They don't necessarily want their uh, their communities and cultures to change in this pretty drastic way.
[00:43:18]  Yeah, I mean, there is a bit of hypocrisy of people advocating for immigration who don't have to deal with the effects of it.
[00:43:24]  But the flip side of your argument of the state telling people that you have to interact with immigrants is, on a lot of levels, especially with unemployment, especially with housing, there are regulations that say that you can't like, if somebody is not a here legally, you can't rent to them, you can't hire them, and so there is that flip side to that argument where the state is still getting involved in this transaction, that they shouldn't be, it shouldn't be, they should not have an opinion on it like, and they do, clearly.
[00:43:54]  But I just want to point out that there is a flip side to that argument.
[00:43:57]  Yeah you're, you're right um, although I think, by and large, those rules are pretty much unenforced.
[00:44:02]  I mean so technically, it is illegal to pay under the minimum wage in New York City.
[00:44:07]  It is illegal to hire uh illegal immigrants.
[00:44:09]  Walk into any store in New York City.
[00:44:12]  It's all being done at every single one of them.
[00:44:15]  I mean like it's just complete.
[00:44:16]  They completely look the other way.
[00:44:18]  Now again, there's.
[00:44:19]  So there's libertarian problems.
[00:44:21]  I'm not advocating they crack down on small businesses, but it there, you're right.
[00:44:25]  A lot of those rules do exist on paper but, as is evidenced by the fact that there are tens of millions of illegal immigrants in the country and the vast majority of them are working, they're working these uh, you know um uh, you know off the books uh, jobs.
[00:44:41]  And, by the way hey, this there's another thing, when they tell you you know there's 30 million, I believe the number of people who have uh applied for unemployment insurance goes up to.
[00:44:49]  That's something that's not being recorded at all.
[00:44:51]  I mean, how many illegal immigrants have lost their jobs?
[00:44:53]  We, we really have uh, have no idea, do you?
[00:44:57]  Let me just ask you this kind of uh, an attempt at you know uh uh, reducto ad absurdum um, of the open borders position.
[00:45:06]  Is there any situation because obviously in Ankapistan there would this problem is solved.
[00:45:13]  Communities who want to take in people can, communities who want to exclude people can, and that, I think, is the best way to solve this problem and pretty much all other political problems.
[00:45:22]  Yeah, but given you know uh, that we have a status system, or even in a minarchist uh system which you, you support on a bad day um, what?
[00:45:31]  Is there any type of situation where you would say?
[00:45:36]  like an extreme situation where you would say, okay, it's legitimate for government to restrict people immigrating into the country?
[00:45:44]  I mean, this is an example that a mutual friend of ours who he told me this on the phone.
[00:45:50]  So I don't know, I won't give his name out because I'm not sure he would want me to, but he leans toward open borders.
[00:45:55]  But even he was saying, he was like, well, I mean, let's say, you know, India threatens to nuke Pakistan, or I think the example was Pakistan threatens to nuke India and 200 million people want to come here tomorrow.
[00:46:12]  Is it just the fact that we have to accept, okay, we're going to be a Hindu country now and everything about our way of life is going to change?
[00:46:21]  Or do the people have some recourse to say we don't really want that?
[00:46:27]  Well, I mean, it is reducto ad absortum in that you're not going to get all 200 million people wanting to come to the United States.
[00:46:32]  I mean, they are going to disperse to other countries.
[00:46:34]  Like, we're not the only country that people want to come to.
[00:46:37]  But I mean, there is, and I mean, I think that would fall under like a refugee program.
[00:46:42]  You're escaping a war zone.
[00:46:43]  Like, obviously, you don't want to get nuked.
[00:46:44]  You don't want to die.
[00:46:46]  So, I mean, I think, especially in the United States, we are talking about a country that is a very large country.
[00:46:53]  Like, we have a very large landmass.
[00:46:56]  And typically, once people get here, usually you kind of disperse out a bit, certain exclusions apply.
[00:47:02]  But I think that they're like kind of like that argument of like there's not enough room in the United States.
[00:47:09]  I think there is.
[00:47:09]  And that's also to say that, say, the Indian-Pakistani war breaks out and nobody gets nuked.
[00:47:17]  Eventually, these people are probably going to want to go home.
[00:47:21]  So, especially like with a lot of refugee status, it is supposed to be temporary anyway.
[00:47:26]  Like, it's supposed to be like, okay, you go wherever you go.
[00:47:29]  And then when the war is done, you go home.
[00:47:32]  So, I think it would be more of a temporary thing in that situation than a permanent thing.
[00:47:36]  Yeah, possibly.
[00:47:37]  But I also think that, you know, housing, obviously, I'm using an extreme to paint a picture, but housing 200 million people and the effects that this would have on our culture, on our country, on our economy would be pretty drastic.
[00:47:49]  And I just think, you know, people generally have a right to be like, no, we don't want that.
[00:47:53]  And obviously, in Ankapistan, they would have a right and a means.
[00:47:58]  The problem is, in today's situation, the only means really is the government because the government has monopolized all of this control.
[00:48:05]  And I guess the point, obviously, I'm using this extreme to paint an example, but the point is that, you know, the idea of reducto ad absurdum in general is like, okay, well, if you can concede the point on this, you know, kind of extreme level, where exactly do we draw that line?
[00:48:21]  Like, when does it get to a point that it's reasonable to say, okay, this is a bit much.
[00:48:26]  And I just think if you kind of look, if you understand the difference between cultures of a lot of the countries where people, where the immigrants are coming from versus ours, that's a pretty big deal.
[00:48:40]  And if you understand the history of multiracial, multicultural democracies, they usually don't work out that well.
[00:48:50]  And it leads to a lot of tribal conflict, which I don't know if you've been on Twitter lately, but we're already seeing quite a bit of.
[00:48:58]  And you start to go, is this not a recipe for disaster taking in a million immigrants every year, plus God knows how many others that are undocumented coming in?
[00:49:10]  And going like, man, are we maybe approaching the point where it might be a good idea for us to kind of freeze or slow down immigration and let us marinate and try to work through these cultural problems that we're having right now?
[00:49:25]  Obviously, I'd like to see this done in a much more libertarian way, but I got to say, I think I really see the current numbers of immigrants coming into the United States of America as really, I don't think it's going to work out in a good way.
[00:49:41]  I mean, a lot of those are the same arguments that were made back in the 1910s, 1920s, when the waves of Irish people, Italian people, Polish people, Jewish people, to the extent that they let Jewish people in, that's a whole special other class of situation there.
[00:49:59]  We're always super cool with the Jews.
[00:50:01]  But, and a lot of people made those same arguments.
[00:50:05]  And ultimately, it kind of worked out, I think.
[00:50:09]  Like we got here.
[00:50:10]  And I mean, I think a lot of what here is right now is, I mean, you see a lot of stuff on social media, especially when you spend a lot of time on social media.
[00:50:20]  But I wonder if, like, in real life, if people are really kind of thinking in those modes, or if people are just like, I don't care, I just want to live my life and go do whatever it is I'm going to do.
[00:50:32]  Yeah, well, it's certainly, you know, you're right that a lot of those arguments were made and, you know, it worked out.
[00:50:42]  I guess yes and no.
[00:50:43]  I mean, we're here, you know, for better or for worse.
[00:50:46]  It certainly changed things.
[00:50:47]  And if people were arguing that bringing in immigrants are going to, you know, change the culture, I'm certain that it did.
[00:50:55]  You know what I mean?
[00:50:56]  So now you could say that's for the better.
[00:50:59]  Kind of hard to say because we haven't run all of the experiments.
[00:51:02]  It also led to us being the biggest, most powerful state in the history of the world.
[00:51:09]  I don't know that that's because of immigration to the country, but I would say that the major difference is the welfare state.
[00:51:18]  And before the welfare state, at least any modern conception of it, the immigration situation had kind of the natural market cleansing that we don't really see anymore.
[00:51:32]  And in the same way where like, you know, business is a lot more effective than the government, much more efficient than the government in many ways because of the cleansing mechanism, the profit and loss system.
[00:51:43]  If you don't make money, you go out of business.
[00:51:45]  Whereas in the government, if you do a bad job, your funding goes up.
[00:51:48]  So, you know, awfulness is rewarded and not punished.
[00:51:51]  And we see this all around us.
[00:51:53]  In the same sense, I think somewhere around a third of the immigrants who came into America pre-welfare state returned back to their countries.
[00:52:03]  Whereas now you see next to none of them returning back, very low percentages of them going back.
[00:52:09]  And of course, it's because there is this safety net underneath.
[00:52:12]  If you don't make it, you know, many of them can in one form or another go on government assistance.
[00:52:18]  And so the welfare state has made this a whole different ballgame.
[00:52:24]  So that's one difference.
[00:52:26]  Potentially.
[00:52:27]  I wonder if we start to see like, obviously quarter one's numbers are out already for the United States and they're horrible.
[00:52:34]  Quarter two's numbers are predicted to be even more horrible.
[00:52:38]  If much like during the Great Depression, a lot of people did go home or just decided not to come to the United States.
[00:52:44]  Like if there's no longer an opportunity in the United States, like are they still going to come or are they still going to go home?
[00:52:50]  And like I said, I don't, I don't know, I don't think the welfare states is as much of a factor because especially even before the welfare state, the argument was made that these people are coming to the United States and they're going to be a burden on the churches or the junior leagues or the charities or whoever.

=== America Changes People Here (07:48) ===

[00:53:07]  Like it's always been an argument that they're going to be a burden on somebody.
[00:53:11]  And by and large, they ended up not being.
[00:53:14]  And so I don't know.
[00:53:17]  I don't know if it's as much of a factor as some people think it is.
[00:53:20]  Okay.
[00:53:21]  Well, that's fair enough.
[00:53:23]  I do think that, and one of the things that I think started turning me around on this topic was kind of, as I've said before, kind of learning my cultural lesson, which people make fun of me for saying at this point, but I don't care.
[00:53:36]  I've learned it.
[00:53:37]  And the truth is that I think libertarians often are a little, how do I say this, nicely retarded.
[00:53:52]  Uh, when it comes to cultural issues um, and they, you know, we really like we all think that our enemy is the state and our enemy is uh aggression or the initiation of violence, which is fair enough, I mean, that is true.
[00:54:07]  However, we tend to take for granted, I think, sometimes when we're in uh first world Western countries, that basically everyone agrees with us about the non-aggression principle throughout every inch of life, except for the state.
[00:54:24]  Now, of course, that's not 100.
[00:54:26]  True, there are criminals, there are people there who beat their wives or children or things like that, but broadly speaking, we tend to agree that that's wrong um that, you know, like it's not as if there's a raging debate going on about whether beating your wife is a okay or not.
[00:54:40]  We generally seem to uh think that that's, that's wrong um, and so it's like I even like I had a, a democratic socialist uh on on my podcast.
[00:54:51]  We debated uh, uh last year and you know I asked him.
[00:54:55]  I was like well, don't you kind of believe in the non-aggression principle?
[00:54:57]  I mean, you don't violate it, you live your life by it right, like you don't hit other people, you don't take other people's stuff.
[00:55:02]  And he said well, I vote for uh, very progressive politicians and I was like, exactly so, even you will agree with the non-aggression principle for every inch of your life, except for the government.
[00:55:14]  However, if you were to go to some other cultures uh, some more third world cultures um, that's not so true, and part of the reason why a lot of these cultures uh aren't doing so well is because there is violence rampant throughout uh, their culture, in a different way than than we have in our culture.
[00:55:37]  And, by the way, this is also true if you go to the really high crime areas in America like we have some places where yeah, the non-aggression principle is really not respected, and amongst the people like, if you, you know, if you just talked to people and you were like well, do you agree?
[00:55:50]  It's a, it's wrong to hit other people, they're not going to agree with you quite as much.
[00:55:55]  And if libertarians don't, if they want to reject the kind of um, the racist stuff that they don't like of, like the alt-right and groups like that, which I agree we should reject, but then you, you're left with culture, like it's kind of the only thing you're left with, and there are major problems in the culture of third world countries, and so I just I think that again, like that's a real concern to me um,
[00:56:22]  just kind of importing foreign cultures in into our country and again with no recourse uh, for people to stop it if they don't want it to to happen.
[00:56:32]  So do you think that's unfair, or is there something Reasonable there?
[00:56:36]  Or am I a Nazi?
[00:56:38]  You're not a Nazi.
[00:56:39]  Yes.
[00:56:41]  All right.
[00:56:42]  But I do think that, especially the culture argument, kind of undersells the fact that America, for better or for worse, changes people when you move here.
[00:56:51]  You become Americanized.
[00:56:52]  Like even if you move from, say, I don't know, Saudi Arabia, where I think it's legal to beat your wife.
[00:57:00]  If you come here and you beat your wife, you're going to very quickly learn either through society or through the state that that is not okay.
[00:57:09]  It is illegal.
[00:57:10]  You will go to jail for that here.
[00:57:11]  And so you start to either alter your behavior because society is not going to alter its behavior for you.
[00:57:18]  Like it's not going to be like all of a sudden people be like, hey, you know what?
[00:57:21]  Beating your wife, that's all right.
[00:57:23]  You know, it's this, this country changes people.
[00:57:26]  Like you become American when you live here long enough.
[00:57:29]  And that kind of also, sometimes it does take a generation or two, but everyone knows the story like first generation, you're still kind of tied to the old country.
[00:57:36]  Second gen, you move away.
[00:57:38]  Third gen, you're American.
[00:57:39]  Like you, you probably don't even have interest in going back to wherever your grandparents came from.
[00:57:44]  And then they bitch at you about it.
[00:57:45]  Like, oh, you don't even know the language or the culture.
[00:57:48]  You don't want to go see your family.
[00:57:50]  So I think that moving here, it changes people and it does change behavior.
[00:57:56]  And it's not necessarily that it has to happen through the state either.
[00:57:59]  Like I do think that through society and through giving people certain inputs to say like, okay, it's okay to behave this way here, but not that way here.
[00:58:08]  Like it's okay to have women walk around without headdresses on, but it's not okay to beat them.
[00:58:15]  So I think there's that.
[00:58:17]  You know, I guess part of the, you know, the issue is that, and there was a, what was it?
[00:58:25]  I forget who said it.
[00:58:26]  It might have been Teddy Roosevelt.
[00:58:27]  I can't remember though.
[00:58:28]  I can't remember who I should attribute this quote to, but it was something like, said something along the lines of like, we welcome immigrants as long as they come off the boat with two feet.
[00:58:38]  And like the idea was that it's like, you can come to America, but you're American.
[00:58:43]  Like you, you have to come here and like adopt to us.
[00:58:46]  So in other words, we're promoting, assimilating into our culture.
[00:58:50]  And it does seem to me like that is not very prevalent in our culture today.
[00:58:56]  And in fact, I think you'd be called a bigot if you were to promote the idea that, okay, you can come here, but you got to get on board with our culture.
[00:59:04]  And so I agree with you that it does happen naturally, like to a lot of people, just from like our, you know, our music and our movies and things like that.
[00:59:12]  Like that's what the kids grow up with and they become immersed in this one way or the other.
[00:59:16]  However, it's not true across the board.
[00:59:19]  I mean, like if you go to Chinatown in New York City, it's not China, but it's not exactly America.
[00:59:28]  It's somewhere in the middle.
[00:59:30]  I mean, there are some groups of people who really don't assimilate and just kind of maintain their culture.
[00:59:37]  And even through a few generations, they do this.
[00:59:40]  So I wonder with our current culture, which where it seems to be the message from Hollywood and the media and the politicians seems to be like our culture is the worst.
[00:59:52]  Yours is probably far better than ours.
[00:59:54]  And we would be racists to ask you to convert to our culture.
[00:59:59]  I mean, even Ilhan Omar is, I think, married to her brother or something like that.
[01:00:05]  I mean, there are some cultures that persist.
[01:00:09]  I don't know her marital status anymore at this point.
[01:00:11]  I think she was getting divorced, actually, or she was having an affair or something.
[01:00:15]  Yeah, I think it didn't work out with her and her brother.
[01:00:18]  That's a pity.
[01:00:19]  I hate to see the divorce rate go up.
[01:00:24]  But I mean, I do think that overall, it's just, it's like moving to any other country.
[01:00:28]  Like if you move to Germany, you're going to be expected to adopt the German cultures and customs.
[01:00:33]  And it's like the same way moving here.
[01:00:34]  Like, and you are going to have outliers, obviously.
[01:00:37]  You're going to have people who are just wanting to stick by their culture no matter what, but there's only so much of that you can do in this country and still be in this country.
[01:00:46]  Like, there's still certain attitudes and norms that become prevalent just by you being here and you just adopt it because that's what's expected of you.
[01:00:54]  Yeah.
[01:00:55]  All right.

=== Selling Libertarianism Incrementally (05:17) ===

[01:00:56]  Let me ask you this as we're coming up toward the end of our time, because this is another concern of mine that I think is important for libertarians to think about, which is a little bit removed from exactly how you feel about immigration, but more in terms of how we present libertarianism to other people.
[01:01:18]  Because I think that pretty much all of us can agree that it's very important that we sell liberty to people and that we try to convince more people that this is the way to go.
[01:01:29]  That's always about as deep as I've thought about how we could possibly get out of this mess.
[01:01:34]  It's like, well, we need a lot more libertarians and we have to find a way to convince more people.
[01:01:39]  And since I was once not a libertarian and was convinced, I still kind of believe it's possible to convince people.
[01:01:46]  I think that there are a large number of people, the right-leaning people in this country, who, if they hear open borders, they are not going to want to listen to anything else that you have to say.
[01:02:02]  It's been a problem, I think, with libertarians losing some traction amongst the young right-wingers in this country.
[01:02:13]  And I wonder if you've thought at all about, you know, how do you go about talking to somebody who is one of these kind of build-the-wall types or how you would sell libertarianism to them?
[01:02:28]  Do you think, like, can you sympathize with where they're coming from?
[01:02:34]  Or do you think you just have to convince them that they're wrong?
[01:02:38]  No, I don't think you have to convince them that they're wrong, but this is something that I have thought a lot about: about how to best sell libertarianism to people who are not already on board.
[01:02:47]  And I think the main thing that you have to do is to meet people where they're at and figure out what exactly are your objections, what are your concerns, what can I do or say to you to help mitigate those?
[01:03:00]  Because, like, there's a lot of people right now who kind of claim the politically homeless label.
[01:03:05]  I mean, over and beyond the right-wingers, you got people coming in from Democrats, you got people coming in from Republicans.
[01:03:10]  They're like, I don't feel like any one of these parties represents me anymore, but they're not ready to take on that libertarian label.
[01:03:19]  So, what I think is to talk to people and be like, okay, what's stopping you?
[01:03:24]  Like, what is the thing that is stopping you from saying, I am a libertarian?
[01:03:29]  And not even that you necessarily have to join the LP or anything like that, but just to publicly identify, like, what are the issues?
[01:03:36]  What are your problems?
[01:03:36]  What can I talk to you about?
[01:03:38]  And I think that's the best way instead of trying to like beat people over the head or be like, no, you're wrong.
[01:03:44]  You need to think this, you need to think that.
[01:03:46]  Here's 15 doorstop books that you need to go read in the next three weeks and then you can come talk to me.
[01:03:52]  Like, no, you just have to meet people where they're at.
[01:03:55]  Yeah.
[01:03:56]  All right.
[01:03:56]  Well, I tend to agree with that.
[01:03:59]  So, what I guess I'm trying to find something in closing to say on this, I guess that really we are in agreement with what our ideal solution would be.
[01:04:12]  And I think that one of the things I've always maintained throughout this is that libertarians should always Make that clear, you know, kind of like plant our flag in where the ideal solution is, even if we're willing to, you know, take some steps in the meantime.
[01:04:30]  You know, like even if we're happy to get a 10% reduction in taxes, we should still be like, listen, we should abolish the income tax because this whole thing is terrible.
[01:04:39]  So I would say that to plant that flag, I think, and I've always kind of maintained this, but I really do think that the best solution for immigration would be to end the welfare state, end the war on drugs.
[01:04:55]  I think this would take care of an enormous amount of the problem right there.
[01:04:58]  Of course, how we get to doing that is complicated.
[01:05:03]  But I would say end all of those.
[01:05:05]  I would also say end the anti-discrimination laws.
[01:05:08]  Let people discriminate if they want to.
[01:05:09]  You're better off having people be able to make that choice than to force them together and let resentments build up, let people come together organically if they want to, and privatize everything.
[01:05:21]  And that would probably be the best for the best case solution.
[01:05:25]  Do you agree or want to add anything to that?
[01:05:27]  I do agree.
[01:05:28]  And I think even if you wanted to still talk about immigration, especially, obviously, we're not going to end the welfare state tomorrow.
[01:05:34]  We're not going to end that war on drugs tomorrow.
[01:05:35]  But what if, say, we could get access to the welfare state limited to everybody, like just put a higher limit on even being able to access it, be you native born, be you not native born, or say if we just legalized weed federally.
[01:05:51]  Like, okay, these are steps that you can take in that direction.
[01:05:53]  And hopefully one day we can get to where we want to go.
[01:05:56]  But there are concrete steps in between here and there that we can take that we could discuss and promote that might make people a little more comfortable with the ideas where it's not like this whole maximalist all at once, but like, okay, we can take incremental steps here.
[01:06:11]  We can take baby steps.

=== Final Thoughts and Thanks (01:21) ===

[01:06:13]  Yeah.
[01:06:13]  I would also just add one more like cultural thing to it, which just kind of popped in my head now.
[01:06:18]  But I also think that maybe to left-leaning people, if their concern really was on the crackdown of immigration and things like that, they'd probably be well advised to eliminate the kind of lecturing/slash hating of white people just culturally and rhetorically.
[01:06:35]  It probably, I mean, I guarantee you that that triggers a big reaction out of a lot of right-leaning white people in this country to be like, yeah, I don't want the country to not be majority white when everything you guys ever say is that you hate us.
[01:06:49]  So maybe get rid of that crap too.
[01:06:52]  Yeah, and also when you engage in that sort of stuff, you're kind of infantilizing people of color.
[01:06:57]  So maybe think about that for a second too before you do that.
[01:07:01]  Yes.
[01:07:01]  All right.
[01:07:02]  Well, we agree on that.
[01:07:03]  I had a feeling that this might turn into more of a discussion than a debate, but I really enjoyed it as I enjoyed doing your show a few weeks ago.
[01:07:11]  And I highly recommend everybody go check out Jen the Libertarian and follow her on Twitter.
[01:07:15]  She's great on Twitter as well.
[01:07:16]  What's your handle again?
[01:07:18]  You can either look for me under Jen Monroe or it's Jennifer M underscore Q. All right.
[01:07:24]  Very good.
[01:07:25]  Well, thank you so much for coming on.
[01:07:26]  And hopefully we'll do it again sometime soon.
[01:07:29]  Cool, man.
[01:07:29]  Thanks for having me.
[01:07:30]  Absolutely.
[01:07:31]  Thanks, everybody, for listening.
[01:07:32]  See you next time.
[01:07:33]  Peace.