Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - Michael Malice On Michael Malice
Aired: 2020-05-16
Duration: 01:07:03


=== My First Interest in Politics (08:49) ===

[00:00:01]  Fill her up.
[00:00:02]  You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
[00:00:08]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:00:10]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:00:12]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:00:15]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:00:21]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:26]  You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
[00:00:30]  Here's your host, James Smith.
[00:00:33]  Hey, what's up, everybody?
[00:00:35]  Let this be your part of the problem for the next hour or so.
[00:00:43]  This madness is continuing.
[00:00:46]  I, of course, am joined by my great friend, the wonderful, hilarious, and thought-provoking Michael Malice.
[00:00:54]  How are you, sir?
[00:00:55]  I am great.
[00:00:57]  Very good.
[00:00:58]  You got some new headphones for this one.
[00:01:00]  These are my noise-canceling headphones that my buddy told me about.
[00:01:04]  I wear them to the gym.
[00:01:06]  Remember the gym?
[00:01:07]  And you don't notice anyone around you.
[00:01:10]  And I thought it'd be cool to go with the Harris, like a pretend I'm a DJ.
[00:01:13]  Oh, yes.
[00:01:14]  Very good.
[00:01:15]  There we go.
[00:01:16]  DJs, another class of workers who haven't been able to do much recently.
[00:01:23]  Yeah.
[00:01:23]  It's weird where you keep thinking of like new people or you're like, oh, yeah, they're completely screwed over.
[00:01:28]  It's like the ones you think of like at first are like kind of obvious.
[00:01:32]  Like, yeah, yeah.
[00:01:34]  Anyone who counts on anything where people get together, which is a whole lot of people.
[00:01:39]  Anyway, so for this episode, I thought we would talk about your favorite subject, which is you.
[00:01:47]  And I thought, no, well, I was thinking about it and I was like, you know, what should we do next time?
[00:01:52]  And then I was like, you know, there's some things like that I don't know about you that I think would be interesting to ask you about on the show and we can all learn about them together.
[00:02:03]  Cause I've so I am pretty sure the first time we met, I think was at your debate with Tom Woods.
[00:02:10]  Correct.
[00:02:10]  Yes.
[00:02:11]  Right.
[00:02:11]  So you debated Tom on the legacy of Hamilton.
[00:02:17]  Something.
[00:02:18]  I forget exactly what the resolution was.
[00:02:20]  It was like...
[00:02:21]  Alexander Hamilton is a hero for the cause of liberty.
[00:02:26]  Right.
[00:02:26]  Okay.
[00:02:27]  And this was the like the precursor to the Soho Forum.
[00:02:30]  Gene Epstein was running a debate series, but it was before he created the Soho Forum.
[00:02:35]  And they had this debate.
[00:02:36]  It was like at a library and it was a really cool event.
[00:02:38]  They sold it out and it was like packed and it was a really great debate.
[00:02:41]  Very interesting and thought-provoking.
[00:02:43]  It's on YouTube.
[00:02:44]  Oh, is it?
[00:02:45]  Good.
[00:02:45]  We got two emails from the venue complaining that there were too many people and it closed down the entire series.
[00:02:52]  There was like one or two after us.
[00:02:54]  John Lott, I was one of them.
[00:02:56]  And then it was Dunzo.
[00:02:58]  Yeah, that's always a weird complaint when the venue complains that you sold too many tickets or you're like fireheads or something.
[00:03:05]  Yeah.
[00:03:06]  You're like, well, that's kind of our goal is to sell as many tickets as possible.
[00:03:10]  So they can't really be like, it's like if you were a band and afterward, they're like, you rocked too hard.
[00:03:16]  And you're like, well, I mean, this is what we're trying to do here.
[00:03:20]  So maybe we need a new venue because this is really the whole point.
[00:03:25]  But so we've known each other.
[00:03:26]  And this was how long ago was this?
[00:03:28]  When did this happen?
[00:03:29]  Was it 2016?
[00:03:31]  It was before.
[00:03:32]  Well, it had Trump tweets.
[00:03:33]  So it must have been 2015, I think.
[00:03:35]  Yeah.
[00:03:35]  Because I had those Trump tweets in the background making fun of Tom.
[00:03:40]  Oh, that's right.
[00:03:41]  Yeah, that was great.
[00:03:42]  Tweets from Trump that you doctored up, or at least I think you doctored up.
[00:03:46]  Perhaps you actually got Trump to tweet them out.
[00:03:48]  But so we've known each other for about five years and we've been friends.
[00:03:54]  But there are some things that I don't know about you that I was curious about.
[00:03:58]  And so I was curious, when did you become interested in like philosophy, politics?
[00:04:08]  And you're not super political, but the stuff that you're kind of known for now.
[00:04:12]  Like, were you into this stuff as a kid?
[00:04:15]  Did you not care and then figure it out later in life?
[00:04:18]  Or like, when was your first interest in philosophy?
[00:04:21]  Well, my first interest in politics was there was a show on.
[00:04:27]  TV in the 80s called Facts of Life.
[00:04:30]  And Michael J. Fox played Alex P. Keaton.
[00:04:33]  And he was the only person on TV who looked like me and who I could relate to.
[00:04:39]  And it's actually really funny because Whoopi Goldberg got her start in a similar way.
[00:04:43]  She was watching, I think it was Diane Carroll had a show called Julia.
[00:04:47]  And Whoopi turned to her mom and said, look, there's a black lady on TV and she's not a maid.
[00:04:52]  And this was kind of this moment for her.
[00:04:54]  And it was that way for me with Alex Piketon.
[00:04:57]  And because he was small, he was smarter than everybody.
[00:05:00]  He was a bit of a wise ass.
[00:05:03]  And I couldn't watch the show.
[00:05:05]  I never could watch it because they made a clown out of him and I resented it.
[00:05:09]  It really bothered me.
[00:05:11]  So because he was, for those who don't know the show, the whole premise of the show is his parents were hippies, but their son, Alex P. Keaton, was basically this like Reagan Republican.
[00:05:20]  It was driving the parents crazy.
[00:05:22]  So as a result of this, I thought I was a Republican.
[00:05:25]  I had literally no idea what that meant, literally none, because this is middle school, right?
[00:05:31]  But then I found that if you say you're a Republican to like your teachers in New York City and Brooklyn, this bothers them.
[00:05:39]  And that is something I enjoyed from a very early age, contempt for authority, hatred of these mediocre people who expect you to seek their approval, things like this.
[00:05:50]  So when I got to high school, a friend of mine who later was my roommate, he gave me a copy of Rush Limbaugh's book, The Way Things Ought to Be.
[00:06:01]  And what Limbaugh, you know, Limbaugh now very much symbolizes this kind of boomer con Ben Shapiro kind of situation.
[00:06:09]  But what people don't appreciate is this is what, 91, 92?
[00:06:12]  Limbaugh was probably the first one.
[00:06:15]  He was Jon Stewart for Republicans.
[00:06:17]  He was the first one to use humor and sarcasm and condescension and aggression toward the other team.
[00:06:25]  And no one had really done it to that level before.
[00:06:28]  And he did it really, really well.
[00:06:30]  I remember vividly, there was a clip he made when this was years later, he had a late night show.
[00:06:36]  And he had Ted Kennedy introducing Bill Clinton.
[00:06:40]  And he goes, and I want to introduce Bill Clinton.
[00:06:44]  And Clinton slanted it, plotting.
[00:06:46]  And Rich Limbaugh goes, what did he just say?
[00:06:48]  They slowed it down.
[00:06:50]  They played it backwards.
[00:06:52]  They put it through a filter.
[00:06:55]  It's such an internet thing, but this was in the 90s, going through this clip, like every angle to try to figure out what the fuck Ted Kennedy is saying.
[00:07:02]  And then he's like, and look at Clinton, look at Clinton's face.
[00:07:05]  He's just smiling.
[00:07:06]  You know what he's saying?
[00:07:08]  So he also gave me that chance to be kind of politically abrasive and aggressive.
[00:07:16]  And I was in a bookstore in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
[00:07:21]  And I was looking at the Ayn Rand books, right?
[00:07:24]  And the one, because the covers are very catching.
[00:07:27]  These were the Nicholas Gaetano covers.
[00:07:29]  They're the Art Deco covers.
[00:07:32]  And I was looking at the back cover of Atlas Shrugged.
[00:07:34]  And it said the stories about the man who said he would stop the, the man who promised that he would stop the motor of the world.
[00:07:42]  And he did, right?
[00:07:43]  And I thought this was like Ghostbusters 2, because in Ghostbusters 2, there's this engine underneath New York City, and like they basically get stopped or whatever.
[00:07:52]  So I thought it was going to be some kind of sci-fi novel and it's a thousand pages.
[00:07:56]  And I'm looking at it.
[00:07:57]  I'm like, I don't know about this.
[00:07:58]  And the guy sitting there at that Barnes and Noble goes, no, Like, don't, don't read that.
[00:08:03]  Read Anthem.
[00:08:04]  If you like Anthem, you like Anthem.
[00:08:06]  And I got to tell you, I despise unsolicited advice.
[00:08:09]  And when strangers start chatting me up, I'm usually pretty nasty.
[00:08:12]  But I owe this man a debt of gratitude.
[00:08:15]  So I read Anthem.
[00:08:17]  And, you know, I thought I was a Republican for quite a bit of time.
[00:08:21]  And I remember I was had a very sick flu my freshman year in college at Bucknell University.
[00:08:27]  And I was reading The Fountainhead.
[00:08:29]  And the copy is still at the Bucknell Library.
[00:08:31]  So you could read the same exact copy I read.
[00:08:33]  And I read the rape scene, right?
[00:08:36]  And I, I'm delirious.
[00:08:38]  I was fevered.
[00:08:39]  And I read it and I couldn't understand what I was reading.
[00:08:41]  And I look at the back cover and I'm like, this is written in 1943 by a woman.
[00:08:46]  Like, I'm clearly misunderstanding what I'm reading.
[00:08:48]  Like, because I'm like, this can't be what I'm reading.

=== The Moment I Kept the State (07:47) ===

[00:08:50]  And it was.
[00:08:52]  And that book, like for many people, there was that book by Drug to Chili called It Usually Starts with Vine, It Usually Begins Vine Rand.
[00:08:58]  Like that.
[00:08:59]  And then in the Bucknell basement, somebody had left behind a pamphlet for laissez-faire books, which Andrea Rich ran for many years.
[00:09:08]  And when you go through those books, like so many doors open toward you.
[00:09:13]  And then I was a Cato intern my junior year.
[00:09:16]  I despise Bucknell and pretty much everything about it, but they had a program where you could spend one semester at a in DC as kind of an intern and you have classes.
[00:09:27]  I did that to get the hell off campus, interned at Cato.
[00:09:30]  And, you know, that opened up a whole other, you know, big world for me.
[00:09:34]  And in fact, the reason I came upon Cato, there was a article in New York magazine, I believe, that talked about the house that Howard Rourke built.
[00:09:43]  Right.
[00:09:44]  And I was wandering one day in Cato.
[00:09:46]  I forgot why I was in DC, but I got away from my group and I'm wandering around.
[00:09:51]  And then it just came on me like this vision.
[00:09:53]  And the building is pretty damn cool.
[00:09:55]  So that was kind of, those are the big turning points.
[00:09:59]  But there's that joke, which I repeat in my book, which I'm sure you and everyone else probably knows, which is, what's the difference between a minarchist and an anarchist six months?
[00:10:06]  I mean, it is such a not tenable position in my view to just stick like, all right, we're gonna, you know, like you have this dial and we're gonna stick it right at one and we're just gonna hold it in perpetuity somehow, even though everyone wants to kind of move the dial as opposed to like, maybe we could just do this.
[00:10:24]  You know, then you don't have to worry about the dial.
[00:10:26]  It's it's really funny.
[00:10:27]  I look back at my minarchist days sometimes with almost like a kind of it's like a surreal feeling that that was you because it was, I had already had all of the like logical tools to make me an anarchist, but I clung to this idea of, well, no, I, there still has to be some government, even when I had already been exposed to anarchist thinkers.
[00:10:50]  And I really think, as I look back on it, that what I think, you know, I would, I would have these reasons of why I was a minarchist, and they're really embarrassing if I were to say them now.
[00:11:01]  But it was things like, well, we need to at least guarantee for the poorest amongst us some, you know, whatever, you know, rights protection, or you have to guarantee that there's cops.
[00:11:14]  You have to guarantee a lawyer.
[00:11:16]  You can't just say, like, oh, if you can't afford one, you don't get police or lawyers or something, you know, something like this.
[00:11:23]  But I don't think it's embarrassing.
[00:11:26]  I think that's a good argument for minarchism.
[00:11:28]  Well, I suppose, but the problem with the argument is that what once you, as most minarchists should know, that nothing fucks poor people over more than those exact institutions that I was defending.
[00:11:41]  That's ultimately, that was really the light bulb.
[00:11:43]  Literally, my moment of when I became an anarchist was, and I had already read a lot of Rothbard and I was a hardcore libertarian already, but I was, I was in my old apartment in Brooklyn.
[00:11:52]  It was one night.
[00:11:53]  It was like three in the morning.
[00:11:56]  I'd come home from doing comedy shows and I was uh uh, smoking weed and uh watching Youtube videos.
[00:12:05]  Like I was like down a Youtube hall.
[00:12:07]  This was probably around like 2000, I want to say like 2011 or something like that.
[00:12:12]  So I was, you know, this Youtube was like early in its days still kind of, and like it was.
[00:12:18]  But I was watching and like reading stuff online and I saw one video like the millionth video I had seen of cops just fucking over poor people.
[00:12:28]  I think it might have even been a clip from the show, Cops.
[00:12:30]  I forget what it was.
[00:12:31]  And there was something about it where I just had this moment where I was like, wait, this is why I want to keep the state.
[00:12:37]  Like this is the thing that I'm hanging on to so that there's police for poor people.
[00:12:42]  And then I was like, really?
[00:12:43]  Like, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to poor people.
[00:12:46]  Probably we could just come up with something better.
[00:12:48]  And if I already accept that there's people like me who give a shit about this and the economy is going to be 10 million times better and all these other things will be better.
[00:12:57]  And why don't we just figure out a voluntary solution for God?
[00:12:59]  And it just kind of dawned on me.
[00:13:02]  But anyway, I wanted to ask you more.
[00:13:04]  So in this period where you just thought of yourself as a Republican, like in high school and stuff like that, what would your, would you argue with other people about this?
[00:13:15]  Or like, what would your, what were like some of the big issues that made you a Republican?
[00:13:20]  Was it just anti-Democrat issues or like, what was your attitude at that time?
[00:13:26]  I mean, I thought those are the only two things on the table.
[00:13:29]  I remember when, so the program I took in DC, the professor's name was, by the way, Mark Roselle.
[00:13:36]  He still teaches and he's still, you know, a complete worthless piece of shit.
[00:13:42]  The first speaker we had, every day we had different speakers.
[00:13:45]  They're from all over the political spectrum.
[00:13:46]  He did a good job getting speakers.
[00:13:48]  It was someone from the Libertarian Party.
[00:13:50]  And I had a lot of contempt for the Libertarian Party because I had felt, and again, this is not something I would ever say again today, but it's not an uncommon perspective is those are Republican votes.
[00:14:03]  You're just stealing Republican votes.
[00:14:05]  And I asked the Libertarian guy, I go, why is the point of running as a libertarian?
[00:14:11]  Like you're not, and he goes, no, no, if you want to get elected, I would advise you to run as a Republican.
[00:14:16]  I'm like, oh, okay, that makes a lot of sense.
[00:14:18]  And I had been of the belief, and this is a great example.
[00:14:22]  I think it was Bertrand Russell who said, because he got called out for like changing his perspective, he says something effective, yeah, when I get new information, I change my mind.
[00:14:30]  What do you do?
[00:14:32]  And I had been of the belief, and I said this, I said, we've never had a Republican president and Republican Congress.
[00:14:41]  And I said, we can talk when that happens.
[00:14:43]  And it doesn't, it's like, you guys are all so skeptical.
[00:14:45]  Just watch, because this is after Gingrich, right?
[00:14:48]  Gingrich steals Congress.
[00:14:49]  It was a, I remember the reason I liked 94, and people might be too young to remember this, is it was a given that we were going to have socialized health care.
[00:15:00]  It was an absolute given.
[00:15:02]  Clinton was pushing it all year.
[00:15:04]  All the media were saying, we're just working out the details.
[00:15:08]  It's ridiculous.
[00:15:09]  We're not, you think we're not, not only does this have to happen, it's going to happen.
[00:15:13]  We have the numbers.
[00:15:14]  Sit down and shut up.
[00:15:15]  You know, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:15:16]  Like it was just a done deal.
[00:15:18]  And Hillary's in charge.
[00:15:19]  And my God, she's so amazing.
[00:15:21]  It's so amazing that this woman with no healthcare experience is going to single-handedly save the healthcare industry.
[00:15:28]  We're so blessed that we have elected.
[00:15:31]  This is, we're told this every single day with a straight face.
[00:15:35]  And the shocking, brilliant idea is socialized medicine.
[00:15:38]  Like, oh my God, whoever thought of such a thing?
[00:15:41]  I mean, it's unprecedented.
[00:15:42]  My God, the talent.
[00:15:44]  And even going into that night, election night, it was not a given at all that the house was in play.
[00:15:51]  The house was not supposed to be in play.
[00:15:53]  And I was sitting in the basement of Bucknell watching and some douchebag guys.
[00:15:59]  I remember one of them when he looked like blonde, like they tried to change the channel, but like it was, and I'm like, I'm watching this.
[00:16:04]  And he came back with a bunch of people to say, like, it was, he's going to have the numbers to change the channel.
[00:16:09]  Well, Dickhead, it's election night.
[00:16:10]  It's on every channel.
[00:16:12]  And as the numbers kept coming in, it was so shocking.
[00:16:17]  And it was like, oh my God.
[00:16:19]  But it was also great because this is very similar to 2016.
[00:16:23]  The butthurt was enormous because I remember there was a little bit of internet even then.
[00:16:31]  And so much of the commentary was, well, I'll wish the Republicans luck.
[00:16:35]  They deserve it, but you'll see that governing isn't easy.

=== Election Night Basement Watch (03:47) ===

[00:16:38]  And all this other like salt, salt, salt.
[00:16:40]  And I'm like, this is my pornography.
[00:16:42]  Like people who are just slug and entitled, just feeling devastated for things that don't really affect them.
[00:16:50]  And then they shut down the government and that was awesome.
[00:16:53]  And the awesome part was that night knowing what the fuck is Clinton going to say?
[00:16:58]  They just knock that cocky smile off his face.
[00:17:02]  And he did a great job.
[00:17:04]  He went on TV the next day and he goes, My mess, I want to talk to the American people.
[00:17:09]  I want to say message received.
[00:17:12]  And that motherfucker went very quickly from being a McGovern Democrat to being a Romney Republican, couldn't wait to throw the gaze into the bus.
[00:17:23]  Oh, I guess I'll balance the budget.
[00:17:24]  Like all, you know, he just caved on everything because he wanted to have his accomplishments.
[00:17:29]  Then in 2000, Bush gets elected, right?
[00:17:32]  I was a Steve Forbes guy.
[00:17:35]  And the nightmare that this was, even if you don't talk about the war, even if you don't talk about 9-11, there was no premise that the budget's going to be balanced, even though it had just been balanced under Clinton just a couple of years ago.
[00:17:51]  There was no claim that we're going to gut the budget or cut the budget.
[00:17:54]  It was all a total lie.
[00:17:58]  And I'm like, holy shit, everything all those people said at the Cato Institute was true.
[00:18:04]  And I was open-minded and I thought, okay, this is going to work.
[00:18:08]  And I was dead wrong.
[00:18:11]  All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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[00:19:41]  So even when you were working at the Cato Institute, you still were basically, you know, a Republican.
[00:19:49]  You weren't yet a committed Liberty.
[00:19:52]  Republican friendly, certainly.
[00:19:54]  Like, I thought, okay, this is going to be a mechanism, a means to an end.
[00:20:00]  Like, it is possible or likely, I would say, even likely, that a Republican president in Congress is going to do a good job of pulling back the growth of government.
[00:20:11]  Look, they just killed socialized health care.
[00:20:13]  They just threw a spine.
[00:20:14]  They shut down the government.
[00:20:16]  This is going to happen.
[00:20:17]  These people believe it.
[00:20:18]  They impeached Clinton.
[00:20:19]  You know, they're holding their, they're not fucking joking around.
[00:20:23]  And yeah, they were.
[00:20:24]  They were totally joking around.

=== Beyond Left and Right (15:09) ===

[00:20:25]  It was a total fucking farce.
[00:20:27]  Yeah.
[00:20:27]  It's one of the really sad things about the story of America is really, you know, what we've done, especially in me and your lifetime, is just what's happened in the 21st century to this country.
[00:20:42]  I mean, we really just blew the 21st century.
[00:20:45]  I mean, forget being anarchists and all the moral problems we could have with America going back.
[00:20:50]  I'm not even talking about morality as much as I am, almost just from a business perspective, like the bottom line.
[00:20:56]  Like we went into the year 2000 with just, you know, being the most successful country that's ever existed.
[00:21:04]  And what we've done in the first 20 years of the 21st century has really been to like jeopardize everything.
[00:21:11]  It's just been, you know, I mean, even this is why we're living in this world of like Sanders and Trump, you know, these like populist movements on the left and the right, because even like your average person can just look around and go, wait a minute.
[00:21:26]  So like we can't win our wars.
[00:21:28]  We can't balance our budgets.
[00:21:30]  We can't protect our borders.
[00:21:31]  We can't have a cohesive culture.
[00:21:33]  We can't have like the very basic things that you expect countries to be able to do.
[00:21:39]  We're failing at all of them.
[00:21:41]  And it's, and I really, I put like the majority of that blame on that moment that you're talking about in the year 2000 when the Republicans take the presidency, the House, and the Senate.
[00:21:54]  And this is like, look, this is how we're starting off the year 2000 with complete Republican control.
[00:21:58]  And they just, we had the most disastrous eight years.
[00:22:02]  The last two were not all Republican control.
[00:22:05]  They had it up to 2006.
[00:22:07]  But those six years, if you want to just say of Republican control, were just, I mean, on every level, an absolute disaster.
[00:22:14]  So it's interesting that that was the moment that you kind of your belief that things might change if Republicans had everything.
[00:22:23]  It was really such a terrible time for the country.
[00:22:26]  Oh, yeah.
[00:22:27]  And it was unambiguous that the data, I mean, the first thing they do is Medicaid Part D, whatever it was.
[00:22:32]  It was just like, are you like, what are you talking about?
[00:22:35]  You people, I remember very vividly in 96 when Bob Dole was running against Bill Clinton.
[00:22:44]  And Clinton says Bob Dole was going, Bill Clinton wants the government to increase it 18%.
[00:22:50]  I want to increase at 12% or whatever the number was.
[00:22:53]  And I'm just like, are you fucking kidding me?
[00:22:55]  Like, this is, and it was just, and while he's doing that, they're saying that he wants old people starving in the street.
[00:23:04]  Yeah.
[00:23:04]  So like that combination, I'm just like, this is not for me.
[00:23:09]  Yeah.
[00:23:09]  Well, there's something, you know, it's funny that you mentioned the Medicare Part D prescription drug program thing because that's an important distinction.
[00:23:16]  Because even if you were to grant the Republicans, which I don't at all, but even if you were to grant them the like 9-11 war in Iraq had to happen, all the military budget buildup and all of that, it's still, that still doesn't explain the outrageous growth in domestic spending, the no child left behind and the Medicare expansions and the every single budget of every domestic program going up.
[00:23:43]  So, yeah, it was that really was, I think, eye-opening to a lot of people, a lot of right-wing people in America.
[00:23:53]  And part of the reason why, you know, I mean, obviously it's years later, but part of the reason why in 2016, a guy like Donald Trump is able to become president.
[00:24:04]  So what, so, so, what happens to you after this period?
[00:24:08]  So now you're kind of disillusioned about the Republican Party.
[00:24:11]  You've been exposed to a lot of libertarian literature and been around a lot of libertarian people.
[00:24:18]  So what was your next step in your intellectual journey?
[00:24:21]  I mean, that was it.
[00:24:22]  That was it.
[00:24:23]  I'm just full-blown anarchist at that point.
[00:24:26]  I mean, there's anarchists from there.
[00:24:32]  Oh, yeah.
[00:24:33]  I mean, I was a hardcore libertarian already, I would say.
[00:24:36]  But I mean, at that point, especially like seeing the war state, it's just like I by 2016, when Egan Hubris came out, my biography, I was already identifying as an anarchist.
[00:24:48]  But I think it came a significant bit earlier.
[00:24:51]  Also, the shit that they're pulling with the Supreme Court, like who Bush is putting up.
[00:24:54]  It's like, are you kidding me?
[00:24:56]  And what's his name?
[00:24:58]  His attorney general.
[00:25:00]  I forget the guy's name.
[00:25:01]  He was a former Spence Average.
[00:25:03]  It wasn't Space State Remember.
[00:25:04]  Anyway, they had Greek statues in the Capitol building and he covered them up because they were naked, like these classical statues.
[00:25:13]  And I'm just like, you people are just pathetic, like just pathetic, but you have no problem killing and like incarcerating your own citizens.
[00:25:23]  But like an ancient statue of beauty of the human body, this is a problem for you.
[00:25:28]  You are not at all what I'm about.
[00:25:33]  So you've always, I remember, I think you were the one who said your definition of what right wing is was the question about people being better than others, right?
[00:25:45]  It's the litmus test, yeah.
[00:25:47]  So so just tell people what that is if they're not familiar.
[00:25:50]  Sure.
[00:25:51]  I think we're in a bit of a delay, but that's okay.
[00:25:53]  The litmus test says it's an easy way to tell if someone is right wing or left wing.
[00:26:00]  If you and I'm already cringing at the comments, but that's okay.
[00:26:04]  Ask someone, do you think some people are better than others?
[00:26:10]  And someone who is right wing will say yes, and someone who is left wing will give a speech.
[00:26:15]  And it has happened, it worked for me successfully 100% of the time.
[00:26:19]  If it doesn't work for you, I don't need to hear it.
[00:26:23]  So would you, do you consider, since me and you would both answer yes without without a speech to that to that question, do you consider us to be right-wingers?
[00:26:35]  I think by most definitions, yeah.
[00:26:36]  Although culturally, I would consider myself to be very left-wing.
[00:26:40]  But there's several different ways to define the terms.
[00:26:43]  See, I always, I kind of like, I mean, I understand different people have different definitions, right?
[00:26:49]  Like you were saying, there's different ways to understand these terms.
[00:26:51]  And certainly there's a lot of people, there's a lot of people who consider me a right-winger, although the hard right-wingers would consider me a left or a liberal or something like that.
[00:27:03]  But I always personally, I kind of like Walter Block's just third leg on the stool.
[00:27:09]  To me, I really do think that libertarian anarchists are, it's just almost like you have this right wing, this left-wing thing, and we're our own different thing.
[00:27:18]  So I was- Everyone wants to be their own thing.
[00:27:20]  And I think that's cheating.
[00:27:22]  Yeah, but I understand.
[00:27:23]  I understand that you, you, a lot of people do want that.
[00:27:26]  But even someone like you, to describe you as right-wing to me just seems off, particularly as you mentioned, with so much of your like cultural views on things.
[00:27:37]  It just, it doesn't seem accurate.
[00:27:39]  Like it seems like it's not cheating.
[00:27:41]  It is actually fair to call you neither left nor right wing, your own branch.
[00:27:47]  Because for very obvious reasons, both of these terms have achieved a buttload of connotations in public discourse and as mechanisms to dismiss preemptively what a person is saying.
[00:28:01]  So, and I talk about this in my book.
[00:28:03]  Like, if you want to talk about Mussolinian fascism, right, which he achieved a decade before Hitler was in power, you can't.
[00:28:10]  Because as soon as you say fascism, you're like right away, there's all these connotations.
[00:28:14]  Not inaccurately, because if this is where it goes, you really want to make sure you're not down that slippery slope.
[00:28:21]  But again, when you say right wing, it has, and that's the other thing that becomes funny.
[00:28:27]  Then you have these boomer cons, like Hitler becomes a hot potato.
[00:28:30]  Like they'll think, well, I'm right wing, Hitler's bad, therefore Hitler's right wing.
[00:28:35]  And then they'll have the rationalization as to why.
[00:28:37]  And the lefties will be like, you're crazy.
[00:28:38]  I'm left wing.
[00:28:39]  Left wing is good.
[00:28:40]  Hitler's obviously right wing, blah, blah, blah.
[00:28:42]  And people want to define these terms as whichever one I am, it's all the good stuff.
[00:28:47]  And whichever one they are, it's all the bad stuff.
[00:28:49]  And it's like, it would be really nice if we could kind of have it, the teams separate so easy.
[00:28:56]  But right wing and left wing have both many positive connotations and many negative connotations and many definitions.
[00:29:06]  And, you know, it always amazes me.
[00:29:08]  And I've talked about this with Tom Woods when people are like, oh, they always think that they're the first ones to think of this, by the way.
[00:29:15]  This is amazing.
[00:29:16]  Every time they go, I've thought of this theory that right wing means less government and left wing means more government.
[00:29:25]  Therefore, you know, Hitler and Stalin are basically the same.
[00:29:28]  Personally, as someone who's Jewish, who was born in the Soviet Union, to be told, well, there's no real difference between Hitler and Stalin is kind of funny to hear.
[00:29:36]  But besides that, it's then you ask them, well, what do you think about the original anarchists like Emma Goldman, you know, people like that?
[00:29:44]  And they're like, who?
[00:29:46]  Or then you go, okay, what do you think about the original right and left wing, which is right was the aristocracy?
[00:29:52]  Are you saying the aristocracy were for less government?
[00:29:55]  Oh, well, it's different in Europe.
[00:29:57]  And like, okay, why do we have terms that work in every context?
[00:30:02]  Right.
[00:30:02]  That have terms that work just in the way that you like, which gives you the result that you want.
[00:30:08]  Right.
[00:30:08]  So, no, I agree with you.
[00:30:10]  Now, it may be forgetting right-left, there is something to me that I think is useful about looking at a spectrum of people and how much state authority they want.
[00:30:20]  And in that sense, there is something, and there certainly can be comparisons made between Stalin and Hitler, right?
[00:30:27]  Like, I mean, obviously, in the 20th century, they really, if you were looking at the two most authoritarian dictators, the numbers of dead, all of this stuff, and the totalitarian impulses of both of them, they're really, you know, figures that have a lot in common.
[00:30:45]  But I agree with you in terms of left and right, that that doesn't exactly, it's not exactly useful.
[00:30:52]  And obviously, there are differences that are important.
[00:30:55]  So what would, to me, I think, and this is just very loose, but wouldn't left seems in general, the left wing seems to always revolve in some ways around egalitarianism.
[00:31:09]  Right.
[00:31:10]  It's not a hierarchy.
[00:31:11]  Yes, exactly.
[00:31:12]  And the right wing is more concerned with hierarchy and traditional traditionalism, you know, in some sense of not tearing down the systems that have existed for a long time.
[00:31:27]  Whereas the left is very happy to tear down systems that have existed for a long time if they're hierarchical.
[00:31:35]  Those are two very legitimate axes, axes.
[00:31:38]  But even even in that, with those definitions, it seems very hard for me to place us on either the left or the right.
[00:31:47]  Like that's that seems to bring me back to the Walter Block third layer of the story.
[00:31:52]  Your priorities, equality as opposed to analyzing power?
[00:31:57]  Well, hold on.
[00:31:58]  I'm sorry.
[00:32:00]  I don't think your concern is equality.
[00:32:02]  Well, I don't think I never say about equality.
[00:32:04]  I don't.
[00:32:05]  Well, I mean, in a very loose sense, certainly not in the sense of like a socialist.
[00:32:12]  And I wouldn't call myself an egalitarian, but there is something to be said for believing that all human beings have the same right to life, liberty, property, things like this.
[00:32:24]  Now, we do believe.
[00:32:25]  I don't believe that.
[00:32:26]  You don't believe that all human beings have self-ownership?
[00:32:29]  I don't believe all humans have the same.
[00:32:31]  No.
[00:32:32]  Okay.
[00:32:33]  But in the sense that everybody has the right to life?
[00:32:37]  Sure, but it's not the same.
[00:32:39]  It's not identical.
[00:32:41]  Okay, fair enough.
[00:32:42]  But there is still something.
[00:32:43]  Let's put it this way.
[00:32:44]  Let me ask you this question.
[00:32:46]  Sure.
[00:32:46]  Do you think it's more of a tragedy?
[00:32:50]  Wow.
[00:32:50]  English is my second language.
[00:32:52]  Do you think it's more of a tragedy when person A dies over person B sometimes?
[00:32:57]  Absolutely.
[00:32:58]  100%.
[00:32:59]  So this idea that it's equal and that it's always not.
[00:33:04]  So granted, and actually, you know, something, and I'm, you know, I'm not a big Ben Shapiro fan, but I don't know if you saw he was getting beat up because he said recently the thing about like younger people's lives being more valuable than older people, which I thought it was so insane that anyone would not agree.
[00:33:24]  Well, here's that statement.
[00:33:25]  What's amazing is when people, sometimes it's hard for me to figure out if people are playing dumb or they're such emotional thinkers that they literally can't understand things that are not even in dispute.
[00:33:37]  For example, the question you'll have is, how can you put a price on a human life?
[00:33:43]  Right.
[00:33:43]  And it's a rhetorical question.
[00:33:45]  And it is fair to say people are irreplaceable.
[00:33:49]  If someone dies, you can't bring them back.
[00:33:51]  And that is a tragedy.
[00:33:53]  And it's a unique tragedy.
[00:33:54]  That's true.
[00:33:55]  But every single day when someone gets killed, there's a wrongful death lawsuit and that jury has to put on a price.
[00:34:04]  My friend met a bad man for the United States government.
[00:34:07]  When the U.S. kills kids overseas, they go to these families and they give them cash to pay off that the kid or the sibling was killed.
[00:34:17]  The boys are paid off at a lot higher rate than the girls because male lives are worth more in the Middle East.
[00:34:23]  So how can you do it?
[00:34:24]  You have to do it every day.
[00:34:25]  And this is the same kind of thing when they say, well, teachers don't get paid enough.
[00:34:30]  Great.
[00:34:31]  I bring this up constantly.
[00:34:33]  How much should they be paid?
[00:34:36]  And how are you determining that number?
[00:34:38]  You can't literally write the word more on a plate, a paycheck.
[00:34:42]  What is the number?
[00:34:43]  You have to have a number.
[00:34:44]  So it's the same thing.
[00:34:46]  It's like, yeah, everyone has a right, but I don't think that right is equal.
[00:34:51]  Then it becomes, well, you're Hitler.
[00:34:53]  Who are you to decide?
[00:34:54]  Well, everyone has to make a decision.
[00:34:57]  Like, I decide whose time I want to spend time talking to.
[00:35:00]  I decide, you know, if someone is like a real asshole, I don't mean like they're mean.
[00:35:04]  I mean like someone like basically Carol Baskett, right?
[00:35:09]  Like they killed a husband and they abscond with his property or allegedly.
[00:35:13]  Allegedly.
[00:35:13]  If we knew for real and it's like, oh, and she got her property seized by Evan Domain, I'm not going to be really that.
[00:35:21]  Okay, sure.
[00:35:22]  So I agree with all of that.
[00:35:24]  And, you know, just to the Ben Shapiro point, the thing that I, even for people who think emotionally, the thing that I just couldn't get past, and I think everything you just said is right.

=== Abandoning Political Theory (05:53) ===

[00:35:34]  And it's not that you can, like if one of the in a wrongful death, it's not that you can actually make that person whole, but you can come closer than you are now.
[00:35:44]  So giving somebody money for somebody who was killed, it's not going to bring that person back, but it's better than killing that person and not giving them money.
[00:35:51]  So we still accept that this is a better solution than not.
[00:35:55]  But to the Ben Shapiro thing, even for people who think emotionally, I just think like, can you imagine if like, you know, there's like a grandmother and a four-year-old and you can only save one of them and someone went and saved the grandmother, would you not be looking at that person like, what the fuck is wrong?
[00:36:13]  Just on an emotional level, don't we?
[00:36:15]  Wait a minute.
[00:36:16]  I disagree.
[00:36:17]  I really disagree.
[00:36:18]  This is interesting because historically, it would easily be the grandmother because the kids were expendable, right?
[00:36:23]  Yeah.
[00:36:24]  So if it's someone, a grandmother that you've had a relationship with, right?
[00:36:28]  As opposed to like a four-year, I mean, it might get tricky when they get older.
[00:36:32]  And this is where it gets, this is a very disturbing conversation to have.
[00:36:34]  I don't think it's at all obvious that you saved the kid.
[00:36:36]  Now, grandma's going to say to save the kid, but I don't think it's that obvious.
[00:36:41]  Because my grandma is a person exclusive value.
[00:36:43]  This is like the patron, my matriarch of the family.
[00:36:46]  Yes, but so much of her value has already been instilled and all of that stuff.
[00:36:51]  She's already lived a life.
[00:36:52]  And this is the future generation.
[00:36:54]  See, I think that, and, you know, I think that most parents would agree that your strongest, your strongest instinct is to protect your kid's life, whether at the expense of someone else's, at the expense of your own.
[00:37:08]  And I think there is kind of like a Darwinian logic to all of that, where it's like you want to keep the next generation going.
[00:37:16]  But either way, to the point we started at, we're agreeing that one person being killed can be worse than another person being killed.
[00:37:24]  And that I'm not saying life, but I'm not saying that life is equal.
[00:37:29]  What I am saying, though, is that there is some spirit of equality in saying that everyone has the right to not be killed.
[00:37:38]  Now, we're not going complete equity, you know, egalitarian, every life is the same value or something like that.
[00:37:46]  But I still think there is something, especially if you were, say, to the point you made before, if you were arguing against the original right-wingers, right, which were the defenders of monarchy, aristocracy, things like that, who would be saying some people get all of these rights and other people get basically no rights.
[00:38:05]  It would be kind of, at least at the time, an egalitarian impulse to say, I think everybody has the right to live.
[00:38:12]  I think everybody has self-ownership and that stuff.
[00:38:16]  Now, regardless of that, the idea of the right wingers, as we kind of loosely defined them before, saying that they, you know, they're for tradition and hierarchy and they don't want to tear down structures of the past.
[00:38:32]  How exactly do a couple of anarchists like me and you who want to abolish the most foundational hierarchy that's existed and a tradition that's existed for pretty much all of civilization, how do we fit into a right-winger definition?
[00:38:50]  Yeah, that's very, that's very, very true.
[00:38:51]  Yeah, it's that, that's a great point.
[00:38:54]  The reason I don't like the concept of equality in the sense of rights is let's look at the idea of something that's not in dispute eyes.
[00:39:01]  We all have two eyes, right?
[00:39:02]  So in a certain sense, you could say when it comes to having eyes, they're all equal.
[00:39:06]  But I think using the word equal there is opening doors.
[00:39:11]  And I don't think it's of much philosophical use.
[00:39:15]  Yeah, okay.
[00:39:16]  So I do tend to agree with you in that sense.
[00:39:18]  And this is something also, of course, that's also pointed out to left wingers quite a bit when people are arguing against them.
[00:39:26]  I think it's very effective, but that you'll realize that they don't even really believe in equality in that sense either, because it's the idea of even floating out what they'll say, equality of outcomes.
[00:39:38]  I mean, it's just absurd.
[00:39:40]  It can't even exist on paper.
[00:39:42]  There's no way you could have it.
[00:39:43]  But then there will be the kind of Jordan Peterson and even people like Thomas Soule and Milton Friedman used to say this too, which drives me crazy.
[00:39:51]  Is when they'll say, We're not for equality of outcome, but we're for equality of opportunity.
[00:39:57]  And I've always hated that because I find that to be equally just fantasy land, like made up.
[00:40:04]  Like, how would you enforce equality of opportunity?
[00:40:07]  That's going to be just as horrible as enforcing equality of outcome.
[00:40:11]  I am glad you brought that up.
[00:40:14]  I have a book signed by Richard Eli, Richard T. Eli.
[00:40:18]  Richard T. Eli was Woodrow Wilson's teacher.
[00:40:21]  He was one of the founders of the American Economic Association.
[00:40:25]  I believe that's the name, something similar to that.
[00:40:28]  And this was the equivalent of the London School of Economics in the States.
[00:40:34]  And their principle was to get together.
[00:40:37]  And basically, if you, it's a public conspiracy.
[00:40:41]  We're all going to get together and spread the ideas of the new economics.
[00:40:45]  And the new economics was, of course, having the government manage the economy.
[00:40:49]  And he was one of the founding fathers of progressivism.
[00:40:54]  He was not a corporatist in the sense that he wants, you know, just like a Mussolini government, whatever.
[00:41:02]  He had a place of private enterprise.
[00:41:04]  But if you read his autobiography, The Ground Under Our Feet, the last chapter is called, I believe in equality of opportunity.
[00:41:16]  That's where it fucking started.
[00:41:18]  And conservatives have that on their flag and they wave it like a pride flag every day.
[00:41:24]  They don't even realize where it comes from.
[00:41:26]  And they're suckling.

=== Equality of Opportunity Origins (03:36) ===

[00:41:28]  When I found that book, because I was doing all the original research and I just popped open to that, like that was after I came up with my conservatism's progressivism by the Speed Limit quote.
[00:41:38]  And I saw that in those words, I was like, holy shit.
[00:41:42]  So one thesis I had was totally wrong: that Republican president, Republican governor, Congress, we're going to scale that government.
[00:41:51]  Thesis, totally disproven.
[00:41:52]  Other thesis?
[00:41:54]  Oh, there it is.
[00:41:55]  It's not proof, but it sure sells a lot of evidence.
[00:41:58]  And that's that's a really great sign of being like an intellectually honest thinker is that you can have a theory, but then when the evidence contradicts the theory or even disproves the theory in this example, you abandon the theory.
[00:42:14]  It's like, oh, okay, goodbye, theory.
[00:42:16]  That was nice.
[00:42:17]  It's a little bit painful to abandon a theory.
[00:42:19]  You got to go, ah, shit.
[00:42:21]  I argued with all these people and said this shit.
[00:42:23]  And now I got to be like, yeah, I was wrong about all of that.
[00:42:26]  But if you want to be right, then you have to do that.
[00:42:29]  And then when you have a theory that is really confirmed, and that is a really great confirmation of a theory.
[00:42:35]  All right, let's take a quick second.
[00:42:36]  I want to thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Ridge, the makers of the Ridge wallet.
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[00:43:47]  So do me a favor, go over to ridge.com/slash P-O-T-P, check it out.
[00:43:51]  They got some great stuff.
[00:43:52]  Highly recommend the Ridge wallet.
[00:43:54]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:43:56]  I remember because I've heard so many of them, and some people, and like really smart people, you know, like Jordan Peterson's a good example of this, and Milton Friedman's another really, really smart people.
[00:44:06]  And they'll tear apart the problem with equality of outcome.
[00:44:10]  And they'll say, well, but how are you going to achieve this equality of outcome?
[00:44:14]  Because given any degree of freedom, we're going to not have an equality of outcome.
[00:44:18]  So you're going to need this totalitarianism, this authoritarianism, at least, in order to force this equality of outcome.
[00:44:26]  And that's why I'm just for equality of opportunity.
[00:44:29]  But they never ask the same question about equality of opportunity.
[00:44:33]  Well, how the hell would you enforce equality of opportunity?
[00:44:37]  Where do you see this around you organically in the real world?
[00:44:41]  Of course, people, some people's parents are just better to them.
[00:44:43]  Some people are born with more money.
[00:44:45]  Some people are more intelligent.
[00:44:47]  You go for a job interview.
[00:44:49]  That person interviewing you is going to have certain prejudices in his mind that he's not even privy to.
[00:44:54]  I don't even mean race.
[00:44:55]  I mean, like, maybe you look like someone you went to high school with and it makes him distrust you unfairly.
[00:45:00]  Or maybe you're tall.
[00:45:01]  Oh, he's going to like you more or you're pretty or you're all a million things.

=== The Myth of Objective Law (05:33) ===

[00:45:05]  There's no, this is one of the big arguments I have against anarchism.
[00:45:09]  When they argue for having common law, I go, you know, damn well that under your system, the rich people are always going to have better lawyers.
[00:45:18]  There's no way around this.
[00:45:20]  So if you're arguing for equality under the law, you cannot accommodate it even theoretically.
[00:45:26]  Yes.
[00:45:26]  And then, and we may have talked about this before, but this is one of the things that I've argued with objectivists about in the port is that they'll say objective law is what we need.
[00:45:36]  There is this idea of objective law, which I always found to be such a bizarre idea.
[00:45:42]  Yeah, what Rand talks about at one point, and I'm sure someone can find it.
[00:45:46]  She says she wants Rand, who wrote a book, collection of essays called Philosophy Who Needs It, who said constantly that every person needs philosophy, that we need to live consciously, that without having a worldview to guide your actions, you can't live a fully moral life and you can't live a fully healthy life and happy life, right?
[00:46:04]  When she's talking about the law, she says, when you have judges who are doing their jobs, I want them to have no ideology at all.
[00:46:14]  They should basically be robots.
[00:46:16]  I think she even used the word robots.
[00:46:17]  And it's like, these, and I get what you're saying that you should look at the evidence objectively without your prejudices, but data doesn't talk.
[00:46:27]  You need to analyze the data using your mind, which was she talked, which was her greatest value.
[00:46:32]  I mean, is there anyone who spoke more about the human mind than Randeau?
[00:46:35]  And it's like, oh, but when it comes to the most important thing, the law, basically, you have to turn off your brain and be a robot.
[00:46:41]  It's not possible.
[00:46:43]  Yes, there will always be the human element in any type of enforcement of any rules.
[00:46:49]  And of course, everybody who's, if you've ever dealt with a cop before in your life, you know this.
[00:46:54]  I mean, it's like that, the truth is that guy could be having a bad day and then you're fucked.
[00:46:58]  And it doesn't really matter what's written down on some piece of paper.
[00:47:02]  I used to have a bit in my, or it was on Libertas.
[00:47:05]  I did a bit about this.
[00:47:07]  But like the idea that people always like, have you ever seen one of those YouTube videos?
[00:47:11]  And we've all seen like the videos of like when people are like, they really know the law and they really confront a cop and they're like, well, actually, you can't do that because the statute C741 says that blah, blah.
[00:47:24]  And this guy ends up on the ground tased.
[00:47:26]  And there's always something amazing about that moment where people have this like, it's this like collision of idea and reality.
[00:47:36]  And the idea is like, I know my rights.
[00:47:39]  And the reality is man with a gun with a walkie-talkie with lots of other men with guns who will come.
[00:47:45]  It's like, it's like written on a piece of paper and I believe in it verse gang.
[00:47:50]  Yeah.
[00:47:51]  Who do you think's going to win?
[00:47:52]  It's really funny because they're often like very skeptical of the Constitution and so on and so forth.
[00:47:58]  But there is no one who believes more in the magic powers of the Constitution than these types because they sincerely believe like minarchists think, okay, a bunch of brilliant men 200 and whatever, 40 years ago sat down in a room in Philly and wrote down some things on a parchment and this most wonderful government ever made came into being, right?
[00:48:19]  Poof.
[00:48:20]  It's a spell.
[00:48:20]  Other than their clothes, they were wizards.
[00:48:23]  And you look at them, you're like, all right, come on, how did that work out in real life, right?
[00:48:27]  These types, take it one step further.
[00:48:30]  They seriously think cop is coming at you for reason or not.
[00:48:34]  And you just say, hocus, pocus.
[00:48:37]  And the cop's like, shit.
[00:48:41]  My gun doesn't work anymore.
[00:48:43]  Like, like, I was going to arrest you, but now you said, don't tell anyone.
[00:48:49]  It's not in and out where you order off the menu and you get like animal style, whatever.
[00:48:53]  That's not how it works.
[00:48:55]  They really also think that like the cop would never lie under oath in court, right?
[00:49:02]  Like if you, if you say, oh, I, you know, like they never plant evidence, they would never back each other up.
[00:49:08]  Now you can say that.
[00:49:09]  Right.
[00:49:10]  Then that's what it comes down to.
[00:49:11]  So there'll be something where they just go, oh, I didn't give him permission to search my car.
[00:49:16]  And that the cop can't just go, he did.
[00:49:19]  And it's just that simple.
[00:49:21]  He did.
[00:49:22]  Not only that he can do it, that he would do it.
[00:49:25]  And his friend would back him up.
[00:49:29]  Right.
[00:49:29]  And of course.
[00:49:30]  And then the other major flaw to me with objective law, the idea is that I don't actually think there can be objective law.
[00:49:39]  And I think law is inherently subjective to some degree.
[00:49:43]  Now, that doesn't mean there can be worse laws than others or more immoral laws than others.
[00:49:49]  But so I would agree with Ayn Rand that there is objective morality.
[00:49:55]  I do agree with that.
[00:49:56]  I think that you could say something like murder is objectively wrong or rape is objectively wrong or lots of different things that are objectively immoral.
[00:50:07]  But law involves not just saying some things against the law, there also has to be a punishment for the law and enforcement of the law.
[00:50:19]  And that gets into very subjective territory.
[00:50:22]  Like, okay, so it's easy to say rape is objectively immoral, but what should the punishment for rape be?
[00:50:29]  Now that gets into a very weird, subjective territory.
[00:50:33]  It's not as if we have some objective answer, like, well, now the chick gets to rape you or something like that.

=== Subjective Punishment Questions (15:56) ===

[00:50:39]  And now it's like, like, this, this, that doesn't really solve the problem.
[00:50:42]  So should you go to jail for three years or seven years?
[00:50:45]  That's pretty subjective, if you ask me.
[00:50:48]  So now who's going to determine that?
[00:50:50]  Well, it's going to be some group of humans who are kind of flawed.
[00:50:54]  And so I just, to me, like, you know, and that's really at the heart of the anarchist position is like, this is why it kind of needs to be decentralized completely.
[00:51:03]  This should be agreed upon by the parties that engage in activity and not by some authority figure somewhere who just decrees that this is the punishment.
[00:51:15]  Okay, so you you said that you went from you went from Republican to full anarchist?
[00:51:23]  Was there were there like stops along the way there?
[00:51:26]  I think it wasn't that I think it was more that I was like a hardcore libertarian who was rooting for the Republican Party.
[00:51:33]  Okay.
[00:51:34]  And who saw it as a mechanism both to roll back the state and who saw it as a mechanism to upset some really horrible people, which it is often effective at doing.
[00:51:46]  Well, look, Donald Trump's proof of that.
[00:51:48]  Yeah.
[00:51:48]  And even like the people like Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham, they've been doing it too.
[00:51:54]  And it's a Ted Cruz to hilarious effect.
[00:51:58]  But again, just seeing that they're the thing people, and I think I mentioned this with you before, but I just really want to beat this in people's heads.
[00:52:05]  Before 9-11, they were talking about going to Iraq.
[00:52:08]  This was very much part of the parlance of the day.
[00:52:13]  Are we not going to go to Iraq and finish the job that George H.W. Bush started?
[00:52:18]  They talked about it constantly.
[00:52:19]  So the fact that this was their priority, you know, was very, very telling.
[00:52:24]  I mean, you have to judge people by how they behave, not by what they say.
[00:52:29]  And no, you're right.
[00:52:30]  And that's, that's a, you know, it reminds me of, I mean, there's lots of different examples, but most recently where de Blasio has appointed this commission to make sure that when New York City reopens, we open in a more racially equitable manner.
[00:52:47]  And you're like, now this has nothing to do with the crisis at hand, obviously, but this is just what he already want.
[00:52:58]  Oh, I lost to Dave.
[00:53:02]  Okay, sure.
[00:53:04]  This case, people want to, people have their plans and that when they have an opportunity.
[00:53:09]  Yeah.
[00:53:13]  Oh, really?
[00:53:19]  And I had already made the de Blasio point.
[00:53:23]  Yeah.
[00:53:24]  That this is what de Blasio already wants.
[00:53:26]  And this is what de Blasio already wanted from before this whole situation.
[00:53:30]  So it's very obvious.
[00:53:31]  They have their goals, they have their plans.
[00:53:33]  And then if they have an opportunity, they go ahead with them.
[00:53:37]  Yeah, this is why I wrote that essay for The Guardian, Why I Won't Vote This Year.
[00:53:41]  And I said, yeah, they were going to start with their conclusions and democracy is a mechanism for them to further their way in that direction.
[00:53:47]  Actually, one thing that really did help my intellectual development, there was a file, a web page called the Heretics Bookshelf.
[00:53:59]  I think it's still floating around on the Wayback Machine.
[00:54:02]  And it was a list of books you're not supposed to read.
[00:54:05]  And I read all of them.
[00:54:06]  So it was, I guess, like a red pill bookshelf on every issue on the alternative perspective.
[00:54:13]  And going through that, there were like 30 of them, really helped me understand politics and culture in a different particular way.
[00:54:22]  So since you became a full-blown anarchist, since you were diagnosed with full-blown anarchy, as I also suffer from, there is no cure, but there is treatment available.
[00:54:37]  There's no cure, but you can podcast about it.
[00:54:39]  And that keeps you alive through the years.
[00:54:42]  And you can even gain weight on it.
[00:54:44]  It's great.
[00:54:45]  But what would you say?
[00:54:47]  So in the last, how long?
[00:54:49]  What year did you say you were like officially anarchist?
[00:54:52]  Ego and humorous came out in 2006 and I'm an anarchist there.
[00:54:57]  And that must have been 2014.
[00:54:59]  So this is a while.
[00:55:00]  Okay.
[00:55:01]  So since then.
[00:55:02]  2004.
[00:55:02]  I mean, when I wrote it.
[00:55:04]  Okay.
[00:55:04]  So since that time, what would you say?
[00:55:07]  Have there been any like major issues that you've changed your mind on?
[00:55:15]  Yes, I think one that I'm changing my mind on is anarchists by definition think the government's the enemy.
[00:55:23]  And I'm starting to realize more and more how much more nefarious the corporate press and the universities are compared to the government itself.
[00:55:34]  And that the hatred for like a Pelosi or a Chuck Schumer is a little misplaced, that they're just kind of shells and they're serving certain interests.
[00:55:44]  And they're not the ones like if Congress bet, like let's suppose, you know, if Congress banished tomorrow, if the government banished tomorrow, you would still have a big issue with outlets like the New York Times really doing a number on the population at large and training them in very nefarious ways.
[00:56:04]  So that is something that I guess I'm not changing my mind, but certainly changing my priority is one.
[00:56:09]  I think another thing I've seen in my lifetime is that, and I've tried my best to help with this.
[00:56:16]  I know you have as well, maybe not consciously, is when I first got into this whole scene, one thing I was very aware of is there were all these like communist party meetings or like green party meetings like back in the day.
[00:56:30]  And it'd be these old hippies with these handmade signs and it'd be really sad.
[00:56:35]  And there'll be these books about some rando who led a strike in the 1920s and they're trying to make him out to be a hero.
[00:56:42]  And I'm like, this is not the business.
[00:56:46]  And I'm like, it has to be a scene where there isn't much of a stigma or social cost to attract people toward it.
[00:56:55]  Right.
[00:56:55]  And I think the internet enormously has helped make that happen.
[00:57:00]  And that has been really wonderful.
[00:57:04]  In fact, like I think, you know, most people who are in any way fringe thinkers online, and there's lots of different schools, of course, they're all familiar with anarchist thought.
[00:57:17]  So that is, and that's where all the innovation comes on the fringes.
[00:57:20]  So that is something that I think is really kind of an excellent thing.
[00:57:23]  And also just how despicable many of these conservatives, the Buckley type conservatives are, like just bad people on a fundamental level, not because of their views, because of their personalities and how they behave.
[00:57:35]  Their views are fine.
[00:57:36]  They're neither here nor there.
[00:57:37]  It's really just them as human beings.
[00:57:39]  I'm like, you really are just awful.
[00:57:41]  And I think many, many, many leftists are far more ethical, have far more integrity, care more about people than they do, are more earnest and are kinder.
[00:57:53]  And people I would enjoy having conversation with.
[00:57:56]  Like they would run the table on them, even if they're in a sense more statist.
[00:57:59]  Yeah, no, I agree.
[00:58:01]  And I think that a lot of those left-wing people, the good lefties I'm talking about.
[00:58:06]  Which there's plenty of.
[00:58:07]  Yeah, there's a lot of.
[00:58:08]  And a lot of times they really are their lefties for the right reasons.
[00:58:14]  Even if they're wrong, they're there for the right reasons.
[00:58:17]  It is truly because they care about the little guy and they don't want to say.
[00:58:21]  And truthfully speaking, they're like, yeah, I don't care about your right to not be taxed as much as I care about this kid's right to not starve to death.
[00:58:30]  And even if we think that's flawed and that that kid would be better off and this is a more ethical system, I'd rather take that kid than fucking, you know, like one of these like right-wing war hawks any day.
[00:58:44]  It's interesting what you talked about.
[00:58:46]  This is one of the things that I changed on a lot.
[00:58:50]  And some of my fans tease me about this because I always say this, but when I, around 2016, I really started talking a lot more about the culture and not just autistically talking about politics.
[00:59:03]  And I just kind of realized that number one, this is what people care about.
[00:59:09]  They care about this a lot more than they care about the, You know, things that I really cared about, and that you know, you'll see, like, if there's one of these videos of, you know, like there'll be one of these videos of some social justice warrior on a college campus saying, like, all the white people here need to apologize for their privilege.
[00:59:30]  And you look under the video and it's like 20 million views.
[00:59:33]  Or then there's some video of Richard Spencer being like, you know, I care about white people and white people have a right to exist.
[00:59:38]  And it's like 20 million views.
[00:59:40]  And then it's like someone talking about the Fed.
[00:59:42]  It's like, you know, 12,000 views or something underneath it.
[00:59:45]  And you're like, oh, yeah, it turns out we can sit here and say, oh, this is just a distraction or this doesn't matter.
[00:59:51]  But you know what?
[00:59:52]  People really care about this issue and are really engaged in this distraction, even if it is one.
[00:59:58]  But then you also realize that if you really believe in liberty, well, then you need to have some type of culture that can sustain it.
[01:00:06]  And the point you were making before, I mean, even if we had a red button we could push that abolish the state tomorrow.
[01:00:12]  Well, if you still have the New York Times and NBC News and CBS News and, you know, all of these different, well, there would just be a state by the end of the year because the first thing they would say is, well, oh my God, we don't have a state.
[01:00:24]  We need to recreate a state.
[01:00:25]  And everyone would beg for it.
[01:00:26]  And everyone would, yeah, and you would just have, so it's like, there would be no, you know, like, first off, we don't have that red button.
[01:00:32]  It's going to be really hard to abolish this thing.
[01:00:34]  But even if we did, if you don't tackle the cultural issues, you're just going to be right back here.
[01:00:40]  Absolutely.
[01:00:41]  I mean, and I think that is, and it's also more fun because then you could talk about things that other people go down rabbit holes, which I like to do, and bring things to popular consciousness, people who are maybe not interested in politics, but interested in history.
[01:00:53]  I think on the right side of the political spectrum, there is, I'll explain why in a second, a huge dearth of knowledge about America's cultural history.
[01:01:04]  And part of that has been due to the fact that the universities who invented these kind of departments in the late 60s as a response to the new left, things like African American studies, women's studies, gay studies, are overwhelmingly hard left ideological professors, you know, promulgating their vision, right?
[01:01:20]  So people on the right are just like, okay, that's a thing for them.
[01:01:24]  But then when you do the homework like I've been doing and you're like, the one I've been on the rabbit holes of the Harlem Renaissance, when you have like the snooty NAACP, WEB Des Moist blacks, and then you have the New York Harlem artists who are writing books about getting drunk and getting late and getting fights, this isn't Republican versus Democrat.
[01:01:46]  This isn't Democrat versus Democrat.
[01:01:48]  This is a cultural battle.
[01:01:49]  And to say that this isn't of interest to you because you're not a black person is weird because just cultural conflicts spread out in every direction.
[01:01:59]  And it's fun to watch people fight over ideas.
[01:02:02]  But we're told, well, you know, all everyone on the right is the same and all Democrats are the same.
[01:02:08]  And it's like, oh, this is for Democrats.
[01:02:09]  And it's like, this isn't a political issue.
[01:02:11]  This is a cultural issue about a race coming into its own and how it's going to present itself, perceive itself.
[01:02:16]  And that is fascinating when it's like, all right, we can't blame slavery anymore.
[01:02:21]  What the fuck are we going to do with ourselves now?
[01:02:23]  And they were asking themselves this question.
[01:02:25]  And to see that, you know, how they handled this 100 years ago, to me, is very fascinating.
[01:02:30]  And I know everyone I talk to, I mean, this isn't a profound statement.
[01:02:34]  People find history fascinating.
[01:02:36]  It's a genuinely interesting subject to learn about, you know, people who've passed and how things handled in the past.
[01:02:43]  It's just so, there's so much there.
[01:02:45]  Yeah.
[01:02:46]  Yeah, 100%.
[01:02:48]  All right.
[01:02:48]  Well, that is our, that is our episode for today, Michael.
[01:02:52]  In this episode about your favorite topic, which is you, what was your favorite part?
[01:02:58]  My favorite part of this episode was that was good.
[01:03:05]  You talking about talking about the police.
[01:03:09]  I think that is such an important thing.
[01:03:12]  I hate using that word important for people to realize that even if you're pro-police, which there's many reasons to be, I can understand, some of the claims people make are just so, even on our side, are so absurd in their face.
[01:03:26]  Like once you talk about it, you start to laugh.
[01:03:29]  You're like, I can't believe people would just take two seconds to think about this and not realize it.
[01:03:34]  Well, you are part of the problem.
[01:03:39]  All right, guys, that's our episode for today.
[01:03:42]  Thank you guys for listening.
[01:03:44]  We'll be keeping these up as long as the government is keeping us inside.
[01:03:48]  Peace.
[01:03:52]  All right, guys.
[01:03:52]  Thanks so much for listening to today's show.
[01:03:55]  Before we leave, I just wanted to say, you know, a lot of people are always asking me about other libertarian podcasts that are out there.
[01:04:02]  Which ones do I recommend?
[01:04:04]  Yeah, I know a lot of times these days people have a lot of time on their hands.
[01:04:07]  So I want to tell you about the Peddling Fiction Podcast.
[01:04:10]  It's a funny and informative libertarian podcast from a Rothbardian radical.
[01:04:15]  I checked out a couple episodes.
[01:04:16]  I think you guys are really going to like what Johnny Profita has to say.
[01:04:19]  In his most recent episode, he explores the Fed intervening in the stock market and how the market is somehow going up while investors are pulling out.
[01:04:27]  I really think you're going to enjoy his podcast and it might give you something to do while you're harassing Brian for whatever thing you think he's gotten wrong, which is usually my fault.
[01:04:36]  Anyway, check out the Pedaling Fiction podcast.
[01:04:39]  This is a lying politician's worst nightmare, destroyer of Keynesian economic fallacies.
[01:04:44]  The link is right here in the episode description.
[01:04:46]  And we've got a short trailer that we're going to play for you right now.
[01:04:50]  Anyone claiming that America's economy is in decline is peddling fiction.
[01:04:57]  And libertarians are better Democrats than the Democrats and better Republicans than the Republicans.
[01:05:04]  A Republican president, a Republican-controlled Congress, presided over the biggest expansion of government up to that point in history.
[01:05:14]  And what's going to happen when they realize that Social Security is nothing but a racist, sexist, ageist, Ponzi scheme?
[01:05:25]  I mean, how badly do you have to screw something up before we finally conclude that maybe government can't solve this problem?
[01:05:34]  The free market is the ultimate expression of democracy.
[01:05:40]  I do the show two days a week.
[01:05:42]  It's a free show.
[01:05:44]  You sure you don't want to see some evidence to back up any of their claims before you get us into another war?
[01:05:51]  Their entire existence is exploitative.
[01:05:55]  Everything they eat, everything they drink, the roof over their heads, it was all paid for from thefts at the threat of violence.
[01:06:05]  Isn't it interesting that an education system run by the government somehow churns out a bunch of people who favor the government handling everything?
[01:06:15]  That's the type of accounting that would get you thrown in prison if anybody else were to do it.
[01:06:21]  But that's how the federal government operates.
[01:06:24]  Black, white, Indian, Asian, rich, poor, short, tall, everybody benefits from freer markets.

=== Ideas Cannot Be Defeated (00:28) ===

[01:06:35]  Libertarianism is principled.
[01:06:37]  It's philosophically sound.
[01:06:39]  In the arena of ideas, we cannot be defeated.
[01:06:44]  This is the Peddling Fiction Podcast.
[01:06:48]  The voice and soul of so-called fiction.
[01:06:54]  Follow me on Twitter at Peddle Fiction.
[01:06:56]  Download and subscribe.
[01:06:58]  And no matter what happens, keep on peddling that so-called fiction.
[01:07:03]  Peace.