Dave Smith and Michael Malice dissect Murray Rothbard's Anatomy of the State, critiquing its naturalistic fallacies while arguing the state inherently expands via violence rather than protecting capitalism. They challenge objectivist views on private defense agencies, citing Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged to illustrate how institutionalized violence mirrors current state failures like the NYPD. The discussion exposes Social Security's "unseen" intergenerational costs and rejects fears of wealthy oligarchs creating new states as mere descriptions of existing tyranny. Ultimately, they conclude that competing defense mechanisms offer a more viable path to liberty than relying on failed institutions like the Supreme Court. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
The Parasite Fest Bait and Switch00:15:33
Hey guys, today's show is brought to you by Heshi Socks.
Heshy socks are my favorite socks in the world.
You have to go buy a pair and try them on.
They will change your life.
If you've ever had your feet hurting after a day in dress shoes going to work, go to Heshisocks.com.
They will solve this problem for you.
Most fashion and dress socks are expensive.
They're poorly constructed and they provide zero protection.
Not Heshy Socks.
Heshy socks are cushioned in the heel, foot, and toe.
They have arch support in the center so your feet don't slosh around in your shoes.
Best of all, they're designed to stay up so you don't have to pull up at your socks all day long.
They're made with breathable Pima cotton and they're antimicrobial to kill the stink.
So your feet are going to feel good and smell good and you're going to look good.
Go to Heshisocks.com.
That's H-E-S-H-I-S-O-C-K-S dot com.
You guys are going to love these socks.
Use promo code problem30 for 30% off your entire order.
They have basic ankle dress socks, anything you need.
Heshisocks.com, promo code problem30.
All right, let's start the show.
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem, the crossover saga continues with the great Michael Malice, who is looking fresh and clean today, ready to go.
There you go.
I like it.
You've gone through all types of different phases of hair in this pandemic.
And this is a sign that we're getting back to the new normal.
I went to my hair guy with 101 lesbian hairstyles.
And I said, we're going through it.
We did it.
Last one.
There you go.
So something, something was accomplished in these last few months.
So I guess we should.
Those ladies sure are ordery.
I've never been hit on so much in my life by all these sexy, sexy women.
Yeah, well, you've got options now.
You can play this a number of different ways.
So there is some unfortunate news that I guess we should start off by announcing.
I literally just a few minutes ago looked down and saw the email, but Freedom Fest has been canceled.
Sucks.
Those guys really did everything they could to make it happen under pretty difficult conditions to organize a big festival.
And then the state of Nevada just basically pulled the rug out from under them, recently announced that they're going back from phase three to phase two.
And they said they couldn't have gatherings of more than 49 people.
And there's just no way to do Freedom Fest like that.
Why didn't they just rename it Black Lives Matter Fest?
And then no one would have any problems getting sick.
Yeah, it is true.
In fact, we'd probably be slowing down the spread if we were doing a Black Lives Matter Fest or even just celebrating gay culture or something like that.
I think that's okay too.
It's just obviously it's got to be a left-wing cause.
We could just pick a different left-wing cause and I'm sure that would be fine too.
It's just, you know, well, what are you going to do?
Really, by the way, and I know we've mentioned this before, and this isn't the topic of today's episode, but I have pointed this out, and I think it should be repeated a lot, that really everything about COVID from the leftist perspective should be a good thing.
Everything about it.
The people it's killed, the economic activity, it's slowed down, it's slowed down.
Because if you really believe that climate change is this existential threat to the world, and as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren all said, it's going to make life, you know, what was Bernie Sanders' line?
I think it will make the planet uninhabitable for our children and grandchildren, which I always thought grandchildren was a little bit unnecessary.
I also like the idea that, like, if the temperature is two degrees higher, it's just like, well, I can't live like this.
Yes, that's a right.
Carbon emissions could not have been slowed down more.
You couldn't have imagined anything that would do it.
I'm going to make a point, which I, when your Facebook friend brings up climate change to throw in their face, because I think this is germane.
As you probably know, David, I'm sure a lot of listeners know about background in zoology.
My first job was writing for an aquarium magazine.
The claim is that if temperature on average goes up two degrees or whatever, one degree, that it's going to be devastating for the oceans and the coral reefs.
So when someone says this to you, ask them, how is it possible, if that's true, for corals to be held in home aquariums where the temperature in no one's home is stable within one degree?
And when you ask them, they don't have an answer, you don't have to follow up.
But they're making this crazy claim that's very extreme.
They're one degree and it's systemic collapse oceanwide.
I'm not buying it.
But that's just something to put out there.
Yeah, no, that's an excellent tool to use.
Okay, so this episode, here's the bad news, Freedom Fest canceled, but the good news is we have the episode that a lot of people have been waiting for.
It's the Anatomy of the State episode because you finally read it and now we can discuss it.
I want to say before I get your thoughts, which I'm very excited to hear what you have to say about the, it's kind of a pamphlet, longer than an essay, shorter than a book.
It's somewhere in that range.
I read Anatomy of the State, I believe maybe 11 or 12 years ago.
I think it was 2009 when I read it first.
And I read it before I was an anarchist.
And you're reading it after having been an anarchist for many years.
So I'm sure that, you know, has like a different perspective.
It was very powerful to me.
I had never heard these, you know, these ideas put quite that way before.
But you, I know you had said that you really hadn't read that much Rothbard.
I think in writing your last book, The New Right, you started to read some of his stuff.
And so, okay, just with that.
And also, I wanted to say that Anatomy of the State is for me a foundational work that I recommend to other people as one of the first go-to's if they're interested in reading about this stuff.
I think whenever I say anything that in any way can be construed as not glamorizing Rothbard, it comes off as either I'm just trying to fuck with people or something like that.
Why would you shit on Murray Rothbard like that?
Why would you take shots at the great Murray Rothbard?
You said it yourself.
It's a foundational text, right?
I was at, I'll tell you a funny story.
I was at some, there's a drag queen in Willem, and Willem has a song called Rupologize, which is a cover of a song called Apologize by some band of like black guys.
And I had never heard the song Apologize.
And I was at a restaurant or something and it came on.
And I'm like, why would they be covering Willem?
Because I had heard Willem's song first, then I heard that one.
So because this book is so influential, this essay is so influential, I felt like I wasn't learning anything I didn't know.
I feel like it's the kind of thing that if, or I disagreed with, I feel like this is the kind of thing where if you're 50 and you read Catcher in the Rye, you're like, it's not, I don't know that anyone who's this deep in anarchism and spreading very heavily Venn diagrammed with Murray Rothbard's ideas as their kind of vocation would read this and be like, oh my God.
And because it's very foundational, very, I don't want to say one-on-one in terms of the concepts aren't strong and thought out, but it is very much, I could see it being the red pill where someone's like, you know, for me, what this would be the equivalent of if I had read it earlier, this is the equivalent for me.
And this essay was the same essay for Tom Woods, the Bright Failed podcaster, was Lysander's Spooner's The Constitution of No Authority.
Because when you argue these things, because you're a minarchist or one is a minarchist, right?
And they're used to hearing all the lefty arguments and you can handle them all day long.
And then someone comes to you from the right and they're like, how are the cops not socialized medicine?
How is that not socialism?
And then you're like, like you start spurting out all the lefty arguments, which you know are nonsensical.
But since you've never had to do this, those are the only arguments in the zeitgeist.
So you just kind of grab onto them because you've never had to consider this.
So I feel like if I had not been an anarchist and I read it, the ideas are put forward so clearly and systemically that I'd be like, oh, like I didn't, the thing that you must have felt, which I felt with Lysander Spooner was, I didn't realize this was on the table.
Yeah.
It was like, oh, this is a thing.
And that is so liberating when someone who is presenting a worldview that you knew nothing about, that you, oh, it's okay, crazy people think this whatever.
Sure, sure, sure.
And then you read it, you're like, okay, even this guy is wrong.
He's not crazy.
He's very coherent, very logical, very spelled out.
My biggest takeaway, and I tweeted this out and everyone was all excited because like, oh, he's back on Rothbard, was that line where he points out that the state is the only agency in a country which gets ahead through coercion.
And that line, I'm like, even though I obviously knew that on some level, to see that spelled out, like that this is the essential difference in terms of not just what it is, because Washington talked about what is the state but force, but to say this isn't just what it is, this is how it makes money.
That is, I think, a big, I don't, epiphany, even though I obviously knew that on some level, just to see it spelled out, that really I thought was excellent.
Yeah.
So I agree.
And for me, it's not just, it's not as if like I had never heard of the idea of anarchy before I read this.
In fact, I went in knowing Murray Rothbard was an anarchist and I had listened to some anarchists.
But if you're, in my opinion, if you're at all even giving anarchy a fair hearing, like if you're like, okay, well, let me see if I can be persuaded by these ideas.
He lays out a devastating case, devastating case.
And in Rothbardian fashion, it's just, and this is what I love about the guys in the, in the Misesian lineage, is that what Mises did, if, you know, for people out there, if you've read any Mises, it was always a logical train of thought where it's like, I'm going to build everything following the last piece of logic very clearly to the next one and not deviate from that.
And that's, this to me is like Rothbard at his best.
And there's a few parts of the book that I find that really still stick with me.
I actually haven't read it in quite a while, but I've read it multiple times.
So I remember enough of it.
One of the lines that I thought was really great.
Well, he's talking about how, you know, the state is parasitic in nature and that it has to be.
Well, I hate that argument.
Let's talk about that after, but go ahead.
Really hate that argument.
Oh, okay.
Well, go ahead.
Tell me why you hate that argument.
Well, because it's begging the question because parasitism is natural.
Like, I hate this naturalistic fallacy where you're like, well, we should be like nature.
Well, there's some matriarchal animals, there's some patriarchal animals, there's some whatever.
Parasite Rand talks about this too: like to be a parasite is to be against man.
That's a value judgment.
Whereas many animals, I think, I think it's actually a majority of species.
I have to look this up, are parasites.
And if you think about it, if one species is going to have several species that parasitize it, you're going to have so that is a kind of like I think bait and switch, which is not intellectually fair.
Well, I agree with you.
It's not, I don't think calling the state parasitic is a bait and switch, but saying that that goes against nature is to some degree a bait and switch.
And he did, he does have a couple lines in there about the state of nature, which I agree with you.
That is not, that is probably the only part of the book that I actually don't like.
And it's very Randian of him.
He's really kind of channeling Rand.
And I've just never, I don't, I do not buy into the kind of libertarian line.
I think it's just forcing our desires into the state of nature to say that it's the state of nature is like non-aggression and us working together, which is like, no, I mean, the state of nature is brutality that we can't even comprehend.
And if you want to go full, be fully pedantic about this, I would rather deal with parasites than with predators.
I'd rather have bed bugs in my house than lions in my house.
Like, if you really want to go in that direction, I'd rather have the welfare state than Stalin.
This isn't, it's not even a hard choice.
Yes, no, I agree.
Predators are more admirable, I guess you could say, but I don't care.
And not that that is the choice in front of us, the welfare state or Stalin, and you could prefer neither, but I think it also is reasonable to say I'd rather have the income tax than mass amounts of violent crime.
Now, not to say that it's one or the other, you know, I'd rather have neither, but sure, there that is a fair point.
That, you know, you'd you'd rather be like, ah, man, I got to send this check into the IRS once a year, but not live in an area where you think you're going to get shot when you walk outside.
And I just do want to point out that the point of this episode is two Jews convincing people that being a parasite is appropriate.
That's really where it is.
I mean, really, is it really that bad?
Just a little bit, a couple of shekels.
But anyway, the point, the line that I really love that he said that really, I think, makes you think.
Well, one of the central themes of the work is that the state, of course, by its nature is begotten by violence and aggression.
But he takes on the Marxist idea that the state is protecting the capitalist class and actually argues that the state by its very nature has to be opposed to capitalism.
And one of the lines that I really love in the book is that he says, production always precedes predation.
Yes.
So it's very Randian and it's very like it's an a priori logical truth.
You can't get around that.
Obviously, I can't steal something before it's been produced.
It would have to be produced first in order for me to steal it, right?
In the same way that you can't hold a baby that hasn't been born yet.
Like it just, it has one has to come before the other by logic.
And that's a really interesting way to start thinking about things to realize that the market activity has to be there first before the state has anything that it can expropriate.
Production Precedes Predation Logic00:02:22
That always really stuck at home with me.
I got to say, like, I feel like this must be, I'm never going to read Man, Economy, and State probably, because I know that that's a tank.
And I'm sure a lot of man, economy, and state is something I have you read the whole thing.
Not the whole thing.
I've read, I sat down.
I mean, I think I've read most of it, but there were parts that I skipped through.
It's very technical.
Yeah.
So I know I'm never probably going to ever read it.
But in the same way, I feel that man, economy, and state is taking the ideas and anatomy of the state and just exploding them into every direction.
I feel like anatomy of the state, as short as it is, is itself an expansion of one Rothbard quote.
And it was the quote I used to start my book, The New Right.
The very beginning of The New Right after the epigram by Sylvia Plath is Rothbard saying, and indeed, what is the state anyway, but organized banditry?
What is taxation but theft on a gigantic, unchecked scale?
What is war but mass murder on a scale impossible by private police forces?
What is conscription but mass enslavement?
Can anyone envision a private police force getting away with a tiny fraction of what states get away with and do habitually year after year, century after century?
And that I think is Rothbard summed up and our version of anarchism in one paragraph.
Like just answer me these questions.
Like, fine, the mafia.
The thing is, the mafia isn't some hypothetical, like a Lex Luthor super villain team.
We know what they look like.
We know what they do.
They do awful things.
They traffic, sell drugs, kill their own.
But again, the mafia compared to war, they don't want to have war.
It's even when they're having war, they're having war with each other and they're doing their best to minimize it.
Yeah, it really is like, and that's so much of what anarchists always have to battle with is that what is the status quo is accepted by most people because most people don't have, aren't creative thinkers.
And so, well, this is what is.
And so that's just accepted.
And what we're asking them to do is to think creatively.
And I know it sounds a little bit crazy that it's like, so there'd be private courts that have agreements with each other and then they could go to other courts to settle their own.
Conservatives Hating the State Yet Using It00:15:37
Can I say one thing?
I also love their idea that these private courts or whatever aren't making it easy for the customers.
Right.
Like when you look at Microsoft Office and all these different programs, that they have the smartest minds in different countries doing their best to make it so grandma, who is also blind and illiterate, can figure out how to use this program.
Like backwards for the lowest of the low.
But when it came to these private courts who are customers, they're going to make it even harder than now.
Right.
So it's a mix of the fact that they can't, it's hard to like wrap their head around this thing that does happen all the time.
But also, if your concern is like disputes between different groups, the fact that we just take it as kind of a given that there were two world wars in the 20th century, which were disputes amongst groups.
Like, I mean, there were, I mean, and no, and that's just the two world wars.
That's not counting like, you know, just the genocides that were committed by governments.
It's not counting, you know, Vietnam or Korea or, you know, any of these other horrific things that happened in the 20th century.
But that's just, that happened.
And that's the status quo.
So it's like, well, yeah.
But our point is like, yeah, it's kind of crazy that we accept that.
That's pretty nuts.
What are you going to do not have like a Nazi government?
Yeah, that's what we're going for.
You could try.
You could give that a shot.
Right.
All right.
Let's take a quick second.
I want to thank our sponsor for today's show, which is lucy.co.
Lucy Nicotine is a company founded by former smokers who are finally making tobacco alternatives that don't suck.
It's 2020.
Get rid of your cigarettes, unplug your vape, throw out your tin of dip, and go get some Lucy nicotine gum or lozenges that actually tastes great.
I can personally attest to this.
They really do taste great.
I've tried some of the other products before, couldn't stand them, some of the gums and lozenges.
But at lucy.co, you can get the best ones out there.
This is the real deal.
I've read lots of testimonials from people who have, you know, it's really saved them.
They've gotten off smoking and vaping from this stuff.
Go check it out.
If you use promo code problem, they're going to give you your first trial order of gum or lozenges at the lowest price they're allowed by law to charge you.
Yes, the wonderful folks at the government have rules against giving nicotine away for free.
The team at Lucy is working with us at gas to get your first trial order of gum for right around a dollar and lozenges for about two dollars.
Anyway, go to lucy.co, use the promo code problem at checkout, get rid of your old SIGs or vapes.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Rothbard, as you said, that quote, I mean, it's just perfect and it's a summation of everything that we stand for.
And in the first, the first portion of Anatomy of the State is what the state is not.
And this is a part there that is one of the main things that sticks out to a lot of people when they read this.
Certainly really hit home with me when I first read it, but taking on the idea that we are the government.
And he mentions the language of us and we, which still really, I mean, that persists to this day.
It is an unbelievable, you know, like, I know there's been great people who have, you know, said things about this before, but controlling language is really such a powerful way to control how people think.
And so much of this, you know, still exists where if somebody has a problem with something that the government of China did, it's like, well, China did this.
And this is now supposed to represent a billion people did this, even though it was a committee that made this decision.
We go, China.
And even people like me and you will speak this way: say, when we invaded Iraq, we did that, but really, we didn't invade Iraq.
This is just how we use language.
We speak of people and governments as if they're all one thing.
Countries are all one thing, and the government represents that whole thing.
You know, like I hate Israel or something like that, but it's like you might hate a policy of the Israeli government.
You know who else hates those policies?
About half of Israel.
Like, if you talk to Israelis, they're about half of them absolutely hate their government and are like for there's, I don't know what the exact number are, but there's a huge percentage of Israelis who are for Palestinian rights and the right to return and all of that, but basically the whole left half of Israel.
What he says at one point to take this down, which I think is great, is just that he goes, if we are the government, then all of those Jews in Germany committed suicide.
Yeah.
Which is a great way to put it.
I'm going to give a quote from one of my favorite thinkers, which is Albert Camus.
And he really codifies this idea that you're talking about we versus the government.
And he said, I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.
I don't want any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood.
I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive.
And I think, yeah, this patriotism, which is often sneered at by people who are horrible, but is often used as a cudgel to exploit people's good nature, is something that I think everyone needs to have a very nuanced opinion on.
Because to think that politicians are thinking about America first instead of themselves and their bested interests is not historically valid.
Yes.
Well, that's another point that Rothbard makes in the book.
That he gets into what actually motivates people within the state apparatus.
And I thought that was always a very good point.
It's one of these things that, which ultimately is, I guess, what a red pill is, but it's one of these things where once you've taken it, you can't unsee it.
Even if you want to, it's kind of like you already took this red pill.
You don't really have the option to not see this anymore.
And what he says is that if you actually look at the actions of the state, they always take the actions that protect themselves.
And one of the points that he makes in the book is that basically there are two threats that exist to the state.
And it's that there's two ways that states can fall.
And it's either a war or a revolution.
It can either come from outside or within, but those are the only two.
And if you look at it that way, it's very hard to unsee that.
You go, well, that's what states are always concerned with.
They're concerned with defending a military to defend against state militaries that could conquer them.
And they're concerned with propagandizing their own people to support them.
And once you look at things that way, everything else kind of makes sense.
It is always surprising to me, or disappointing, I should say, or there's a lot of feelings I have toward this, how willing conservatives are to have the government, which they genuinely hate, like they really do hate it, raise their children and kind of like be like, oh, what are you going to do?
And it's like, I don't know how to reconcile it or how they reconcile it because I know for a fact that they are crazy about their kids, as everyone is about their kids.
And I know for a fact that they do not regard this government as representing them, their values.
And somehow they just don't kind of put these two in a Venn diagram.
And they just kind of like, oh, what are you going to do?
And I'm just like, I'm sorry.
I'm not a dad.
So I'm talking out of my ass to some extent.
You're a dad.
But if I knew that these people are the ones training my child, nothing else is on the table.
Like this is the argument I made on Rogan and I've made since.
Like if climate change, like we talked about this on your show, I think about COVID, if climate change was this issue that they are claiming it is, you're not talking about racism.
You're not talking about statues.
You're only, if a meteor is facing the earth within 10 or 20 or 50 years, we are only talking about the meteor.
There's nothing else that is on the table.
Everyone only cares about the meteor.
They're not going, oh my God, this meteor is coming right at us.
And this guy's making 12 bucks an hour.
I really think he should make 15.
Yeah, it's not happening.
So if you are aware that this is like your kids are being raised by these people and taught things that not only that you hate, but are going to cause them harm and hurt your country.
I don't understand how you're talking about anything else other than abortion.
Like that I can wrap my head around.
Okay, we got to stop the killing of the children.
Then we have to stop the abuse of the children.
Like I don't get it.
And I would, and I've heard conservatives talk about it, but nothing that they have said resonated with me emotionally.
It is really something.
It's hard for me to wrap my head around it too, where conservatives will, I mean, they'll even, many of them will believe goofy conspiracy theories, you know, about Obama being a Muslim or something like that, or the, you know, or, you know, whatever, that's that Obama, you know, truly hates America and is in there to destroy this country.
But coming after their children, you know, it's like if Obama was then to come after their guns, they would lose their shit.
Like that will not be tolerated.
But we are going to quite blatantly indoctrinate your children for 12 years or 13 years is that it's just like, well, that's the way it's got to be.
Yeah, I can't solve that one for you.
It's very strange.
I think now that we're talking, part of me is thinking that maybe they think, well, I didn't get indoctrinated.
So, and the other point is you did, because this is why conservatives are so big on saying, oh, when I was a kid, it wasn't like this.
No, when you were a kid, you were oblivious.
I have this example I'm putting in my forthcoming book.
It's like someone who turns 18 and thinks all of a sudden sexual activities through the roof.
No, it's just that all your friends are having sex now and grown-ups were having sex when you were five.
Lots of it.
You had no way of knowing this was going on.
It's just that your awareness has changed now and your ability to spot these things and have conversations.
So I think they think, oh, it wasn't this brainwashy when I was a kid.
No, it was just defective.
That's how effective brainwashing works.
It doesn't write brainwashing on the board.
It's that you look at it like, oh, they're telling me like an honest, fair truth.
And I'm seeing both sides.
Yeah.
Well, right.
And there is something like the nostalgia is a powerful psychological force.
I mean, it really is.
Like, I can't tell you how I know you were just reading that book, The Red Decade, which you really like.
But, you know, I've heard so many conservatives.
I've heard liberals as well, but so many conservatives talk about the time when journalists were objective.
You know, like there used to be objective journalism and now there's all these journalists have their agenda, like as if there was not always an agenda, which is, I mean, it's just a completely made up, you know, version of history.
But that's, yeah, let's just go back to, you know, when the journalists only told the truth.
You know, it's, I think that they lived through Reagan.
That's the thing.
Like Reagan is there.
They all have a boner for Reagan, understandably to some extent.
But like, you saw how he was talked about.
Yeah.
Like, so you can't even, so what?
It was good in the 60s?
What the hell are you talking about?
When Barry Goldwater was about to get us into nuclear war?
Right, right.
I think it's kind of like, you know, sometimes I think it does appeal to autistic libertarian types.
Yes, right.
The idea of like objective journalism.
I think of it kind of similarly to people say when they say we're against identity politics.
Like that does, part of it kind of even sounds nice to me because I am an autistic libertarian and I repeat myself again.
But I don't know that it ever really exists.
Like I don't think there's actually ever been an objective journalist and I don't think there's ever been an absence of identity politics.
I mean, it might be an identity that you prefer to the other, like we identify as Americans or something, or we identify, but all politics is identity politics to some degree.
And that's how people operate.
Yeah, it's amazing how people, well, when there's like certain similarities in our history, and when you point those out, people will hand wave them away because they like one and they don't like the other.
So therefore, they're not the same.
And it's like, they are the same, just like one doesn't like the other.
Like Joe Biden saying, oh, I'm going to have to pick a black woman or a woman as my vice presidential candidate.
Oh, why not pick the best person?
But historically, for a very long time, you had something called geographical balance, where if I'm a northerner, I'm going to have a southerner on the ticket, right?
And it's just like, okay, like it was their version of what we're seeing now.
Now, you can make the argument it's worse to pick for gender than you were than it is to pick for geography because you want the ticket to represent the whole country.
Yeah, the vice president has no power back in the day.
Harry Truman didn't know about, that's what's insane.
FDR wasn't in great health.
World War II is like one of the biggest crises that this earth has ever seen.
You would think that Harry Truman is getting briefed a little bit, right?
In case something happens, in case FDR is assassinated.
Like, I mean, there's a million scenarios where things go bad or whatever.
Yeah.
Someone can drop dead at any minute, particularly FDR.
Right.
And you know, he's not dropping because he's sitting, but you know what I mean.
But it's still a little bit smaller drop.
You would think, all right, this is World War II.
We are not messing around.
If we're going to have a relay race, we are making sure that baton is handed off easily.
And they didn't.
So the geographical balance is also a complete canard.
Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.
Andrew Johnson's not sitting in on him and being like blah, blah, blah, blah.
So it's something that we have had historical precedent over.
But because when something is happening now and it's happening in a way we don't like, we think, oh my God, this is terrible.
And therefore, the point is it's not that different from what we've had in the past.
Yeah.
And so even like to your example, if you were saying, oh, well, I prefer, you know, someone picking someone on the grounds of where they're from than their race.
Okay.
You might prefer one strand of identity politics to the other, but that's not an absence of identity politics.
And regardless, even if there is one true Scotsman autist out there who is like, I really have no identity and just live in the world of logic, you're pretty much alone.
And everybody else is concerned with their identity, whether you like it or not.
Now, you can say that identity politics should be tamed as much as possible and that it shouldn't.
Yes, it's obviously this is a cartoonish, ridiculous version of it that we see on the left where your qualification is your identity.
And that's stupid.
But most people, their identity means something to them.
And the truth is that all of us in this country have different reactions toward different types of identity politics.
And that you might be able to defend that for like there might be good reason for that.
Now, if somebody were to say, you know, like, I'm a proud Italian and I really love Italian culture and Italian music and Italian food, that doesn't really ruffle too many feathers.
If someone said European culture and European traditions, that ruffles more feathers.
Why White Power Triggers More Feathers00:02:36
And if someone said white power and white culture, that like really gets a reaction out of people.
Now that might be justified, but all of those are identity politics.
And then, you know, on the other side, if someone said, hey, listen, I'm a black man and what I care about is a healthy society for my, you know, black kids and I want black communities and black businesses to do well.
That is generally not seen as being nearly as problematic as if a white person said the same thing.
Now, that might be fair, given the state of things in this country and the history of the country, but it's still, let's not pretend we're just against identity politics.
There's one identity that you don't like.
All right, let's take a quick second.
I want to thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Cushy Dreams.
Cushy Dreams specialize in extraordinary CBD-rich hemp flour, also known as Bud.
They also make CBD pre-roll joints.
Cushy Dreams is a new company with a full lineup of premium smokable CBD shipping legally to all 50 states.
Join the group of men and women who smoke their CBD.
I'll tell you, I didn't even know this was possible.
And I am very aware of CBD, but I know of it in lots of other forms.
I didn't know you could smoke it just like pot.
It's amazing.
If you get this Cushy Dream stuff, it looks like the best pot you've ever seen.
It just tastes, feels, smells, looks like really great marijuana, but it's CBD.
So it's not for getting high.
It's just for the medical benefits of marijuana.
And it's great.
It's 100% hand-trimmed, never machine-trimmed.
They take an artisan approach.
Every run is a small batch.
Independent lab tested compliance for purity.
Each batch is slow cured for two to four weeks to guarantee maximum freshness and preserve flavor and cannabinoids.
Cushy Dreams has CBD flower and pre-rolls that are just incredible.
They come in specific indica-sativa blends like energy, hustle, dream.
Anyway, go to cushydreams.com and at checkout, use the promo code problem20.
That'll get you 20% off your first order.
It's an exclusive discount for our listeners.
There's no better offer out there.
Smoke your CBD because you can.
CushyDreams.com, promo code PROBLEBLEM20 for 20% off.
All right, let's get back into the show.
There's the devil's argument, advocate arguments we've made here, which is like, yeah, but when you have that you're going to have to pick a woman as your VP, what you're validating is men not getting hired for certain positions because you're modeling what your company should look like vis-a-vis the presidency, the vice presidency.
Politicians Bound by Their Own Constitution00:15:34
And I think that is a fair argument.
At the same time, you have to realize you could also very easily look at it as validating white supremacy because the Democrats are nominating the oldest, whitest man in this country, and he's at the top of that ticket.
And they did everything in their power to make sure that that oldest, whitest man is at the top of the ticket.
So a lot of this depends on perspective.
I'm not saying this isn't a threat.
I'm not saying this isn't an issue in America.
But what people need to appreciate is there will always be an out-group which will leverage whatever power it can to try to get itself further ahead.
And it will use arguments that are fair or reasonable and use arguments that are nonsensical, whatever works to get that group ahead.
And people identify themselves by opposition.
So what I talk about in my book: if you have a group of kids and adults, the kids will think of themselves as kids.
If you just have a group of kids, they'll think of themselves as boys and girls.
They'll split up.
So very easily, it could be like a race thing, but then it could just as easily be like Joe Biden's old.
This happened in 92.
You had George Bush is old, and Bill Clinton and Al Gore are the young people.
So they did identity politics on, I don't want to call identity politics, but kind of what you were saying, on the basis of age.
So there will always be some need to be like, we're going to draw the circle.
Where do you draw your border to get the 51%?
It could be on race.
It could be on geography, but it's inevitable that some of these things will happen.
Now, you could say some are more legitimate than others.
Sure.
And some are certainly much more illegitimate than others.
But this is something that you shouldn't be surprised that people are going to exploit.
Yeah, absolutely.
And to tie things back in, the state operates by exploiting these differences.
I mean, that's like the first rule to be a ruler is that you have to exploit the differences amongst the classes that you're ruling.
So back to anatomy of the state.
Rothbard, after going through the chapter of what the state is not, goes into what the state is and makes what is to me a conclusive argument that in order for me to take anyone's arguments seriously, they can't avoid this kind of Rothbardian point, which of course is not unique to Rothbard and he quotes other people in the pamphlet.
But again, I would also say that this is central to all, you know, the whole business that we're in, which is that if you objectively look at what the state is, it's not us.
It's not mountains and hills.
It's not a flag.
It's not, it is the group of people in society who are fighting to maintain a legal right on the initiation of violence.
Yeah.
And that to me is that like that's the fundamental libertarian or anarcho-capitalist or whatever like realization.
So obviously, I knew you reading this, obviously, you've known about this stuff for a long time, but what did you think about that?
You know how he put it.
Because this is like the basis of kind of my worldview.
This is, I mean, Rand talked about this.
This is, she beat that point to death in far more verbose speeches than Atlas Shrugged.
So I was very familiar with this.
What now?
What's clicking in my head?
I would love to hear your thoughts because I don't know that you're going to have a quick answer because I don't know that I do.
Which is a bigger red pill, Anatomy of the State or the Constitution of No Authority?
You know, I read the Constitution of No Authority way after Anatomy of the State.
Yeah, so I mean, I realize it was written before.
Sure.
But yeah, I didn't read any Spooner until I had been an anarchist forever.
So for Spooner, I thought made really great arguments.
And it was like, oh, there's been a guy who's like this forever.
So I don't know.
I don't know that I have an answer.
I think it might depend on which you read first.
Yeah, but I feel like it's a lot easier for someone to wrap their heads around Spooner than it is to wrap their heads around the arguments in Rothbard because all Spooner is saying is that the Constitution is BS.
He's just putting doubt in your head.
Rothbard's giving you kind of answers, and that's a lot harder, I think, for people to make that cognitive leap.
So what I would do is I would give them, like, first, you got to tell them it's a problem, then you got to give them the solution.
So I would sit someone down and say, read Spooner, and then immediately after read Anatomy of the State.
Yeah, well, that's that's reasonable.
My favorite insight from Spooner, which I always love, I find just so fascinating, is that he argues that politicians are actually bound by the Constitution, that you can still reject the Constitution completely and say, that has no authority on me, but they are bound by the Constitution.
So you can still be outraged when they violate the Constitution because you're like, you know what?
You did swear an oath to this document.
So you are actually bound by it.
So you can simultaneously have be like, this is a piece of paper written hundreds of years ago.
I don't care.
I'm not bound by it.
And also still be like, John McCain can be, you know, tried for violating the Constitution.
Not anymore, but a few years ago, he could have been.
You could still try him.
Well, yeah, I guess that's true.
Yeah.
Yeah, let's do it.
Maybe that'll be our next podcast.
Did you see that letter I got from the Lysander Spooner Company?
Did I show it to you?
I don't think so.
Oh, pause 30 seconds.
This will be a cool moment.
Absolutely.
So Lysander Spooner, in addition to being, I think, the strongest anti-constitutionalist, was also famous because he had a private post office.
And he pointed out just because the Constitution authorizes the federal government to run a post office doesn't mean it makes it illegal for private citizens to do it as well.
And he did it and he ran circles around him, around them, and they kept suing him and ran him into the ground.
So I have here from 18, I think, 60, 1832, maybe this is a Lysander Spooner.
This is from the company.
This is his stamp.
And this was sent.
I got this on eBay.
And this was sent to New York, to Chestnut Street in Philadelphia.
And I looked up the guy, which is even cooler.
And it says over here, it's hard to read, but it's American SS, whatever.
He founded the American Sunday School System.
And there's several letters to him that have been addressed.
So I got this, and I think I got to get a frame for it.
But yeah.
That is really cool.
All right.
You always have an endless supply of cool, random things that I would never think to get.
But I would be like, oh, that would be really cool to have.
You mean like a pen made out of a warthog tusk from South Africa?
See, now you're repeating.
I already had that one in.
I always expect you to pull out something I've never seen before.
How about a pen made of wood from the DMZ?
Yeah, that's now that's pretty good.
There you go.
Yeah.
One of the other things about Anatomy of the State that I really love that I thought was very useful for me, particularly at the time, because it was really, you know, it wasn't like I read Anatomy of the State and I was immediately converted to being an anarchist, but it is what I credit converting me.
Like it gnawed at me until I just couldn't fight it anymore.
But one of the points that he makes is that, which is kind of the inverse to the argument that anarchists get a lot.
A lot of times, and this was Rand's critique of anarchists, right?
Is that like, well, you'd have one private security force that disagrees with another private security force.
There you go.
The whole thing goes to waste.
But Rothbard makes the inverse of that point, which is that what happens when it's the state and there's a conflict that involves the state at all?
Oh, the state gets to decide.
So that's the system we go through now.
So, can we really be surprised if there's going to be a pro-state bias?
And he takes on the Supreme Court and the idea that the Supreme Court is to be there and decide if the president or the Congress has overstepped their bounds.
However, the Supreme Court judges are picked by the president and nominated by the Senate.
So obviously, this is a flawed mechanism to control the state apparatus.
I mean, if someone got to control whether Michael Malice had overstepped his bounds, but first you had to nominate the person to control them, you'd probably end up with some pro-Michael Malice people on that panel.
And so he takes on and basically says that the Supreme Court has failed throughout the years at containing the state.
The Supreme Court is the Tom Woods of the legal system.
Very failed.
Very failed.
It's a very failed court.
It's real.
I talked to Tom about this, how deranged that adjective is, very failed.
Like, what does that even mean?
Like, okay, not only does he fail, he very much fails.
I love it.
But it's just there's something about this, what Trump's really great at.
There's something about just the way his kind of insults roll off the tongue and the way they hit you that it's just like, oh man, that is devastating.
I don't know why.
It doesn't make any sense, but it is devastating.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that's, I just, every time I say that, I laugh.
Very, very failed podcast.
What is this?
What?
No one listens to this podcast.
That happens to most podcasts.
And it should happen to my friend Place.
So it's just like, how is so?
Okay, so no one listens to this podcast.
Who cares?
Well, the best is the few times that I've seen that people get triggered by it and defend Tom and are unaware that you guys are good friends and that this is maybe not a like real thing.
But it is to me like this point Rothbard makes in the book to me is a real problem.
Sorry, I got to laugh because I've also described you as a very failed comedian.
And then I have to wonder, like literally, what are you perceiving me as saying?
Right?
Like he gets gigs, but no one shows up or no one laughs.
How would that even happen?
Like a very failed.
How can you be a very failed comedian?
You could say someone's unfunny, but they're not failed.
Yes, it's a very different thing to say than unfunny, which no one would dare say.
No one would dare.
But so, you know, and I still get this when I argue with objectivists or minarchists of different stripes, where there will be this.
And I almost, you know, I was a minarchist once.
I can kind of wrap my head around the argument that, like, well, you need this one universal system of laws.
And then we want them to be the laws that we want.
So everyone's got to have this law, you know, and this will govern everybody.
But a lot of times people will not criticize, but question anarchists on how you maintain an anarchist society, once you have one, which is a completely legitimate question to ask.
And that the concern is that, well, couldn't it devolve into some group grabbing a bunch of weapons and forcing their will on the majority?
And that's a will on other groups.
And that's completely legitimate.
But what nobody seems to take on from that side, from the objectivist minarchist side, is, okay, but let's say you have your minarchist government.
How do you maintain that?
Because having a state guarantees that it can't be maintained.
And this actually has a lot of empirical evidence to back up the claim that states never maintain their current size or level of power.
They always move to increase their power in the same way that anyone with power wants more of it.
And if the state is deciding whether the state has overstepped its bounds, there's a tendency of the state to say, no, we're actually doing just fine.
Yeah, if you read like pickup artist theory, which is very good for people who are bad with social skills to just learn how to communicate with other human beings, what's awful about it is they'll like give examples of techniques to use.
And then dudes will use those techniques verbatim instead of understanding the concept and then like working it for something that will work for you or the context.
And the same thing really drives me nuts with objectivists, people who follow Rand, how not only do they take her worldview, like they'll take her arguments also.
And it's like, okay, if she's, you know, talking from a place of reason and truth, you should be able to think of new analogies that are more contemporary to be able to persuade them.
And they don't do this.
And the example they always use, a lot of times when people use a rhetorical question, that's a cheat because it's something like, well, I haven't thought of it, therefore you can't think of it.
It's like, no, maybe you just haven't thought of it.
You know what I mean?
Or maybe no one's thought of it.
That's not at all.
That's, you know, Rand always violently attacks the idea of primacy of consciousness, that ideas come before reality.
No, you look at reality, then you get your ideas.
But in this case, and I'll give you the example in a second, what's like, well, I can't think of anything, therefore that's indicative of anything.
It's not.
It's just indicative of your inability to think of an answer.
So the case that she was brought up is like, okay, what if I'm part of one defense agency, private defense service, and you're another and we're having a fight and like both of them show up at the door?
What happens now?
It's anyone's guess.
And I'm like, what happens if the NYPD's there and the FBI shows up?
Like these aren't examples that are like crazy.
Well, we have to sit down with like a ruler and an abacus and try to imagine what it's like with a non-centralized state.
We have that now.
And sometimes it's nice and sometimes there's drama, blah, blah, blah.
But to say that this is incomprehensible and there's no answer or that there would only be one answer.
It would always be violent war.
It's really embarrassing to hear them parrot her in this regard.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And it's kind of like, again, I think, and this has been a theme of our crossover shows a lot, but it gets into kind of binary thinking.
And even brilliant people like Ayn Rand can be guilty of it at times.
But if it's kind of like, well, this system would result in violence, and that's why we can't have this system.
And that's not really what we're going after here.
Sure, could there be violence in an anarchist system?
Absolutely.
And clearly, there will be in a status system as well.
The question here is what's more likely to produce more violence than the other one.
And for people who, you know, if what you care about is liberty and what you care about is the non-initiation of violence.
At the end of the day, it's all about freedom.
Yes, that was really what I was trying to say.
That could sum up every podcast that I have.
But if that's what you care about, if you look at it that way, well, what's more likely to lead toward people initiating violence against other people?
Probably institutionalizing the right to do it is not the way to get there.
And to me, that's kind of what made me an anarchist after all of the years of battling.
And not just institutionalizing that, but to train people since they're children to regard the people who use violence as heroic, like and admirable and the acme of morality.
Like, and what's it's hilarious is this is something I've never heard in criticisms of Rand.
Training Kids to Admire Violence00:08:23
And by the way, it's also funny that if you agree with someone 99% of the time, you're not going to talk about that 99%.
There's no point.
It's kind of redundant.
And you disagree about the 1%, then it sounds like you hate them.
It's like, no, no, no.
I'm only talking about the part I disagree with because everything else is like, yep, yep, yep, yep.
Rand in Atlas Shrugged, she's a cop killer.
Like they go to rescue John Gall, spoiler alert, and there's a guard there and the guard's like, oh, I don't know.
And they shoot him.
He wasn't even really being like a bad cop.
He was just doing, he really was just following orders and had no mind, wasn't thinking.
And they're like, all right, boom.
And no regrets.
So that's kind of interesting that that's in there.
And she's been criticized for that, C.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, it is, it's an interesting place that you find yourself in.
Being a libertarian at all, being an anarchist and what is justified to do against an agent of the state and what isn't.
But, you know, a lot of times, and Rothbard did directly take this on, where he, not an anatomy of the state, I don't believe, but in other, in other writing, where he said that, you know, because I hear this a lot from people where they'll kind of, they'll bring up in many cases, much like with the Rand example, they'll bring up a concern that is a legitimate concern.
Like that's okay.
Yeah, we'd have to figure this out.
That's a fair point.
But then by bringing up the concern, they act like, and that's why this is over.
That's why your whole experiment is done because I just thought of this concern.
So can't possibly be addressed.
Don't even think about it.
But so like I'll hear people say, okay, well, even if you had an ANCAP society tomorrow, if we were able to abolish the state, well, all of the big money people, like let's say all of the Rockefeller, you know, types, the Rothschilds of the world, they're just going to start putting their money together to propagandize people to create a new state.
And it's like, yes, that is a very legitimate concern.
Absolutely.
This probably would happen.
And that's something we got to think about and deal with.
But they'll present that as like, and they're destroyed anarcho-capitalism.
And you're like, if you're saying the worst thing about anarcho-capitalism is that it could lead us back to not having anarcho-capitalism, that's not much of an argument against anarcho-capitalism.
I have said this many times, and I'm going to be using this line a lot.
I don't have the phrasing exactly right in front of me, but it is inevitably the case that what is presented to be the strongest argument against anarchism is in fact a description of the status quo.
Someone was like, well, with your competing defense agencies, the people who's the most ruthless in using power are the ones who are going to get to the top.
Unlike now.
Are you serious?
So there's lots of examples like this where it's just under anarcho-capitalism, if you went before a judge, you're not going to know what the decision is going to be.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Does that sound familiar?
It really is unbelievable.
And particularly when the concern is that some group of people could just have a whole bunch of guns and then they could tyrannically oppress you.
And you're like, dude, I mean, we like, what do you, there are people out there serving 30 years for dealing pot.
Like, because a whole bunch of people have the guns and there's nothing they can do.
And they decided this plant was illegal and now your life's ruined.
Or what about under anarcho-capitalism?
People be shooting each other in the street.
Yeah.
And what?
Right.
Right.
As of where now, where there's only, what, what do we have?
Like 12,000 a year.
It's like, right.
So the question is not ever.
Can your system provide no one being shot in the street?
Or would people be shot in the street in your system?
The question is, is it likely to believe that less people would be shot in the street than in this system?
And why people would be more likely to be caught and punished and dealt with.
Yes, exactly.
Okay.
So is there anything else about the book that stood out to you or that you particularly liked or disliked?
No, I mean, I can see how, but again, as I'm reading this, I'm like, it was hard for me to wrap my head around trying to imagine reading this when I didn't know this stuff.
That is what I predicted when you went into reading it is that I thought it's kind of like Anatomy of the State is it is the pamphlet that I recommend to people where they're like, hey, I checked out a couple of your podcasts.
Like, I thought it was kind of interesting.
Anything I should like read to do that?
I'm like, read this.
This is like the first, because it's easy to get through.
It's 60 pages.
You can sit down and read it in one sitting or two sittings at most.
And it gets the central points out there.
But when you said, Romney autobiography, yeah.
But that's that you got to dive deep into.
That's like if you're ready to really blow your mind, okay?
This guy thinks that Iran is a real problem that we have to deal with.
And this is, you're like, yeah, it's, no, but I kind of knew, I was like, I think that this is going for you going to, you know, to some degree be like learning the ABCs or something like that.
You're going to be like, yeah, I mean, obviously, this is the foundation.
But this is also why I yell at people, don't you dare read The Fountainhead after Atlas Shrugged?
Because I think The Fountainhead is a superior novel, but you're going to, a lot of it is going to been beaten into your head by Atlas Shrugged, and you're going to be missing out a lot on reading it first.
So definitely make sure you read The Fountainhead before Atlas Shrugged.
And she wrote The Fountainhead before 43 and Atlas Shrugged is 57.
Yeah.
Okay.
It's funny because like that was at the time almost like the only game in town of what would change people's minds to even like look at the world this way.
And now it's almost hard to like imagine that.
I mean, it's hard to imagine a nation of people who read novels, but it's hard to imagine now with like, you know, the internet and all this shit that there would be like, well, this is all we got.
Please read these novels.
And we got to give people credit economics in one lesson.
Yeah.
The other one.
That's another one I recommend very early.
That's a real like economic red pill to me, where once you see that, it's very hard to not see.
Well, the premise is the red pill.
The premise is the blue pill is what you see.
The red pill is that wherever you're seeing, there's something you're not seeing.
Yes, yes.
And it makes it very easy to bat down silly kind of pop progressive economic arguments.
So like, and they're made because people haven't, you know, read that book or have haven't taken that red pill, where they're made all the time.
I remember I was in a debate with a progressive and he said to me at one time that social security is the most positive or the most successful policy that Americans have ever had.
And he said that he goes, you know, his example was that through the great recession, that old people would have been this much more in poverty if they didn't have social security.
But now they're up here because of social security.
And so there.
I mean, obviously, that's a success.
And this was a sincere argument, like a sincere, well, look, I mean, if they weren't getting the checks, they'd have that checks, much less money.
And you're like, right, but who was taxed to pay them that check?
Oh, young people, a way poorer group than old people.
So you're taking from a poorer group to give to a wealthier group.
And this is just, I mean, it's just, if you read economics in one lesson, it's just, you kind of, it becomes second nature to just think of the fact that those old people could have been investing that money their entire lifetime.
Well, right.
Yes.
That's another point, too.
You just start to look at what, okay, well, this is the seen benefit, but where did this come from?
What was the unseen?
Okay, that is our episode for today.
Michael Malice has officially read Anatomy of the State.