Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - The Economy Is Trash
Aired: 2021-05-11
Duration: 01:02:12


=== Welfare State Incentives (12:08) ===

[00:00:00]  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.
[00:00:16]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:00:22]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:27]  You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
[00:00:31]  Here's your host, James Smith.
[00:00:34]  What's up, everybody?
[00:00:35]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:00:38]  I'm Dave Smith.
[00:00:39]  He is the king of the caulks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
[00:00:42]  What's up, my brother?
[00:00:44]  Doing good, Davey Smith.
[00:00:45]  How about you?
[00:00:46]  Doing good, man.
[00:00:47]  Doing good.
[00:00:48]  Just got back the other day from Maryland doing Tim Poole's show.
[00:00:54]  Had a good time out there.
[00:00:55]  Big thank you to Tim and his whole crew for hosting me again.
[00:01:00]  Got a great response from the show, just like last time.
[00:01:03]  So a lot of fun.
[00:01:04]  A lot of fun.
[00:01:05]  Good time.
[00:01:05]  Hi, Gene Epstein on Run Your Mouth.
[00:01:07]  Oh, cool.
[00:01:08]  How was that?
[00:01:09]  Oh, it was great, dude.
[00:01:10]  We talked about Rothbard's history of money and banking.
[00:01:12]  We went deep on some nerdy economic stuff.
[00:01:15]  He's a fun time.
[00:01:16]  Oh, yeah.
[00:01:17]  Gene's.
[00:01:18]  Wealth of knowledge.
[00:01:19]  An incredible wealth of knowledge, a treasure in our movement, Gene Epstein.
[00:01:26]  Love that guy.
[00:01:27]  Can't wait to see him.
[00:01:28]  He's going to be at Porkfest.
[00:01:30]  So I'm excited to actually see Gene Epstein and give him a hug, cough directly on him, give him the COVID.
[00:01:38]  Knock him out.
[00:01:39]  Give an angel.
[00:01:40]  I'm telling you, during my episode of Run Your Mouth, he was pounding shots of cough syrup.
[00:01:45]  That guy can party.
[00:01:46]  He keeps that to himself.
[00:01:47]  Oh, yeah.
[00:01:48]  Guys took down like a bottle of robotosum.
[00:01:51]  There's a secret side of Gene Epstein that we don't know.
[00:01:54]  Yeah, but he's going to be up at Porkfest.
[00:01:56]  A lot of great people are going to be up there, including Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
[00:02:00]  And yours truly, we will be up at Porkfest.
[00:02:02]  I'm doing a live stand-up show and a live podcast.
[00:02:05]  So I'm really looking forward to that.
[00:02:09]  And yeah, of course, if you haven't already, you still can come.
[00:02:13]  They got like a huge venue, so there is still a little bit of room left at the Mises Caucus event.
[00:02:18]  I will be speaking next week or this week now, Friday the 14th in Pittsburgh.
[00:02:24]  If you're in the area, I need you there.
[00:02:26]  Come on out to that.
[00:02:28]  Get your speech ready?
[00:02:30]  I'm mulling over some ideas.
[00:02:33]  I put together my remarks for when I'm going to be out in Portland, and I will be making the case for why I should be your press secretary when you win.
[00:02:40]  Ooh, yeah.
[00:02:42]  You're going to compete with Malice.
[00:02:44]  Malice.
[00:02:44]  I'm officially putting my foot in the race.
[00:02:47]  I don't know if that's an expression, but I'm coming prepared.
[00:02:51]  In the ring is what you were looking for.
[00:02:53]  Which also, I don't understand.
[00:02:54]  Talk to a strong smart.
[00:02:55]  I don't understand that expression.
[00:02:56]  It's probably in the 1800s, they all used to throw hats into a ring, and then you'd pick hats out of the ring.
[00:03:02]  I don't know.
[00:03:03]  Listen, you are my road dog.
[00:03:06]  You are my brother, and we will find something else for you.
[00:03:10]  But if Michael Malice wants this job, Michael Malice is going to be getting this job.
[00:03:15]  Well, you say that now.
[00:03:15]  Just wait till I make my presentation.
[00:03:17]  I'm going to change your mind and everyone's going to realize that that should be my position.
[00:03:22]  Okay.
[00:03:22]  All right.
[00:03:23]  There we go.
[00:03:23]  Well, I will gladly hear out your presentation, even though I'm letting you know that I've already made my decision beforehand.
[00:03:33]  But that should be a lot of fun.
[00:03:34]  I look forward to what you have prepared.
[00:03:37]  Okay.
[00:03:38]  So let's get into some stuff.
[00:03:42]  Since we've spoken last, and I do, I know our schedule has been a little bit interrupted.
[00:03:48]  Getting back to normal here, the new normal.
[00:03:50]  We'll both be wearing masks on the podcast going forward.
[00:03:53]  But big news of the the last week was that uh, the jobs report came out and um, the Biden administration had been bragging about how great uh their, their economic recovery has been.
[00:04:09]  Uh they've, and it is.
[00:04:10]  People don't need to work anymore.
[00:04:11]  That's how I mean.
[00:04:12]  Who realized?
[00:04:14]  That's how great it is.
[00:04:16]  You don't even need an economy anymore.
[00:04:18]  That's, this is beyond an economy.
[00:04:20]  It's really, it's an idea, the economy, not an organization.
[00:04:24]  Um yeah, so the jobs report was terrible.
[00:04:28]  It was really, really bad um, and it's uh I I don't know how this could be a shock to anybody who's actually paying attention.
[00:04:37]  Um, but it it turns out that um, locking down the country for a year and kicking millions of Americans out of work and then cutting them checks and increasing the unemployment benefits, all the while while bailing out the biggest companies in the country not a recipe to actually create jobs for working class people pretty shocking.
[00:05:04]  Would have been very hard to predict.
[00:05:06]  Um, I don't know what.
[00:05:08]  What are your uh takeaways from the most recent jobs report?
[00:05:11]  Well, I think uh, i'd love to hone in for a little bit about this.
[00:05:14]  Uh unemployment um, the unemployment benefits, because Jan Yellen said that she doesn't believe that it's the unemployment benefits, they're holding back the job growth numbers, I believe.
[00:05:24]  I believe she said they have a little effect, if any or something.
[00:05:27]  Little effect and this is part of what you and I have been acknowledging when it comes to some of these covet laws where it's like government's playing this role-playing game that we're supposed to pretend along with them, like i've heard firsthand from waiters that they're not going back to work because they have unemployment benefits.
[00:05:45]  I know a guy who said that he literally can't go afford to take a new job because he's currently getting, he's got four kids and he's got his government health insurance and so he needs to be making like a hundred grand a year with health benefits in order to be comparable to the free health benefits and his current employment benefits.
[00:06:02]  Or maybe it's 80k a year with health benefits.
[00:06:05]  And then i've also heard from business owners that they'd like to open up their businesses like clubs on more evenings, but they can't get help.
[00:06:12]  So it's like I I mean maybe I don't know enough people, but it seems very, very obvious from the multiple reports of businesses that would like to um, have more staff.
[00:06:22]  I even heard that in Maine some random guy was like at a coffee shop was like on the phone talking about I think this is pretty widespread that businesses would like to hire more people and they can't afford to do so because the current employment benefits were that good.
[00:06:37]  And it's just proof of just how much of a liar Jannie Yellen is.
[00:06:40]  Every single time you've heard claims of we're going to control the interest rate or any other claim that she's ever made she's.
[00:06:46]  This is like a good example where just any common folk can wrap their head around the fact.
[00:06:50]  Okay, she's lying.
[00:06:51]  Just ask anyone with the business trying to hire right now.
[00:06:53]  The unemployment benefits are getting in the way of businesses hiring and are giving people a perverse incentive not to work.
[00:07:00]  Yeah well, look the.
[00:07:00]  The reality of the situation is that incentives matter and you can try to sweep that under Under the rug, all you want to, but this is just a law of economics.
[00:07:12]  It's a law of reality on the level of, you know, like the laws of gravity.
[00:07:18]  It's incentives matter.
[00:07:20]  And if you're incentivizing people not to work, you're going to get less people working than you otherwise would have.
[00:07:26]  That's just the reality of the situation.
[00:07:28]  This is, I mean, I know people like I think just about anyone who's been on this earth for more than a couple decades probably knows people in situations like this.
[00:07:40]  And I'm not even talking about just in the most recent COVID regime.
[00:07:45]  I'm talking just in general about the welfare state that there are these people.
[00:07:51]  A friend of mine was just telling me a story the other day about like he knew this couple who had three kids and they never got married for whatever reason.
[00:08:02]  I don't know, but they, you know, they were basically married.
[00:08:04]  They lived together and had three kids.
[00:08:07]  And he got laid off.
[00:08:09]  And, you know, they're like in a small town somewhere.
[00:08:13]  I guess like their expenses probably weren't that high, but he got laid out off and she went down to the welfare office and was like, hey, listen, we got like no money coming in for the next few months.
[00:08:22]  We could really use some help.
[00:08:24]  And they basically ask her a bunch of questions and then they go, they were like, well, look, we can't give you anything.
[00:08:32]  But if the man's out of the house, we could give you two grand a month.
[00:08:37]  Now, she didn't end up like leaving him or anything like that.
[00:08:40]  They just lied.
[00:08:41]  Yeah.
[00:08:41]  Well, it's not even that they're lying.
[00:08:44]  This is the truth.
[00:08:46]  Or you're saying she could just lie or something like that.
[00:08:48]  Well, I think at least in this particular story, she didn't end up taking the money.
[00:08:51]  She didn't end up lying.
[00:08:52]  So it's not that incentives are foolproof that everyone will always do what they're incentivized to do, but this on a large scale, you will get more people either lying or in many cases, actually breaking up.
[00:09:09]  I mean, if it's a relationship that's on the rocks already and it's going to be a lot of hard work to put it back together, well, look, I could get a couple thousand dollars a month coming in now if I kick this guy out of the house.
[00:09:21]  You know, there's, and, and you do this on a massive level, and this happens to a lot, a lot of different people.
[00:09:27]  And it particularly targets the ones who are kind of the most vulnerable to that type of thing, like the people who are in the shittiest marriages, the people who kind of have, you know, in some cases, trashier values, things like that.
[00:09:40]  And it breaks up families.
[00:09:42]  And this is just, this is what the game is, you know?
[00:09:45]  And again, it's the reason I just start by saying incentives matter, it's not as if whoever that person working at the welfare office is, it's not like they were some secret cultural Marxist who's trying to break up Western civilization and destroy the family.
[00:09:59]  She's just letting this woman know what the rules are.
[00:10:02]  Like, yeah, the rules are if you kick this guy out of your house, I can give you money.
[00:10:07]  Just so you know.
[00:10:08]  Like that's the, so a lot of this is just you set up the incentive structure and then things play out from there.
[00:10:14]  Now, in this situation, right, what we've done, there's, there's a cocktail of a lot of different things here.
[00:10:19]  But what we've done over the last year is just wreck the profit margins for millions of small and mid-sized companies.
[00:10:28]  I mean, they're, you know, the money that they're making has been just like destroyed.
[00:10:34]  I mean, some of them couldn't bring in any revenue for months and months and months.
[00:10:39]  Many of them reduced revenue.
[00:10:41]  So what effect do you think that's going to have on how much they can offer workers?
[00:10:45]  Obviously, they're going to be able to offer workers less than they otherwise would have been able to offer them by and large, right?
[00:10:52]  So, but let me just make this point right.
[00:10:54]  So you have this one pressure that is pressing down the amount that businesses can afford to pay.
[00:11:00]  And then we're increasing and giving more and more generous benefits.
[00:11:04]  So what do you think is going to happen in this situation?
[00:11:07]  I mean, okay, just hypothetically, right, thinking about this in the abstract, if you get offered a job for $20 an hour, but the government will pay you $10 an hour to sit home.
[00:11:20]  Well, you might go take that $20 an hour job, you know?
[00:11:23]  Okay, it's double.
[00:11:24]  Well, now what happens if you put pressure down on what they're offering?
[00:11:27]  Well, now they're only offering you 15.
[00:11:29]  And now the government's willing to pay you 13.
[00:11:31]  Well, now you're only making $2 an hour to work.
[00:11:36]  You know, like it's a lot of times people don't realize this.
[00:11:39]  I was making this point on Tim Poole the other day, but it's not as if if the job comes in right above what the government pays, then you're going to take that.
[00:11:45]  You're just making the difference now.
[00:11:47]  If the government pays you $15 an hour to stay home and someone offers you $17 an hour, they're offering you $2 an hour to do a full-time job.
[00:11:56]  A lot of people are not going to take that.
[00:11:58]  And so if you have the government pressure pushing down what companies can pay and pushing up what they'll pay you not to work, shocker, more people will end up not working.

=== Oral Health Special Offer (02:51) ===

[00:12:08]  I'm sorry, go ahead.
[00:12:09]  No, you're almost an idiot for working at that point.
[00:12:12]  Stress is a killer.
[00:12:13]  What are you going to kill yourself for two bucks an hour?
[00:12:16]  It really does also, everything you just said, 100%, but also it ruins economic development in that, like I remember during when Obama extended employment benefits after the last economic downturn.
[00:12:29]  I know a person had a small family business, just like a small practice.
[00:12:34]  He had an employee that he had to fire because they were really bad, like ruining the business employee.
[00:12:38]  And then they couldn't hire a new employee because they couldn't afford to do so because they had to pay out the last employment benefits extended, ruined the business.
[00:12:46]  That was the end of the business from there.
[00:12:48]  And so it's also, you have no idea what kind of growth would happen, the new jobs that could be created, the amount of just good services that could be offered that these laws just get in the way of.
[00:12:59]  Yeah.
[00:12:59]  Yeah.
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=== Market Value Recognition (12:40) ===

[00:15:00]  Now, the other thing, which is just because all these government numbers are, let's say, incredibly flawed, to put it charitably.
[00:15:09]  Well, they thought a million jobs were coming.
[00:15:11]  Yes.
[00:15:11]  Well, their projections were certainly wildly off.
[00:15:15]  It's unbelievable how much they got it wrong.
[00:15:18]  It was a couple hundred thousand, and they thought it would be over a million.
[00:15:23]  But on top of that, first off, they don't count when you see the unemployment rate.
[00:15:28]  It's complete nonsense.
[00:15:29]  They don't count people who have dropped out of the workforce altogether and aren't actively looking for jobs anymore.
[00:15:35]  And the other real flaw in the unemployment rate is it's just, it's a binary.
[00:15:40]  It's employed or unemployed.
[00:15:42]  So they're not counting the guy who ran his own business and now works at Starbucks.
[00:15:48]  That would be no change in the unemployment rate, right?
[00:15:52]  But in reality, for human beings existing in time and space on the planet Earth, that's a profound change that happened to that human being.
[00:16:02]  And what's going on also is you can't remove the human element from all of this, that a lot of people have been demoralized.
[00:16:10]  A lot of people have lost their previous job.
[00:16:12]  And now it's like, you know, like you were like a chef at a restaurant and now you're going to be a barista and you're just like, fuck it, I'll just take the unemployment.
[00:16:20]  I don't care about this job.
[00:16:21]  I don't have a sense of identity and purpose from this job.
[00:16:23]  There's a lot of that going around the country, a lot.
[00:16:27]  And the other factor is, again, because we're human beings and not just numbers on a chart, the fact that they've propagandized the country just relentlessly.
[00:16:40]  I mean, the biggest propaganda campaign in modern history to be terrified of a germ.
[00:16:45]  There's a lot of people who are skeptical to go back to work.
[00:16:49]  Or they're like, wait, what?
[00:16:51]  You know, I'm going to fucking be around this virus.
[00:16:53]  I could get it, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff.
[00:16:56]  Even if you've been vaccinated, they're telling you, you know, it's still dangerous and all this shit.
[00:17:00]  And so there's a substantial portion of the population that's been brainwashed by this shit.
[00:17:07]  And then there's also a probably more substantial part of the population who's like, doesn't want to work under the brutal COVID restrictions.
[00:17:17]  You know, it's like, oh, being a server is like a really hard job, right?
[00:17:22]  So if it comes in, whatever it is, let's just say hypothetically, you can make 20 bucks an hour being a server, but the government's going to pay you 15 bucks an hour if you don't go back to work.
[00:17:32]  So now it's only $5 an hour.
[00:17:34]  Oh, and now throw in you have to be double masked the whole time or something like that.
[00:17:37]  It's like, you know, this is another incentive that is going to push people toward not wanting to go back to work.
[00:17:43]  So there's a lot going on here.
[00:17:45]  It's all the government's fault, as usual.
[00:17:47]  They're completely wrong about their predictions.
[00:17:50]  They're completely their numbers paint a rosier picture than it is, even in these reports when it comes out really bad.
[00:17:57]  And they're the ones who caused the whole problem to begin with.
[00:18:02]  We're against the government.
[00:18:03]  The only saving grace might be maybe this will put a pause on all the inflation that's coming.
[00:18:09]  Yeah.
[00:18:09]  Well, if you got a job, your money might still be able to buy something.
[00:18:13]  Well, that's the other thing that's going on that's really being underreported.
[00:18:18]  But again, if you exist in the real economy, if you go, you know, it's always like these things like, you know, like in the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, when they'll, you know, there's years ago when they took out the cost of housing and the cost of food and the cost of energy and all these things.
[00:18:36]  And you're like, I don't know.
[00:18:38]  Regular people really seem to like houses and food and energy.
[00:18:42]  Like that's, that's part of life.
[00:18:44]  It's a pretty big part.
[00:18:46]  It's pretty hard to get by without all three of those things in a modern economy.
[00:18:51]  But for those people who do live in the real world, you see prices going up.
[00:18:57]  And this is happening.
[00:18:59]  I mean, the certain prices have really skyrocketed.
[00:19:02]  The price of lumber is up like 200% or something like that.
[00:19:06]  This has a huge effect on people who are doing jobs.
[00:19:10]  And, you know, this is, you know, I know there's like a couple houses in the neighborhood I live in, very nice neighborhood, that are just like stopped in the middle of building.
[00:19:23]  Like they're building these new houses and they've just, they've been frozen.
[00:19:26]  And it's got to be because the price of supplies has skyrocketed.
[00:19:30]  I mean, the price of lumber, you know, going up 200% may not be that big of a deal if you're going to buy a couple two by fours or something like that.
[00:19:38]  But if you're planning on building a house and it goes up 200%, like maybe you thought building the house was going to cost you $200,000 and now it's going to cost you $600,000.
[00:19:48]  That's a huge difference.
[00:19:50]  That's enough to make you go like, we're not building this anymore.
[00:19:54]  That's actually probably more of the contractor walking away because usually they give you bids.
[00:19:58]  So if they fucked up their bid because the costs go up like that, projects underwater, they're just not showing up.
[00:20:03]  Yeah, no, it's quite possible.
[00:20:04]  I mean, there could be other stories in these particular examples.
[00:20:07]  People could have lost their jobs and stuff like that.
[00:20:09]  We got to place the graffiti.
[00:20:10]  That's what you're really saying.
[00:20:11]  Yeah, I'm saying the point of this is we're having a rave.
[00:20:15]  So if you want to come, if you're down, hit me up.
[00:20:20]  So yeah, it's bad.
[00:20:23]  And of course, you know, so this was always a fundamental point that the Austrian school economists would make that has been largely rejected by the mainstream economists.
[00:20:38]  And there's been, you know, debates about this back and forth.
[00:20:41]  But the Austrians would always argue that there are certain truths about understandings of economics that you're only going to get from a priori truths, meaning that you're going to logically think this through and come to conclusions about the way the world works.
[00:21:01]  And this is often the Austrians are criticized because they say, well, that's kind of anti-scientific.
[00:21:07]  I mean, you're not really like running empirical experiments.
[00:21:11]  You're just kind of, you know, thinking things through.
[00:21:14]  And so the only real way to see how things work is to, you know, look at the empirical evidence, say what happened when this was done, what happened when this was done.
[00:21:24]  The problem with this line of thinking is that when you stop using your brain and start just looking at data, you can come to any conclusion.
[00:21:35]  And it's, you know, so what's going on here is that we've had the biggest stimulus in history.
[00:21:44]  It ends up being a disaster.
[00:21:46]  And how will they interpret that empirical evidence?
[00:21:50]  Well, we need more, right?
[00:21:53]  We didn't do enough.
[00:21:54]  We were close.
[00:21:55]  That's right.
[00:21:56]  And this is always what ends up happening in practice.
[00:22:00]  It's circular logic, right?
[00:22:02]  So you sit there and you say, well, we're going to have this huge, massive stimulus bill.
[00:22:08]  Then it doesn't come out the way you want it to.
[00:22:10]  And it goes because the answer is because we didn't have a huge enough stimulus bill, even though it's the biggest one ever.
[00:22:17]  Still not big enough.
[00:22:21]  And yeah.
[00:22:22]  So anyway, economy is not in good shape, my friend.
[00:22:26]  Yeah, I wonder if they're going to have to confront this unemployment benefit thing because I don't think they're going to be able to keep the lid on that live forever.
[00:22:34]  And I think it's pretty widespread.
[00:22:36]  One of the spins that I think Bernie Sanders and some others were saying was, well, if corporations would actually step up and pay good wages, then they could have the employees, which is a tough line of reasoning, especially when you consider that we compete globally and people can outsource jobs.
[00:22:53]  All right.
[00:22:54]  All right.
[00:22:55]  Yeah.
[00:22:55]  I mean, that's, you know, they can always fall back on the argument that businesses should just be paying their workers more.
[00:23:04]  Again, to me, this just seems like a very, it's seductive.
[00:23:09]  I certainly understand.
[00:23:10]  From the perspective of employees, it's easy to go, yeah, I should get paid more.
[00:23:14]  But the reality of the situation is that there are these businesses who want workers, right?
[00:23:21]  They want people to come work for them.
[00:23:23]  So why wouldn't they be paying them more?
[00:23:28]  By and large, it's because they can't afford to.
[00:23:31]  And there are economic realities, whether we like it or not.
[00:23:35]  And you can't, you know, it's like, yes, you know, just to use an extreme to paint a picture, right?
[00:23:42]  If you are one of these businesses where they're saying people aren't willing to come work for you, whatever, you're a McDonald's and you're trying to hire people to work behind the counter.
[00:23:52]  Now, it is true, right?
[00:23:53]  It's not exactly a lie.
[00:23:55]  Bernie Sanders is right that if they offered a million dollars, you could fill up those positions.
[00:24:02]  But what's the problem with that, right?
[00:24:03]  People don't want to spend $45,000 for a hamburger.
[00:24:06]  Yeah, exactly, right?
[00:24:08]  McDonald's would be bleeding money if they hired people at that price, right?
[00:24:13]  Now, obviously, I'm using an extreme, but the point is that wherever that threshold is, there is a threshold where this no longer is economically viable to pay people more money.
[00:24:25]  And, you know, again, it's, it's, you know, the real important thing to understand is that the money has to come from somewhere.
[00:24:32]  The wealth has to come from somewhere.
[00:24:34]  Forget the money for a second, because I know they just print that out of thin air.
[00:24:37]  But what do you trade your money for?
[00:24:39]  You trade it for things, actual things.
[00:24:41]  And every one of those actual things needed work in order for it to be made.
[00:24:47]  It took hours and, you know, of real, you know, resources and labor and all of these things, right?
[00:24:56]  So this has to be coming from somewhere.
[00:24:58]  People have to be doing it.
[00:25:00]  And the idea that we're just going to pay people, you know, we're just going to pay people for not working.
[00:25:06]  You're like, okay, well, someone who worked had to produce that value to give it to them.
[00:25:10]  And so it's not as if the choice is between them getting money or not getting money.
[00:25:15]  The choice is between robbing all of the people who are working to pay for these ones who aren't.
[00:25:21]  It's that or let them go work for the price that they can find in the market.
[00:25:27]  And this might be harsh, but I've seen signs like at fast food places, or at least online, I haven't seen this in person of please be patient.
[00:25:35]  We're understaffed because of the unemployment.
[00:25:38]  It'd be interesting if like enough people got an education on, man, I need government to stop interjecting in the market because I want to be able to go purchase thing this conveniently for cheap.
[00:25:48]  It'd be interested if government almost exposes itself as being the one interfering in your ability to show up at a fast food place and buy a cheap hamburger because usually people don't put that together.
[00:25:59]  You know what I mean?
[00:26:00]  They're not that economically literate.
[00:26:02]  So it would almost be interesting if this got so out of control, people started to realize that government's the culprit in, you know, basically the market just being able to provide you value.
[00:26:12]  Right, right.
[00:26:13]  Yeah, you know, it's it's one of the things that Rothbard said years ago, and he was, he was so right, as he usually is, was that one of the things that was so awful about the Fed and about money printing is that the effects of it are usually seen later.
[00:26:34]  And it's easy to blame it on something else, you know, which is usually capitalism.
[00:26:40]  You know, it's usually, oh, the speculators or something like that, or you know what I mean?
[00:26:44]  Like big business or something, you know?
[00:26:48]  And whereas if you're getting taxed, at least there's no question about where your money is going.
[00:26:53]  Everybody recognizes right away, like, oh, okay, it's the government taking this money from me.
[00:26:58]  The government is clearly the problem.
[00:27:00]  And this is why they much prefer to print money than to just outright raise taxes.
[00:27:05]  And borrowing is to some degree the same, but not as much as raising money.
[00:27:11]  I do think that over this last year, compared to other times in history, it's been, just to your point, but in a broader sense, it's been a lot easier to recognize that this is what's going on.
[00:27:24]  It's just a lot easier to recognize that it is the government who's doing this.
[00:27:28]  I mean, who locked you down?
[00:27:29]  And if prices are going up a bunch this year, it's even for normies, a lot of them at least are going to be like, hey, didn't we print a shit ton of money last year?

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=== Fauci Mask Hypocrisy (12:53) ===

[00:29:48]  You know, another thing that I've just been thinking about a lot lately, and the jobs report is kind of part of it, but particularly with the COVID stuff and the latest versions of it, is just like,
[00:30:04]  it's really something to witness living in this time where there's, I don't think there's ever been a bigger disconnect between what the officials are telling the American people and what the American people are seeing with their own eyes.
[00:30:20]  And it's not like, it's not like the corporate press got more dishonest.
[00:30:26]  I mean, they've always been dishonest.
[00:30:28]  It's just that it's more right in front of your nose.
[00:30:32]  And that's what's so bizarre about all of it.
[00:30:35]  So, you know, they would say like, you know, like the corporate press and the Bush administration after 9-11, they were saying things like Iran was in on 9-11.
[00:30:47]  Now, if you know anything, you'd be like, really?
[00:30:51]  You think the Shiites in Iran were working with the radical Sunni like bin Ladenites?
[00:30:57]  This obviously is not happening.
[00:31:01]  They hate each other.
[00:31:02]  They're like literally would kill each other in a second.
[00:31:06]  But most people don't know anything about that.
[00:31:09]  And most Americans just look at that and they go, yeah, crazy Muslims working with other crazy Muslims.
[00:31:13]  Like that seems plausible to me, you know?
[00:31:16]  So it's not like right in front of your nose.
[00:31:18]  It's like, oh, these guys over there are bad guys.
[00:31:21]  And so they're all working together.
[00:31:23]  That's how it's somewhat easy to sell to the average American.
[00:31:27]  But this is just so much different.
[00:31:31]  You know, it's really something, it feels like something out of the Soviet Union, which at least like from what I've read about it, would be that people, like from the accounts, the firsthand accounts of people who lived under the Soviet Union, they'd basically say everyone knew what the government was telling them was bullshit.
[00:31:50]  Even like apolitical people who just didn't really care.
[00:31:52]  They're like, yeah, no, obviously we can't.
[00:31:54]  We don't trust a goddamn word that's coming out of this propaganda machine.
[00:31:59]  But you don't really say it publicly because it's the Soviet Union and you could get in a lot of trouble.
[00:32:04]  So you're just kind of like, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, sure.
[00:32:06]  We totally believe you and go on about your day.
[00:32:09]  But to watch, you know, like you could be, you can watch the news, watch a Joe Biden press conference, watch a Dr. Fauci interview.
[00:32:20]  And they're like, you know, we are considering in some areas allowing people to take their masks off outside.
[00:32:30]  If they're still socially distant and they've been vaccinated, then we can think about letting you breathe in fresh air outside.
[00:32:37]  And then you just like open your window and look around and you're like, people have had their masks off outside for months.
[00:32:44]  Now, this is a little bit different depending on where you live, but there's still, I mean, large parts of the country where this is the reality.
[00:32:54]  You're hearing the officials say one thing, and it's as if it's completely removed from reality.
[00:33:01]  Like just complete, you know, like I can't even like think of an example, but it's like if somebody was up there, you know, I don't know, like in our world, like somebody was like, you know, we think that we're going to allow stand-up comedians to start telling jokes about sex and race and whatever.
[00:33:26]  And you'd be like, wait, what?
[00:33:28]  We've been doing this.
[00:33:29]  I watch this every night.
[00:33:32]  And what really struck me was seeing Fauci the other day talk about, yeah, I forget exactly what he was saying, just some Fauci stuff about how, you know, we have to be very careful and be very slow and things could get bad if we were to open up right now.
[00:33:50]  And then to watch a couple weeks ago, the UFC had their first event, sold out.
[00:33:56]  You know, I think they had like 17,000 people there, something like that.
[00:34:00]  Then they just had this big boxing fight.
[00:34:03]  Canelo Alvarez fought.
[00:34:07]  And I think they set a record in Texas for the largest attendance.
[00:34:11]  And it was packed, tens of thousands of people in this event.
[00:34:16]  And it's just very weird to see that.
[00:34:19]  You know, to see this, and then you're like, oh, is there some major spike that's going to come from either one of these events?
[00:34:25]  Well, I mean, the boxing fight just happened, but no one really thinks there's going to be a big spike.
[00:34:30]  There was no evidence spike from this UFC event.
[00:34:34]  If you remember back, way back when to last Thanksgiving, last Christmas, they were always predicting these spikes.
[00:34:40]  Nothing really materialized from it.
[00:34:42]  And so it's so weird to see the government telling you you can't have your freedom.
[00:34:47]  Then over here, people just living free, at least to some degree.
[00:34:52]  And I don't know.
[00:34:53]  There's just something about it where I go, it's, I think there might be something really positive in there.
[00:34:58]  You know what I mean?
[00:34:59]  Like enough people just looking at this and going, yeah, none of this has anything to do with reality.
[00:35:04]  There's just, they're really, I think, in the eyes of many people discrediting themselves.
[00:35:09]  I think they just want us all to play pretend with them.
[00:35:11]  It's like a big role-playing game.
[00:35:13]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:35:14]  And don't get me wrong, because I know that there are people out there.
[00:35:18]  And I see people on social media talk about it.
[00:35:20]  I've talked to people and, you know, I know friends who have family members like this who have actually really gone insane over this year.
[00:35:28]  They're called suckers.
[00:35:29]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:35:30]  But in a really profoundly sad way, that, you know, like there are grandmothers out there who have not seen their grandchildren for a year.
[00:35:38]  You need to get people Fauci nated where they just know they don't have to listen to Fauci.
[00:35:43]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:35:44]  Well, I mean, but it's, you know, but how, like, what percentage of our society could that actually be?
[00:35:50]  Like 10%?
[00:35:51]  Yeah, that's what I'm saying, right?
[00:35:52]  Like maybe something around there, but which is, by the way, goddamn tragic that 10% of people have just been so mind fucked that they're like have have robbed a year of their lives.
[00:36:03]  It's like you can't overstate what a profound thing that is to rob a year of somebody's life from them.
[00:36:12]  But 60% have been mind fucked enough to just go, hey, this thing's extremely dangerous.
[00:36:17]  And so I need to get vaccinated or I need to be overly cautious or I'd be okay with a COVID passport.
[00:36:23]  Yes.
[00:36:24]  So there's him taking the extreme approach while only 10% might be taking that 100% seriously.
[00:36:30]  It still has a large impact on other people where they're still very bought into that there's a like they almost can't put two and two together of this guy's going too far with it that he's clearly lying.
[00:36:40]  So I just shouldn't listen to him.
[00:36:42]  They more just go, oh, look, the government's being super careful because this is really serious.
[00:36:47]  And that guy's being a little bit too careful, but it still shows how much of a risk this is.
[00:36:52]  And so I like, you know what I mean?
[00:36:53]  It's almost like a like a negotiating anchor effect that since he takes it to such an extreme place, people are willing to meet him, but like they're not willing to just remove themselves from the reality of the threat.
[00:37:05]  Yeah, no, I think that's a very good point.
[00:37:07]  I think that's a very good way of looking at it.
[00:37:09]  And I think that there are a lot of people who are who are simply, whether they would consciously look at it this way or not, are simply just willing to pay the ransom.
[00:37:23]  And that's what the vaccine is for a lot of people.
[00:37:25]  It's just like, look, if you're telling me this, it'll get us back to normal.
[00:37:29]  Like, all right, I'll do it.
[00:37:32]  Just like, tell me what to inject in myself if that means we can stop all of this.
[00:37:37]  The issue with that, aside from whatever skepticism some might have about the vaccine, the issue with that is that we've really got no assurances that they're going to pay up.
[00:37:48]  You know, you give them this ransom.
[00:37:49]  We have no idea that they're actually going to return your kid alive and safe.
[00:37:54]  So in fact, Fauci is talking about masks being a permanent thing.
[00:37:57]  He actually, he said the quiet part out loud the other day, what we've been talking about forever, which was obvious.
[00:38:04]  You know, I'm not like really giving us that much credit for this.
[00:38:07]  I'm sure lots of people have said this.
[00:38:09]  Like we called the climate change would be their next thing they pushed.
[00:38:13]  And what Fauci said was what we've all been saying they were going to say at some point, but he said it out loud.
[00:38:18]  He goes, oh, you know, the flu's down.
[00:38:20]  Maybe we got to mask up every winter.
[00:38:23]  So that's the next, that's the next step.
[00:38:25]  God damn right, Train.
[00:38:26]  That's the next step, right?
[00:38:27]  Is that you go like, okay, so now this is just going to be a permanent part of life.
[00:38:33]  That this is, we're just going to become a mask culture, which, you know, like, look, look, I personally, I hate masks.
[00:38:40]  I fucking hate wearing them.
[00:38:42]  I understand where some people could be like, ah, it's not that big of a deal to wear a mask.
[00:38:46]  But I don't know.
[00:38:47]  I think there's something pretty profound about this whole government, media, medical industrial complex, just deciding that we are going to overhaul societal norms, change interpersonal, you know, interactions in this really profound way.
[00:39:05]  And I do think that there's something if you're if you believe in freedom and you believe in liberty and that kind of rugged individualism, there's something very connected to risk-taking, you know, and there's something about promoting entrepreneurship as being very connected to risk-taking.
[00:39:26]  Freedom has its risks, you know?
[00:39:29]  And the culture that you want to create for authoritarianism to flourish is a culture of fear, of a desire for security and protection.
[00:39:41]  And the idea of people masking up, being afraid of germs, to me is not the culture that is going to go hand in hand with like some tough, like liberty-loving people.
[00:39:56]  Yeah, I'm not looking forward to this plan ride.
[00:39:59]  That's going to be the longest I've spent in a mask.
[00:40:01]  Oh, yeah.
[00:40:02]  No, dude, getting on the plane fucking sucks.
[00:40:04]  And it sucks because it's like, you know, you got it.
[00:40:07]  You take a taxi to the airport.
[00:40:08]  You got to wear the mask in the taxi.
[00:40:10]  You got to wear the mask in the airport.
[00:40:12]  You got to wear the mask on the plane.
[00:40:13]  Then you got to wear it in the airport when you get off.
[00:40:15]  The taxi by the time, dude, by the time I get into my hotel, is I'm always like at that hotel front desk checking in, just furious in this mask.
[00:40:22]  You know, truck me in.
[00:40:24]  Every time the woman at the front desk always feels the need to read off all of the things that you're like, I've been in hotels before.
[00:40:31]  I'm aware.
[00:40:32]  You go, okay, so the Wi-Fi password is, it's on the outside of my key card, right?
[00:40:36]  Okay, I'll figure it out when I get up there.
[00:40:37]  I'll call if I need you.
[00:40:39]  We have Continental Breakfast.
[00:40:41]  Yes, I know.
[00:40:41]  There's breakfast in the morning.
[00:40:43]  You're not unique.
[00:40:45]  I don't mean to take it all out on her, but it's been a long time in this mask.
[00:40:47]  You're like, damn.
[00:40:48]  That's funny.
[00:40:48]  I literally just wrote a joke about that.
[00:40:51]  No, there you go.
[00:40:52]  I see.
[00:40:53]  I stole your material from your mind.
[00:40:56]  That's how powerful my jokes deal.
[00:40:58]  I'm still telling it in Portland.
[00:41:00]  Yeah, go for it.
[00:41:01]  I'm sure you do it better than I just riffed off it right there.
[00:41:05]  And if you don't, you got to take some more time writing because I really put very little thought into that.
[00:41:10]  But yeah, but it's just, it's, you know, it's about you getting your fucking room.
[00:41:13]  I'm going to have to pick up smoking just so I get some opportunities to take the mask off.
[00:41:17]  I must have a smoker section in the airport.
[00:41:19]  Just take it off, get some secondhand smoke in there.
[00:41:21]  It is unbelievable, dude, though, like that you can like, you're like, wait, so if I get a water, then I can take my mask off again.
[00:41:27]  But if someone else just wants a second to breathe, they can't do it.
[00:41:30]  It's the whole thing.
[00:41:31]  The thought of going into the bathroom to take off your mask is just so gross in my mind.
[00:41:35]  Well, it's all, yeah.
[00:41:36]  Oh, yeah.
[00:41:37]  Yeah, no, that's awful.
[00:41:38]  No, you can't do that.
[00:41:39]  Even I wouldn't do that.
[00:41:40]  And I really hate the masks.
[00:41:41]  But I do think that there is, there are, so like, as you were speaking to the percentages and all that before, I think that there is a growing percentage of people who are who are starting to see all of the inconsistencies and contradictions in all of this stuff.
[00:41:58]  You know, it's like, so we, we do have to wear a mask in this situation, but now they're saying we don't anymore.
[00:42:07]  And if we don't, Joe Biden wears a mask on a Zoom call, but not when he's meeting with the corridors.
[00:42:13]  Like, this is a little weird.
[00:42:15]  Maybe what we got to do is we all got to get ourselves like built on trays that have some food on it.
[00:42:19]  And then you never have to wear a mask.
[00:42:21]  With like suspenders, you just walk around.
[00:42:23]  Tray with food.
[00:42:24]  You're always at a table with food.
[00:42:25]  You're good.
[00:42:27]  It's almost like a necklace.
[00:42:29]  It just stays in front of you.
[00:42:30]  You're always about to eat.
[00:42:32]  That's the solution.
[00:42:33]  Overeating, which of course puts you at higher risk of getting sick from COVID.
[00:42:38]  So, you know, either way, you're damned if you do.
[00:42:40]  You're damned if you don't.

=== Trump Government Pressure (14:40) ===

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[00:43:40]  Okay.
[00:43:41]  So what was the other thing that we wanted to get to?
[00:43:46]  Oh, yeah, the Trump Facebook ban.
[00:43:49]  I don't know, Rob, what do you think?
[00:43:51]  All right.
[00:43:52]  Well, my first thought is Trump is a fucking loser.
[00:43:55]  The guy, I mean, he left the presidency and there was like, hey, he might start a new television network or he might start his own social media platform.
[00:44:03]  I mean, you see how much profits would be in if he created his own Twitter.
[00:44:07]  The entire conservative landscape would go over there and he would make money, but he's made himself a blog where he can share fucking soup recipes and he has other people writing about, you know, we're going to, it's not even Trump.
[00:44:18]  He's got a writer on his website with a blog that's getting zero traffic.
[00:44:22]  So first is let's just all take a moment to appreciate how much of a loser Trump really is.
[00:44:26]  He talked about, you know, overturning the election results, not one piece of evidence, knew that that was going to happen, didn't fight it.
[00:44:33]  Then he's left office with this claim of, hey, I've got this big platform and I'm going to fucking lose her.
[00:44:39]  He's not doing anything.
[00:44:40]  Yeah.
[00:44:41]  No.
[00:44:41]  And well, that is, look, there is something about that that is like the whole Trump moment, the whole rise, the campaign, the presidency, everything.
[00:44:54]  It was like even when Donald Trump would address some real problems, which he wouldn't always do.
[00:45:03]  I mean, and oftentimes he would get it completely wrong, like really profoundly wrong.
[00:45:09]  He was mad at the Fed that they weren't keeping interest rates lower at one point, you know, like yeah.
[00:45:14]  But even when he would address certain very real problems, he never had any type of game plan about how to actually do it.
[00:45:23]  And so he would just bitch about it and then get steamrolled.
[00:45:27]  Now, this is the problem with like the kind of fake tough guy thing that Donald Trump had.
[00:45:31]  You know, he really convinced everybody he was so fucking tough.
[00:45:34]  But when it came down to it, he always just took it like a bitch.
[00:45:38]  It's like, oh, you know, even when he was complaining, and it was like there was something beautiful about it when Donald Trump said the whole thing about the military industrial complex, if you remember, we played the clip on the show and it was amazing because there's a sitting president, you know, talking about the military-industrial complex in a way even way more brazen than Eisenhower.
[00:46:02]  But he was talking about it and he's just like, look, I want to end these wars, but there's all these people in there who's these people at these big weapons companies.
[00:46:09]  They make a lot of money off war and they want to keep the wars going.
[00:46:12]  And there's all these people in the Pentagon and they want to keep the wars going.
[00:46:15]  But, you know, I want to end them.
[00:46:16]  And it's like, ah, it's a shame you're not the commander in chief.
[00:46:21]  Like, so then where's this toughness?
[00:46:23]  Where's the big tough guy now?
[00:46:25]  So say we're doing it, right?
[00:46:27]  Like, that's what you need, that kind of like courage.
[00:46:30]  And with the election thing, like you said, I mean, he bitched for six months before the election that vote by mail was going to, you know, lead to fraud and they were going to steal it from him.
[00:46:40]  And then he lost, and then he bitched some more, and then he left.
[00:46:44]  And he bitched about social media censorship forever, and then he got banned, and he's gone.
[00:46:52]  Starting a blog, though, to share his recipes.
[00:46:55]  There you go.
[00:46:55]  All right, that'll change the game up.
[00:46:58]  Look, there is something, and we've said this for a while now, but it is, it really is unbelievable that they could do this to Donald Trump.
[00:47:09]  You know, however you feel about Donald Trump, I'm not a fan and never have been.
[00:47:15]  But Jesus, I mean, the guy was the sitting president of the United States.
[00:47:22]  Even if you believe every inch of the election results and think there was absolutely no funny business whatsoever.
[00:47:29]  All right.
[00:47:29]  Well, besides Joe Biden, he got more votes than any other presidential candidate in history.
[00:47:34]  He's the sitting president for four years and got 74 million people to vote for him.
[00:47:39]  You know, got more votes than Barack Obama.
[00:47:44]  That's for that guy to be silenced, you know, that is pretty goddamn creepy.
[00:47:52]  It's creepy because, man, if they could silence that guy, they could silence anyone.
[00:47:55]  And for anybody who believes in something where you think you'd be a threat to the establishment power, the fact that they have this power to silence someone is terrifying.
[00:48:06]  And that, you know, who cares if it's a private company or a government agency or a private company that's kind of in bed with the government, you know, like it's still equally terrifying that they have the power to silence someone like that.
[00:48:22]  And it's just, it's, it's, you know, the libertarians who like celebrate it and say it's their right.
[00:48:29]  And this is what freedom looks like.
[00:48:30]  I just, I have a lot of trouble taking them seriously.
[00:48:35]  And then they pretended to do an academic review where they had a council of experts.
[00:48:40]  It's all just such, it's censorship.
[00:48:42]  We don't live in a free country anymore.
[00:48:45]  If the president, the ex-president was removed from social media, or I mean, at one point, he had posts taken down from Twitter, but just the fact that the guy who was the president isn't allowed on social media, like that's not even like, that's not even not running for aught.
[00:48:59]  You know what I mean?
[00:49:00]  That's a level of censorship and like you said, creepiness that is unbelievable.
[00:49:05]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:49:06]  And the, oh, they did it to him while he was still the sitting president.
[00:49:10]  I mean, that in itself is just, you know, like, whoa, that's really quite unbelievable that they would be able to, that they would have the gall to do that.
[00:49:21]  So yeah, very, very creepy stuff.
[00:49:24]  And there's a lot of really creepy stuff being proposed right now.
[00:49:28]  And some of it is from the government.
[00:49:31]  Some of it is quasi-private government, you know, in tandem.
[00:49:36]  And all of it is, you know, look, it's just not removed from like think of it this way, right?
[00:49:48]  We have, the government has gotten so goddamn big that it's hard to even comprehend.
[00:49:54]  I mean, I don't know what, what our government will, what will the bill be for 2020 and 2021?
[00:50:02]  Total federal government spending.
[00:50:04]  What's it going to be?
[00:50:05]  Over 10 trillion, probably, right?
[00:50:08]  I mean, that is the forget like the libertarian versus, you know, private public.
[00:50:16]  This organization is the biggest organization in the history of the world.
[00:50:22]  There's nothing like it.
[00:50:25]  Find me another organization that spent $10 trillion in two years.
[00:50:30]  We're going to need those UFOs to start dropping some gold bars on the Pentagon.
[00:50:34]  Well, right.
[00:50:34]  I mean, look, if you had like, if you knew like a company, right?
[00:50:39]  And they said that this is uh, they're gonna spend a billion dollars in the next two years, you'd be like, whoa, that's a huge company.
[00:50:49]  Like, if someone, if someone told you, oh, you know, they had a company they ran and it became real successful, and they're like, you know how big we are?
[00:50:55]  We're gonna spend a billion dollars in the next two years.
[00:50:58]  You'd be like, holy shit, that's bigger than any company you've ever known that somebody ran.
[00:51:04]  Like, what a huge organization.
[00:51:06]  How many people are there?
[00:51:07]  How much control?
[00:51:08]  How much power?
[00:51:08]  How many resources do you have?
[00:51:10]  You're spending a billion dollars, you know?
[00:51:14]  And now you talk about spending a trillion dollars in those two years.
[00:51:18]  That's a thousand times bigger.
[00:51:20]  And then, so now $10 trillion, right?
[00:51:23]  That thing that you thought was humongous, this is 10,000 times bigger than that.
[00:51:29]  It's really hard when you get into these numbers to even wrap your head around how much power, how big that is, right?
[00:51:37]  And here's the thing: it's even more than that.
[00:51:40]  It's way more than that, because then there's all these other entities that are like, okay, the Federal Reserve may not count, the credit that they extend may not count in total government spending, but what is that?
[00:51:53]  What is that other than government spending, right?
[00:51:56]  I mean, government lending, but it's essentially just spending, right?
[00:52:01]  When they lend it out to banks at 0% interest.
[00:52:04]  I mean, okay, the Federal Reserve is technically a private company, but they were created by an act of Congress and the, you know, the chairman is appointed by the president and they have the government power of legal tender laws.
[00:52:20]  So they're, you know, they're the government.
[00:52:22]  So you add what the Fed's doing onto that.
[00:52:25]  Then you'd look at the fact that like there's all the banks are basically in bed with the Federal Reserve.
[00:52:34]  They're all their member banks.
[00:52:35]  So that's spending.
[00:52:36]  Everything they spend is really tied into the government.
[00:52:39]  Then you look at the big corporations who the government basically props up.
[00:52:42]  Their spending is pretty tied to the government too.
[00:52:45]  Then you look at the corporate press.
[00:52:47]  I mean, come on, give me a break.
[00:52:49]  Half the people there are probably deep state agents and they're all just kind of like propping up these government narratives.
[00:52:55]  So this whole thing, it's a monster.
[00:52:57]  It's the biggest monster in the history of the world.
[00:53:00]  And so when they unleashed their biggest propaganda campaign in human history over this last year, all around the COVID, you know, pandemic, when some private companies in that environment start implementing these crazy policies, look, strictly as a libertarian, you can say, okay, they're a private company doing it, but it is in a backdrop of all of this other stuff going on.
[00:53:29]  In the same sense that just like, look, if the government runs the schools and they teach kids to be, let's say, racist, like from the age you're, you know, in kindergarten all the way to 12th grade, you're just being taught that like black people are less than human and it's okay to assault them and they're, you know, like you're created by God and they're created by the devil or whatever.
[00:53:51]  And then you have a society of like racist people.
[00:53:54]  You could be like, oh, well, that's just a private person being racist or something.
[00:53:58]  But it's like, well, no, obviously there's a backdrop here.
[00:54:00]  Like this is this whole thing has been poisoned.
[00:54:03]  So no, when Yankee Stadium or something like that, who gets a bunch of taxpayer money and then they come out and say, hey, we're going to have a vaccinated and unvaccinated section, the libertarian response that like you don't have any onus on you to be like, well, they're a private business and that's a voluntary choice if they want to do it.
[00:54:23]  Now you just, you're just removed from reality.
[00:54:26]  You just don't understand what you're actually dealing with.
[00:54:30]  They're coming to a rest robbed for all.
[00:54:31]  Try to say the unvaccinated section is probably going to be fucking awesome.
[00:54:34]  It's going to be like when the fleachers were back in the day.
[00:54:37]  So if you're running for president, you got to be careful with these lines where you're like, and we're going to make the kids racist and we're going to teach them in schools.
[00:54:46]  They're going to be taken out of conversation.
[00:54:47]  They're going to make some horrible cuts.
[00:54:49]  For the record, I was against all of that.
[00:54:51]  Oh, well, if that's, I have not been very careful, Rob.
[00:54:54]  So that's not going to be the cornerstone of my campaign.
[00:54:57]  Very, very careful with his words.
[00:55:00]  No, but I'm just saying from a libertarian point of view, when you look at that now and you see that as the situation, look, obviously the role of libertarians is to try to explain how government interference has been poisoning this whole thing.
[00:55:14]  And what we want to do is roll back all this government power.
[00:55:17]  But if you just look at that on the surface and go, oh, it's totally fine that they do that as long as it's voluntary.
[00:55:22]  It's like, yeah, that's not really, that's not really the point.
[00:55:25]  And we can oppose something just because private people do it.
[00:55:29]  That is incredibly creepy, incredibly creepy, that you would start saying like we're, you know, that we're going to start doing these kind of vaccine passports, even on a small, somewhat like, you know, private level.
[00:55:43]  This is a creepy way to run society.
[00:55:45]  It's inching towards some type of apartheid caste system society.
[00:55:51]  We don't want any part of that.
[00:55:53]  It's goddamn awful.
[00:55:55]  It's interesting that businesses, I'm starting to hear more and more of the requirements of getting the vaccine to keep your job or schools that you're not going to be able to send your kids to school unless they're vaccinated, which is almost similar to like the tax scheme that private corporations basically collect their taxes on behalf of the government.
[00:56:14]  It's interesting that government's done such a good job of like partnering with businesses to enforce their own policies.
[00:56:22]  Well, this is the new model, and it's been this way for a long time.
[00:56:26]  I mean, it's really been this way since the end of World War II.
[00:56:32]  And the competing models were essentially our fascistic model and the commies communist model.
[00:56:43]  And, you know, like again, like when you say fascism, what people think of is Hitler's genocide.
[00:56:51]  You know, like that's what most people's mind goes to.
[00:56:53]  But there were other fascist governments, most notably Mussolini in Italy.
[00:56:59]  And what he described his version of fascism as was the third way.
[00:57:05]  So like you have this free market capitalism and you have this state, you know, socialism.
[00:57:11]  And this is kind of the third way, where the state has enormous control over the economy, but you still allow private corporations, you still allow private business, but the state can squash them at any minute.

=== State Controlled Economy (04:49) ===

[00:57:23]  And they're all kind of serving the state in some way.
[00:57:26]  And so this is what we have in America.
[00:57:29]  This is basically what everybody embraced after we beat the fascists in the war.
[00:57:36]  We realized, yeah, they were really onto something.
[00:57:39]  And so there have been, if you look at it like that, from the pure kind of Lenin-Stalinist vision of government ownership Of the means of production.
[00:57:52]  It just proved to be way less successful than private ownership of the means of production with a large centralized state that can squash private actors whenever convenient and prop up private actors whenever convenient.
[00:58:06]  And you can look at this even in China.
[00:58:08]  I mean, they embrace the fascistic model.
[00:58:10]  I mean, they may call themselves the Chinese Communist Party, and they may not have embraced the democratic participatory aspect of our democratic fascism, but they realized it was a much more successful game to have that model, a giant centralized state with private means, with private ownership of the means of production, or at least a mix, some private, some public, which I guess you would say is what we have too.
[00:58:38]  And so this has been the game for a long time.
[00:58:41]  It turned out to be a much more stable, successful model for the powerful than full-on communism, which is all types of just, you know, natural instability in it because you have all these price calculation problems, you have all these shortage problems.
[00:59:00]  You know, you have this thing.
[00:59:01]  The problem with mass starvation is it doesn't lead to a very stable grip on power for the ruling elite.
[00:59:09]  But so this is it.
[00:59:10]  Yeah, this is the society we live in now where they really mastered implementing things through private means that are essentially government policies.
[00:59:21]  And I just don't believe.
[00:59:22]  Now, I mean, when you talk about like the COVID passport stuff, I just, there's no way that without the government interference and, oh, there we go.
[00:59:35]  There's no way that without the government interference in the marketplace and without the siren.
[00:59:42]  It's just amazing how many fucking noises start the second I start recording.
[00:59:46]  It's cartoonish.
[00:59:49]  It's not like Rob's not in downtown Manhattan.
[00:59:51]  Last week, I was literally in the fucking woods of Maine, and then all of a sudden we start to record and a truck delivery shows up out of nowhere and the dogs start going nuts.
[00:59:58]  I'm like, how am I in the middle of the woods?
[01:00:01]  Surrounded by nothing.
[01:00:02]  Never find quiet.
[01:00:03]  Never find quiet.
[01:00:05]  All right.
[01:00:05]  So the point I was making is that if, listen, if you didn't have this propaganda machine with the corporate press and you didn't have these government propped up, you know, big businesses and you didn't have the threats that government will come down on you if you don't follow this, there's no way we would see mass COVID passports.
[01:00:24]  There's no way.
[01:00:25]  There's just no incentive structure to start excluding a huge portion of your would-be customers.
[01:00:33]  And there would be too much backlash.
[01:00:35]  Now, there might be a few little areas in the economy.
[01:00:38]  I mean, some things like, like I saw recently there was a cruise ship that wanted to test people.
[01:00:45]  You know, like that, I think would happen organically in a market.
[01:00:49]  Like something like a cruise ship, they'd be like, you know what?
[01:00:51]  Like, I don't know if you've ever been on a cruise before, but they're pretty obsessive about like washing hands and germs and stuff like this.
[01:00:57]  Because if something spreads on a cruise, it's real easy to just be a real big problem, you know, and you're out at sea.
[01:01:02]  It's a whole nightmare.
[01:01:03]  You know, people get sick on cruises.
[01:01:05]  It sucks.
[01:01:07]  But like, you're telling me grocery stores, sporting events, all of these things.
[01:01:11]  There's just no way this would be happening in a free market.
[01:01:14]  So there's no obligation for libertarians to be like, well, I support if it's private, but I don't support it if it's public.
[01:01:21]  You can call this shit out all the time.
[01:01:23]  The only obligation for libertarians is to then try to explain to people what we need to do to solve this problem, which should always be rolling back the state.
[01:01:33]  So that's how I'd say that one.
[01:01:36]  All right, let's wrap there.
[01:01:38]  Come check us out in New Hampshire at Porkfest.
[01:01:40]  Come check me out in South Dakota at Freedom Fest.
[01:01:43]  Rob, where can they find you?
[01:01:44]  Yeah, I'm in Portland this.
[01:01:46]  I mean, it's a little bit outside of Portland, but grab a ticket.
[01:01:50]  All proceeds going to the caucus.
[01:01:52]  I'm going to be out there.
[01:01:53]  Also, going to be at Childerberg, which is going to be a blast.
[01:01:55]  And go to the blackcaptain.com, theblackcaptain.com.
[01:01:59]  I got a new scripted audio series.
[01:02:00]  It's really funny.
[01:02:01]  A lot of work went into it.
[01:02:02]  So go support that.
[01:02:04]  Hell yeah.
[01:02:04]  And run your mouth.
[01:02:05]  Go check out Gene Epstein on Run Your Mouth, Rob's podcast, and follow him on Twitter at RobbieTheFire.
[01:02:10]  All right.
[01:02:11]  See you guys next time.