Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - The Libertarian Take On China
Aired: 2021-05-29
Duration: 54:12


=== Live Events and Festivals (04:14) ===

[00:00:00]  Fill her up.
[00:00:02]  You're listening to the Gas 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.
[00:00:21]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:26]  You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
[00:00:30]  Here's your host, Dave Smith.
[00:00:33]  What's up, everybody?
[00:00:34]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:00:37]  I am Dave Smith.
[00:00:39]  He is on the road recording not from home and looking better and in a more professional setup than ever.
[00:00:44]  Robbie the Fire Bernstein, king of the cocks.
[00:00:47]  What's up, my brother?
[00:00:48]  I love traveling the country and realizing that people suck everywhere.
[00:00:52]  Oh, yeah, that is true.
[00:00:53]  It's nice.
[00:00:54]  It's the same Hurts.
[00:00:55]  It's the same hotel check-in.
[00:00:57]  No matter where you go, it's just fucking dumbasses that you got to deal with.
[00:01:00]  I hope you can hear that in the lobby.
[00:01:03]  It's a very egalitarian worldview that you have there.
[00:01:06]  I mean, it's a pessimistic one, but it's egalitarian.
[00:01:10]  You don't have to travel.
[00:01:11]  Just stay wherever you are because if you are annoyed by people, you're going to be annoyed with them everywhere you go.
[00:01:16]  So just stay put.
[00:01:17]  Did you have a bad experience with Hertz?
[00:01:19]  Oh, my God.
[00:01:20]  You get off a flight.
[00:01:21]  It's a whole day and then they got a line there.
[00:01:23]  Fuck you.
[00:01:23]  Get your shit together.
[00:01:24]  Yeah, no, I hear you.
[00:01:26]  I hear you.
[00:01:26]  But the important thing is that you're there and we're here talking to the people.
[00:01:30]  You're in Austin and you're doing Childeberg.
[00:01:34]  Dude, I'm so excited.
[00:01:35]  The lineup of other podcasters that are going to be there.
[00:01:38]  It's cool.
[00:01:38]  It's like a who's who of Liberty Podcasting minus Dave Smith.
[00:01:42]  It's going to be fun.
[00:01:43]  There you go.
[00:01:43]  I was almost about to get a little offended.
[00:01:45]  Who's who?
[00:01:46]  Really?
[00:01:47]  Is it?
[00:01:47]  Well, I know Scott's doing it.
[00:01:49]  Who else is going to be there?
[00:01:51]  I saw Monica Perez was on the lineup.
[00:01:55]  Bud from, I forget his last name, but he was a really cool dude.
[00:02:00]  He's like a firefighter.
[00:02:00]  He's got a cool show.
[00:02:02]  The fad cast guys, even though they're on a different name now, there's a bunch of people.
[00:02:06]  It's cool.
[00:02:07]  There's like a lot of people hanging out.
[00:02:09]  Awesome.
[00:02:09]  Awesome.
[00:02:10]  Well, I hope you guys have a great time.
[00:02:11]  I'm going to try to make it out there one of these years.
[00:02:14]  I've heard it's a great time.
[00:02:16]  So let me, I should start by apologizing.
[00:02:19]  I know our schedule has been frantic over the last two weeks.
[00:02:22]  I apologize.
[00:02:23]  It's all on me.
[00:02:25]  I've had some crazy shit going on.
[00:02:27]  Everything's okay, but I've had some crazy shit going on, some family stuff, and just had to reschedule a few different times.
[00:02:36]  But anyway, very happy to be here with you now.
[00:02:39]  We have some live dates coming up.
[00:02:42]  Oh, hell yeah.
[00:02:43]  We're going to be in Brooklyn.
[00:02:45]  We're doing two, me and Rob the Fire Bernstein doing two stand-up comedy shows in Brooklyn at what's it called?
[00:02:52]  Old Man Hustle?
[00:02:53]  Yeah, I think it might be online as Brooklyn Comedy Club, but it's an unbelievably good comedy room.
[00:02:58]  So, and Beaky Chris is online up, me and you.
[00:03:01]  That's going to be a really fun show.
[00:03:03]  Yeah, and so with that, we're going to be doing that.
[00:03:05]  I'll post all the links for that, but we'll be June 6th and June 13th.
[00:03:09]  We will be in Brooklyn doing some stand-up comedy.
[00:03:13]  Definitely come through to that if you're in the area.
[00:03:15]  June 19th, we will be in Norwalk, Connecticut.
[00:03:20]  Come on out if you're in the area.
[00:03:22]  7 and a 9 p.m. show.
[00:03:24]  That one's, what is it?
[00:03:26]  Unhinged comedy.
[00:03:27]  What's the venue on that?
[00:03:28]  Yeah.
[00:03:29]  No, they're the promoter in conjunction with Stand-Up New York, but I think it's called BJ Ryan's or something.
[00:03:36]  We'll have the link and it's a cool spot.
[00:03:37]  All right.
[00:03:38]  Yeah, I'll post all the links.
[00:03:39]  We'll throw them in the episode description for this one.
[00:03:42]  But yeah, looking forward to that.
[00:03:43]  Of course, Pork Fest, I believe, is all sold out at this point.
[00:03:47]  And then Freedom Fest, you can go get your tickets for that.
[00:03:49]  I'll be there.
[00:03:49]  So a lot of live stuff coming up.
[00:03:51]  Should be a lot of fun.
[00:03:53]  So, you know what I wanted to talk about today was I wanted to talk a little bit about China, China, and the libertarian take on China as I see it.
[00:04:07]  But you know, when I say it's the libertarian take, then it's the motherfucking libertarian take.
[00:04:11]  That's what the libertarian Tupac tells you.
[00:04:14]  And this is what it is.

=== China Lab Leak Hypothesis (05:23) ===

[00:04:15]  And I was thinking there was a bunch of things that were kind of making me think about China over the last week.
[00:04:23]  Obviously, probably the biggest one is that all the stuff of the origins of COVID that's being talked about, and it really is.
[00:04:32]  It's starting to look more and more and more like the lab leak hypothesis is correct.
[00:04:39]  And that, you know, just at this point, from literally the scientific experts and just like the general consensus and all of the circumstantial evidence, I really think it's safe to say at this point that the most likely origin of COVID is the Wuhan lab.
[00:05:00]  Now, that doesn't mean it's definite, but the fact that that's just even the most likely thing right now is pretty incredible.
[00:05:08]  Even Joe Biden admitted the other day that the intelligence community, a lot of them, think that it came from the Wuhan lab.
[00:05:18]  And that's just like when they're like, look, you know, we got to start to admit this slowly because we called you conspiracy theorists for all of this time.
[00:05:26]  And I will say that obviously the likely scenario here seems to be just like incompetence and that people working at the lab got infected.
[00:05:36]  But if you start to accept that this came from that lab, which again, I said is not conclusive at this point, but I do think is the most likely scenario, it would be criminally negligent to not start asking whether in fact it was accidental.
[00:05:53]  Like you just, you can't, if you were to have any type of security operation, private or unfortunately public, if you really had an intelligence community, you know, that did what they're supposed to do, you would have to start really considering that possibility.
[00:06:09]  Whether or not it's, you know, that's the case.
[00:06:12]  You'd have to start asking that question.
[00:06:14]  You know, I mean, if somebody lets loose a virus that creates this global, you know, shock on a truly hard to describe scale, both with the actual virus and the governmental responses to it, you would have to ponder that question.
[00:06:33]  And so that's obviously in my mind.
[00:06:35]  And then there was this thing with John Cena.
[00:06:39]  Did you see this?
[00:06:40]  Where he gave this apology for referring to Taiwan as a nation.
[00:06:49]  He got bitched out.
[00:06:50]  It was almost uncomfortable to watch.
[00:06:52]  It was, yeah, yeah.
[00:06:53]  And he gave the apology in like fluent Mandarin, which was also just bizarre to see.
[00:07:02]  I mean, not knocking somebody for speaking Chinese.
[00:07:06]  He didn't think we were going to see them in the U.S. That's that classic celebrity getting a huge paycheck to do something abroad, thinking it will never be seen here.
[00:07:14]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:15]  And look, it's obviously like, ooh, it's more than just that it's cringy to see him apologizing.
[00:07:24]  There is absolutely something about it that is creepy and really concerning.
[00:07:33]  You know what I mean?
[00:07:34]  When you have famous Americans that have to toe the line for the Chinese Communist Party, that's creepy, you know?
[00:07:44]  And in some ways, even creepier than the actual people in these countries.
[00:07:50]  Like it's one thing if you see like someone, let's say in North Korea and they're just telling you exactly what the government wants to hear.
[00:07:57]  It's well, you kind of understand that.
[00:07:59]  Even if you don't like the government and you believe in liberty, you're like, yeah, well, the government will come get this guy if he doesn't say that.
[00:08:05]  But there's something even more disturbing about a rich American who isn't going to be, you know, violently forced to tow the Communist Party line, just offering it.
[00:08:17]  And it's not even that flagrant of a sentence that Taiwan is not China.
[00:08:22]  It's not like you're calling them out for the Uyghurs or for any of their other crimes or any of the real crazy stuff.
[00:08:28]  No.
[00:08:28]  It's a pretty tame claim.
[00:08:30]  Yes, exactly.
[00:08:32]  And so to see, right, so to see that such a minor infraction against a government, not even our government, a foreign government, when you're just, obviously it's just like you're already rich, but you want to get a little bit richer.
[00:08:45]  So this will help you.
[00:08:47]  So you will just like castrate yourself publicly like this.
[00:08:51]  It speaks to a lot of things, but it's very disturbing.
[00:08:54]  I get the capitalism to it, which is China is a giant market.
[00:08:57]  And I'm sure that they get direct threats saying we will not air your movie here unless you retract that statement.
[00:09:05]  And you got producers that have invested probably, I don't know, what do you think goes into one of those movies?
[00:09:09]  $300 million and that China market's probably worth about that in profit.
[00:09:14]  So I understand you get a call from your boss and he says, hey, listen, you got to go make this statement because you fucked up.
[00:09:20]  But what this just points to and what Ricky Gervais, I think even said it at one of like those Golden Globes or whatever the hell it was, is quit preaching to us.
[00:09:28]  Quit pretending like your little global warming or whatever other nonsense you want to preach at us or that there needs to be more black people at the Oscars, whatever your dumb little agenda is.
[00:09:38]  You can go fuck yourself.

=== Fume Program Flavors Explained (02:52) ===

[00:09:39]  You guys are pro.
[00:09:40]  You don't mind slavery in China.
[00:09:42]  You don't mind a socialist government that, you know, has people in concentration camps.
[00:09:47]  You don't care.
[00:09:48]  So quit pretending.
[00:09:49]  And that it, yes, you're, I completely agree with you.
[00:09:53]  And it exposes more to your to your point, it exposes that it's like you are masquerading around as if you're taking a courageous stance, but you are not.
[00:10:07]  When you go up at the Oscars and you say we need to fight climate change, you know that this will be met with nothing but applause from the entire room.
[00:10:16]  Now, I'm not saying that something being met with applause means it's wrong.
[00:10:20]  I'm just saying don't act like don't have this air of courage about what you're doing.
[00:10:26]  There is no courage in any of these positions.
[00:10:28]  You get up there and say, oh, we're against racism.
[00:10:30]  But it would actually take courage to say something in the face of real naked authoritarianism that would lose you something.
[00:10:38]  And when it comes to that, none of them have an ounce of it.
[00:10:41]  So it's like, yeah, just like you said, spare me all of these other lectures.
[00:10:45]  All right, guys, let's take a quick second and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Fume.
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=== American Empire Mentality (15:28) ===

[00:12:31]  You know, I think there's a real thirst for confrontation with the Chinese in the right wing in America.
[00:12:44]  And this is, you know, something that's been there for a while.
[00:12:48]  I got to say, and I'll just, you know, completely admit this, I was really taken by surprise by how much Donald Trump's anti-China rhetoric resonated with right-wingers in America.
[00:13:02]  I remember when I first saw, and this is, you know, just to own my failed understandings of the American political climate, but I remember the first political speech that I saw Donald Trump give at CPAC.
[00:13:19]  And he was just going on and on about China and this and that with China's currency manipulation and China's ripping us off and we have to get tough on China.
[00:13:29]  And I was just like, I go, no one's going to care about this.
[00:13:33]  Like Americans don't care about China and what they're doing with their currency.
[00:13:37]  I was like, look at what we're doing with our currency.
[00:13:39]  Like, really?
[00:13:40]  They're manipulating their currency.
[00:13:41]  And the problem, like, I just didn't think this would resonate.
[00:13:44]  And it really did.
[00:13:45]  And so I had to reevaluate that whole thing.
[00:13:47]  And obviously, over the last, you know, four or five years, you've really seen the rise in the China hawks amongst the Republican base in this country.
[00:13:59]  Not just the politicians, but I'm talking about like the people, you know, are really like that really resonates with them.
[00:14:05]  And then obviously after 2020 and the whole COVID pandemic, it kind of, you know, works to confirm what exactly what they were saying.
[00:14:17]  And not completely unfairly.
[00:14:18]  I mean, you know, like, look, even if whatever it is that the origin of COVID is, like whether it was from bats or or whether it was more likely from the Wuhan lab or whatever, I mean, it happened in China.
[00:14:30]  And China, one way or the other, did this to the world, right?
[00:14:35]  I don't mean to collectivize the whole country.
[00:14:37]  Of course, there were people there who were working very hard to stop it and were silenced by the government.
[00:14:42]  And, you know, it's nuanced.
[00:14:43]  But I'm just saying that I kind of look at this like, you know, a lot.
[00:14:48]  So you have the right-wingers who feel that way, right?
[00:14:50]  And then you have a lot of the Democrats, at least at the top, who like their obsession is Russia.
[00:14:55]  They're not concerned with China at all.
[00:14:57]  Joe Biden and those guys, they just, I mean, they may say something when pressured to, but they basically want to do business with China and they want to be very concerned about Russia.
[00:15:06]  And then you have libertarians who generally, I feel like, at least when talking about this stuff, are pro free trade with China.
[00:15:18]  They don't like to talk about tariffs.
[00:15:19]  They don't like the accusations about what they're doing with their currency.
[00:15:22]  Somewhat split on the intellectual property stuff, but most of them are pretty good on that.
[00:15:29]  And, you know, so it's like kind of all these different forces.
[00:15:32]  And really, as libertarians always have a knee-jerk reaction to have, are very like wary of any talk of military confrontation.
[00:15:41]  Like we're, you know, very anti-war in general.
[00:15:44]  And so when the Hawks start talking about getting hawkish on China, they, you know, don't respond well to that.
[00:15:52]  So I want to just say it like this.
[00:15:55]  This is what I think, okay?
[00:15:57]  I think of the three groups, right?
[00:16:00]  I think that the Democrats are insane.
[00:16:04]  And the idea that Russia is more of a threat than China just is like, I don't even know how to take on the argument.
[00:16:11]  It's just so incredibly stupid that it's just like, you're not living in reality.
[00:16:15]  You're just not living in reality.
[00:16:17]  The only threat about Russia is that they have a lot of nuclear weapons.
[00:16:22]  And so let's stop talking shit to Russia.
[00:16:25]  Let's stop pushing them further and further to play their only, you know, like card.
[00:16:31]  It's like, you know, it's like if you were like battling over a house and who had more control of the house and say like you have like two-thirds of the house and the other person has one-third of the house.
[00:16:45]  You know, they have their stuff there and you have your stuff in two-thirds.
[00:16:47]  I'm just an analogy is, you know, after World War II, we had most of the world and Russia had the rest of it.
[00:16:54]  And then they lose everything and they retreat more and more and more.
[00:16:58]  Now they're just down in one room, but they have a gun.
[00:17:01]  It's like all they have is a gun, but they're down to one room and they're really not trying to start a fight with you.
[00:17:05]  And then you're like, I'm going to take a little bit more of that room.
[00:17:07]  I'm going to take a little bit more of that room.
[00:17:09]  Now I'm going to call you a pussy while I take a little bit more of the room.
[00:17:11]  It's like, at a certain point, their only weapon is the gun.
[00:17:14]  So just don't push them to use that because they don't want to because we got more guns than them.
[00:17:19]  But they do have a gun.
[00:17:20]  So let's just not push it.
[00:17:21]  So that's the Russia thing is just ridiculous.
[00:17:25]  Also, if you're terrified that global warming is going to kill the planet, then India and China are probably our biggest enemies.
[00:17:30]  Well, that's another thing.
[00:17:31]  So if you're a Democrat, you're focusing on the wrong person with Russia.
[00:17:35]  A very weird contradiction amongst the Democrats who are so concerned with climate change but want to do business with China.
[00:17:42]  Anyway, regardless of any of that.
[00:17:44]  With the right-wingers who are very critical of China, I will say this.
[00:17:52]  I think they have a point.
[00:17:55]  I don't think they're completely wrong.
[00:17:59]  I think they need to listen to the libertarians because as usual, the issue with right-wingers is that a lot of times they'll have more or less, this is not true always, but a lot of times they'll more or less have a point to what they're saying.
[00:18:17]  But libertarians just always have the correct legal and governmental answer to the question.
[00:18:24]  Okay.
[00:18:25]  So I'd say it like this.
[00:18:28]  In the defense of the conservatives, though, it's hard to get a read on them.
[00:18:33]  No one wants to go to war with China.
[00:18:34]  So somewhat becomes a question of negotiations and leverage of if they're trying to make more of a stink of things or trying to be more aggressive under the sediment of that we're being taken advantage of.
[00:18:46]  And in this case, you know, if it turns out that Wuan either was direct from the government or just accidental, it might be a time and place for the government to actually step up.
[00:18:59]  Listen, I'm not advocating for war with China, but there certainly is something to be said for, I guess, trying to be a little bit more forceful and seeing if you get some concessions.
[00:19:09]  Well, let me say this, right?
[00:19:10]  Because I want to start this off with granting something to the right-wingers, right?
[00:19:15]  So what I would grant to your point there is that it is really fucked up that they did this.
[00:19:24]  That is really fucked up.
[00:19:26]  And it's not okay.
[00:19:28]  And China is a bad government.
[00:19:30]  I mean, they are like a legitimate, you know, fascistic state.
[00:19:36]  There's no question about that.
[00:19:38]  Like, they are really, really bad.
[00:19:40]  They do not tolerate political dissidents.
[00:19:45]  They rob a whole lot of people of basic freedoms.
[00:19:51]  And I don't just mean freedoms in the American conception.
[00:19:54]  I mean in most of the advanced world, very basic freedoms.
[00:20:00]  They're very creepy.
[00:20:01]  The fact that they are a huge market and that you have to kind of go through their government in order to get access to their market creates all types of very troubling incentives for big corporations.
[00:20:18]  And again, the fact that they have control over like figures in American culture is, like I said before, just incredibly creepy.
[00:20:27]  I do think, though, it is like you have to keep in mind where China was to where they are now, right?
[00:20:35]  Like as bad a government as they are, this is the Chinese Communist Party, you know, they're not Mao Zedong.
[00:20:43]  Okay, and that's what their legacy is.
[00:20:46]  Like that was their government not that long ago.
[00:20:50]  And that, you know, like this is the biggest mass murderer in world history was their leader.
[00:20:57]  So just saying, just to keep that in mind, it's just, you know, that is the reality of the situation.
[00:21:03]  So here's what I will say to the idea of, you know, like saying, even when you preface by saying, we don't want to go to war with China, right?
[00:21:16]  Let me just say, it is not an option to go to war with China.
[00:21:22]  And the idea of even considering that in the back of your mind is just insane.
[00:21:30]  I mean, China has a serious arsenal of H-bombs.
[00:21:35]  Now, not as many as we have, but this isn't a war that you could even compare to any war that's ever happened in human history.
[00:21:42]  A war with China would mean losing, you know, like Tokyo and South Korea and Los Angeles.
[00:21:51]  And like, I mean, it would just be a disaster.
[00:21:53]  Scott Horton was making this point when he was on Tim Pool the other day.
[00:21:57]  And by the way, go check that out if you haven't already.
[00:22:02]  But it's not an option.
[00:22:03]  Now, we could, I suppose, win that war in the end, but we would legitimately be risking destroying the species.
[00:22:12]  There's no option to go to war.
[00:22:15]  So the strong...
[00:22:16]  Now, what I'm going to say to the right-wingers is this, right?
[00:22:20]  I think that Americans have developed empire mentality.
[00:22:28]  And it's a real problem that I think really, really needs to be addressed.
[00:22:35]  And the truth is that right-wingers need to realize that the empire is your enemy.
[00:22:42]  The empire, and I think it makes it a little bit easier when you see that all the people who lead the empire hate your guts and also worked pretty tirelessly to ruin your last president.
[00:22:55]  But the empire is, it's not just the fact that we run most of the world and bully other people around and threaten other countries.
[00:23:07]  It's this mentality that it's created.
[00:23:10]  And a big part of the reason why the empire has been able to exist and persist is because right-wingers fall into this mentality.
[00:23:20]  And the mentality is something like, it's like a binary thinking between either we got to do something about this or you're okay with this.
[00:23:33]  As if those are your two options, which are not the case.
[00:23:37]  You don't have to be okay with this or do something about this.
[00:23:40]  You know, just like an example, there's a million examples you could think of in like, you know, just everyday human life.
[00:23:48]  You're like, I may not like the way my neighbor is raising his kids down the street.
[00:23:53]  But that's a far cry from, I'm going to go do something about that.
[00:23:57]  Because it's like, well, no, I'm just going to raise my kids the way I think you should raise kids.
[00:24:02]  But I don't know.
[00:24:04]  I'm not really in a position to go do something about that.
[00:24:07]  I don't know what the strategy would be or how I would pull this off.
[00:24:11]  I don't know what the repercussions for that are.
[00:24:14]  And I frankly just don't have the time and resources to go raise other people's kids.
[00:24:18]  I got my kids to raise, you know?
[00:24:20]  And so this empire mentality creeps into people where it's like, you know, Iran has some dispute.
[00:24:29]  You know, the Sunnis and the Shiites have some dispute in Iran and Iraq.
[00:24:33]  And it's like, well, we can't just let them do that.
[00:24:35]  It's like, wait, what?
[00:24:37]  Like, who the hell are you?
[00:24:39]  Why do you even think this is your fight or you have anything to do with that?
[00:24:44]  And if you have that mentality, then people start going, oh, so you just don't care.
[00:24:49]  Like, it's this false binary where it's one or the other.
[00:24:52]  So I would just say that with issues like Taiwan or Hong Kong or something like that, it's not that I don't care.
[00:25:02]  I want everyone to be free.
[00:25:04]  I don't want anyone not to be free, you know?
[00:25:06]  And I think it's horrible if a communist government is denying someone their freedom.
[00:25:11]  But it ain't our fight.
[00:25:13]  And the idea that the United States government is going to go do that, it's not just that it's wrong and that it doesn't make sense.
[00:25:22]  It's bananas.
[00:25:25]  It's insane.
[00:25:27]  The federal government in Washington, D.C. can't even control the crime problem in Washington, D.C., let alone go solve the dispute between Hong Kong and China or Taiwan and China.
[00:25:44]  It's like this empire mentality that we are even capable of solving these problems without making it, you know, way worse and just robbing the American people.
[00:25:54]  And it's also, and this is the statist empire, you know, mindset.
[00:25:59]  It's like, what do you feel like?
[00:26:01]  This is just somebody else's sacrifice?
[00:26:03]  Like, the question comes down to this, right?
[00:26:05]  It's not, do you care about Hong Kong or do you want to go do something about it?
[00:26:11]  It's like, are you willing to sacrifice your kids for the freedom in Hong Kong?
[00:26:17]  Are you willing to put your brother, your son, your father in harm's way to go make sure that Taiwan is considered a separate nation?
[00:26:26]  If the answer to that is no, then you've got your answer.
[00:26:30]  It doesn't mean you can't be for them or speak up about them.
[00:26:33]  It damn sure doesn't mean that you can't pressure John Cena to not be such a bitch about it.
[00:26:38]  But it doesn't, but it doesn't mean the government has to do something about it.
[00:26:44]  And I love that Scott Horton says this, and he got some pushback from right-wingers when he was saying this stuff.
[00:26:50]  And that's why I'm trying to be fair to them and like really, you know, like put this into like what I think is the correct lens, the way I see this.
[00:26:58]  But I love when Scott Horton says this.
[00:27:00]  He's like, we are the middle part of North America.
[00:27:05]  It is ridiculous to think that we should run the entire Pacific Ocean, that we should run the continent of Asia.
[00:27:13]  It doesn't make any sense to feel that way.
[00:27:17]  And while, so you can, you know, you can be appalled by the government of China.
[00:27:25]  You can be appalled by their treatment of their surrounding, you know, neighbors or nations or whatever, you know, they technically are.
[00:27:33]  I don't want to call them a nation and then have to do an apology video later.
[00:27:37]  But, you know, anyway, no, I think it's fair.
[00:27:38]  You know, I think Taiwan is a nation.
[00:27:40]  I think Hong Kong is a nation.
[00:27:42]  But that's not how they're treated by China.
[00:27:45]  And, you know, it's really just not our fight.
[00:27:48]  And in fact, this is exactly what the founding fathers warned the American people about, right?
[00:27:53]  Entangling alliances, war guarantees.
[00:27:57]  Stay out of the internal affairs of other nations.

=== Economic Logic and Jobs (17:02) ===

[00:28:00]  It's not our business.
[00:28:01]  It's destined to be a disaster.
[00:28:04]  You can't go around looking for conflict because you know what?
[00:28:08]  You can always find one.
[00:28:09]  Because unfortunately, the world is a really imperfect place filled with tyrants.
[00:28:14]  So if you want to do this, you'll be sending your sons, your daughters, your brothers, your sisters off to go fight and die in these wars forever.
[00:28:23]  But if you don't want to do that and you care about your own country, then you got to reassess this empire mentality.
[00:28:30]  And you got to think, look, you have to think like in the same sense that I have loyalty to my family before my neighbor's family and then loyalty to my neighbor's family before some family I've never met before.
[00:28:42]  It's like you have to work on what you can actually control on a more local level.
[00:28:48]  And so when you see something like John Cena being a complete bitch, it's, you know, you could think about how fucked up China is.
[00:28:57]  And sure, that's appropriate.
[00:28:59]  But the first thing you should think about is like, what's happened to our culture?
[00:29:04]  That there's not so much pushback against someone doing this that they'd ruin themselves in our market for ever being such a bitch.
[00:29:12]  How have we allowed ourselves to be so conditioned to be so compliant?
[00:29:16]  You know, how have we become so conformist that we could just see someone conforming so blatantly?
[00:29:23]  And then maybe you'd look at our whole culture of fake apologies and bullshit whenever anyone says something honest that they believed and then they had to go and apologize for saying, and we all know they're full of shit when they apologize, but we just accept it and pat them on the head.
[00:29:36]  Maybe that's the problem.
[00:29:38]  At least maybe that's a big, you know, contributing factor to it.
[00:29:42]  And when you look at something like the Wuhan virus, maybe you look at the fact that our tax dollars were funding this shit, right?
[00:29:49]  So like, that's all I'm saying.
[00:29:50]  Like, that's a fight that is at least your fight.
[00:29:55]  Taiwan, Hong Kong, that's not your fight.
[00:29:58]  That's a completely different fight.
[00:30:00]  All right, guys, let's take a moment.
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[00:31:17]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:31:19]  Now, I want to get into some of the other threats that right-wingers, you know, build up about China that I think are really bullshit.
[00:31:26]  And I really think that this idea that China is like, you know, we need to come to some type of like economic battle with China.
[00:31:35]  We need to, we need tariffs and we need to cut them off.
[00:31:38]  This is the idea that China is destroying America by flooding us with affordable consumer goods is just wrong.
[00:31:50]  And right-wingers got to give up on this because it's just bullshit.
[00:31:53]  It's bullshit.
[00:31:54]  It's not the reason why jobs are disappearing.
[00:31:58]  It's not the reason why people are getting poorer.
[00:32:01]  It's not causing the standard of living to go down.
[00:32:04]  If anything, it's what's saving the economy from being far worse.
[00:32:11]  They're not taking jobs from you.
[00:32:13]  If you want to look at your enemies who are destroying the economy, look no further than the Federal Reserve and Washington, D.C. That's who you can blame for any type of economic stagnation that you're suffering from.
[00:32:26]  This is the fact that we get cheap stuff from China is not, you know, I think we've mentioned this back in the day, but as Bob Murphy's, you know, argument on it was the best where he goes, you know, if you think it's hurting someone to sell them things for cheap, then you'd have to think it would really be screwing them over to give them stuff for free.
[00:32:50]  But now look at what you're reduced to arguing, that giving someone something makes them poorer, right?
[00:32:58]  And don't make the comparison to welfare, which I know people like to make.
[00:33:02]  The problem with welfare is not that they give people money.
[00:33:05]  The problem is that they give people money on the contingency that they don't work.
[00:33:09]  That's a whole separate issue.
[00:33:11]  But, you know, the example that I like to use are things like, you know, like oxygen.
[00:33:15]  Like oxygen is just essentially free.
[00:33:18]  It's just there.
[00:33:19]  We don't have to worry about it.
[00:33:20]  If we did, it'd be a very major concern.
[00:33:22]  But we don't have to worry about oxygen.
[00:33:23]  We don't have to buy it.
[00:33:24]  But if you think that if all of the sudden we had to spend five hours a day, every person had to spend five hours a day working to get oxygen, that that'd be wonderful because it would create all types of jobs.
[00:33:37]  That's the type of economic logic that you're working with here.
[00:33:40]  You're to a place where you're basically saying that having to work more for something to produce something that we're already getting for free would make us wealthier.
[00:33:49]  No, it would not.
[00:33:50]  It would just mean working.
[00:33:52]  And if you want to take this logic all the way to its conclusion, we could just destroy all technology and then we'd have nothing but jobs.
[00:33:58]  We'd have a lot of jobs, but we'd be far poorer.
[00:34:01]  So blaming China for this, you know, for that, you know, like undermining our economy by the fact that they produce things for very cheap is just wrong.
[00:34:14]  It's just like economically illiterate.
[00:34:17]  And you guys got to brush that shit off.
[00:34:18]  This is, it's like, come on, right-wingers, you're getting into Bernie Sanders territory here.
[00:34:22]  This is just bullshit.
[00:34:24]  So there's that.
[00:34:28]  I'd also say that I think the intellectual property argument is largely bullshit.
[00:34:33]  And that there's, and even if you don't think it's bullshit, the idea of a government solution to it is really bullshit.
[00:34:42]  Like, they do a lot of shady things over there in China.
[00:34:45]  They'll have like Apple stores that aren't Apple stores.
[00:34:48]  They just literally make the logo.
[00:34:50]  They just make the logo and fucking claim it's an Apple store, but it's not.
[00:34:55]  But they just have them.
[00:34:56]  And it's just like that.
[00:34:57]  Now, okay, feel however you feel about that.
[00:34:59]  I don't believe in intellectual property.
[00:35:01]  I know you're not completely sold on that position, Rob, or at least last we talked you weren't.
[00:35:06]  But what do you want to do here?
[00:35:08]  You want the government to go enforce rules on China somehow, magically?
[00:35:15]  I don't even know how they would do that, but you want them to enforce rules to make sure that Apple profits more?
[00:35:21]  I mean, you understand that it would just be taxpayer funds going to recoup money for Apple.
[00:35:28]  It's essentially just going to be corporate welfare in effect, right?
[00:35:32]  Like, my point is just that on top of the fact that it would just be aiding corporations, you're not, there's no effective way to even do it, even if you want to.
[00:35:44]  So, you know, there's a.
[00:35:46]  So I got to say, I literally, I agree with everything you said.
[00:35:50]  I mean, up until that, and this is similar to what I was saying before, and I'm not speaking in an absolute, there are a lot of variables here, but potentially the U.S. government can exert more influence and leverage on China than any individual U.S. corporation can to create more favorable trade agreements for these companies.
[00:36:11]  Also, we're still in theoretical space.
[00:36:14]  Maybe there actually is a return on investment where it's not just corporate welfare, but it's actually, I mean, I don't, listen, typically speaking, I don't see government executing or nor do I preach, hey, let's have government step in and do something that the free market can't.
[00:36:31]  But I do think, I mean, I don't think you can say that there's absolutely like no path here by which basically all of these corporations that have to pay taxes to the U.S. government, it's a little bit like when we demand our police protection where they go, hey, we're paying a lot of taxes here and this other country is really robbing us of our intellectual property.
[00:36:53]  We need you to step up and do something.
[00:36:55]  And potentially the government can do more than what these corporations can.
[00:36:59]  Now, I'm not saying that that's an absolute, but I'm just saying it's not.
[00:37:03]  I don't know that it's something that's impossible.
[00:37:07]  Well, I think, and I think there's even leaving aside the philosophical aspect to it, empirically speaking, the idea that big corporations are going to run the government and that this is going to lead toward the government doing something good for the people is very unlikely.
[00:37:26]  On top of that, it's like, yeah, I mean, you could theoretically say that maybe we can put pressure on them to work out some type of trade deal that's more in the best interest of big corporations here in America and that maybe that will have some type of positive effect for the American workers.
[00:37:42]  We've been trying that for a while and it does not seem like there's really a plausible solution to that.
[00:37:49]  Again, I'm open to whatever, you know, proposal somebody wants to throw out there.
[00:37:56]  But I would say if you're talking about this, like to all of the, to the most hardcore, hawkish right-winger, if your issue is that China is this horrible government, that they're destroying our economy, that they're ripping off our companies, and we have to find a way to have some leverage to negotiate this away, right?
[00:38:18]  Like Donald Trump's line.
[00:38:20]  You can change labor laws.
[00:38:20]  I mean, that's the real solution.
[00:38:22]  We won't just do everything here.
[00:38:23]  There's a few, right?
[00:38:27]  And that's a good point.
[00:38:28]  But if you accept my premise that I laid out at the beginning that war is not an option with a nuclear-armed country, which, again, as I said, has never been done before and for a reason, because the loss of life, like if you think, you know, whatever, whatever bad you think China's doing to us, believe me, a nuclear war with China will do a lot more bad to us.
[00:38:54]  Probably more to them, but a lot more bad, you know, for us than any of the economic issues.
[00:39:00]  But if you think that you need to be in a position of leverage to negotiate with China, which is, I would say, the more real world, you know, not insane right-wing position, right?
[00:39:13]  It's not that we want to go to war with China, but that we want to have some leverage to negotiate.
[00:39:18]  We got to make the best deals, right?
[00:39:20]  That line.
[00:39:21]  Well, then what you'd really want is to not be massively in debt to them.
[00:39:27]  That's how you would have some position to negotiate with them.
[00:39:31]  It would not be to be in a situation where you owe them trillions of dollars and you need them to continue funding your oversized government.
[00:39:41]  So if right-wingers want to get serious about that and they think China is so evil, then stop taking their blood money.
[00:39:47]  That's what you'd have to demand of our government.
[00:39:50]  Okay.
[00:39:50]  And then to your point, also, of course, you'd want to not regulate all the jobs away.
[00:39:55]  And don't make it so expensive to do business here.
[00:39:59]  And you will keep more business here than you will, you know, have if you make it more expensive to do business.
[00:40:06]  That's just like a praxeological a priori truth about economics.
[00:40:11]  The more affordable you make it to do business, the more people will want to do business, or at least more than if you make it more expensive.
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[00:41:26]  All right, let's get back on the show.
[00:41:28]  The other thing that I hear a lot from the soft defenders of the empire is that is basically the following argument.
[00:41:40]  And the argument goes that, well, yes, America is essentially the empire.
[00:41:45]  America runs the world.
[00:41:47]  And we don't like that they do it in stupid ways.
[00:41:50]  Like we don't like that there's the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
[00:41:53]  Those were stupid.
[00:41:54]  Obviously those didn't work out and cost us a ton of money and didn't get anything done for us.
[00:42:01]  But we got to run the world because if we don't, someone else will.
[00:42:06]  And China wants to run the world.
[00:42:09]  And so if we don't run, like you might think the American Empire is bad, but how about the Chinese Empire?
[00:42:14]  You really want to live under this fascistic government?
[00:42:16]  You know, that's so the argument goes something like that.
[00:42:20]  And to that, I say absolute bullshit.
[00:42:25]  This is absolutely bullshit, a completely false binary choice that is just not based in real life.
[00:42:32]  And as, you know, Scott was pointing this out on Tim Poole's show the other day, but China is, they are poor, okay?
[00:42:42]  Now, they're not as poor as they once were, but they have an incredible, they have a lot of poverty in their country.
[00:42:48]  They have people living in poverty that, you know, we have nothing like that in America.
[00:42:53]  Our homeless live better than, you know, the moderately poor in China, just by being here, you know?
[00:43:01]  Also, you know, those tents in LA, it's warm year-round.
[00:43:05]  But you know what I'm saying?
[00:43:06]  So like there, this is the truth is the only country that can afford a world empire is the American people, and we can't even afford it.
[00:43:15]  It's bankrupting us.
[00:43:17]  The idea that China can afford this world empire is bananas.
[00:43:21]  And why would China look at us, commit national suicide, and then say, all right, we're going to go next?
[00:43:30]  Now that they're done, now that they've destroyed themselves this way, we'd like to bleed ourselves into bankruptcy to follow them.
[00:43:37]  It just makes no sense.
[00:43:38]  And the funny thing, right, is that the trend is that these right-wingers will go, well, we got to run the world so China doesn't run the world.
[00:43:47]  And China is going to run the world.
[00:43:49]  And the reason why China is going to run the world is because we're bankrupting ourselves with these wars.
[00:43:54]  And China is going around investing in all these parts of the world.
[00:43:58]  And so if you think that's the case, then learn the obvious lesson.
[00:44:04]  Don't fight the wars.
[00:44:07]  I mean, that's your lesson.
[00:44:09]  If you don't want China to gain more and more influence, then don't bankrupt yourself.
[00:44:17]  Like, if we don't learn that lesson, you're actually making it more likely that China is going to gain influence.
[00:44:23]  But in real life, the choice is not between the American Empire or the Chinese Empire.
[00:44:29]  The choice is between the American Empire or China having more influence in Asia.
[00:44:37]  Now, do you really think it's worth sacrificing our children, our country, bankrupting ourselves and destroying our economy to make sure that China doesn't have more influence in Asia?
[00:44:52]  Because I don't.
[00:44:54]  That's not to say I want them to have more influence in Asia, but I don't think it's worth destroying the country over.

=== Realistic Global Strategy (09:10) ===

[00:45:02]  So that more or less is my pitch about what right-wingers should learn from libertarians about this whole situation.
[00:45:12]  It's not to say the answer isn't.
[00:45:15]  And of course, there'll always be these goofy libertarians who make us look bad.
[00:45:19]  You know, it's like with the tech censorship stuff.
[00:45:21]  Like there'll always be these goofy libertarians.
[00:45:23]  Like it's a private company or this is the market working itself out and getting rid of bigots or whatever.
[00:45:28]  It's not that.
[00:45:30]  China is bad.
[00:45:32]  What's happening to the people in Hong Kong is awful.
[00:45:35]  It shouldn't happen.
[00:45:37]  It's bad.
[00:45:38]  It's also not our fight.
[00:45:40]  We also have to accept that we can't do anything about it.
[00:45:44]  You may want to, but you can't.
[00:45:47]  And if you do, go ahead.
[00:45:48]  Sacrifice yourself.
[00:45:49]  You know, you go over and join the fight.
[00:45:51]  But don't send other people's kids over there.
[00:45:55]  I also think sometimes in doing nothing, you create an opportunity to find a new solution.
[00:46:01]  Like, and so if you start investing your resources into a bad option, I think there's a lot of time where you just bad chase his badge.
[00:46:08]  So you invest more and more into that and you never kind of figure something else out.
[00:46:13]  So if the only solution here is, well, we have to do something.
[00:46:16]  Well, what's that something?
[00:46:16]  I guess it's exerting military strength.
[00:46:19]  Then what do you do?
[00:46:19]  You just keep exerting military strength because that's kind of what you win with.
[00:46:24]  If anything, if you've got absolutely no idea what to do, sometimes it's not bad to go, you know what?
[00:46:28]  Let's not waste any resources here until we actually come up with something good.
[00:46:32]  Yeah.
[00:46:32]  Yeah.
[00:46:33]  I think, I think you're right about that.
[00:46:34]  I also just think that, you know, it's you'd have to, you have to look at this, right?
[00:46:42]  Like if you're one of these China hawks.
[00:46:44]  Oh, go ahead.
[00:46:45]  And there's also, there is another pathway here, which is sometimes like sometimes time really just does present solutions where like when you don't take action, all of a sudden you end up with some new opportunities that you never even thought of.
[00:46:57]  And while it's easy to look at the world and look at all the things that look really bad, the internet has brought a lot of new information to people.
[00:47:06]  Now it's kind of the wheel seems to be turning in a more negative way where governments have figured out how to use that exact same technology to better monitor people and like exert control.
[00:47:16]  But we're trending towards freedom for a while.
[00:47:19]  And with Bitcoin and other decentralized finance, we might be heading for like a next generation of kind of internet technology and freedom.
[00:47:29]  So, the battle is not lost.
[00:47:30]  If we're over here and we're kind of proving the model for freedom and how economic prosperity can come from that and how everyone can win, the more that they can theoretically look out their window and go, look at how well that freedom thing is working, the more that they're personally going to demand it.
[00:47:46]  And that's the only way that they're really going to end up with it.
[00:47:50]  So, it could be even for them, we're kind of better off sitting on the sidelines and just proving the model to the point where it's so undeniable that the people at some point just have to fold and go, yeah, we're kind of just keeping our own people back here.
[00:48:06]  We got to allow some freedom because otherwise they're going to revolt.
[00:48:10]  Yeah.
[00:48:10]  And, you know, that doesn't sound quite as appealing as, nope, got to do something about it.
[00:48:17]  And then, of course, the people who say they're going to do something about it, they never have anything to do.
[00:48:20]  They don't really have a plan, but they talk tough.
[00:48:22]  And this is one of the reasons why statism sells.
[00:48:25]  You know, because it's one thing to sit back and say, yeah, we got to let the Sunnis and Shiites figure this out on their own.
[00:48:30]  And it's another to say, like, no, we will put a stop to this.
[00:48:33]  But then, of course, that always creates like 10 times more problems over there.
[00:48:39]  And we have to be realistic.
[00:48:40]  I mean, we have to be realistic about what the federal government can do.
[00:48:43]  Like I said, you know, our federal government can't even solve the crime problem in Washington, D.C.
[00:48:48]  This was the old line.
[00:48:49]  I can't remember if it was a Harry Brown or a Ron Paul line originally back in the day, but they were talking about the war on drugs.
[00:48:56]  And they said the federal government can't even keep drugs out of federal prisons.
[00:49:02]  And you just think about what a controlled environment a federal prison is.
[00:49:06]  And they can't even keep the drugs out of there.
[00:49:09]  So the idea that they can keep the drugs out of the country is insane.
[00:49:12]  And then we have the DEA trying to keep drugs out of Central America.
[00:49:15]  You know, like, what do you think?
[00:49:17]  It's not, you're talking about something that is not plausible and then pursuing that policy.
[00:49:23]  So if you are a conservative in any sense, you would think that would start with a realistic policy, right?
[00:49:31]  Isn't that something that a conservative would want to think about?
[00:49:35]  Trying to achieve something that is achievable.
[00:49:38]  As George W. Bush, in his second inaugural address in 2004, I don't remember off the top of my head the exact quote, but I believe he said something along the lines of our goal over the next four years is to rid the world of tyranny.
[00:49:56]  And you're like, that's a tall order for George H.W. Bush's dumb son to pull off in four years.
[00:50:07]  Not even his smart son, his idiot son.
[00:50:11]  He's going to rid the world of tyranny.
[00:50:14]  Let's pick something a little bit more achievable and go with that.
[00:50:18]  But what right-wingers got to realize, right, is that if you are really concerned about the rise of China, well, then you just have to realize that our big government has done nothing but facilitate that rise.
[00:50:33]  And that so many of these corrupt politicians are in bed with China.
[00:50:37]  And so many of them do all of these deals with China.
[00:50:40]  So the thing that's more realistic, already daunting enough, is to try to roll back that power from them and try to, you know, like let our society be less corrupt.
[00:50:51]  Let our society not be going bankrupt.
[00:50:53]  This is what's going to keep us in a stronger position globally.
[00:50:58]  And I don't mean strength in a sense of like we can be the empire and run the world.
[00:51:02]  I just mean like we won't be bullied by anyone else.
[00:51:04]  But the truth is that America is nowhere near, unless we continue down this path and really do destroy our own currency and destroy our own economy and our own culture and our own people.
[00:51:16]  As long as we don't go stop going down that path that we're on now, no one's ever going to bully us around like some tiny country.
[00:51:24]  We got the largest nuclear arsenal in the history of the world.
[00:51:28]  We got something like 400 million guns in this country.
[00:51:33]  You know what I mean?
[00:51:33]  Like no one's bullying us around.
[00:51:36]  No other country is in a position to be an empire that's going to tell America what we can or can't do or subjugate our people unless they willingly do it, like fucking John Cena.
[00:51:46]  You know, I don't really, I don't like the word cuck, but man, was that a good example of that word?
[00:51:52]  The greatest driver of economic prosperity is open markets where you can actually have innovations.
[00:51:58]  So if we got back to having totally free markets and competition, that's how you stay ahead of these other countries because I can't imagine that they have quite the resources that we do or quite like every other country has a little bit more socialist flavor or a little bit more government control than we do.
[00:52:15]  I mean, I haven't traveled everywhere.
[00:52:16]  I'm not a world expert, but it does appear that way, at least historically, you know, we were pretty good on the on the freedom front.
[00:52:24]  So if you want to stay away from these other people, like let's just, we can live by example and we can really innovate some cool shit and stay ahead of them.
[00:52:31]  Yeah.
[00:52:31]  No, that's exactly right.
[00:52:33]  And like kind of in closing, and we'll wrap up here because, you know, it's we're recording this one pretty late.
[00:52:40]  But, you know, if you.
[00:52:41]  I'm enjoying keeping these people up, David, knocking on the door.
[00:52:44]  They're getting upset.
[00:52:44]  This is a thrill for me.
[00:52:45]  Learn some economics, you douche.
[00:52:49]  Learn some economics.
[00:52:51]  Fuck it.
[00:52:51]  You're like, dude, it's late.
[00:52:52]  I'm trying to go to sleep.
[00:52:55]  But, you know, if you're really worried about the threat, what's going to take down America, what's going to ruin our economy or any of this shit, Joe Biden just proposed a $6 trillion budget for this year.
[00:53:09]  Oh, that's just this year.
[00:53:11]  Yeah.
[00:53:12]  That's what your focus should be on.
[00:53:16]  That's what you should worry about.
[00:53:18]  And it may not be as sexy and as enticing as the outside evil empire or something like that.
[00:53:23]  But do you notice?
[00:53:24]  Do you notice how the establishment always has to pick some next enemy?
[00:53:30]  There's always got to be someone.
[00:53:32]  You know, we just have to jump around from like the Soviet Union to Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda to, you know, and now it's got to be China.
[00:53:44]  Why does there have to be a next one?
[00:53:46]  It's WWF.
[00:53:47]  You got to sell something.
[00:53:48]  You need to build it.
[00:53:49]  Exactly.
[00:53:49]  That's what I'm saying.
[00:53:50]  Exactly.
[00:53:51]  It's WWF.
[00:53:52]  This is all a show, and it's not real.
[00:53:55]  You don't have to fight this fight.
[00:53:57]  And so that's more or less my pitch.
[00:53:59]  That to me is the libertarian take on China.
[00:54:02]  All right.
[00:54:02]  So we're going to wrap there.
[00:54:03]  Come see us in Brooklyn.
[00:54:04]  Come see us in Connecticut.
[00:54:06]  Robbie, have fun out there in Austin.
[00:54:08]  All right.
[00:54:09]  Thanks, man.
[00:54:10]  All right, brother.
[00:54:10]  Thanks for listening, everybody.
[00:54:12]  Peace.